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Riot Games is back from its holiday season and the developers of League of Legends are diving straight into the action with the first patch of Season 13. As promised last year, Riot Games is nerfing Yuumi until a larger rework is in place and is also releasing the mid-scope update for Jax in LoL Patch 13.1. A total of 12 champions are getting balance changes alongside seven items that are getting buffed, nerfed, or system adjusted. While the company is looking at balancing outliers when it comes to champions, it is keen on buffing underpowered items and adjusting tank items.
Game designer Ezra “Phlox” Lynn wrote on Twitter, “For champions, we're still mostly looking at soloq [Solo Queue] outliers as we head toward season start (10th). We're also buffing up a number of underpowered items and adjusting Jak'Sho to make it less valuable on fighters.”
He added that the developers were looking into making changes to sustain stats in the fighter system and these changes shall be coming in the next few patches. He added that more details will come later as it is not fully hashed out yet. Addressing Yuumi’s state, Phlox said, “The larger Yuumi changes are still in the works but we're nerfing her this patch since she remains very highly banned.”
Phlox just posted the preview for Patch 13.1, but we should soon be getting the numbers and actual changes for the champions and items in the coming days as LoL Patch 13.1 heads into the Public Beta Environment (PBE) first.
Champions getting buffed in LoL Patch 13.1
The buff list for the first patch of 2023 is relatively short compared to the nerf list. The following are the champions that are getting buffed in LoL Patch 13.1:
Attack Damage (AD) Shaco
Jayce
Lissandra
Sion
Items getting system adjustments and buffs
Items getting a power spike in LoL Patch 13.1 are as follows:
Axiom Arc
Horizon Focus
Rod of Ages
Winter’s Approach
The ones getting system adjustments are:
Jak’Sho, The Protean
Seraph’s Embrace
Nerfs in LoL Patch 13.1
Champion nerfs:
Aatrox
Dr Mundo
Fiora
K’Sante
Mordekaiser
Rammus
Yuumi
Zeri
Meanwhile, Legend Tenacity is getting system nerfed.
In November last year, after the pre-season reveal, Riot Games confirmed that Jax and Rell would be receiving the next mid-scope update and on cue, the company has finally dished out a release date for Jax’s update.
Coming to ARAM (All Mid All Random) changes lined up for this patch, Lead Modes Designer Daniel “Maxw3ll” Emmons revealed that the team is playing it safer this time around. He wrote, “We're back in the office and back to work. Submitting the following changes to ARAM balance for patch 13.1. We kept it to safer buffs/nerfs in order to give the team time to properly test updates to the systems.”
According to Riot Games’ official patch schedule for Season 13, LoL Patch 13.1 is scheduled to go live on 10th January (Tuesday).
