With the League of Legends Patch Notes for January, the theme of Noxus comes to the forefront with a new Noxian mage, Mel, entering the rift. The hope is the meta changes from the static tank meta and the new objectives become balanced more healthily around the existing League ecosystem. With buffs to ADC items and Yuumi, bot lane is in for a power spike, plus system changes to Atakhan and Homeguard. Riot also rolled back some reward changes after massive community backlash.
System Side Adjustments
The Patch Notes include changes as follows:
- Class Power rebalance due to Item Adjustments
- Objective Changes
- Champion Buffs and Nerfs
Item Changes
ADCs are probably happy about the ADC items becoming stronger after many in the community complained about how unkillable tanks were and how undertuned the class was. While understandable, ADCs are generally very vocally upset when their class doesn’t shred through opponents with impunity. These changes to items such as Yun Tal and LDR make it worth the more expensive buy because they give more stats and are much more gold efficient. LDR and Mortal Reminder also probably give more ability to shred through armour and tanks.
Atakhan Adjustments
Atakhan being nerfed fits the common theme of Riot releasing new features that are generally overpowered and will be rolled back accordingly, although it is still massively powerful and another key objective much like Nashor and Dragon. The Feat of First Blood becoming the first team to three kills also reduces RNG elements that included getting killed during the initial jungle invade or 5-man one-lane catches determining the course of the game. Also giving the team killing Voracious Atakhan buffed enemies more gold makes sense as the GA effect of Atakhan is already powerful enough.
Celebration is upon us! 🎇 Unlock Mythmaker Jarvan IV, Jhin, Nami and Prestige Mythmaker Cassiopeia with vibrant chromas today! pic.twitter.com/tOMkiclGmd
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) January 23, 2025
Champion Buffs and Nerfs
Viktor, Tahm Kench, Irelia and Cassiopeia all get nerfed, and it would be hard to argue most of them didn’t deserve it. Viktor’s late-game damage being nerfed puts him somewhat in line, Cassio’s passive being nerfed offsets the upgrades to boots, Tahm Kench has a knack for being nerfed every time he’s viable in the top lane as a flex pick and Irelia? Well, Riot always nerfs assassins so what did the player base expect?
Evelynn, Kayn and Master Yi buffs make the holy trinity of selfish power-farming assassin junglers more powerful, a change that is probably largely met with disdain from non-junglers. Smolder can now build Infinity Edge and Malzahar just had a quality-of-life update that shouldn’t change many gameplay patterns. It was a big win for assassin junglers and ADCs and a loss for tanks and the aforementioned champions who got nerfed.
Patch Note information at a glance.
New Noxian Mage: Mel
The new Noxian Mage has clear strengths against the current roster which are easy to see and includes:
- Easy-to-learn kit
- High floor and high ceiling character
- Oppressive landing phase
- Has Mobility
- Consistent Skillshots
- Executing Passive = Good Scaling
Laning Oppression
I experienced the Mel versus Xerath lane as Xerath to test how oppressive her mid-presence was both upon launch and after hotfix. The conclusion that can be made is that Xerath is an immobile and skill shot-based damage dealer that gets outclassed in both reliability to secure kills and ability accuracy. With less mobility and reliable execution, suffers both in the lane, scaling and self-peel. One could chalk it up to being a bad matchup, but Mel does Xerath better than Xerath while having self-peel, movement speed and execution below certain health while her abilities are quicker to cast and less vulnerable in animation. Despite all this, she still scales better.
Mel is another one of the 200-year champions.
Matchup Interactions
Against assassins she has enough harass to snowball a lead from early when assassins tend to have limited kill pressure, and against traditional mages, she outclasses them in both damage or CC and sometimes both while having an oppressive pressure that forces enemies to have to be very careful about their health bar in all phases. The real answer that I’ve found in her is to play safely with a late-game hypercarry which is hardly a real answer to a champion that has a built-in execute button.
Despite this, the only way to truly beat her is to make her burn her self-peel and beat her up in ways melees do traditional mages. Mel has invincibility and some movement built in as well as reliable CC which makes her very slippery. Melee’s struggle to all in her effectively without being dangerously low due to harass, and short-range champions especially suffer when walking up for CS in ways that are very Xerath-like. Trading with Mel seems miserable so burst kill pressure appears to be the only way to beat her in lane outside of jungle intervention.
Blue Essence and Account XP Updates
Blue Essence Updates
The community’s backlash from the BE and XP changes was understandably met with massive negativity. However, Riot used the classic bargaining tactic of overcutting the free XP and then walking it back, acknowledging that they had ‘got it wrong’. Their initial objective was to remove the few previously freely available rewards. The backlash ensured that both short-term and long-term rewards awarded more consistent Blue Essence through the Battle Pass which may be considered a small win for users.
Other Rewards
These previously freely available rewards are chests and mythic essence, including gutting the mythic essence store. Along with adding a seasonal loot box system, Riot is trying to ensure that free-to-play players cannot obtain skins or cosmetics without opening their wallets. If they do, they will be pushed towards gacha systems, which are predatory and flat-out evil in their odds. Riot has refused to comment on the removal of chests and other rewards, which makes it likely that they were set on removing this feature to monetise skins more effectively.
The Riot shareholders have presumably been taken over by corporate greed and told to monetise their audience with more predatory methods for bigger profit margins. It’s a shame that no one has fought this change and welcomed it with open arms, deploying every strategy in the book to make it seem like they’re listening to the community when they are not.
Check out more League of Legends content.
