Patch 26.17 Breakdown: A Stabilisation Patch Before the Playoff Run
Patch 26.17 goes live on August 26, and it lands as a stabilisation pass rather than a reset. Eight champions receive buffs, six take nerfs, and the only system changes touch Stormrazor and Sundered Sky. Riot Lead Gameplay Designer Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison published the preview on August 19 and built it around outliers — Vayne, Xerath and Nasus carry the headline reductions, while the roaming support question stays under observation instead of getting another lever pulled.
Support: Riot hold after reading the pro data
The most significant line in the preview concerns a change that is not happening. Riot pulled gold and experience levers on roaming supports in 26.16, and the early professional sample has been enough for them to sit still. Phroxzon said the limited number of pro games on 26.16 showed good movement on roaming supports, and that Riot expect the effect to trickle down to solo queue as players find the strategy less effective over time. He also drew a boundary around how far they want to go — regular roaming should not be over-punished, and a small amount of unconventional roaming is acceptable as long as it does not become broadly optimal.
For drafts, that means the support pool stays where 26.16 left it. Teams that had already rebuilt their bot lane priority around the marksman magic resistance buffs will not need to redraw anything before the closing weeks of the split.
Loading tweet...
That patience is consistent with how Phroxzon described the problem to RFT.GG ahead of 26.16. His read at MSI had been relaxed — mages accounted for roughly a fifth of bot lane picks, marksmen still outnumbered them four to one, and he put the inflated win rates down to shallow mastery curves rather than raw power. The spike came in the two to three weeks after the tournament. By the time we spoke to him, he was already seeing the opposite movement.
This is a constantly moving target.
Loading comments...
Thresh is the one support touched directly, and the nerf lands on a pick that had already fallen out of the conversation. His E active damage drops from 75-255 (+70% AP) to 65-245 (+60% AP). He has been drafted once in the LEC this Summer, by Stend, in a loss. Whatever the change does, it will show up in solo queue long before it shows up in a draft.
Bot lane: Xerath takes the generic hit
Xerath loses two base armour, from 22 to 20, and five damage on Q at every rank. Riot's reasoning matters more than the numbers here. Phroxzon repeated that AP bot laners add long-term variety to the role and a healthy kind of frustration, so Xerath is being trimmed rather than pushed out of the lane. He is performing well in both mid and bot, especially at average levels of play, and the nerf is deliberately generic across both roles.
Image Credit: Riot Games
Two base armour is a real number for a champion who trades against auto attacks from the first minute.
Top lane: Vayne's laning phase trimmed, Nasus loses sustain
Vayne receives the longest change list on the patch. Her Q mana cost moves from a flat 30 to 46 at rank 1, scaling down to 30 at rank 5. Her W true damage falls from 6-10% of target maximum health to 4-10%, with the minimum damage down from 50-110 to 40-100. Her base health is reshuffled to 580 with 98 per level, up from 550 with 103, which leaves her marginally sturdier at level 1 and thinner by level 18. Her attack speed ratio follows the same pattern, moving to .67 with 2.8% growth from .658 with 3.3%.
Phroxzon was explicit about the target. Vayne top has been strong at higher levels of play, and Riot consider her mix of Experimental Hexplate durability, a strong laning phase and clean scaling to sit past what the counterplay in most matchups can answer. The stated intent is for her lane opponent to keep slightly more health, which helps them assist a gank or trade back.
That last detail connects to a broader diagnosis. Phroxzon told RFT.GG that the balance between roles is still off, and that ganking is one of the main levers Riot have for handing a class more influence over a game.
ADCs broadly are still more powerful than top lane, both in agency and pure power level.
There is a tension worth naming. Riot want more carry potential in top lane — Phroxzon named Jax and a possible return of Camille to the role — yet this patch cuts a carry currently succeeding there. The line they draw sits between melee carries, which they want structurally supported, and ranged tops, which they accept as variety without letting them define the role. Vayne stays in the pool, as a pick teams reach for deliberately.
Nasus loses passive life steal at every rank, from 12/18/24% to 10/15/20%. The data explains the urgency. Since the 26.16 buff, his win rate has climbed 3.2 points to 53% at Emerald and above, his pick rate has more than doubled to 7.6% and his ban rate has pushed past 13%.
Riot admit the buff was over-magnitude. Cutting his sustain makes high stack counts harder to reach in lane while barely touching the jungle version. The solo queue numbers say little about a drafted game, but a ban rate that steep shows how fast the pick became something to plan around.
Cho'Gath and Irelia gain on the other side of the lane. Cho'Gath's E adds 10 flat damage at every rank, and Irelia's Q AD ratio rises from 70% to 80%.
Image Credit: Riot Games
Mid lane: Leblanc restored, Yasuo and Yone nudged towards crit
Leblanc's attack speed ratio returns to .625 from .4, with growth cut from 2.35% to 1.5%, and her W and R-W AP ratio rises from 80% to 90%. Phroxzon explained the history behind it. The ratio was cut when Statikk Shiv was an extremely strong one-stop waveclear item, and it was never restored after the Shiv rework moved the item towards on-hit. She is not strong in any particular skill bracket, so this is a restoration with a small buff attached.
Yasuo and Yone both see their passive crit damage reduction move from -10% to -5%. Riot want first-item crit to compete with Blade of the Ruined King and Kraken Slayer, and they concede that none of the crit items feel right for the pair — an itemisation hole they intend to fill later. In pro play, where Yone is drafted for his teamfight windows and sidelane rather than his lane, a build shift towards crit changes his second and third power spikes more than his draft priority.
Qiyana and Aurelion Sol round out the mid buffs. Qiyana's Q goes from 70-190 (+85% bonus AD) to 80-200 (+90%). Aurelion Sol's Q mana cost drops by 10 at every rank and his W cooldown falls to 14 seconds at max rank, from 16.
Jungle: Graves and Nocturne pulled back, Sundered Sky cut again
Graves loses 10% bonus AD on his Q damage. His Q return damage is rebalanced rather than flatly reduced, with the rank 1 base rising from 0 to 80 while the bonus AD ratio drops from 55-115% to 45-105%. The change front-loads the return hit and lowers his ceiling. Nocturne loses two base armour and 15 base health, a small correction to a champion whose early clear and dive threat had been holding priority. Trundle's W attack speed cap climbs from 90% to 120%, which is a larger swing than it looks for a champion who converts attack speed into both clear speed and objective control.
Image Credit: Riot Games
Sundered Sky takes another cut, from 45 AD and 450 health to 40 and 400. Phroxzon called the direction good and the magnitude still off, and said Riot are hoping to see more movement on AP junglers and less Sundered Sky dominance at higher levels of play.
Asked by RFT.GG what he wanted fixed in the pro meta before Worlds, he named two priorities: getting more AP junglers into the mix, and restoring carry potential in top lane. His reasoning ran through the mid lane. Teams playing mage bot do not pair it with an AD mid — they run an AP mid and stack the AD on jungle and top, which tells Riot that AD mids are weak as a class. Widening the AP jungle pool is one half of the correction. Read alongside the Vayne and Nasus changes, 26.17 is Riot working on both items on that list at once, with the international season approaching. Stormrazor moves the other way, gaining five percent attack speed, as Riot look to broaden a user pool that currently runs through Jhin and little else.
These numbers come from the preview and can still change before 26.17 ships on August 26.
