Riot Games is stepping in on the mages bot meta. In Patch 26.16, it will nerf support roaming and hand a series of buffs to marksmen, Lead Gameplay Designer Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison announced on July 29.
The headline change targets the roaming support directly. The out of lane gold and experience penalty goes from 25% until level three to 33% until level five. Alongside it come buffs to Berserker's Greaves and Fleet Footwork, a buff to Heal, and a rebalancing of AD carry magic resistance, with a higher base value and reduced growth. Riot is also testing more speculative changes it plans to detail later in the week.
Phroxzon framed the patch as a correction rather than a purge. Mage presence in the bot lane sat at roughly 20% of picks at MSI, but it climbed at both EWC and the KeSPA Cup and has since spread into ranked. Riot likes mages being viable there, he said, but views the current state as too far a swing away from marksmen.
He also traced how the game arrived here. Patch 26.11 buffed melee supports and nerfed ranged ones, especially enchanters, to break up a lane dominant support meta. At the same time, players found ways around the anti-roaming and anti-lane swap controls built into the season start support quests. The two moves pushed in the same direction at once.
Gumayusi: "They don't let me do anything"
The developer post lands two days after Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong voiced his frustration on stream. Cassiopeia outfights Draven, he noted, while Ziggs and Xerath outrange Caitlyn with better wave clear and crowd control on top.
