Riot revealed the dates for each League of Legends pre-season patch last week, and to coincide with the arrival of Patch 8.23 this week, the patch notes are here.
These are the most important patch notes Riot has published in a while. Why? Because they contain the contents of the first round of the pre-season, and these are some of the hardest-hitting changes they’ve released all year. Some of them are on par with, or even more significant than, the massive changes that were introduced in the mid-season patches in spring.
Related: All changes coming to League with the 2019 pre-season
We’ve already covered a lot of this week’s patch in our comprehensive and total guide to the pre-season, like turret plating and the new stat shards with runes, but there is some champion-specific content in this week’s patch that’s also very noteworthy.
Up first on the list of 8.23’s VIPs is Lissandra. Her brand new passive, which turns the corpses of enemy champions into exploding ice zombies (no we aren’t joking), is arriving. It will undoubtedly turn Lissandra into even more of a teamfighting monster, and since it won’t help her in-lane trading much, it may turn her into more of a top laner, or even a support mage.
There are some other smaller changes coming to some very popular champions as well. Aatrox’s ultimate is getting nerfed in both cooldown and in its Blood Well, and AP Ezreal is getting a little bump. Jungle Taliyah is getting pretty heftily nerfed, too.
The next large change, however, isn’t for a champion. It’s for an item—the Guinsoo’s Rageblade. After this patch arrives, the item will no longer give you scaling AP or AD, and instead will provide magic and armor penetration per stack. This is clearly a very large change to one of the most popular items in the game, and as such, it should have a heavy impact on the meta.
If you’d like to read specifics on minion, turret, or other changes, you can read the official patch notes. And for knowledge on what’s coming down the pre-season pipeline still, you can read our guide. The patch should arrive this week.
