Legends of Runeterra Patch 2.5.0 brings multiple card changes and updated Labs

Legends of Runeterra’s newest update, Patch 2.5.0, is officially dropping tomorrow.

When compared to more recent patches within LoR, this one has an abundance of balance changes with a total of 21 cards being altered in some shape or form. The key differences look to nerf top-performing decks on the ladder, like Aphelios, Twisted Fate, Fiora, and Concurrent Timelines, while buffing weaker cards like Lulu and Jarvan IV.

Aside from updates to cards, Riot is updating two of its Labs: Quick Draw and Lab of Legends. Quick Draw is being altered and renamed to Ultra Rapid Draw, which looks to model itself after of League of Legends’ April Fools’ mode. This means there will be Urf-related effects that players can use to find victory. For Lab of Legends, Taliyah and Azir are getting their own decks with corresponding icon rewards if you achieve a win with them. In addition, a new difficulty slider is being introduced for players looking for a challenge.

Here are the full notes for LoR’s Patch 2.5.0. 

Card updates

Champions

Twisted Fate

• Level Up Requirement (Twisted Fate Level one): I’ve seen you draw 8+ cards → I’ve seen you draw 9+ cards.
• Twisted Fate’s quest can be completed in extremely short windows of time. Considering his level two is usually completely game-winning, Riot feels the need to increase the quest requirement slightly to broaden windows for interaction before he levels up. This is especially important for Riot to keep an eye on given both current and potential future content that involves card draw.

Fiora (Level one and two)

• Base Stats (Level one): 3|3 →  3|2.
• Base Stats (Level two): 4|4 →  4|3.
• Fiora has a long history of going between breaking thresholds one week, and then being totally fine the next given certain metagame shifts. Recently, it’s been doing more of the former given Golden Aegis and Shurima’s regional weaknesses against her. By reducing her health, Riot is giving decks with less interaction more ability to power through, and introducing much more risk and disruptability for Fiora’s alternate win condition.

Jarvan IV (Level one and two)

• Base Stats (Level one): 5|3 →  6|4.
• Base Stats (Level two): 6|4 →  7|5.
• Jarvan IV has been the least-played champion of Empires of the Ascended. Riot wants to give him a straightforward buff to his base stats to make him more of a threat on the board.

Shyvana (Level one)

• Change: Added Fury
• Base Stats (Level one): 4|4 →  3|4.
• Base Stats (Level two): 5|5 →  4|5.
• Shyvana originally didn’t have Fury given her thematics. But the lack of Fury has caused enough gameplay issues in her usability for Riot to retroactively reconsider her design.

Lulu (Level one and two)

• Base Stats (Level one): 2|3 →  3|3.
• Base Stats (Level two): 3|4 →  4|4.
• Lulu has been among the least-played champions since her launch. Riot is looking to reinforce some of Ionia’s aggressive capabilities in this patch and is giving a small buff to Lulu to allow her the ability to attack profitably in more games.

Followers, Landmarks, and Spells

Pick a Card / Twisted Fate’s Pick a Card

• Cost: 3 → 2
• Change: Place a card from hand into your deck to draw 3 at the next Round Start. Give them Fleeting. → Place a card from hand into your deck to draw 2 at the next Round Start. Give them Fleeting.
• Pick a Card’s draw power was both allowing significant lethal setups while also creating explosive card draw to turbo-level Twisted Fate on round five. Riot is streamlining the effect to reduce the ceiling of this card.

Wiggly Burblefish

• Base Stats: 3|1 → 2|1
• Wiggly Burblefish can both efficiently and reliably cost zero mana. This is an exciting build-around and payoff, so Riot is leaving this capability but flatly reducing its power to reduce the payoff and lethality of Fizz’s friend, especially when copied.

Dreg Dredgers

• Base Stats: 1|1 → 2|1
• Riot is reverting this previous change to give Deep decks a bit more early game.

The Dreadway

• Cost: 9 → 8
• Base Stats: 4|8 → 4|6
• Changing The Dreadway has two purposes. First off, Riot wants to prevent the Concurrent Timelines and Ledros into Dreadway from occurring, regardless of the deck’s power level. Variance has its places, but this particular combo is too decisive in gameplay considering its erratic nature.
• Secondly, this change gives Riot an opportunity to adjust Dreadway for more decks to be able to use it and Gangplank more effectively.

Shadow Assassin

• Base Stats: 1|2 → 2|1
• Riot wants to provide better options to use Ionia as a core part of any given strategy. Given the current power level and availability of new regional tools, the company wants to make an adjustment that it was a bit hesitant about when it originally changed Shadow Assassin.

Fae Guide

• Base Stats: 3|3 → 3|4
• Fae Guide looked like they could use some slightly better stats to help them be a bit more reliable in combat and provide more realistic appeal to Ionia decks looking to capitalize on the effect.

Legion Rearguard

• Base Stats: 3|1 → 3|2
• Riot is reverting a previous change to Legion Rearguard that unfortunately had left him strictly worse than other cards over time. Riot is making this change to support Noxus’ aggressive regional identity.

Sea Scarab

• Base Stats: 1|2 → 2|3
• Like with Dreg Dredgers, Riot thinks Deep’s early game could use a boost. The company wanted to respond to feedback by both making it less detrimental when generated, reinvigorating Deep strategies.

Esteemed Hierophant

• Change: When I’m summoned, advance your Buried Sun Disc 2 rounds. → When I’m summoned, advance your Buried Sun Disc 3 rounds.
• Sun Disc decks are generally reliant on leveling up two Ascended champions to restore The Sun Disc. Riot wants to give the Hierophant a minor adjustment, allowing him to be a more meaningful inclusion in Shurima Decks revolving around the Sun Disc and creating alternate paths to its countdown in some situations.

Callous Bonecrusher

• Base Stats: 6|3 → 6|4
• Callous Bonecrusher’s stat profile is too off for serious consideration. Riot is making this change to help in Expeditions and potentially see more niche Normal game experimentation.

Calibrum

• Cost: 2 → 3

Severum

• Cost: 2 → 3

Gravitum

• Cost: 2 → 3

Infernum

• Cost: 2 → 3

Riot’s initial goal for Moon Weapons was to be slightly better than collectible cards of the same cost, similar to Celestials. But the ability to Phase and recreate weapons was too easily achievable. Riot is moving Aphelios’ weapons to three cost to lower their efficiency and slow down his payoffs.

Gifts from Beyond / Aphelios’ Gifts from Beyond

• Cost: 2 → 1

Riot wants to retain the current total cost of Gifts From Beyond considering it’s not creating Moon Weapons freely like Aphelios.

The Veiled Temple

• Change: Each round, the first time you play two other cards, refill two mana and grant your strongest ally +1|+1 → Each round, the first time you play two other cards, refill two mana and grant your strongest ally +1|+0
• While Riot has liked to see some of its newer landmarks having legitimate competitive power, The Veiled Temple can snowball games in multiple directions. Riot is removing the health buff from its trigger to allow players to attack or otherwise remove buffed units.

Labs updates

Patch 2.5.0 brings a new rotation to Multilab:

• Lab of Legends (Updated)
• Ultra Rapid Draw (New in 2.5.0)
• United Front PvP

Heimerdinger’s Temporal Transducer has gone haywire. Everything is looking a little quicker than usual. Ultra Rapid Draw is a new spin on Quick Draw with more random cards, more mana, and everything moving at a rapid pace. There are also a few more golden spatulas and manatee statues around than there are usually.

Additionally, Lab of Legends has been upgraded:

• Champions: Taliyah and Azir have joined the Lab of Legends lineup, each with their own unlockable icon for completing a run.
• Difficulty Tiers: Normal, Hard, Heroic, and Legendary difficulties added. Complete a run on each difficulty tier to unlock the next one.
• Reward Rerolls: Don’t like your rewards? Toss them out for a new batch. You only have three rerolls for each run, though, so use them carefully.
• Run Results: Share your glorious victories and painful defeats with new summaries added at the end of a run.

Personalization

Boards

• Planet Urf
  • For Legends who know pyrotechnics are the key to victory.

Guardians

• Urf
• Carpe spatula!
• Keep an eye out for flying fish… Urf has special visual effects when you tap or rub him.
• Personality: Extra
• Favorite food: Pancakes

Card Backs

• One new card back is available in the Store.
• Planet Urf
• Abs of gold > abs of steel.

Emotes

• One new emote is available in the Store.
• Big Flex

Bundles

• The Planet Urf Bundle is available for 2,169 Coins. Bundle includes:
  • Planet Urf Board
  • Urf Guardian
  • Big Flex Emote
  • Planet Urf Card Back
  • Exclusive Urf Icon

Miscellaneous

• Taliyah’s Level one and two art have been updated.
• Added an on/off toggle for Prismatic Card Styles in the deck loadout screen.
• Standard and Singleton formats have been removed from Gauntlets. All Gauntlets have been updated to best-of-three format.
• Maximum number of Prime Glories available from Gauntlets reduced from five to four.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t use a card as a deck cover if three copies of that card were in the deck.
• Fixed an issue where text was overlapping in some languages in the Mastery tab.
• Fixed a bug where Prismatic card sounds weren’t affected by the SFX volume slider.
• Improved readability of card text on Prismatic Azir and Fizz.
• Stoneweaving no longer incorrectly creates Buried Sun Disc in Expeditions.
• Kindred now correctly counts slayed units that were marked in previous rounds toward their level up progress.
• Fixed a bug where Spellshield wouldn’t protect against Lissandra’s Entomb.
• Fixed a bug where Unworthy was able to target friendly units.
• Fixed a bug where Mimic was able to copy enemy champion spells (Mimic will only create the base version of the spell).
• Fixed a bug where transforming units were incorrectly healing themselves when transforming.
• Sea Scarab now has a Deep counter.
• Aurelion Sol’s cost reduction effect should now behave more consistently with other cost reduction effects.
• Katarina, Viktor, and Draven have had their Play effects updated to be Summon effects to be consistent with other cards with similar effects.
• Lucky Find will no longer trigger a second spell cast upon selecting one of the three choices.
• More updates and corrections to card text, tooltips, and other text across the game in our continued effort to improve text consistency.

LoR Patch 2.5.0 will be released tomorrow, March 31.