Patch 4.10 Notes

Balen has been a Formidable threat in both Standard and Eternal—hopefully this makes you have to work a bit harder to get multiple attacks in.

Heimer and Jayce have been a meta force for ages. This change lets Epic Scraptraption still be a worthy way to spend 6 mana without running away with some matchups.

Our last adjustment to the Handler didn't succeed in slowing down the Tech menace. This change should make Heimer turrets stay fragile, giving the deck a much clearer weakness to pings.

It was fun to see the board fill up with snakes for a little while, but the extreme cases have been limiting what we can do to make the card playable more regularly.

While we like that Swindle is a cool way to "share" in your opponent's cards, the information gained was a lot stronger than we'd like. By reducing the number of options, we reduce both the power of the selection and the information gained.

Samira's dominance has been pretty consistent since her arrival, so we wanted to lower her ability to style on her opponents in the very early game.

Lurk has been rising up from the depths to put up some strong winrate numbers, so we're dulling its teeth a little bit by making it harder for Pyke to make his surprise appearance.

Cloudwinder has been carrying Janna to some impressive wins, but we want to make sure the card advantage machine is something you can still interact with on the board.

Warden's menagerie has really taken over since dropping his cost in a prior balance patch. We're reverting the change to try and reserve an effect this powerful for the very late game.

Wildfire has been burning up the ladder since its release, and while it isn't always the top deck in the pile, it does lead to some less interactive games. We're hoping to lower the flames a bit without smothering it completely.

Watchful Idol has been the engine for various Illaoi decks, but its self-damage has also fueled some other champions in a less healthy way. At a lower health total, it should still be an efficient tentacle source, but do less to feed the Noxian agenda.

Sting Officer has been showing up as an offensive force in Elusive aggro decks. We wanted to tone back the core package while making it a little better at its original job: planting flash bombs.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but combined with Chief Nakotak and Big Game Tycoon the Valley hasn’t been only imitating, but also surpassing the units it's copying. We like the creativity of this deck, but we are hoping to slow it down just a bit.

We love innovation, but the Blacksmith was a bit too good at her job. She should now apply a bit less pressure from the best Freljord starts.

Freljord has struggled against Elusives, especially more midrange-style Freljord decks that don't want to run Avalanche. Giving them a small roadblock to Elusive attackers will help them stabilize and make the matchup less polarizing.

Children of the Forest has been extremely difficult to play basically since it was made. By making it a choice card, it can fill short term needs while still giving Recall a fun splashy finisher effect.

Lord Eldred is pretty good at protecting the team, but not great at getting you the actual win. Now he lets you turn that defense into some offense.

Jack has been lagging a bit lately, but worry not—he’s finally returned back to his boat. 

Editor’s Note: The debate that’s divided the internet, is it a ship or a boat? But I’m asking the important questions: Why isn’t the King’s Court a submarine?

The terrible trio are meant to be the big payoff for saving Coins in Bilgewater, but that payoff wasn't necessarily leading to a win.

With Volibear giving support to Titanic units, we wanted to support some of his underplayed in-region Titanic friends.

Shark Trainer's mana penalty felt outsized for its benefit, and led to accidentally not getting a shark more often than it led to interesting gameplay.

Babs is crazy, but has never been crazy good. With Attune, she makes sure you have enough left in the bank to cash in your coins right away.

With more slower, late-game strategies coming to the Freljord, we think there's a home for a slightly bigger AOE effect that helps you stabilize without hurting your own team.

Harrowing Return far too often brought back a big threat that would just get chumped. Now that big spooky zombie is a little Fearsome to do a better job of actually closing out the game.

The Diva's been stuck on PnZ’s B-side pretty much since her release, so we're trying to get her some more regular airplay with a Titanic new sound.

The Gemcrafter has a powerful effect, but her immediate impact on the board was too low to justify it.

Ahri's days of dominance are behind her, but we do want Recall to have a place as a competitive deck, so we're giving her some power back.

In Path of Champions, Teemo could sometimes show up as a level 2 without any Puffcaps in the enemy deck. This change makes him slightly less useless in those cases.

With Titanic units on the rise, we wanted Atakhan to feel like a reasonable option to include in your deck.

Editor’s Note: Atakhan, true to his name, is sure to bring Ruin to your games when he pops up from Clash of Titans.

Consult was always a risky card because of how suddenly it could end a game, and that kept it from being a reasonable cost. By moving it to Slow, we can give it power in other ways and make it a finisher for Soraka.

With the new Titanic cards from Volibear, we wanted to revisit some older, less played bigguns and get them into Titanic shape.

Nine Lives has been more of a kitten than a tiger, but we think buffing the Liminal Guardian will let it take out more real threats.

Singular Will is a huge effect, but was it really worth double digit mana? We still want this to be difficult, just not impossible.

Haunted tomb already asks a lot of you, with both a dead unit and waiting for countdown as requirements. By easing back the mana investment, those other costs become easier to stomach.

We have tried MANY keywords on Brash Gambler to see what might stick - Overwhelm, Tough, Challenger, you name it. Turns out the answer was right in front of our faces the whole time.

As we're taking a look at Elusives in general, we want to make sure each region has better tools for dealing with the Elusive threat. While this change to Exhaust doesn't always make it better against Elusives (where it was already solid), it should shift the card to be a more generally usable combat trick, letting decks pay a smaller penalty in other matchups when they include it.

Noble Rebel has never stuck in the Discard decks, so we wanted to let it fill a role as a mid-game board control tool for Sion, who has been lacking Challenger since the Twinblade Revenant changes.

With elemental decks coming in a little under where we'd like them to be, we're flipping Caprine around to let her stick on the board longer and get her Forge hotter.

With the new Titanic cards from Volibear, we wanted to revisit some older, less played big cards and get them into Titanic shape.

The Ursine was meant as a way to play a different Sigil of the Storm strategy, but was too weak to actually support his long-term game plan. He's now hit the gym and should be able to stick around longer and generate more sigils.

Deep has struggled to get off the seafloor lately, so we're making the Tusk a bit more Mega.

We don't think Kayn needs a lot of love to become relevant again, but with his origin bonus taking longer, we wanted to let his champion spell come out a bit easier.

This Yordle has mostly been exploring the unused portion of the deckbuilder since his initial rebalancing. We think a little extra health will keep him around long enough to spread the knowledge to his fellow scouts.

Norra's portals have been coming up empty lately, so we wanted to make their full board payoff a bit more potent.

After copious research and some very personal questions, we have determined that the Portal Pioneer is, indeed, a Yordle.

Called Shot fits our usual criteria for a burst or focus spell, but was stuck at Slow. We think speeding things up will make the card easier to use without greatly increasing Ekko's power.