League of Legends patch 10.8 highlights - Eight Champions buffed, six nerfed

The League of Legends (LoL) patch 10.8 highlights have been revealed by Riot Games. In the patch, the developer has decided to buff eight Champions, while swinging its nerf bat at six. The LoL patch 10.8 is also a follow-up to the funnel mechanics, death changes, and more. 

Here are the most important changes in the latest LoL patch 10.8, starting off with which champions have been buffed, and which have been nerfed.

LoL patch 10.8 Champion changes

In the LoL patch 10.8 highlights, Riot explained each of the changes, revealing their thinking behind the Champion buffs, as well as nerfs. Alongside these changes, the developer also revealed Coven Morgana, Coven LeBlanc, Coven Zyra, and Coven Zyra Prestige Edition will be available on April 16, 2020.

Let's pull off that band-aid and first take a look at the nerfed champions, starting with Aphelios. 

Aphelios - Nerfed

• Passive bonus armour penetration removed, lethality added. Q ability level scaling takes longer for base damage and cooldowns, damage ratio increased.

"Aphelios has continued to pull out the big guns as a pro dominant champion. We’re looking to attack his power curve as well as his ability to deal with the tanky front line threats that he more likely encounters in pro play."

Kalista - Nerfed

• Base armor reduced. E slow decreased.

"We're reeling in a bit of Kalista's power with a focus on her early game CC so that she can’t kite enemies as easily without backup, and has to rely more on her support for utility."

Master Yi - Nerfed

• R bonus attack speed decreased.

"We've been seeing Yi snowball too often, especially in average play, so we're nudging him back by pulling a little power out of his ult."

Senna - Nerfed

• Passive Mist Wraith spawn chance decreased.

"Trimming some power from Senna since players are continuing to get better with her."

Sett - Nerfed

• W base damage decreased.

"We’ve been seeing players rely on Sett’s W for its consistent early wave control, so we’re giving his enemies a bit of breathing room before he can, uh, set them straight."

Varus - Nerfed

• R cooldown increased.

"We're looking to curb a bit of Varus' power while making sure both of his meta builds are still equally viable, so we decided to balance one of the tools in his kit that would balance across both versions without chaining him down."

Ashe - Buffed

• Q bonus attack speed increased.

"Strike quickly—now even quicker. Ashe has been weaker than we’d like, so we’re amping up her main DPS ability as frost-ing on the cake."

Evelynn - Buffed

• Q damage increased.

"We're upping some of Eve's damage to help her saunter her way through early skirmishes and the jungle more reliably."

Orianna - Buffed

• W movement speed modifier increased later. E shield ratio increased.

"We’re giving our Golem gal more oomph in her CC and utility so she can run more like clockwork."

Ryze - Buffed

• Base health, armour, and damage rounded up. Q movement speed increased.

"Cautiously giving Ryze some power while cleaning up some uneven stats."

Soraka - Buffed

• Base mana increased. Q cost decreased.

"Star Guardians get a lot of mana. It's a thing. Loosening her restrictions on her aggressive output so she can have some more presence in lane."

Tristana - Buffed

• E bonus damage ratio increased.

"We're giving Tristana a bump up to help her core kit combo to continue razing her enemies throughout the game."

Urgot - Buffed

• E bugfixes. R cooldown decreased.

"We’re fixing some bugs to Disdain and giving him more opportunities to bring the fear. And death. And all that."

Xayah - Buffed

• E damage per feather hit increased.

"Buffing those sweet Bladecallers so Xayah can keep ruffling her enemies’ feathers."

Funnel mechanics in LoL patch 10.8

Riot has continued to change funnel mechanics in LoL patch 10.8. In this patch, the minion gold penalty now triggers when gold earned from minion kills is greater than 40% of your gold earned from monsters. Further, minion gold penalty removal happens at the 20-minute mark, up from the 14-minute mark. 

Riot explains the changes:

"Our attempts at reducing the effectiveness of funnel have notably cut the playrate of the strategy, but it's still proving to be a successful one for those who continue to do it. We want to see if modifying our current levers work to further curb pairings like Master Yi and Taric's success."

Death changes

• Pity Zooms - On death, gain a smaller version of Homeguards which gives the player about 2.5 seconds less time to get back to lane
• Lone Wolf - At levels 1-6, a champion's solo kills grant 20% more experience and assisted kills grant 20% less experience. At levels 7-8, these numbers are reduced to 10%

Riot explains the death changes:

"We're adjusting the potential teams have to snowball early to make sure that your games don't go wildly out of control as often and give teams more chances to participate in an even game. Kill experience coupled with Homeguards means that early kills are still very powerful, but they're not quite as game-ending as before. Shifting the type of kills to solo ones also help give individual agency, which is something we still want to promote, especially since we're seeing such a heavy skew towards shared kills.

We understand these pacing changes may hurt the jungle more than other roles, but we're making sure that we put back power into places that make sense for the role."

The League of Legends patch 10.8 further holds some quality-of-life changes, bug fixes, and practice tool additions for players to enjoy.