sazu

EUW GM Jungle/Adc

[sazu @sazulol_]

Riot gave us duo in Master back
Buffing Berserkers, Fleet, giving us more MR early
Nerf Aegis
The only thing missing is for them to fix Matchmaking and we are lowkey fully back, insanely big W from Riot for the changes this week

[sazu @sazulol_]

BERSERKERS BUFF + BASE MR IS HUGE!!

[Matt Leung-Harrison @RiotPhroxzon]

Mages Bot and Approach for 26.16

26.15 Rundown releasing later tonight; got a bit delayed this week

Mages Bot in Pro Play
- While Mages Bot at MSI only represented ~20% of picks (and often felt like much more), we have been seeing a significant uptick in their presence and priority at EWC and Kespa Cup and it seems only likely to continue increasing
- This presence has also started to trickle its way into Ranked play in a major way
- Only a few months ago in March, we were seeing a significantly Enchanter and range dominated support meta, which also resulted in ADC and hyper carries in bot lane being very powerful
- These champions benefitted a lot from the Season Start 2026 changes; from things like the ADC quest hyperscaling with Enchanters + changes to nerf roaming in the support role generally
- So in Patch 26.11, we made some adjustments to buff melee supports, nerf ranged supports, especially Enchanters
- But at the same time, some certain chefs were also cooking some clever ways to bypass some of the anti-roaming and lane swap controls that we added into the Support quests at the start of the year
- What resulted was 2 major swings towards roaming supports and away from ADC bot (it’s an interesting thought experiment for what would have happened if we had changed nothing about the First Stand Enchanter meta and had the roaming developments play out)
- While we overall like Mages bot being viable in some capacity, what we’re observing now is arguably too far of a swing in the other direction, players are familiar with and we still want to support ADC as being a primary supported class there
- All of the previously listed dissatisfactions with gameplay that led us to nerf support roaming in Season Start 2026 still stand and in that set of changes, we intentionally went a bit lighter on some of the anti-lane swap, anti-support roaming controls to avoid overly punishing either accidental roaming or unique playstyles
- We’ve also heard a lot of the Pro Player complaints about the meta and are taking that into consideration
- We don’t want to force them to suddenly completely swap subclasses by suddenly making ADC and that learnt skill expression unviable, so it’s a fine balance
- That said, for those who want to learn it, we want to encourage and allow for skill expression of Pros to play a variety of things resulting in more flexible comps, dynamic lanes, etc. and greater champ variety long term

Mages Bot in Regular Play
- A lot of this “excitement” has also made its way to regular play
- Players have been excited to try out Mages bot. That said, not everyone is excited about that; Mages represent a natural counter to ADC for a decent chunk of the game duration and people trying to replicate the Pro Play Support roaming style often causes more grief to their lane partners than benefit
- Overall, we like that Mages are playable bot as it adds to a lot of variety in the lane and the games that players play
- However, too many mages bot with them being too powerful in certain cases results in undermining a lot of the mastery and expectations of what can be played in the lanes
- We’re not looking to adjust this power dynamic significantly as a result (eg. Mages have earlier spiking, smoother scaling curves. ADC have later & stronger scaling, but sharper successes and failures), but we are looking to address some of the magnitude of differences to make some of them less extreme
- eg. Flattening the differences between Mages and ADC bot so they have the same smooth builds, the same amount of mana, similar levels of spikes, etc. is a quick way to make it so there’s no class differentiation, even if it would “solve the problem”
- The profile of Mages in bot lane is also quite dissimilar to how they manifest in Pro Play
- For several years now, Mages bot like Brand, Swain, Ziggs, Veigar, Seraphine, Xerath etc. often don’t win by allowing a support to roam (especially historically), they often win by either poking you out with the support or 2v2 killing especially in average play
- They also have higher winrates on account of having higher starting winrates for first time plays compared to ADC, shallow mastery curves and favorable matchups in some (but not all) cases against ADC
- Their winrates as a result, I think are misleading for their true power level, in the same way that one shouldn’t be alarmed by Malphite having a 52-53% winrate (high winrate as a novice, low skill growth)

What are we doing?
- In 26.16 we will be making some targeted adjustments to these dynamics; some examples
- Straight nerfs to support roaming using already established levers (starting at upping out of lane support gold/xp penalty from 25% until level 3 >>> 33% until level 5
- Buffs to some underpowered ADC tools (Berserker’s Greaves, Fleet)
- Buffs to ADC base MR, nerfs to MR growth
- Buffs to Heal
- We’re also testing a variety of speculative things; will share more later in the week once we’re more firm on tactics

Thank you to everyone for all your passion and thoughts on these topics. We want to strike the right balance between increasing and rewarding diversity of playstyles in the game; the rate of these adoptions and how much burden we’re putting on the player base and Pro Players for said diversity

[sazu @sazulol_]

DUO MASTER IS BACK LETS GOOOOOOOOO 🥳🥳🥳

[sazu @sazulol_]

@Rell_ative Yea that sadly sounds a little too rough 😔

[sazu @sazulol_]

Since there was a lot of feedback for the Adc Tierlist, here is my Jungle Tierlist (Locke S Blind)

[sazu @sazulol_]

@Rell_ative I'm not gonna lie I haven't seen her in Jungle ever since they removed her Jungle ratios, so couldn't tell you, sorry

[sazu @sazulol_]

@_n__m__nyan I'm glad you like it, Smolder in current meta is really just his own tier 😭

[sazu @sazulol_]

@FeuKyurem123 I just checked, his winrate like slowly drops on average from Iron 51% to 50.2% in Master, that's kinda what I mean. To your question, to me personally I'd say Master+ is high elo yes

[sazu @sazulol_]

@naliaaowo @azukade_ yes for sure, only otps playing him rn pretty much I agree

[sazu @sazulol_]

@TheRealYGV3 Don't worry the next list will literally have all Champions included

[sazu @sazulol_]

@naliaaowo @azukade_ That's a fair statement, for me it's more that I wouldn't like to Blind him so i just put him in Counter 😭

[sazu @sazulol_]

@Chimera_LoL_ always people's perception which can vary from player to player, so if it works for you, fuck the tierlist and enjoy them free wins 😎

[sazu @sazulol_]

@Chimera_LoL_ Think it's one of those Champs that gets slightly worse the higher elo you go, so on the lower ends because his kit is rather simple you can focus on a lot of other parts of the game which is very nice, also feel like Top lane Warwick is slightly better but ofc Tierlists are

[sazu @sazulol_]

@glaive33 @marikastits72 You buy a lot of HP / tanky items, usually you go Liandry, Riftmaker, Rylais/Zhonya, so once you have a couple of those you are quite beefy and constantly go in and out and also heal up with conq/passive/riftmaker

[sazu @sazulol_]

@pottyos_hu OKAYYYY HOLY FUCK LETS GO DUDE YOU ARE THE MORDE JUNGLE GOAT 🐐

[sazu @sazulol_]

@apfelbombe With there being usually 2 Mages and no Adc right now tanks definetly are stronger in Games like that, people need to pick up on pretty much being forced to ban Vayne on Blueside tho, cause Lastpick Vayne Top is really strong right now.

[sazu @sazulol_]

@_Njox What role/champ do you usually play/main, easier to tell you cause some skills can transfer, Malphite with Sylas ban is for sure very autofilled friendly so you are good on that generally speaking, maybe something like Skarner or Shen is also easy to pick up on initial thought

[sazu @sazulol_]

@pottyos_hu Yes, don't need to listen to listen to all Tierlists, usually Champs that have easier kits/abilities are better in lower elo because you can focus on other things, so in that regard Mordekaiser is great and if it works for you, then no Tierlist can take that away from you 😎

[sazu @sazulol_]

@Scrubbums Maybe you've just had bad experienced, always good to keep being open minded 🫡

[sazu @sazulol_]

I'm not talking non sense is all I'm gonna say. I will defend the Zeri S tier with my life

[DPM.LOL @dpmlol]

Only 4 ADCs have a positive win rate against bot mages 📊

[sazu @sazulol_]

@f3tanith Don't even remind me about the HORRORS of Rell Jungle 😭😭

[sazu @sazulol_]

@pottyos_hu Somewhere in either C or B tier, haven't played it or vs it but AP Junglers kinda hard to pick bcs Ad/Mid want to AP usually, + for flex pick top, hard to ult and get objectives still, Sylas/Diana just seem better if you wanna play an AP Bruiser ish champ