LoL Patch 25.12 Preview: Gwen and Yorick nerfed, Jax and Zeri Buffed in first MSI Patch

Patch 25.12 brings targeted nerfs to overperforming champions and early-game dominance, while buffing underused picks across all roles to shake up the meta ahead of MSI.

Yorick Artwork

This is the first major patch before MSI that will be played on 25.13

The League of Legends 25.12 Patch Notes are out. According to Riot’s official schedule, Patch 25.12 is expected to drop on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. This is the first MSI patch, which brings a lot of buffs to several champions. For information, MSI will be played on Patch 25.13.

This patch mainly nerfs overperforming champions like Gwen, Yorick, Kalista, Taliyah, and Neeko by weakening their early-game strength or damage outputs. Meanwhile, underperformers such as Jax, Lee Sin, Leblanc, Samira, and Twisted Fate receive buffs to improve viability across roles or stages of the game.

The Full Patch 25.12 Preview. Credit: @RiotPhroxzon on X.

Buffs:

Champions: Aatrox, Aphelios, Aurora, Bard, Bel'Veth, Garen, Jax, LeBlanc, Lee Sin, Mordekaiser, Nidalee, Samira, Twisted Fate, Zeri

Nerfs:

Champions: Ahri, Azir, Gwen, Kalista, Neeko, Rumble, Senna, Taliyah, Varus, Yorick

Adjustments:

Champions: Rammus, Vi

Systems:

Atakhan
Runes: Grasp of the Undying

Riot's Reasoning behind these changes

Read more about League of Legends changes on the X account of Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison.

Top

Gwen has been strong for a while; looking to open a bit more windows for opponents to gain an advantage on her early through higher early W CD and lower base health before she gets her scaling going
Hearing a bunch of chatter about not nerfing Shen; while he’s a tad strong, he does good things for the game by being a champ that can slow down damage and also adds some strategic diversity in being that tank/fighter split hybrid. Additionally, his mastery curve is not the steepest, so while he has a high winrate, people are decently performant on him at low mastery levels, which bumps his winrate up
Yorick is still a tad strong, looking to improve item diversity for him by moving power away from Attack Speed bindings (Trinity) into other items while also nerfing him - Jax has been a bit weaker than other options; looking to give him a nice AS boost throughout the game and also will help bump his jungle viability a tad

Jungle

Nidalee changes are focused mainly on her AP build; leaving top intact
Lee Sin is getting a bit more throughput on his early ganks to help land Q’s and also speed up his clear a bit with E CD. While we don’t think this is enough to get lane Lee Sin over the line, should be a decent buff for him

Mid

Aurora struggles a bunch into some of the mages that outrange her and some of the tankier champions that she struggles to kill later in the game. Giving her more opportunities in the short term to play these lanes out without skewing her to top (where MR is less useful) and also bumping her AP Ratios on R, as they’re more likely to be effective compared to the Liandrys style builds that she often opts into in top lane
Leblanc is another burst oriented champ that has been worse for wear recently; giving her a bit more of an opportunity to drive tempo throughout the game, especially with a big buff on the level 11 spike
Twisted Fate has also been struggling to keep up with the meta, because he’s often a bit too slow to get going; looking to allow him to try and get the game going faster compared to his other global or semi-global contemporaries like Taliyah, Galio (or if Sylas can just take his ult). Situational angles for AD TF to also be playable in some spots
Ahri is getting a bit of a tap down in a way that doesn’t change her W vs E incentives too much (E max 2nd is normally prioritized in higher levels of play). We want to retain how important it is for her to land it for damage, so we’re choosing CC, which will sometimes let players get out of Charms where they otherwise wouldn't have on Live (esp when they have Merc Treads).
Taliyah, we’re giving more windows for opponents to find earlier kill angles on her and nerf her trading before her Seraphs turns on and makes her too durable. She also just outputs too much damage for how tanky she is, so a few nerfs to both aspects
Finally, some pretty straightforward nerfs to Azir’s output

Bot

Some buffs to Aphelios’ early game here, maintaining his “slow and assailable, but high output” playstyle. If there are spots he can be safe, he should be pumping output a lot better and this will be decent buffs to his early laning
Zeri has been away from the meta for a while and sporting pretty good metrics for average players. Out of the 3 things Zeri stands out on compared to the roster (kiting, teamfighting, getting picks), teamfighting is both the most exciting and the most accessible for regular players, so we’re opting to index power there
Samira has been out of the meta, especially in high levels of play for a long while. With Shieldbow gone, she’s been struggling with being able to pop off on her first item spike and her laning has been nerfed considerably (especially with the MS nerf from a while ago). We’re returning some of that, so she can pick better angles to take an engage and keep up with retreating enemies
Kalista is receiving some straight nerfs to make her more assailable in the early game and need to be a little more careful with her all-in timings - Senna was just overbuffed in AD

Support

We considered a few changes for Bard, but opted to amp him up in his matchups where he’s free to roam (eg. Braum, Rakan, etc.) compared to buffing his early durability, so he could facetank Alistar engages for example. While that would make him viable, it’s not a particularly long term sustainable one
Neeko has been one of the top supports for a while, in the short term, we’re moving power away from her Q harass in the early game and skewing it towards her more AP heavy builds. While she does get a lot of value from her W and its contribution to vision control with all the tricks she can do with it, it’s one of the unique things she can do in support, so we opted to hit her damage output instead (and let her keep doing the cool thing)

Header Photo Credit: Riot Games