LoL Patch 25.17 Preview: Irelia AP is coming, another Gwen nerf and several items buffs

Riot Games has released the preview for Patch 25.17, which notably announces the arrival of AP Irelia.

Irelia Artwork

Axiom Arc, Horizon Focus and Profane Hydra are being largely buffed

The League of Legends 25.17 Patch Notes are out. According to Riot’s official schedule, Patch 25.17 is expected to drop on Wednesday, August 27, 2025. It brings the arrival of AP Irelia alongside new alt-build options like Lane Kayn, AP Kog’Maw, Vayne Jungle, and Nilah Jungle.

Several underused items — Axiom Arc, Horizon Focus, and Profane Hydra — are buffed to encourage more diversity, while champs like Kassadin, Morgana, and Senna also receive boosts. On the flip side, Gwen, Master Yi, Rumble, and Singed get nerfs, Teemo gets adjustments, and Riot keeps patches light as they prepare for the big Worlds update.

The Full Patch 25.17 Preview. Credit: @RiotPhreak on X.

Buffs:

Champions: Irelia, Kassadin, Kayn, Kog'Maw, Miss Fortune, Morgana, Nilah, Senna, Sett, Vayne
System: Axiom Arc, Horizon Focus, Profane Hydra

Nerfs:

Champions: Gwen, Master Yi, Rumble, Singed

Adjustments:

Champions: Teemo

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

"Next few Patches

We're gearing up for the first major release of anti-boosting/smurfing stuff (and a few other behavior-related things) in 15.18, so patches are going to be pretty light these next 2 patches.
In the meantime though, continuing our strategy of getting some alt-build variety, we have some changes to AP Irelia, Lane Kayn, AP Kog, Vayne Jungle, Nilah Jungle. Would love to hear what other things you'd like to see.
We'll also be preparing for our Worlds patch coming up pretty soon (can't believe it's come up so quickly after MSI)!

Red side DoT changes

Thanks so much to the players who found these changes in the first place
They've stabilized really well and both Singed and Rumble are now falling into line with the rest of the champions, showing similar blue/red discrepancies
However, they're now both OP, so hitting in with a nerf

Item Changes

We're also throwing in a few changes to a few underperforming items with very few users across the board
Horizon Focus has also not really picked up a major audience outside of Vel'Koz types
Profane is failing to pick up any real number of users on first item, except for Quinn sometimes. It's clearly weaker than other alternatives, so we're buffing it with a skew towards first item performance

Alt Builds

Our alt builds this patch aim to add spell oriented builds for Irelia, Lane Kayn, Vayne JG
We've historically tried to make lane Nilah work, but it's too hard to balance her capabilities in both bot lane and top lane simultaneously, so we're opting for bot/jungle instead

Gwen

We landed on a set of changes that make it easier for champs that should have better matchups against her to succeed (eg. Jax, Jayce, Akali, Ambessa, Aurora, Singed if you like cooking, etc.)
The slow to tag champs and run them down and being hard to push out in early lane are our avenues to hit some of these aspects down
Gwen; she's the most present Top laner and for good reason
After our laning buffs, she's pretty hard to put behind, while having strong scaling and hard countering certain archetypes
Changes this patch are aimed at giving her some weaknesses

Kassadin

Kassadin can be pretty ineffective in the early game and so that lets him sit a bit higher than he otherwise would at equivalent power level, so we're giving him a buff to better live up to that fantasy

Morg

Our changes last patch undershot a little bit, so we're adding a bit more to her this patch
Morg has found it pretty hard to put out much pressure in lane and we think we can go harder on the changes we did last patch

Master Yi

Now that Kraken on-hits work on Yi work correctly, he's a bit too strong, so we're nerfing it

Yunara

Yunara is quickly climbing to be the most powerful ADC on the patch
There are a few power impacting bugfix nerfs going in this patch, mainly to her bounces.
We'll monitor how powerful those are and otherwise reassess next patch

Header Photo Credit: Riot Games

LoL Patch 25.17 Preview: Irelia AP is coming, another Gwen nerf and several items buffs

Axiom Arc, Horizon Focus and Profane Hydra are being largely buffed

Buffs:

Nerfs:

Adjustments:

Author

Clément Chocat