LoL Patch 25.7 Preview: Yorick adjustments, Brand jungle buffs, and Xerath scaling changes

Releasing on Wednesday, April 2, this patch brings significant Yorick adjustments, alongside buffs and nerfs to champions impacting both pro play and solo queue.

Yorick Splashart

This patch is aiming for small adjustments on many champions

The League of Legends 25.7 Patch Notes is out. According to the official schedule the game's developers provided, Patch 25.7 is set to be released on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. The patch introduces major Yorick adjustments. Champions like Brand jungle, Trundle, and Shaco AD are getting buffs, while Naafiri, Darius, and Gwen face nerfs. Xerath is also more focused on scaling than raw damage to make him less powerful in the early game. Notable system changes include adjustments to Fountain Regen and Lane Swap Detection.

The Full Patch 25.7 Preview. Credit: @RiotPhroxzon on X.

Buffs:

Champions: Brand, Ivern, Olaf, Shaco, Shen, Trundle, Volibear
Item: Catalyst of Aeons, Rod of Ages, Umbral Glaive

Nerfs:

Champions: Darius, Gwen, Lilia, Lulu, Naafiri
System: Fountain & Homeguard

Adjustments:

Champions: Singed, Xerath, Yone, Yorick
System: Lane Swap Detection

Riot's Reasoning behind these changes

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

Yorick

Yorick's changes are aimed in broad strokes at making him a slightly more functional teamfighter in exchange for reduction in split pushing power
Making him better in the early game at some cost to his late game
Make him better at being a juggernaut and reducing the need for him to buy Seryldas as often (E hits shredding)
A variety of QoL changes that make him feel better to play, eg. ghouls continuing to fight while recalling

Singed

In our micropatch nerf for Singed, he has a pretty small number of levers that are effective and the changes that work well for normal champions don't work so well on him, so we have to change things that we know work (eg. Q damage)
At the same time, we want these changes to feel positive for Singed players long term and Q damage is basically the main thing he does, aside from “running fast”, “being unkillable (esp in R)”.
So we're restoring it back to where it was pre-nerf and taking some power out of other places instead

Yone

Yone's changes are intended to reduce some frustration from the E Crowd Control cleanse
Simultaneously, wanting to give more incentives for Yone to build Crit items

Brand Jungle

Jungle is still a very unpopular role in many regions; we want to make sure that as many jungle champs are viable as possible to ensure that players can transition roles cleanly, especially when they get filled
Our risk of (especially) jungle flex picks is also meaningfully reduced in this world

AD Voli & AD Shaco

2 traditionally AD champions that have their builds dominated by AP currently
Just adding light incentives to add these back

Fountain Regen

The notes yesterday were a bit ambiguous, these changes are targeted at making repeated recalls and topping yourself off to win lane through attrition, worse
We still want to keep the typical behind cases of getting chunked hard and having to recall strong though (acknowledging that keeping this strong also does keep some ahead attrition cases strong as well though, but are more likely to hit players that are actually behind)
Incidentally, we also intend this to nerf Symbiotic Soles on mid laners a bunch, which is a bit of a playstyle that's picking up and relatively non-interactive
We still like the real support options being able to pick up Symbiotics here though

Systems

Catalyst has been weak for a while, especially compared to Lost Chapter which feels like a significantly better purchase
We're not looking to decrease the price as that makes it too good at stalling action on the 1100 spike, so just looking to increase its actual efficiency
Umbral has also been pretty weak for a while with Pyke being the only user
Recall with symbiotic soles has been an intended but too powerful interaction, we like where it is on supports, but the mid lane use cases have been too powerful, so we're taking it down a tad

Gwen

Gwen's changes have had the effect we wanted in terms of skew (especially adding her back as a more effective pick in top lane in high skill play), however a bit too effective, even after the micropatch so we're taking her down a bit more

Naafiri

Naafiri is still pretty strong, even after the micropatch, so we're taking her down a bit further down
So far, she's pretty low ELO skewed; we're looking to bring her early game down and especially in jungle
So far her damage is pretty high, which we're keeping it there but making her work a little harder to access that damage

Header Photo Credit: Riot Games