LoL Patch 25.14 Preview: Yunara, the new ADC, arrives as Attack Speed items get buffed

LoL Patch 25.14 Preview: Yunara, the new ADC, arrives as Attack Speed items get buffed | Sheep Esports

Kled should receive lots of adjustments, details will be shared later

The League of Legends 25.14 Patch Notes are out. According to Riot’s official schedule, Patch 25.14 is expected to drop on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. This is the first patch post Mid-Season Invitational, which brings a lot of buffs to several champions. For information, the Summer Split from several regions is expected to start around the end of July and beginning of August, similar to the LEC, which begins on August 2, and the LTA on July 26.

Yunara finally lands on the Rift after months of champion teasers. The last new champion was Mel Medarda, released back in January. Yunara’s arrival comes alongside buffs to several attack speed items like Kraken Slayer, Phantom Dancer, and Blade of the Ruined King. Some champions are getting direct nerfs — including Riven, Twisted Fate (both heavily buffed last patch), and Lee Sin. On the flip side, Riot is giving Azir a strong boost and adding a bit more damage to Fizz and Ziggs. But the most notable buff might be for Fiora, whose ultimate now provides significantly more healing.

The Full Patch 25.14 Preview. Credit: @RiotPhroxzon on X.

Buffs:

Champions: Azir, Darius, Fiora, Fizz, Ziggs
System: Blade of the Ruined King, Kraken Slayer, Phantom Dancer, Rod of Ages

Nerfs:

Champions: Braum, Lee Sin, Riven, Sett, Twisted Fate, Yasuo, Yuumi, Zoe
System: Haunting Guise, Unsealed Spellbook

Adjustments:

Champions: Kled

Riot's Reasoning behind these changes

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

"Firstly today, losers queue is not true, we're not intentionally making you lose more games while you're losing (it doesn't even remotely make sense why we would even spend compute time and increase queue times to do that).

We're not matching you on your honor score, your number of pings, your runes, whether you're on a loss streak or any of that. We only match you on your mmr, try to achieve as best on-role parity as possible (we can still do a bit better here)

Yunara

Yunara is releasing this patch
After a string of spell focused/non-AA oriented ADC's (Smolder, Akshan, Samira), we wanted to go back to basics with a simple, but deep champion
We also wanted to add to our list of more simple releases in recent years (Mel, Smolder, Briar, Naafiri, Milio) as we'd released a few higher agency ones in the past few (Ambessa, Aurora, Hwei)
Simple champions that are fun are some of the most challenging things to design, but really proud of the team for navigating a really back and forth dev
We tried many different attack patterns here, but eventually landing on the R being a transform moment was the playtest we felt like we were delivering that power fantasy while evoking the traditional auto attacking ADC feel
It's a bit of a shame that this direction did not utilize her beads as much as some of the other directions, because they're so cool!
Design, Art and Narrative moving forward all at once can result in this sometimes and some of the directions that utilized the beads more just didn't feel quite right for her "attack forward" feel

Items

Attack speed items barring Yuntal have not been in a great spot for a while; AD items benefit from buffing your spell damage, but champions get so much Attack Speed from sources like Lethal Tempo, Greaves, etc. that Attack Speed purchases feel worse by comparison
This is one of the reasons that led us to remove Lethal Tempo in the first place, but since it was so beloved, we added it back and will need to find another way around this issue
As mentioned previously, a modest ROA buff that both improves the Seraphs combo (larger shield + AP) and skews more heavily towards its core user pool that want mana more (Kass, Ryze, Anivia, etc.)
We like where Catalyst is currently in allowing champs like Viktor, Ori, etc. to situationally flex into it to survive tough matchups though
While this may stem some interaction, traditional mid mages for most players still feel like they lack agency in solo Q particularly and we want to keep this ~potent as a good option for them so they feel a bit less team/jungler reliant

Dr Mundo

Mundo is sporting pretty highly on our frustration surveys, though at the same time we don't think he's overpowered
He's one of those champions that can feel so oppressive when he gets ahead, but it's easy to not see all the games where his weak early game was abused and he was useless - It's possible that this means we need to do a power reshape or keep him power suppressed, but for now, we're opting to just keep him as is
BOTRK buffs are also expected to make itemization options against him more real

Champs

Mostly straightforward buffs and nerfs to champs this patch
Riven has been receiving a lot of attention recently, especially after the Teemo clip
Love the discussion that clip generated, but we'd been talking about nerfing Riven for a while before that, she's sporting high numbers, especially given her mastery curve
It's been very interesting to see that people are so excited about killing Teemos under turrets though!"

Header Photo Credit: Riot Games

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