As promised by the
LoL Dev Update shared on January 8th, the most recent
League of Legends update,
Patch 26.03, brought a massive shake-up to
ARAM: Mayhem. The latest iteration of the wackiest team-fight focused game mode delivered on the promise of freshening the game up by implementing a progression system to unlock a wide variety of distinct augments and buffs to your augments when selecting from the same set.
However, these changes might not gauge the power of the latest augments. Around 24 hours after the patch was released, Riot Phlox shared a different number of hotfixes ready to hit ARAM: Mayhem. From reducing the frequency of certain augments, nerfs to augments and sets, and patching an infinite recursion bug.
The Good, The Bad, and the Augment
After these changes were shipped, the community had mixed reactions. Overall, certain players reported several fun, quirky, and harmless interactions, complementing ARAM: Mayhem's wackiness.
But others' experiences were full of frustration, fueled by unfair interactions with minimal to no counterplay. Introducing a novel view to a fan favorite game mode has proven to be a work in progress. "The new Mayhem launch definitely overshot a bit on power so we're pulling down the top end of a number of different augments and augments sets," said Riot Phlox on his X (formerly Twitter) account. "We don't expect this to be the last bit of balance but hitting the high end now."
Complete Change list
Here is the full scope of changes implemented on a Mid-Patch Update released on Thursday:
Augments:
- Poro Blaster:
- Reduced frequency to one per team
- Poro Stack Time: 15s > 25s
- Heads Up Cupcake!:
- Slow: 50% > 25%
- Gold per 1000 healing 200 > 150
- Missing Health Healing: 50-20% > 5-15%
- Devil on your Shoulder:
- Health drain near enemies: 7.5 > 5% drain
- Bonus true damage: 20% > 15%
- Speed Demon:
- Move Speed: 350 decay over 2s > 200 decay over 1s
- Kill Secured:
- Bonus MS towards low health champion: 100% > 60%
Augment Sets
- Make it Rain:
- Bonus Gold: 30/50/100% > 15/30/50%
- Archmage:
- Cooldown Refund: 40% > 30%
- Deathknell:
- Death Timer Reduction: 40% > 25%
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Prom Queen failed to trigger after you died
- Fixed a bug where Critical Healing and Critical Missile could trigger infinitely
- Fixed a bug where Critical Missile triggered too often with Tank It or Leave It
- Fixed a bug where the Firecracker set bonus caused the attack timer to reset
- Fixed a bug where the Firecracker set bonus was triggering on basic attack effects
- Fixed a bug where players could select the same augment multiple times
Progression Track
- Adjusted the gold reward in the progression track to be a 1% chance of a golden reroll
