League of Legends patch 14.23 early notes: Rell & Aurora mini-rework, Smolder changes & more

League of Legends patch 14.23 has some big changes in store, most of which are focused on balancing champions away from pro play without nerfing them out of casual viability.

While we don’t have a full view of the patch’s smaller changes just yet, Phreak has already gone over some of his biggest goals with the patch before the PBE version goes live. Aurora, Rell, and Smolder are the main three champions he highlighted as ones who are getting changed.

Additionally, lead gameplay designer Phroxzon has confirmed that Ambessa will be getting changes, but they’re solely going to be oriented around bugfixes and polish rather than balance. Her win rate has landed low as is typical of new champions, so they’re letting her sit for a bit as players learn her.

However, there are adjustments coming to the bounties system as well to follow up on patch 14.21‘s changes and hone them in. Despite LoL’s blistering pace when it comes to large-scale changes as of late, the game isn’t slowing down either, with Phreak explaining 14.23’s small scale reworks.

Here’s everything we know about LoL patch 14.23 so far:

LoL patch 14.23 early notes

Riot Games

Champions

Ambessa Medarda

According to both Phreak and Phroxzon, they’re happy with where Ambessa has landed. They don’t plan on buffing her as of now, but there are still changes to be made.

• Bugfixes planned for 14.23 including input buffering around her ultimate to make her feel more consistent

Aurora

Aurora dominated Worlds 2024, with the dev team retroactively regretting that they didn’t deliver more nerfs to her before the event started. However, they’re changing that now with a plan to nerf some parts of her kit and buff others to make her easier for casual players and worse in pro play.

A lot of her abilities and the way they function are changing, to the point where it’s a small-scare rework of the champion and how she functions.

Here’s a rundown of the changes Phreak has in mind:

Passive: Spirit Abjuration

• Bonus movement speed removed entirely

Q: Twofold Hex

• +50 range
• Damage increased
• Cooldown increased
• Recast goes off automatically

W: Across the Veil

• No longer gets cooldown reset on takedown
• Cooldown decreased
• Grants movement speed upon being casted

E: The Weirding

• +50 range

R: Between Worlds

• Will now grant W’s movement speed passive rather than the old Passive’s movespeed
• Duration increased
• Now the ring slows rather than trapping enemies inside

Rell

Phreak claims that Rell has too much CC, skewing her toward pro play relevance because of how difficult she is to counterplay. He wants to nerf her CC but make her more mobile and flexible to make her playable in more broad skill brackets.

Base Stats:

• Armor and MR growth lowered slightly
• Attack speed growth increased

Passive: Break the Mold

• Armor and MR steal slightly increased

Q: Shattering Strike

• Stun duration decreased by 0.1 seconds

W: Ferromancy

• Both Crash Down and Mount Up’s stun duration has been decreased. The abilities will still knock up, but the stun tied to them is shorter
  • Crash Down’s stun duration deceased by 0.2 seconds
  • Mount Up’s stun duration decreased by 0.4 seconds
• Bonus Armor and MR increased: 12% >>> 15%
• Passive bonus movement speed given to horse form scaling with points in this ability

E: Full Tilt

• Passive mounted movement speed taken off this ability and placed on E
• Now makes W the best ability to max by a mile by loading many of E’s passives onto W
• Rank ups now decrease cooldown
• Now deals % max health damage with no base damage

Smolder

A small note here, Phreak explained that Smolder’s wave clear has been drastically nerfed across all his abilities, claiming that Smolder’s full kit rotation couldn’t even clear a wave with the new set of changes.

However, Phreak also claims that Smolder’s abilities are getting significantly increased AD scaling to make items much more valuable on the character rather than his power being oriented around levels and passive stacks.

Base Stats:

• Base stat level scaling decreased
  • Intended to make him weaker in solo lanes and take him away from being a pro play flex pick

Q: Super Scorcher Breath

• Passive scaling nerfed
  • Flat damage per stack decreased
  • Passive’s scaling with number of missiles decreased
  • Damage on AoE blowback for tier 2 and 3 upgrades decreased: 75% >>> 50%
  • Max health burn damage on tier 3 no longer scales with stacks
• Total AD scaling >>> Bonus AD scaling
  • Less damage early, more damage late with items
• No longer does bonus damage to minions
• Now grants mana refund upon killing minions
• AP scaling removed

W: Achoo!

• Mana cost adjusted, lower early and higher later
• Bonus minion damage removed
• Damage split between initial projectile and explosion is now 50/50
• Bonus AD ratio: 0.5 >>> 1.2

E: Flap, Flap, Flap

• AD scaling per passive stack: 0.1 total AD per stack >>> 0.25 total AD per stack
• Flat damage per passive stack decreased
• Bonus shots per passive stack increased

R: Mooommmm!

• Now deals half damage to minions
• Cooldown decreased

Systems

Bounties

• Higher caps on objective bounties
• Faster bounty accrual for kills/assists
• Stronger devaluation of bounties on the team that’s losing