Snow covers Summoner’s Rift, poros are bundled in scarves, and a brand-new champion is ready to shake up the meta. LoL patch 25.23 is live, bringing the full release of Zaahen alongside the long-awaited return of Winter Rift.
This patch also includes a wide set of balance changes, updates to ARAM Mayhem, tweaks to Arena, and quality-of-life improvements designed to speed up champion select. The Blue Essence Emporium is open for the rest of the year, and the Arcane Anniversary event adds even more rewards.
On the gameplay side, Riot is once again focusing heavily on the jungle, aiming to make around ten more champions viable while adjusting outliers, boosting underperformers, and dialing back dominant picks shaping the current meta.
Snow Rift
The Winter Rift is finally here! The image below is a teaser, go play a game for yourself to see the full map.
Champions
Let’s start with the big one – Zaahen has been added! He’s the third champion added in 2025, with the two others being Yunara and Mel.
Just a heads up that Zaahen’s Eternals are delayed to patch 25.24.
Now let’s get in to the champion changes!
Aatrox
“Here’s a fun story: Aatrox’s VGU was slated for the jungle for part of his early development before being shipped as a top laner. He’s a very interesting champion with fun mechanics to play around, so we’re alleviating some max-HP caps and adding some jungle juice to see how he performs in this new role.”
Passive – Deathbringer Stance
- Monster Damage Cap: 100 ⇒ 100 – 320 (based on level)
Q – The Darkin Blade
- Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 40 flat bonus damage (multiplied by other effects like sweetspots and multicasts)
Ahri
“Our latest buff to Ahri didn’t get her quite as high up as we’d hoped, so we’re back to deliver some more damage. We’re juicing up her W when used to pick off an individual target to reward her for landing autos, E, or generally just properly isolating her opponents. “
W – Fox-Fire
- Subsequent hit damage: 30% ⇒ 40%
- Maximum single-target hit damage: 64 / 96 / 128 / 160 / 192 (+ 64% AP) ⇒ 72 / 108 / 144 / 180 / 216 (+ 72% AP)
Ambessa
“Ambessa’s jungle play rate never really took off but it’s always been right behind top lane in terms of actual power. We’re giving it a light nudge that should make her balanced in this alternate role and especially help unoptimized players who can’t always get sweet spots to land on large jungle monsters.”
Q – Cunning Sweep / Sundering Slam
- Monster Damage: +125 ⇒ +150
Ashe
“We’re delivering a suite of ADC changes in this patch in order to shake up the end-of-season solo queue meta. A few of the most commonly picked are being nerfed and some of the least common are being buffed. We’d also like to move in a direction of making non-caster ADCs more attack speed-reliant, which you should notice in many of the ADC changes later on in this patch.
Ashe has been a top performer in terms of both pick and win rate for most of this season, so we’re tapping her down to create a little more equity in ADC pick rates. We’re maintaining Ashe’s appetite for attack speed by giving her a little bit less from Q.”
Q – Ranger’s Focus
- Attack Speed: 25 / 37.5 / 50 / 62.5 / 75% ⇒ 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60%
Caitlyn
“Like Ashe above, Caitlyn has also been eating up a lot of ADC pick rate. We think she should maintain her identity as a long-range lane bully, but she’s also bursting champions too hard with late game Headshots, so we’re bringing down the top-end damage a bit.”
Passive – Headshot
- Champion Damage Increase: 60 / 90 / 120% total AD ⇒ 60 / 80 / 100% total AD (Crit formula unchanged)
- Non-Champion Damage Increase: 110 / 115 / 120% total AD ⇒ 110% total AD (Crit formula unchanged)
Cho’Gath
“While he’s no stranger to being played in all sorts of alternate roles, Cho’Gath has a naturally fitting jungle kit and we’d like to make that work well. We’re adjusting his E damage vs. monsters to no longer care about their max HP and instead just deliver a solid punch to get through his camps. This should be an unequivocal buff to early monster damage.”
E – Vorpal Spikes
- Monster Damage: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 (+30% AP) + up to 200 based on target max HP ⇒ 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+30% AP)
Dr. Mundo
“Dr. Mundo has once again risen up the ranks in popularity due to some very skilled players playing him very publicly. This time, in the jungle! We think Dr. Mundo is appropriately balanced in both roles at the present, but will continue to monitor how he’s performing in the coming weeks. All that said, we’re shipping a very impactful bug fix in this patch, which will increase his win rate, so we’re also preemptively nerfing him a bit. We’re happy with his recent reduction in burst damage, which this bug fix furthers, but want to maintain his overall sustained threat, so we’re re-buffing his functional attack damage.”
E – Blunt Force Trauma
- Bonus Attack Damage from Maximum Health: 2 / 2.2 / 2.4 / 2.6 / 2.8% ⇒ 2 / 2.3 / 2.6 / 2.9 / 3.2%
- Fixed a bug where Dr. Mundo was getting maximum damage at 30% missing HP instead of 70% missing HP.
Fizz
“While Fizz wins an appropriate number of games in mid lane, he’s incredibly feast-or-famine and often relies on simply leaving his lane to go kill other champions, so we’d like to make him more robust in playing out his laning phase. In order to do that, we’re improving his early resilience so that he can take more trades and compensate elsewhere to make him a little less ult-reliant.
We’re also taking a swing at enabling jungle Fizz. We think this new role is a bit of a stretch and may not pan out in the end, but we’re swinging hard to get his first jungle clear into something comfortable and seeing if players will enjoy him here.”
Base Stats
- Base Armor: 22 ⇒ 26
Passive – Nimble Fighter
- Increased by 10 against jungle monsters (now 14 + 1% AP)
W – Seastone Trident
- Active and on-hit damage deals +60 damage to monsters
R – Chum the Waters
- Cooldown: 100 / 85 / 70 ⇒ 120 / 100 / 80
Jayce
“We think Jayce jungle is a bit of a longshot but there’s a chance he’s got a real player base in this new role, so we’re delivering some buffs to make his first clear more comfortable and watching to see how many players are interested.”
Q – To the Skies! (Hammer Stance)
- Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 50 flat bonus damage
Q – Shock Blast (Cannon Stance)
- Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 50 flat bonus damage
Jhin
“Jhin looks quite weak at the present, so we’re giving him some damage buffs and found another place to include the number 4 in his tooltips, which is the only buff he really needs, right?”
Base Stats
- Base AD: 59 ⇒ 61
Passive – Whisper
- Move Speed on Crit: 14% (+ .4% AS) ⇒ 14%(+ .44% AS)
W – Deadly Flourish
- Damage: 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 50% AD) ⇒ 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 / 210 (+ 50% AD)
Jinx
“As with the other ADC nerfs above, Jinx wins a large portion of her games and risks crowding out other champions if left untouched amidst the other nerfs in this patch. We want to preserve her identity as a late-game auto attack monster, so we’re nerfing some of Jinx’s spell damage.”
R – Super Mega Death Rocket!
- Maximum Damage: 300 / 450 / 600 (+ 155% Bonus AD) (+ 25 / 30 / 35% missing HP) ⇒ 250 / 400 / 550 (+ 130% Bonus AD) (+ 25 / 30 / 35% missing HP)
Kai’Sa
“As with the other ADC nerfs above, Jinx wins a large portion of her games and risks crowding out other champions if left untouched amidst the other nerfs in this patch. We want to preserve her identity as a late-game auto attack monster, so we’re nerfing some of Jinx’s spell damage.”
Base Stats
- Base Armor: 27 ⇒ 25
R – Killer Instinct
- Cooldown: 120 / 90 / 60 ⇒ 130 / 100 / 70
Hwei
“Hwei’s a well-performing mid laner who has low-quality gameplay when he can simply throw out Q-E and clear waves with little effort. We’d like to weaken his access to non-committal wave clear by nerfing that output. As the intended rank 5 magnitude would mark an over-nerf, we’re partially compensating him with an AP ratio buff. These changes will still result in a net reduction in power and should open up more room for laning phase interactivity.”
QE – Molten Fissure
- Hit Damage: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 (+ 30% AP) ⇒ 20 / 35 / 50 / 65 / 80 (+ 30% AP)
- Damage over time: 50 / 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 (+ 50% AP) ⇒ 50 / 87.5 / 125 / 162.5 / 200 (+ 60% AP)
- Total Damage: 70 / 140 / 210 / 280 / 350 (+ 80% AP) ⇒ 70 / 122.5 / 175 / 227.5 / 280 (+ 90% AP)
Malphite
“Malphite has a natural jungle kit with a decent gank paradigm, and repeatable damage for killing monsters. He just doesn’t deal enough right now to comfortably clear, so we’re juicing both his early game clear (hint hint start W!) and late-game as well, since he often builds full tank and needs his damage to keep up with growth monster health.”
W – Thunderclap
- Monster Modifier: 1x ⇒ 2x
Mel
“We’re glad that Mel is a viable mid laner (shoutout League’s GOAT for raising awareness!). However, she’s also proven to be one of League’s most frustrating champions, which we’re looking to alleviate. Her passive buffs that required her to take on more risk were successful in our eyes, so we’re headed back to that. To continue to expose her to more risk, we’re weakening Solar Snare’s lockdown and self-peel potential. We know she’s still got such sharp interactions that she’ll still sport one of League’s highest ban rates, but we hope this adjustment will be roughly power-neutral and frustration-reducing.”
Passive – Searing Brilliance
- Damage per spell: 24-99 (based on level) (+9% AP) ⇒ 24-150 (based on level) (+ 15% AP)
E – Solar Snare
- Root Duration: 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 / 2.25 ⇒ 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 / 1.5 / 1.6
Miss Fortune
“Miss Fortune isn’t winning as often as she should for how straightforward she is to play, and unlike many of the other ADCs in this patch, she is indeed a caster, so we’re looking to amp up her ability to take over teamfights with her ultimate.”
R – Bullet Time
- Damage per wave: 75% Total AD (+ 25% AP) ⇒ 80% Total AD (+ 25% AP)
Ornn
“While Ornn is a totally viable top laner, we think he could also shine in the tank jungle roster, so we’re buffing some of his monster damage caps. We’re also adding some tooltip clarity, as some of his numbers weren’t exposed to players.”
W – Bellows Breath
- Active Monster Damage Cap: 155 / 180 / 205 / 230 / 255 ⇒ 260 / 320 / 380 / 440 / 500
- Passive Monster Damage Cap: 250 ⇒ 260 / 320 / 380 / 440 / 500
- Level-up tooltip now displays the minimum and maximum damages per rank.
Rek’Sai
“Rek’Sai top has been an enjoyable spectator experience but a fairly miserable one to play against and she’s significantly overpowered for those who know what they’re doing. We don’t want to remove this role from viability but we’d like to reduce just now immovable she is through her lane sustain. Her jungle will take a small hit from this nerf, but she can sustain a small nerf there, as well.”
Passive – Fury of the Xer’Sai
- Fury gained on minion hit: 20% ⇒ 16% (5 ⇒ 4)
- Max HP healed: 10 – 20% (based on level) ⇒ 9 – 20% (based on level)
Riven
“Riven’s native mobility, strong dueling, and interesting risk profile of having to burn damage in order to close the gap could make for a really compelling jungle champion. She’s also monstrously hard to play, but even accounting for that, she appears to be a pretty abysmal jungler at her current tuning. We’re substantially buffing her first clear to see if players will find a fun, dynamic, high-skill fighter compelling in this new role.”
Passive – Runic Blade
- Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 50 flat bonus damage
Sion
“Sion is pretty playable in the jungle but is slightly weak and deserving of a small nudge for players who want to yell “COWARDS!” as they barrel up and down the river. We’re just delivering a light touch to see how many players want to try their hand at Si-ungle.”
Q – Decimating Smash
- Monster Mod: 150% ⇒ 165%
Skarner
“Last patch’s Skarner changes unfortunately landed him weaker than we had hoped and anticipated. We’re now here to deliver direct buffs in order to give him the power he deserves. We were overly cautious on how much attack damage to give him, so we’re back for more, and his Q isn’t doing quite enough now that he can’t quickly get two cycles off, so we’re buffing its uptime and throughput.”
Base Stats
- AD Growth: 4 ⇒ 5
Q – Shattered Earth / Upheaval
- Cooldown: 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 ⇒ 8 / 6.75 / 5.5 / 4.25 / 3
- Target Max HP Damage: 8% ⇒ 9%
Swain
“Swain is quite weak in his most-played role of support. We’re giving him a little more power in his E as well as lowering its mana cost to let Swain support have more room to work with without a mana item, since he typically doesn’t buy one there.”
E – Nevermove
- Damage: 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 70% AP) ⇒ 90 / 130 / 170 / 210 / 250 (+ 70% AP)
- Mana: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 ⇒ 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70
Tristana
“Tristana is a little underrepresented and could do with a small buff and we’d like to ensure she has good late-game attack power, so we’re bumping her AD growth.”
Base Stats
- AD Growth: 2.5 ⇒ 2.9
Vladimir
“We’re continuing to identify ranged top laners who undeservedly gained laning dominance from our recent lane sustain changes, and Vladimir is next on that list of overperforming ranged tops. We’re looking to make his matchups more interactive by giving more room for typically-physical melee champions to strike back during Vlad’s moments of downtime. Also, the number 607 makes it uncomfortably easy to type 6-7 and we just can’t have that.”
Base Stats
- Base Health: 607 ⇒ 600
- Base Armor: 27 ⇒ 24
Volibear
“Volibear’s last patch succeeded in addressing his jungle-vs-top gap but left him a little weaker than we wanted across both roles. We’re here to deliver him some more power to our favorite Zilean-hating demigod. We chose attack damage here to ensure that as a moderate-mobility melee champion, his attacks are appropriately threatening”
Base Stats
- Base Attack Damage: 62 ⇒ 65
Zeri
“Zeri’s in a relatively weak spot with pretty much no presence in pro play as well as a generally low pickrate. We want to bring her back toward those glory days of being one of the fastest ADCs in the game, so we’re buffing her top-end move speed during her ultimate.”
R – Lightning Crash
- Move Speed per Stack: .5% ⇒ 1%
Items
“Sunfire Aegis has been strongly losing to Liandry’s on any tank jungler who can reasonably choose between the two. We’d like to bring back tank-forward itemization here and allow Aegis to return to the forefront.”
- Monster Damage Mod: 1.6x ⇒ 2x
ARAM Mayhem
” Hello Mayhem enjoyers! We’re excited to bring you a new round of updates to the Bridge. In this patch, we’ve focused on improving Augments that felt a bit tricky to use or lacked excitement. We’ve given them mechanical updates to make them more engaging and impactful.
On the systems side, we’re making some changes to early game augments to remove the possibility of getting back to back silver augments in your first and second round of choices, and we’re lowering the frequency of seeing silver augments as your first augment choice. We saw a ton of feedback on these points and we agreed, it’s way more exciting to pull those powerful build influencing augments earlier in the game so you can decide how or what you want to start building around. We’ve also updated the Bloom Portal to a traditional Hexgate interaction. This change aims to give you more control when teleporting while still keeping in-combat plays possible.
For Mayhem’s overall pacing, we’re closely monitoring early-game excitement and late-game stalling. These adjustments are designed to give losing teams more comeback opportunities and keep matches feeling dynamic throughout.
We’ve also introduced a new item: the Stat Anvil. This item lets you spend extra gold in the late game to boost your stats. Stat Anvils become available at level 9, and currently, there’s no Shard Holder that increases their effects.
Thank you for playing the Mayhem and see you on the bridges!”
Systems
- Silver Tier augments will now appear less frequently in the first round of augment choices.
- It’s now no longer possible to get silver augments back to back for the first and second rounds.
- Koeshin’s Crossing Portals have been changed from touch to teleport to traditional click to teleport with an instant cast time. This is for both ARAM and Mayhem.
- Stat Anvils have been added for 750 gold each, which can be purchased after level 9. Silver, Gold, and Prismatic Anvils are available, but the Shardholder Value Shard is not included. Also… each Anvil comes with a hat!
- Double Super minions have been removed to prevent some late-game stalling.
- Passive XP/Gold values have been modified to prevent games from ending a little too soon.
Mayhem Augment Changes
Blunt Force
- AD: 15% ⇒ 20%
Gash
- Additionally gain 50% Attack Speed.
- For non-english languages there was a typo in this tooltip change that we couldn’t quite fix in time for all languages but it will be corrected in a later build.
Lightning Strike
- Attack Speed Requirement for Bonus: 4 ⇒ 3.5
Protein Shake
- Base Heal and Shield Power: 20% ⇒ 25%
- Armor and Magic Resist Conversion Rate: 30% ⇒ 35%
Self Destruct
- NEW Every 25 seconds, attach a bomb to yourself that explodes dealing damage and knocking up enemies.
Snowball Roulette
- NEW Cast a random harmful Summoner Spell on your target when your snowball hits an enemy target. Cast a random beneficial Summoner Spell on yourself when you take your snowball dash.
Steel Your Heart
- Stack requirement: 350 ⇒ 300
Repulsor
- NEW When dropping below 35% health, knock back enemies and slow them for 90% for 1.5 seconds. (25 second cooldown or refresh on death)
Urf’s Champion
Takedowns required: 22 ⇒ 18
Mayhem Champion Changes
Cho’Gath
- Damage Taken: 100% ⇒ 95%
- Damage Taken: 110% ⇒ 100%
- Damage Dealt: 85% ⇒ 95%
- Damage Dealt: 90% ⇒ 100%
- Damage Taken: 110% ⇒ 100%
- Damage Dealt: 95% ⇒ 100%
- Ability Haste: -20 ⇒ 0
Skarner
- Damage Taken: 100% ⇒ 95%
- Damage Dealt: 100% ⇒ 105%
- E Cooldown: 22 / 21 / 20 / 19 / 18 ⇒ 18 / 17 / 16 / 15 / 14
- Damage Taken: 105% ⇒ 100%
- Damage Taken: 105% ⇒ 100%
Volibear
E Shield Amount: 11% Max Health ⇒ 14% Max Health
Mayhem Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Upgrade Collector let Collector execute people under 15% health.
- Fixed a bug where Get Excited can be triggered if your clone died.
- Fixed a bug where Neeko does not lose attack range when she disguises as melee champion and pick Draw Your Sword.
- Fixed a bug where champions in zombie status can get extra augment when they have Augment Cheating.
- Fixed a bug where Viego can sell items when possessing other champions when he has Augment Cheating.
- Fixed a bug where Augment Cheating is restoring resources other than mana and energy.
- Fixed a bug where Vampirism with Zilean R will cause champions to revive with 0 health and be non-attackable by enemies.
- Fixed a bug where Gangplank with Infernal Conduit can have 0 cooldown on his E spell.
- Fixed a bug where Zac can deal damage with Circle of Death when he transforms into his passive blobs.
Arena
“Arena typically patches on even-numbered patches; however, we wanted to participate in Zaahen’s release along with some changes that we felt we could sneak in.”
Augments
Undying Guard
- Upon reviving with Cultivation of War, Zaahen deals damage to nearby enemies based on their current Health and knocks all targets back, becoming impervious to damage dealt by champions outside of the circle created and gains a brief burst of movement speed.
Arena Bugfixes
- Queuing a tear item through an item anvil no longer grants that item if you have the evolved version of the item in your inventory.
- Orbital Laser VFX can no longer be hidden in terrain.
- You can no longer cut your channel short by using a Hexgate.
- Aurelion Sol’s attack no longer breaks when using a Hexgate while he is in flight.
- Fixed a bug where Zeri was able to go above the attack speed cap with Slow and Steady.
- escAPADe finally converts bonus Ability Power from Riftmaker’s passive
- Fixed a bug where some champions with Infernal Conduit were getting 0 cooldowns on certain abilities
Blue Essence Emporium
“Essence Emporium returns once again! All of your favorites will be available to snap up with the Blue Essence you’ve saved up since last time. The Emporium will be active November 19, 2025 until January 7, 2026. This time around, we’ve added a new Title for our most dedicated players (aka the blue essence hoarders).”
Practice Tool
“In this patch, we’re introducing the ability to see champions’ auto-attack ranges in Practice Tool. Toggling this on will place markers under each champion showing their auto-attack range. We hope this feature helps you master the art of kiting your enemies even faster – give it a try and let us know what you think!”
- Added “Toggle auto-attack range markers” function
QoL Champ Select Update
“In an effort to speed up the pre-game flow a little, we have slimmed down SR draft pick a bit in this patch. These changes are very minor, a few seconds here and there. As a result, champ select should feel the same, but snappier. Here are the details:”
- Intro animation changed from 10s to 5s
- Hover pre-select changed from 15s to 7s
- Ban phase changed from 30s to 25s
- Total pick phase changed from 3m to 2.5m (each pick will be 25s as a result)
- No changes to AFK check or the loadout phase
“These changes will be shipped to NA/OCE Summoner’s Rift champ select queues as pilot launch with 25.23, more regions will be covered in 25.24. Queues that will have the changes are:”
- Solo/Duo Ranked
- Flex Ranked
- Normal Draft
Bugfixes & QoL Changes
QoL Changes
- “Hide My Name” and “Hide My Identifying Info” Streamer Mode settings are now respected in other player’s spectator streams. e.g. if Spectator1 spectates their friend, Player1, any players in Player1’s lobby with Streamer Mode enabled will have their name and/or information hidden in the spectator stream.
- In order to better protect players from negative in-game experiences, we’re continuing to enhance Streamer Mode and shift public spectator experiences towards replays. The ability to spectate live games directly from ranked leaderboards is being replaced with a shortcut to that player’s match history and replays. Right-click player name on ranked leaderboard > Match History.
- Added capability to access replays directly through Riot API. More details available in Riot Developer Portal.
- Updated AFK detection to better account for situations where players are disconnecting throughout the game.
Bugfixes
- Fixed an issue where casting Sion’s Death Surge while his Passive is active would activate Experimental Hexplate.
- Fixed an issue where Skarner’s Q would sometimes be on cooldown for longer than intended in the practice tool after restarting a game.
- Fixed an issue where Ambessa doesn’t lose a passive charge if the target died mid auto attack.
- Fixed an issue where Garen could stack his W passive without learning his W.
- Fixed an issue in Swiftplay where Lethal Tempo rune would get automatically swapped to a champion’s default in certain regions.
- Fixed an issue where if Mel reflected Vel’Koz’s Q it would reset the cooldown of her Q.
- Fixed an issue where Mundo’s E bonus damage would reach its maximum at 30% missing health.
- Fixed an issue where the amount of Cassiopeia’s W damage ticks would be doubled if an enemy would walk into previously created clouds.
- Fixed an issue where Rengar would fail to stack Conquerer or Lethal Tempo when jumping from brush.
- Fixed an issue where Nocturne’s R dash could fail to follow an enemy champion until the collision.
- Fixed an issue where Aurora’s Spirits could be visible for other champions.
Skins Bugfixes
- Fixed an issue that caused Star Guardian Senna’s R VFX to be distorted.
- Fixed an issue that caused Shan Hai Scrolls Lillia’s VFX to be mispositioned when using chromas.
Upcoming Skins & Chromas
The following skins will be released in this patch:
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