Patch 25.23 Full Preview – Zaahen is added

The patch 25.23 preview is live. Riot Phroxzon shared the usual table of champions, items and miscellaneous things that will be changed – but this time there’s a twist. Zaahen will be live on patch 25.23. He is the 3rd champion added in 2025. The post also adds some more info on the development of Zaahen.

Zaahen

Zaahen will also go Live this patch! Hope you’re all excited!

We wanted to have many throwbacks and homages to Xin Zhao throughout his kit, while also giving him that Darkin flair (eg. vamping, lifesteal and revive?!) .

Interestingly, Zaahen started out as a support! But after some testing, we pivoted him to Top lane as it would allow him to better execute on his power fantasy. We think the revive this time will be better balanceable as the “on demand” nature of previous revives was typically what made them problematic to balance and he does have to either fight for a long time or land a lot of multi-hits to trigger it, which if he’s doing that, we think is probably deserved.

The team really cooked, we’re so excited for him – I’ll add a few more thoughts and behind the scenes insights tomorrow.

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Champion changes

Buffs

This patch, Riot is looking at a lot of changes around adding new champs into the jungle (and some old ones) – Many regions suffer from high jungle autofill rates and being able to play your mains when you’re autofilled is overall net positive – Some of these changes are more experimental (Fizz in the jungle for example), but Riot will be monitoring closely to see how they shake out.

• Aatrox (jungle)
  • R max HP monster cap: 100–200 → 130–200
  • Now deals ×4 damage to monsters, multiplied by sweet spots and Q2/Q3
• Ambessa
  • Q bonus monster damage: 125 → 150
• Ahri:
  • W secondary bolt damage: 0.3× → 0.4×
  • Maximum W single target damage: 64–192 + 64% → 72–216 + 72%
• Cho’Gath (jungle)
  • Armor: 27 → 25
  • Q Damage: 120/90/60 → 130/100/70
  • (Not sure why he is listed under buffs – as there’s literally only nerfs to his kit?)
• Jayce (jungle)
  • Melee and ranged Q both deal +50 damage to monsters
• Jhin
  • AD: 59 → 61
  • P MS on crit: 14% → 40%
  • AS: 14% → 44%
  • W Damage: 60–200 → 70–210
• Malphite (jungle)
  • Q now deals 2× damage to monsters
• Miss Fortune
  • R Damage per wave: 75% TAD (+25% AP) → 80% TAD (+25% AP)
• Nunu
  • W active monster cap: 155–255 → 260–500
  • W passive monster cap: 250 → 260–500
• Riven (jungle)
  • P now deals +50 damage to monsters
• Sion
  • Q monster mod: 1.5× → 1.65×
• Skarner
  • AD growth: 4 → 5
  • Q CD: 8–4 → 8–3
  • Q max charges: 8% → 9%
• Swain
  • R Damage: 90–240 (+50–170 AP) → 90–250 (+50–170 AP)
  • W Mana: 70–110 → 50–70
• Tristana
  • AD Growth: 2.5 → 2.9
• Xayah
  • P Feather Damage: 30/40/50% AD → 35/45/55% AD
• Zeri
  • P Move Speed per stack: 1% → 2%

Nerfs

• Ashe
  • Q bonus AS: 25–75% → 20–60%
• Caitlyn
  • P champion total AD damage: 60/90/120% + 182,75% from crit → 60/80/100 + up to 182,75% from crit
  • Non-champion: 110/115/120/ + crit → 110% + crit
• Hwei
  • Q–E total damage: 70–350 + 80% → 70–290 + 90%
• Jinx
  • R damage: 300/450/600% bonus AD → 250/400/550 + 130% bonus AD
• Kai’sa
  • R–S2 Shield: 45/60/75% bonus AD → 25/30/35% missing HP
• Neeko
  • Now transforms back into Neeko upon taking damage from a turret
• Rek’Sai
  • Fury gain on minions: 5 → 4
  • P max HP healing: 10–20% → 9–20%
• Vladimir
  • HP: 607 → 600
  • Armor: 27 → 26

As one of the beneficiaries of the sustain nerfs in previous patches, Vlad has benefited quite a bit, so we’re tapping him down a bit and making him more vulnerable in top lane especially.

Adjustments

• Fizz
  • Armor: 22 → 26
  • R CD: 100/85/70 → 120/100/80
• Hecarim
  • P damage reduction vs monsters: 4% → 3%
  • W W: W1 deal +60 damage to monsters on-hit
  • W2 duration: 1.25–2.25 → 1.2–1.6
• Mel

Thanks to Faker for raising visibility on Mel, we’re making some relatively power neutral adjustments that move power out of some of her high frustration and lower counterplay builds (eg. E max) into other places with higher counterplay and interactivity (eg. Passive).

The E max build in particular is pretty fire and forget and is looking quite a bit stronger than Q max in many situations. This is relatively unintuitive to players and lower gameplay, so we’re making adjustments to it.

• Dr. Mundo
  • P damage per spell: 24–99% → 24–150 + 15%
  • E crit duration: 1.25 → 1.0
  • E active damage: 1.4× at 30% missing HP → 1.4× at 20% missing HP
  • E passive max HP as bonus AD: 2–2.8% → 2–3.2%

Recently, the team found a quite impactful bug where Mundo was getting max damage at 30% missing health instead of 70% missing health.

While it didn’t result in a change in his winrates overall (he was still balanced around this), it did change his overall power budget, so the damage is being adjusted back up to compensate.

Despite his recent rise to fame in several series’, we still think he’s overall pretty balanced, but just has pretty sharp success/failure cases which seems OK for now (might re-consider later).

System changes

Buffs

• Sunfire Aegis
  • Monster damage multiplier: 1.6× → 2×