League of Legends Patch 14.9: Everything You Need To Know

With the Mid-Season Invitational 2024 in the rearview mirror, Riot Games is unleashing a tidal wave of balance changes in the upcoming League of Legends Patch 14.9. The developers are taking direct aim at frustrating champions, stale meta picks dominating high elo, and much-needed system updates like consistent champion hitboxes. 

In a lengthy preview on the official League of Legends website, Lead Designer of Gameplay Matt Leung-Harrison outlined Riot’s new philosophy for tackling power creep and outlined 29 champions in line for buffs, nerfs, and adjustments in Patch 14.9.

Major League Patch 14.9 Champion Changes

According to Riot, Patch 14.9 will bring nerfs to frustrating champions like Draven, as well as those dominating at master+ ranks like Aurelion Sol and Kassadin despite not being overpowered in general. Champions getting buffs include Amumu, Karma, Kennen, Malzahar, Sejuani, and Seraphine.

Other targets for nerfs are Ahri, Blitzcrank, Evelynn, Jinx, Master Yi, Olaf, Pyke, Skarner, Taliyah, Twitch, and Urgot. Akshan, Bel’Veth, Janna, and Nilah are also lined up for adjustments.

Riot remains focused on nerfing Skarner for the fourth patch in a row as players keep finding more optimizations on the newly reworked Brackern. Phroxzon admitted “he’s turned out to be pretty elite skewed” and they want to “even out his skew between roles.”

Fighter Item Adjustments in 14.9

On the item side, the most dominant fighter items like Eclipse, Sundered Sky, and Sterak’s Gage are getting nerfed to allow options like Black Cleaver and the newly buffed Death’s Dance to compete. Maw of Malmortius is also being adjusted so it’s not an auto-purchase against magic damage teams.

Hitbox Consistency Finally Addressed 

Perhaps the biggest announced change is a full pass at making champion hitboxes and their gameplay/select radii more consistent across the board. For years Riot has had to deal with hitboxes that did not line up with a champion’s actual model size, with smaller picks like Warwick being harder to click than larger tanks.

Riot Phreak is leading this initiative to make “champions more consistent to click on, with hitboxes that feel in line with their size.” Hopefully, this means no more missing last hits on minions due to a deceptively small champion hitbox.

Lil Nas X Empyrean Skinline Returns for MSI

To celebrate MSI 2024, Riot is bringing back the popular Empyrean skin line that originated with Lil Nas X’s K’Sante Prestige skin in 2022. This time around, Akali, Brand, Kayle (with Prestige edition), Malzahar, Nocturne, and Varus are getting celestial space-themed skins.

When Does Patch 14.9 Launch?

League Patch 14.9 is locked in to go live on Wednesday, May 1st, with an estimated server downtime of a few hours as the update gets applied across all regions. North American servers will be patched starting at 3 pm CT, EU West at 5 am GMT, EU Northeast at 3 am CET, and Korea at 8 am local time.

Players can expect to see these hefty 14.9 notes in full after a cycle of testing on the PBE server in the coming weeks. While champion changes are nearly set in stone, item adjustments and other systems could still shift before the big May 1st launch. With pro play in the rearview, Riot is going for impactful solo queue changes.