Update history and meta predictions
Numbers are transcribed from the official Riot patch notes; the commentary is ours. This page covers patch 7.2c (released 2026-08-12).
25 matches
Dragons and dragon souls were buffed across the board, so fights over the objective carry more weight from the early game onward. Compositions that can rotate to the pit quickly — mobile junglers and supports in particular — go up in value. Tier 2 boots got stronger and tier 3 weaker, so delaying the upgrade and finishing other items first is reasonable. The late-game scalers Nilah, Nasus and Ryze were all reined in while Jinx received a direct buff, so the cast of duo lane carries shifts. With the baron lane wave freeze reverted, the baron lane is harder to stall out and more players move off the lane and onto the map.
Our take
Jinx was still falling behind even after the crit items were buffed, so she gets help on both ends. The extra 4 base AD steadies her lane trades and her last-hitting, while the near-doubled attack speed on Get Excited! makes her follow-up after a takedown far more dangerous. One kill in a teamfight now often carries straight into the next.
Our take
Nilah was dominating in high elo, so her late game takes the hit. The lower conversion rate means stacking crit no longer shreds tanks as quickly, and the drop from 140% to 50% bonus AD scaling on Apotheosis is the decisive one — the more items she finishes, the less her damage over time keeps up. Her early game is largely untouched, so opponents finally get a window as the game runs long.
Our take
Leona shrugged off lane poke with no real consequence, so her early durability is shifted into per-level health. Chip damage from her lane opponent now actually sticks. Eclipse loses a tier of resistances but gets a second of cooldown back, meaning she engages more often while absorbing less punishment early on. Once the levels pile up she frontlines exactly as before.
Our take
Rumble was putting out heavy damage without committing to AP, so his damage profile gets rebuilt. Flat values and max-HP scaling come down while AP ratios go up, which means bruiser builds lose output and AP builds gain it. Scrap Shield follows the same logic, trading max-HP scaling for rank scaling. The change forces a clear choice between durability and damage instead of letting him have both.
Our take
Like other scaling picks, Nasus had become impossible to punish. Six less base armor makes his early lane noticeably softer and gives his opponent a reason to commit. His ultimate now costs 15 more seconds at rank 1, so he can no longer pop it to start any fight he likes — misjudge the timing and the gap before it returns is long.
Our take
Ryze has been riding high since Archangel's Staff and the other mage items were reworked. Lower base HP and armor make him easier to shove around in the early skirmishes, and Rune Prison loses on all three fronts — flat damage, AP ratio and mana ratio — so it takes longer to reach the mana-stacking payoff he is built around. Fall behind early and the comeback is much harder.
Our take
Since his ultimate was changed, Warwick had been picking off priority targets far too reliably. A flat 20 seconds of extra cooldown means it is no longer up for every skirmish, and whiffing it now costs him dearly. The 25 less base damage also means some targets he used to finish will survive on a sliver. Choosing the right moment matters much more than it did.
Our take
The mage item pass let Kog'Maw stack enough AP and mana to shell opponents from complete safety. The higher mana ceiling makes sustained barrages far more expensive, and one step less range forces him to stand closer than before. The artillery identity stays intact, but opponents now have room to close the gap and answer back.
Our take
Part of a pass that closes the gap between tier 2 and tier 3 boots. Berserker's Greaves gains 5 points of attack speed, making it a perfectly reasonable stopping point before upgrading.
Our take
Doubled tenacity turns Mercury's Treads into a genuine answer to CC-heavy compositions. If you keep dying while locked down by stuns and slows, this is now worth rushing.
Our take
A sizeable boost to its auto-attack mitigation. Against marksmen and on-hit fighters you will feel the difference from the laning phase onward.
Our take
Part of the tier 3 boot power-down. Both melee and ranged users lose 5 points of movement speed, which makes the upgrade less automatic and leaves room to spend that gold elsewhere.
Our take
Five less magic resistance as part of the tier 3 boot pass. Its value as a magic damage answer drops slightly.
Our take
Also part of the tier 3 boot pass. Five less armor makes it a slightly thinner answer to physical damage.
Our take
Both the ability power and the true damage come down, reining in what had become the strongest damage option among the tier 3 boots.
Our take
Sunfire Aegis rarely got picked as a first answer to physical damage, so its role is sharpened. It trades 75 health for double the armor at +40, leaning hard into the identity of a tanky item that shoves waves while trading. The recipe drops from three components to two, making the build path easier to plan around.
Our take
Stridebreaker was not paying off for the attack-speed reliant champions it was designed for. Ten more points of attack speed finally make the chase-and-keep-hitting pattern work the way it should.
Our take
A direct buff meant to restore its place among defensive support items. On top of the stronger healing and shielding, 15 seconds off Purify means the second use is far more likely to be available when fights come back to back.
Our take
Kaenic Rookern had fallen behind since the mage item pass. Five more magic resistance, and Magebane trades flat shielding for max-HP scaling at 14%. The more health a tank stacks, the thicker the shield gets — which is exactly who wants to eat a mage's burst.
Our take
Part of a pass raising the value of elemental drakes and souls overall. Infernal gives more per stack, and its soul gains on both the flat value and the ratios. How many dragons your team has taken now translates directly into teamfight damage.
Our take
Ninety more shielding on the soul. The barrier that goes up before a fight is now thick enough to absorb an opening engage and turn the fight around.
Our take
Both in-combat and post-combat sustain go up together. The more skirmishes a game contains, the wider the gap grows — and the more often you can move to the next fight without recalling.
Our take
The two Master Yi entries are a different kind of change: Alpha Strike gains an AP ratio it never had, and Meditate's ratio is multiplied by five. Read it as an experiment to see whether an AP Master Yi build can stand on its own.
675 recorded changes across 29 versions, from 6.3 through to the current 7.3a. It is built for tracking how often a single champion has been buffed or nerfed.
The largest is 7.2 with 175 entries — the patch that rebuilt boots and introduced tier 3. Others run to a handful of lines, so the version numbers alone say nothing about how much the meta shifted.
Of the 675 entries, 231 are champion changes. The rest cover items and runes, ARAM and Arena tuning, ranked seasons and system-level work.
Selecting a version also brings up a meta prediction for that patch, 29 versions in all. It is an AI-written read rather than measured data; the tier list is where you check what the win rates actually did.
Counts reflect the patch data bundled with this site. A new patch takes a short while to appear.