Gameplay

Gnar’s a prehistoric yordle best suited to the Rift’s top lane. A transform champion with clear strengths and weaknesses in both Mini and Mega forms, Gnar fights best when he anticipates his fits of rage, and come late game, brawls most effectively as a tank or fighter.

Top Lane

Gnar’s rage meter fills slowest at the start of the game, so mastering his Mini form is key to a successful early game. Fortunately, Mini Gnar has plenty of tricks up his furry sleeves to keep his more fragile form safe from enemy aggression. Boomerang Throw deals decent damage to his lane opponent, and its slow helps Gnar maintain distance and avoid retaliation. Once unlocked, Hyper applies further damage, helping Gnar gain lane dominance with timely basic attacks and repeated Boomerang Throws. Mini Gnar is best off saving Hop as an escape: it’s a solid disengage ability that he can use on lane opponents or junglers as they come in to take him out.
And then there’s Mega Gnar. A brutal beast with significant crowd control and surprising burst, Mega Gnar brings a completely different playstyle to bear complete with inherent strengths and weaknesses. He’s a juggernaut: slow, strong and resilient, and while he delivers a punishing burst of damage, he has little to follow up with. While Mini Gnar is nimble enough to dart around the edges of combat, Mega Gnar thrives in the heart of the fight. After Crunching in to face his enemy top laner, quick casts of Boulder Toss and Wallop should see all but the most defensive of enemies pummeled effectively. He has considerable vulnerabilities, though, particular when being ganked. Mega Gnar has no effective means of escape, and has to rely on raw health and resistances to keep him alive as he lumbers back to the safety of his tower. Things change meaningfully once Gnar hits six and gains access to GNAR! While it hits hard enough, the utility is strong enough to save Gnar’s life - and end his enemy’s - particularly when they’ve strayed close to walls. Bait your opponent into the brush as Mini Gnar, then transform and use GNAR! to smash them into the wall, stunning them as you burst them down with the rest of your abilities. If your enemy’s particularly confident and tower dives, use the ability to stun them against your turret. When trying to survive a gank, simply throwing them away should give you the time you need to escape.

Teamfights

Gnar has three distinct phases during teamfights, each oriented around timing his forms. First, he needs to avoid engaging for a while as Mini Gnar builds up rage, kiting with basic attacks, Boomerang Throw and Hyper’s passive to put a dent in the enemy frontline. Once Gnar’s about to pop, he’s best suited Bouncing in towards the enemy team. Whenever Mini Gnar’s activates an ability with full Rage, he transforms into Mega Gnar while using it, so while the gathered targets might see a small ball of fluff leaping towards them, something very different will land in their midst.
Once Mega Gnar’s landed, his role is to disrupt as much as possible, using Boulder Toss and Wallop to damage and crowd control all nearby enemies. Gnar works best as his team’s tank here, blocking skillshots with his considerable frame and forcing the enemy damage dealers to focus on him. Knowing when to use GNAR! is critical: smart timing can interrupt several enemy abilities simultaneously, while smart positioning can send the entire enemy team crashing into a structure, stunning them all and giving his allies the chance to secure kills.

As Mega Gnar’s Rage meter starts to fade, Mini Gnar’s strengths become an amazing asset in clean-up. He’s fast, he can close gaps with Hop and his basic attacks, which, when numerous enough, trigger Hyper and give Mini Gnar a huge movement speed boost. Add in Boomerang Throw, and Gnar has all the tools he needs to catch and finish off his targets.

Synergy

Lulu - the Fae Sorceress

Lulu’s kit handily fills in Gnar’s weaknesses and supplements his strengths in both forms. She can shield Mini Gnar with Help, Pix! whenever he’s under attack, while Whimsy gives Mega Gnar all the movement he needs to help him stick to the enemy team and dish out his AoE damage.

Amumu - the Sad Mummy

Come late game, Gnar thrives when he has a primary tank initiator to follow up on. Amumu’s perfect: his Q to R combo locks down enemy teams, meaning Mega Gnar can Crunch in and complement Amumu’s AoE damage with his own.

Orianna - the Lady of Clockwork

The ball delivery system lives on whenever Mega Gnar leaps into the enemy team! Combining Crunch and Command: Shockwave (Crunchwave?) deals devastating damage, and Orianna can follow up with Command: Dissonance, which slows the enemies and speeds Mega Gnar’s otherwise lumbering gait.

Teemo - the Swift Scout

Teemo outranges Gnar and deals enough damage over time with his Toxic Shots to beat him in a war of attrition. The Swift Scout can also blind Gnar in basic attack battles, or turn to Move Quick to dodge everything from boomerangs and boulders to Mega Gnars.

Irelia - the Will of the Blades

Though Gnar can trade well with Irelia over the opening few levels, by level 5, she has all the true damage, sustain, speed and resilience needed to beat Gnar in a fight, meaning the Missing Link has little choice but to farm under tower and rely on jungler support.

Fizz - the Tidal Trickster

Fizz is a problem for both of Gnar’s forms. He’s nimble and powerful enough to burst down Mini Gnar before he has the chance to transform, and Playful/Trickster can dodge Mega Gnar’s considerable power and crowd control, including GNAR!

Champion Insights

Gnar, designed by gypsylord
Let’s talk transform!
Transform champions have historically been some of the hardest to balance in League of Legends because they frequently end up with a dominant form: pre-4.10 Nidalee worked best in human form unless she needed to execute or run away, and Jayce happily sits in cannon form for the bulk of his games. Giving both forms unique strengths and weaknesses is meaningless when they can just transform at will to lose the weaknesses they had. Let’s look again at Jayce: How’s a melee champion supposed to fight him in a one-on-one scenario if Jayce can duel just as well up close and has the option to transform into an effective ranged champion?
Here’s the central question we posed ourselves: how can we create a new transform champion that feels fundamentally good to play as and against? Our answer was to make a champion with identifiable strengths and weaknesses in both forms, then limit the player’s ability to control which form they play in. After months of testing, we ended up with the (sometimes) adorable ball of fluff known as Gnar.

So how’s he different? Well, Mini Gnar’s one of the most mobile champions in the game. He boasts good sustained damage and kites incredibly well, but when he does get caught, he dies fast.

On the other hand, Mega Gnar is a colossus. He’s tanky and surprisingly bursty, with strong area of effect and crowd control to boot. But he’s slow, meaning his enemies can pretty much get away simply by walking in the opposite direction. Removing control of the transform from Gnar means that he has to anticipate when he’s about to pop (or er... unpop?), and position and prepare to play in a completely different way, adding extra complexity and depth to his gameplay. This also means that – for the first time – learning how to play during the transitions between Gnar’s forms is just as important as mastering the play styles of his two forms.

na.leagueoflegends.com

Hey Summoners,

Welcome to patch 4.12! With only a few patches between now and the League of Legends World Championships, our focus is on the competitive scene and the things we can do to ensure the landscape is diverse and healthy. Part of how we're accomplishing this goal is to look at champions who are skewing champion select in one way or another while also looking to healthy "almost there" champions, like Alistar or Ahri. For either side (strong or weak champions), our main philosophy is to look for strengths to highlight while also emphasizing weaknesses. This ensures a champ can hold onto their strategic value while still havingmeaningful tradeoffs. You'll also hear me repeat this many times. Too bad.

For you Twisted Treeline fans, we've got two item overhauls with Grez's Spectral Lantern and The Lightbringer (they're now two separate item lines with different functionality), so be sure to read up before hopping into your 3s game.

Final thing: we'll also be shipping jungle timers with patch 4.12! Read just below for a rundown on those but, as part of our focus on gameplay clarity, we want to ensure that the right skills are being rewarded in League of Legends. In the case of jungle timers, we want to focus on the meaningful choices you make with the information you've earned, rather than the quick arithmetic you can do with the clock. Also be sure to read our dev blog on Clarity for more philosophy!

And that's it for now! Read up on the changes below, and we'll see you next patch!

Chris "Pwyff" Tom

Jungle Timers

We want League to be all about the smart decisions you make in the moment and how you make plays around those moments, rather than how well you can track certain timers. There's definitely skill in memorizing information, but our philosophy on gameplay clarity is making sure that skillful decisions can be made with the rightinformation and that players are fighting each other, not the system.

The information you get through clearing an objective is important stuff you've already earned, so we wanted to clarify that through jungle timers. It's also worth mentioning that jungle timers aren't adding new information that hasn't been there before, as they follow the same rules as minimap icons.

Jungle timers have been added to the game!

Jungle timers currently track the next spawn time of: enemy / team Elder Lizard, enemy / team Ancient Golem, Dragon, and Baron
Timers will only start tracking a camp if you or a teammate directly witness a monster camp being fully cleared (similar to minimap icons)
If you manage to snipe Baron or Dragon without vision, the timer will set itself off
You can access jungle timers by pressing TAB (default key) through the scoreboard. They'll be at the top of the screen.
We've also updated monster minimap icons! Check them out!

Champions

Ahri

Q does a little more damage and costs less mana.

Ahri's a cool fox gal that we'd like to see more of, but she's currently sitting just below the top-tier mid picks. That said, we don't think she needs too many buffs to keep up, so we focused on her ability to push the wave more efficiently so she can find more opportunities to roam.

Q - Orb of Deception

COST70/75/80/85/90 mana ⇒ 55/60/65/70/75 mana

ABILITY POWER RATIO0.325 (total: 0.65) ⇒ 0.35 (total: 0.7)

Alistar

Ali's mana costs are lower, and his ult now reduces tons of damage, even at lower levels. In exchange, Ali's jungling is weaker.

We really want to bring Alistar back up as a support, but our challenge has been to make sure he doesn't also take up his crown of jungling cow king from the days of old. Access to a 'mini' Malphite Unstoppable Force at level 2 (via his Headbutt + Pulverize combo), combined with guaranteed tower dives and the ability to punt people away from safety makes for a pretty oppressive gank-train from the jungle. We want to give Ali the things he needs to succeed but, like we did with Maokai, we also want to make sure he's in a healthy position to do so. There's a little concern that having 70% damage reduction at level 1 Unbreakable Will might make Alistar a little too good at tower diving (even as a support), but we'll see how these changes affect him first.

Passive - Trample

REMOVEDJUNGLE COWNo longer deals double damage to monsters

Q - Pulverize

STUNNING LANDINGPulverize now correctly matches its visuals by applying a 1.5 second knockup ⇒ 1 second knockup followed by a 0.5 second stun (functionally should remain the same)

COST70/80/90/100/110 mana ⇒ 65/70/75/80/85 mana

W - Headbutt

COST70/80/90/100/110 mana ⇒ 65/70/75/80/85 mana

R - Unbreakable Will

NEWYOU CAN'T MILK THOSEDamage reduction now applies instantly, rather than after the spell animation

DAMAGE REDUCTION50/60/70% ⇒ 70/70/70%

Caitlyn

And the Yasuos around the world rejoiced.

General

PSYCHIC BULLETSFixed a bug where Caitlyn's basic attacks were registering as attacks before they visually hit the target

Ezreal

Ezreal can now hit himself with Essence Flux if he can find a way to get ahead of it. Use with caution please.

Just E into it.

W - Essence Flux

NEWJUST E INTO ITEssence Flux can now hit Ezreal in addition to his allies

Garen

This one's for all you Garen junglers out there.

E - Judgment

AOE ON AOEGaren can now (again) use Tiamat / Ravenous Hydra while spinning

Kassadin

W's cooldown has gone up, Force Pulse slows for a lot but for a shorter period of time.

This guy. Again.

Currently, our focus is on Kass's super snowballing potential where, when he's ahead, he can help both himself and his team succeed by constantly slowing and punching people in the face. We still don't want to go after Kass's iconic Riftwalk (as that's clearly his core strength), but these changes mean Kass will have less offensive windows to go in.

W - Nether Blade

COOLDOWN6 seconds ⇒ 9 seconds

E - Force Pulse

SLOW DURATION3 seconds ⇒ 1 second

SLOW AMOUNT30/35/40/45/50% ⇒ 50/60/70/80/90%

Kha'Zix

We're doing a little follow-up for Kha'Zix, especially with our previous tanky jungler and marksman buffs.

Q - Taste Their Fear

PHYSICAL DAMAGE55/80/105/130/155 ⇒ 70/95/120/145/170

Lucian

Lucian's attack ranges have gone down, but E's cooldown will now get reduced with every hit from Lucian's passive. E also has no mana cost, so Lucian will be dashing quite a bit in the mid to late game.

Our design philosophy when approaching a strong champion is to highlight their strengths while also emphasizing their weaknesses (I told you we'd be repeating this a lot). This mostly relates to the concept ofmeaningful choices, where we want that champ to maintain their strategic value while also having some tradeoff that enemies can play against. Specifically for Lucian, his high generic power (a strong early and late game, high burst, high mobility, etc) meant he could just be blindly picked without much consideration for the enemy team. For a while, this is what made Lucian such a strong competitive pick - he could adapt to any team and could still perform well.

Ultimately our changes are focused on highlighting some of Lucian's strengths as a spell-slinging, mobile marksman, while also emphasizing new weaknesses - like having a lower range. At higher levels with some items (cooldown reduction!!!), Lucian can fluidly chain Es together as long as he has a target to hit with his passive. This also means Lucian will be one of the most mobile mid-range ADCs in teamfights (there are some concerns that he'll be... too mobile thanks to E removing all slows, but we'll keep a close eye here). Having a lower range, however, also means Lucian will need to take more risks in order to get E's cooldown back up, and he might have some tougher matchups during the laning phase (where before he could win almost any lane). This gives us a lot more space to emphasize Lucian's unique traits, and we'll be watching how he performs after these changes.

General

ATTACK RANGE550 ⇒ 500

BASE MOVEMENT SPEED330 ⇒ 335

BASE HEALTH470 ⇒ 500

BASE ATTACK DAMAGE49 ⇒ 52

Passive - Lightslinger

THE DOUBLE TAP RULEFixed a bug where sometimes Lightslinger would fail to kill a champion because it incorrectly predicted that the first shot would be enough and would use the second shot to last hit a minion. Lightslinger will now always follow the double tap rule by shooting a near-dead champion twice to secure the kill.

Q - Piercing Light

NEWFARMCIANPiercing Light now deals 75% ⇒ 100% damage to minions

CAST RANGE550 ⇒ 500

COST60/65/70/75/80 mana ⇒ 50/55/60/65/70 mana

E - Relentless Pursuit

NEWNOW WITH MORE RELENTLESSNESSCooldown is now reduced by 1 second per Lightslinger (passive) hit, doubles against enemy champions (2 second reduction per hit, 4 seconds total for a full passive proc)

NEWNOW WITH MORE PURSUIT60/45/30/15/0 mana ⇒ 0 mana at all ranks

NEWSMOOTH SHOOTERLucian now resets his basic attack timer upon dashing

COOLDOWN18/16/14/12/10 seconds ⇒ 14/13/12/11/10 seconds

REMOVEDCULLEDRelentless Pursuit no longer resets on kill during The Culling

Nautilus

Passive - Staggering Blow

SECRET STAGGERINGFixed a bug where Nautilus' enemies could see his countdown indicator

Quinn

Some bugfixes for Quinn to give her a little more consistency in play.

E - Vault

LOOK VAL, SNACKSNow always causes Valor to immediately mark the target, even if Valor is in the process of marking another nearby enemy

PROPER FORMFixed a bug where Quinn would sometimes propel herself in the wrong direction

Rengar

This bugfix might be a significant hit to Rengar's jungling effectiveness (he was proccing Madred's Razors twice), but we'll track his performance over time.

General

A FINE COLLECTIONRengar will now correctly say a line whenever he upgrades his Bonetooth Necklace

Q - Savagery

BUGFIXFixed a bug where Savagery was triggering on-hit effects twice

Vel'Koz

Q - Plasma Fission

KNOWLEDGE THROUGH DISINTEGRATIONPlasma Fission will now split after Vel'Koz has died

Yasuo

E - Sweeping Blade

BUGFIXFixed a bug where Sweeping Blade sometimes didn't count as a spellcast for various items and champion abilities

Ziggs

Passive - Short Fuse

SHORTER FUSEFixed a bug where Satchel Charge wasn't properly reducing Short Fuse's cooldown

Items

The Bloodthirster

Bloodthirster now gives even more life steal and the shield decays slower. The max shield, however, has been reduced, and Bloodthirster's life steal is now unique (to itself).

We made Bloodthirster a bit generic when we reworked the passive to a shield, because its other stats (life steal and AD) could be nabbed via other items just as easily. These changes are to push Bloodthirster as the sustain / defense item for anyone who wants to pick up AD along the way. As an aside, the UNIQUE life steal on Bloodthirster means you can't stack BTs for +40%/+60% extra life steal, but it'll still stack with any other life steal items like Vamp Scepter, Blade of the Ruined King, Ravenous Hydra, etc.

LIFE STEAL15% ⇒ 20%

NEWUNIQUENESSLife Steal is now UNIQUE

BLOODY SHIELD50 - 440 ⇒ 50 - 350

TIME BEFORE SHIELD DECAYS15 seconds ⇒ 25 seconds

Essence Reaver

Now builds out of B.F. Sword and gives 80 attack damage. We just re-stated the changes in a sentence.

We were a little safe with Essence Reaver because there are a few champions who can get crazy strong with a mana-focused item. After seeing it in the wild, however, Essence Reaver just wasn't giving enough of a power spike for anyone building it, so we're rectifying that to make it more attractive as a pickup.

RECIPEPickaxe + Vampiric Scepter + 975 gold ⇒ B.F. Sword + Vampiric Scepter + 1050 gold

TOTAL COST2650 gold ⇒ 3400 gold

ATTACK DAMAGE60 ⇒ 80

Ardent Censer

+10 AP. Literally.

We were also pretty conservative with Ardent Censer, given its high potential as an item (attack speed for everyone!). So... we gave it more AP.

ABILITY POWER30 ⇒ 40

Manamune

Now builds out of Pickaxe instead of Longsword, costs a little more and has slightly more AD.

Making this change lets us smooth out the build path for Manamune rather than front-loading it with cheap items and then waiting a full 1000g+ to upgrade.

RECIPETear of the Goddess + Longsword + 1040 gold ⇒ Tear of the Goddess + Pickaxe + 625 gold

TOTAL COST2100 gold ⇒ 2200 gold

ATTACK DAMAGE20 ⇒ 25

Sunfire Cape

Now with sunnier fire. Or fierier sun. BOTH?!

CLARITYDamage aura visuals are now more fiery and aggressive

Summoner Spells

Exhaust

Earlier in the season, we updated the visual and sound effects of our summoner spells. We're happy with the changes, but in Exhaust's case, we think combining the fidelity of our Exhaust update with the visual impact of old Exhaust gets us the best of both worlds.

CLARITYVisuals have been updated to improve readability

Howling Abyss

REMOVEDJungle Items

The following jungle items have been removed from the Howling Abyss:

Hunter's Machete
Spirit Stone
Quill Coat
Spirit of the Ancient Golem
Spirit of the Elder Lizard
Spirit of the Spectral Wraith

Twisted Treeline

Fixing some bugs we found with Twisted Treeline, along with a small balance tweak for the Ichors, which are statistically very strong so we wanted to trim just a bit of their power.

Jungle Monsters

UNHEALTHY MONSTERSFixed a bug where all monsters (not just the big ones) were giving a regeneration sigil

Ichor of Rage

DURATION4 minutes ⇒ 3 minutes

Ichor of Illumination

DURATION4 minutes ⇒ 3 minutes

Spirit of the Ancient Golem

REMOVEDWARDING ACTIVEWard active ability has been removed for Twisted Treeline

NEWUNIQUE PASSIVENow has UNIQUE passive Trap Detection: Nearby stealthed enemy traps are revealed

NEWUNIQUE ACTIVENow has UNIQUE active Trap Detection: Covers a target area in a stealth-detecting mist that grants vision for 5 seconds and reveals enemies that enter it for 3 seconds (60 second cooldown)

Twisted Treeline and Crystal Scar

Kayle

R - Intervention

COOLDOWN100 / 90 / 80 seconds ⇒ 110 / 95 / 80 seconds

Lord Van Damm's Pillager

DAMAGE70 ⇒ 80

Twisted Treeline, Crystal Scar & Howling Abyss

We're buffing Grez's Lantern to help it keep up with the other jungle items on these maps. The newly revamped Lightbringer is to give marksmen a more enticing vision-focused item on the map.

NEW Grez's Spectral Lantern

This item has been remade - we will be listing only the new stats!

REMOVEDMAPSGrez's Lantern is no longer available on Howling Abyss and Crystal Scar

RECIPEMadred's Razors + Long Sword + Dagger + 180 gold (total cost: 1765 gold)

ATTACK DAMAGE+15

ATTACK SPEED+30%

UNIQUE PASSIVENow has UNIQUE passive Maim: Basic attacks against monsters deal 50 bonus magic damage and restore 8 health

UNIQUE PASSIVEOwner now gains +30% increased gold from monsters

UNIQUE PASSIVENow has UNIQUE passive Trap Detection: Nearby stealthed enemy traps are revealed

UNIQUE ACTIVENow has UNIQUE active Trap Detection: Covers a target area in a stealth-detecting mist that grants vision for 5 seconds and reveals enemies that enter it for 3 seconds (60 second cooldown)

NEW The Lightbringer

This item has been remade - we will be listing only the new stats!

RECIPEWicked Hatchet + Cloak of Agility + 350 gold (total cost: 2280 gold)

ATTACK DAMAGE+30

CRITICAL STRIKE CHANCE+30%

CRITICAL VISIONCritical strikes now cause the target to bleed for an additional 90% of your bonus attack damage as physical damage over 3 seconds and are revealed for the duration of the bleed.

Intro Bots

Intro Bots is a new difficulty of Co-Op vs. AI designed for players brand new to League of Legends. In addition to changes to bot AI, there are a variety of tutorial-style features designed to help new players pick up some of League's basic lessons over the course of a few games. Check out our dev blog to get the full scoop on how we're approaching the onboarding experience.

Intro is now the default level of Co-op vs. AI for new players
Players above Summoner Level 10 will receive reduced IP/XP rewards and can't earn their First Win of the Day bonus from the Intro Bots queue

New Audio Engine

Back in 4.7, we started a multi-patch process to ship files for our new audio engine. We're happy to announce that process is now complete and the engine will be going live with 4.12! Our new audio engine brings a few immediate improvements, but more importantly will help us focus on providing a more immersive and engaging League of Legends experience moving forward. Check out our earlier post for more details!

Made improvements to stereo imaging and panning
Added proper support for Surround Sound
Made subtle improvements to audio clarity

Bugfixes

Smoothed out a few small delays when the item shop, options menu and death recap are opened for the first time in a match
Fixed a graphical bug with start-of-game tips
Fixed a bug that occasionally applied duo queue restrictions to queues other than ranked solo/duo
Players who have negative LP from dodging ranked queues can no longer automatically reset their LP to 0 with a single ranked win
Fixed a bug that occasionally caused players with low LP to be demoted when losing a ranked match that would drop them to 0 LP
Fixed an issue with ranked teams sometimes not being promoted after winning a promo series
Fixed an issue with players sometimes being unable to join a new ranked team after leaving another