After the month-long Teamfight Tactics Patch 12.5, the live balance team had ample time to dissect data to make sure that the game will be better than ever in TFT Patch 12.6. Here are all the big changes players need to be aware of in the TFT Patch 12.6 notes before it goes live on Wednesday.
Champions
After taking over the metagame for the entire month of March, Irelia is finally getting significant nerfs. Irelia will receive two targeted nerfs that will hurt her carry power.
The first is to her max mana, as Irelia was previously casting too often. Now she’ll need 10 more mana and one more auto-attack in order to Bladesurge. Speaking of Bladesurge, her base spall power at all ranks is being nerfed by 15/10/50 damage damage. Irelia is also one of the many champions getting a flat AD reduction, which Riot is pushing out to help fights last longer.
Malzahar is the other big loser in this patch, as he is getting a nerf veiled as an adjustment. That’s because Malzahar really shines when he is paired up with the Synaptic Web Mutant buff, which allows him to essentially cast infinite times and perform better than any other champion in the game.
To combat this, Riot is increasing his max mana by 20, which makes him cast significantly less often. To balance that out, his attack speed and damage are going up — but expect to see Malzahar a lot less in TFT Patch 12.6.
Traits
The biggest change on the trait side is a rework for Enforcer. The cop trait is being restructured to a three-piece in the name of justice, which should make it harder to activate. To compensate, Riot will put a bit of power back into the trait by making it four seconds again.
Hextech is also getting a mini rework. Like Clockwork, Hextech will now also scale with the number of augments in the Hexcore. The changes will make the trait scale a lot better into the late game, which may make it good enough to pursue as a big, vertical trait again.
Augments
On the augment list of changes, one of the biggest is actually a system change. Augments currently can be classified into two main categories: battle and economy.
Econ augments are nice to have, especially early, but there is no replacement for raw power in a composition. It feels bad for players when they don’t have a choice of a battle augment and are forced to take an econ augment when they don’t need one. To combat this, Riot is changing the algorithm so players cannot be offered three econ augments in the same round.
As for actual augment nerfs and buffs, Innovators take a big hit. Innovator Soul is no longer an option and Innovator Heart is now a gold augment. These changes will make hitting the seven-piece Innovator trait much harder. The So Small Yordle augment is also becoming a gold augment.
With the theme of scaling being present in the patch, Riot is also tuning two augments, Luden’s Echo and Electrocharge. These augments now scale based on the stage of the game which will make them worse early and better late.
