Welcome to the first patch of the year, which also makes it the first official patch of the 2015 season! While the preseason is transforming into the regular season with this patch, this doesn't mean we're done with everything thus far. In reality, the point of the preseason is for us to monitor and quash any potential "Black Cleaver" situations where singular items, champions, or strategies come to dominate the scene in unique ways. In this way, we're pretty happy with the stability of our preseason changes, so we're rolling out a few last treats (BASE GATES! VOID GATES!) to kick off the new year.
So what can you expect in patch 5.1? Well, aside from the start of the 2015 ranked season, the theme of this patch is on Jungle diversity and following up on the preseason. In terms of jungle diversity, while we haven't put all of the junglers front and center on the champion change list (we thought about it, but have stuck with alphabetical order), you can see a number of small buffs for the ones struggling along. So for this patch, check out the small changes to Elise, Evelynn, Hecarim, Nautilus, along with some new changes to Smite (two charges baby!) and a few tiny gold upgrades.
On the other end of the patch narrative spectrum, we've got a lot of followup to the 2015 preseason, including some significant power shifts for Baron Nashor, the addition of Base Gates and the Zz'Rot Portal, and some small trinket rebalancing to help out defending team vision. We're hoping these few changes continue to deepen the Strategic Diversity (there it is) of League of Legends, and will keep a close eye out for potential opportunities to continue doing so in the future.
And that's it for the first patch of the 2015 season! Good luck this year on your climb to Challenger (aim high!), and we'll see you again soon with more balance changes for the new year."