Welcome to the official 5.2 patch notes! With a lot of our 2015 changes in the process of settling down, we realized we could finally tackle some longer-standing design challenges of the game.
Like Deathfire Grasp (there it is).
We'll get into the gritty details soon (well, immediately after this foreword), but the short of it is that DFG has always been a tough item to balance around and, like Lich Bane, we finally realized if we wanted to have healthy mage assassins in the game, we needed to tackle the problem at its source. Ultimately we came to the decision to remove DFG completely (remember, read the context for more information!), but this also frees us up to give cool things for champions who've been shackled by their reliance on the item (or by our fear of them picking one up).
For the unfortunate news, however, we couldn't hit as many things as we'd have liked for 5.2, so we're spreading a lot of this love out over the course of two patches - 5.2 and 5.3. With 5.2, we've got Ahri and Annie (no, we didn't prioritize by alphabetical order), but you can expect some changes for champs like Veigar, Mordekaiser, and Katarina, along with new 120 AP item explorations in the near future (small warning: the item might take additional iteration time, so no promises!).
Some have noted a sort of 'anti-assassin theme' for this patch, but we're trying to broaden the definition of a successful assassin beyond simply blowing up a squishy target. Alternatively, if an assassin is just too reliable at what he or she (or it) does, that's another challenge for us to tackle. There's always going to be a fine line we'll have to walk when it comes to making healthy assassins, but we'd love to live in a world where assassins have their place in the game along with other types of mages. This will be an ongoing process and we'll keep you abreast as we continue working.
Finally... We hope everyone's doing well with their ranked placements! We'd like to wish you all success in your matches, but that ends up being paradoxical because someone's gotta lose for others to win, so rather than showing any favoritism we'd like to wish you a pleasant time. That's it.
Originally Posted by Royce
