Toot toot! That's the sound of the patch 5.5 buff barge, sailing the ocean of champion diversity. There were a few we had to slap on the wrist for overstaying their welcome but, for the most part, we've got a lot of +1s on the way. As a caveat, while it might feel great for every patch to be held aboard the S.S. Buff Barge, we're being very conscientious about making the directionally right change for each champion. It's still very, very important for champs to remain strategically unique from one another, so we're always hoping to accentuate strengths (or weaknesses) through each update.
So what's our current narrative? For today it's the jungle. We're going to say this up front: we haven't been as communicative on the topic of the jungle as we should have been. Additionally, when we have made changes, we haven't been empathetic to player pain surrounding each patch.
With that said, our focus is to increase champion diversity in the jungle. Some of you might be worried about "double dipping" buffs with the new Cinderhulk enchantment combining with tanky jungler buffs, but these are aimed at two separate things. Bami's Cinder (and Cinderhulk) creates a clear mid to end game item for tanky junglers to pursue, while a lot of our champion-specific buffs are aimed at improving the feel of early clears. We're a little concerned some tank junglers (looking at you, Sejuani & Amumu) might just start rampaging from the forest, but are taking a more "wait and see" approach for now. You've been warned.
But wait there's more! Beyond the jungle, we've also got a new +120 ability power item coming to the game to fill the void left by Deathfire Grasp's departure. There isn't much else we can contextualize in the foreword versus the actual item context, so go read down there.
P.S. We're also at the end of the updated Summoner's Rift Beta! While it's hard to define an 'end point' for these things - since we're always going to be iterating - it's nice to put a "finished for now" sticker while we can. We're shipping some final map-wide iterations for Summoner's Rift (and animated end of game victory / defeat graphics!), so you should expect a hefty download compared to our normal patches. We appreciate all the feedback you've given over this course of time!
And that's all for us! We've got a lot of changes packed into this patch, but we hope you'll make it through it.