Preseason 2023 begins with League of Legends Patch 12.22, including a jungle overhaul, new items, the Chemtech Drake, and a whole lot more!
There is a mountain of new changes introduced in the jungle, check out our Preseason 2023 Jungle feature for a more in-depth explanation of everything added!
League of Legends Patch 12.22 Notes
Chemtech Drake
The Chemtech Drake makes its return once again, offering vastly different buffs from its previous iteration from last year.
The drake itself will deal more damage and take less once it is below half health, as a testament to the buff that it gives once it is slain. When your team kills a Chemtech Drake, you will get a stack of a buff that grants Tenacity and Healing and Shielding power. When you have the Chemtech Soul, the buff gives extra damage and damage resistance when below half health, much like the drake itself.
Chemtech Rift
The Chemtech Rift has also been reworked, and instead of the Chemtech gas materializing on the surface of the Rift, it instead seeped under and mutated the jungle plants.
Honeyfruits turn into Stim Fruits, which will no longer slow champions that consume it and provides a shield on top of the usual heal.
Blast Cones will now blast units inside its range twice as far when exploded
Scryer's Bloom turn into Firelight's Bloom, revealing a small area around the plant in addition to the usual cone. Allies tagged will gain movement speed towards the direction of the cone, and enemy wards revealed will be reduced to 1 health.
Jungle Changes
All of the camps have received more durability. According to the patch notes, the goals are to ask for more investment from laners when they take jungle camps especially in the early game without taking away from the speed of the fast jungle clearers. Slow clearers, on the other hand, will experience a slight buff to their clear speed with the introduction of the jungle pets which deal damage themselves.
The Krugs are now less of a time sink and should be a more viable choice for early pathing as the Ancient Krug (the large one) no longer splits into two medium ones.
Changes are also introduced towards poaching camps, both for laners and enemy junglers. It will become easier for junglers to clear their own side of the jungle, increasing the opportunity cost of invading. This also helps prevent early invades and vertical jungling which was deemed “too reliant on you team's ability to play around you and maintain early lane pressure” by the balancing team. A new “Marked for Death” mechanic is also being introduced. Despite the changes, the balancing team has the following to say:
“To be clear, we absolutely do want counter jungling in the game and believe it should be an effective strategy for junglers. However, the current state of counter jungling is far too strong and punishing, making it an incredibly miserable experience for those being invaded which isn’t ideal for the role.”
The Rift Scuttlers are also receiving their own changes. There were two “problems” with the camp, one was clearing it was miserable for champions that cannot break the fat shield, and another was that jungle champion viability depended on whether the champ can clear and reach the Scuttle by 3:15. To solve these problems, the shield is now completely gone, and the spawn time was moved to 3:30. The latter change gives slower clearers more time and faster ones a window to gank or gain more information.
Jungle Companions
The Emberknife and Hailblade jungle items has been retired, and instead replaced by the jungle companions. If you have Smite, you can purchase one of the three companions: Mosstoomper, Scorchclaw, or Gustwalker, in egg form. These companions will evolve and grow as you feed them stacks from monster and champion takedowns.
Leashing Range
Visual indicators for the leash range of each camp are being added to make the jungle “more welcoming to players unfamiliar with the role.” The distance camps can be pulled are also being decreased.
Recommended Pathing
As the final addition towards the goal of making jungling more approachable for new and off-role players, first clear patching recommendations are being added. Your recommended pathing will be visible on both the minimap and the camps themselves, numbered in the suggested order.
New Communication Tools
The number of pings available to players is being doubled from 4 to 8.
- Retained Pings (clockwise, from North): Retreat (formerly Danger), On My Way, Assist Me, Enemy Missing
- New Pings (clockwise, from Northeast): Push, All-In, Hold, Bait
A whole new ping wheel is also being added, focusing on vision
- (from left to right) Vision Cleared, Enemy Vision, Need Vision
- The Need Vision ping will persist on the map for a minute or until a ward is placed nearby. Only one of these pings can be active per player at a time and pinging again replaces the previous one.
The detached Caution ping remains the same but will receive updated visuals.
Objective Planning
A team can now vote over objectives. Pinging an objective will cause the new voting function to appear. This works similarly to a surrender vote, and all players in the team can vote whether or not they'd like to take or contest the objective. The jungler's vote counts as 2 votes, a total of 4 votes on either side will conclude the vote.
Vision System Updates
Ward visuals on thee minimap will now indicate when wards are about to expire. When an allied ward reaches a third of their remaining duration, its minimap icon will change appearance.
When a vision ping near an enemy ward that you've seen within the last 10 seconds is used, or if it is attacked, an accurate ward timer that is visible to all teammates will appear until the ward is removed or expired.
Ability Recommendations
To help onboard newer players onto the game, League of Legends Patch 12.22 will introduce in-game ability level-up recommendations. The suggested ability level-up will be highlighted on each level, and the data is updated every patch.
New Items
The full list of new items that were added in League of Legends Patch 12.22 can be found here.
Champion Changes
Cho'Gath
- R – Feast
- Damage to Non-Champions: 1000 (+50% AP)(+10% Bonus HP) >>> 1200(+50% AP)(+10% Bonus HP)
Lillia
- Base Stats
- Attacks: Ranged >>> Melee
- Base Health: 625 >>> 605
- Health Growth: 104 >>> 105
- Passive – Dream-Laden Bough
- Healing vs Champions: 10.5-124.5 (based on level)(+18% AP) (Note: linear scaling) >>> 6-120 (based on level)(+18% AP) (Note: now uses stat growth multiplier)
Nunu & Willump
- Q – Consume
- True Damage to Non-Champions: 340/500/660/820/980 >>> 400/600/800/1000/1200
Rakan
- Base Stats
- Attacks: Ranged >>> Melee
Summoner Spells
Smite
- Smite Damage: 450 (Base)/900 (Challenging/Chilling Smite) >>> 600/900/1200 (0/20/40 companion stacks)
- New Names: Smite/Challenging Smite/Chilling Smite >>> Smite/Unleashed Smite/Primal Smite
Turret Adjustments
Turret Plating
- Gold per Plate: 160 >>> 175
- Armor and MR per Turret Plate: 35 >>> 40
ARAM Balance Updates
Buffs
- Akali: +20% Tenacity, +20% Energy Regeneration
- Ekko: +20% Tenacity
- Elise: +20% Tenacity
- Evelynn: +20% Tenacity
- Fizz: +20% Tenacity
- Kassadin: +20% Tenacity
- Katarina: +20% Tenacity
- Kayn: +20% Tenacity
- Kennen: +20% Energy Regeneration
- Kha’Zix: +20% Tenacity
- Le’Blanc: +20% Tenacity
- Lee Sin: +20% Energy Regeneration
- Pyke: +20% Tenacity
- Qiyana: +20% Tenacity
- Rek’Sai: +20% Tenacity
- Rengar: +20% Tenacity
- Talon: +20% Tenacity
- Zed: +20% Tenacity, +20% Energy Regeneration
Nerfs
- Ashe: -20 Ability Haste
Competitive Updates, Bugfixes, Remake Changes, and others
There are also smaller and out-of-game changes that this update will ship. For one, champion base stats are being rounded off to make the numbers a little cleaner.
Penalty ladders will be updated accordingly following the text evaluation service that was introduced earlier this year in an attempt to lessen disruptive chat.
AFK surrender time is being updated, so the Remake system is more reliable. In Ranked Solo/Duo champ select, all summoner names that isn't your or your duo's will be replaced by Ally 1 through 5.
Eternals Series 2 is being added. The Mythic shop will update. A plethora of bugs have been fixed.
More details about each of these changes can be found on the full League of Legends Patch 12.22 Notes.
Follow Us
Subscribe