League of Legends patch 26.18: Fixing mistakes and choosing who Seraphine gets to disappoint

Updated on September 2, 2026 at 10:11pm: Added detailed patch notes posted by Riot Phroxzon on X. Aurelion Sol and Renekton removed from planned champion buffs.

League of Legends Lead Gameplay Designer Matt “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison posted a preview of LoL patch 26.18 on X today.

Worlds is right around the corner — the tournament runs on LoL patch 25.20 — which means 26.18 is one of the last chances for Riot to shape the meta before the pros take the stage.

This preview touches three very different corners of the game: an item that got quietly nerfed by a rework two patches ago, a laner whose power is in the wrong place, and a champion who just can’t seem to escape the nerf bat.

LoL patch 26.18 notes

Champion buffs

Ekko

Ekko’s getting a waveclear and mana buff aimed at his AP ratios, tailored specifically for Mid, where AP stacking and Lich Bane rushes are more common than in Jungle.

Riot frames the waveclear buff as lower-interaction by nature, but necessary because Ekko is a roaming tempo champion who needs clear to get his snowball started.

Viego

With Divine Sunderer gone and Sundered Sky nerfed, Bruiser Viego fell further behind Squishy Viego than intended. This patch adds explicit support to bring the bruiser build back into a healthier spot.

Zaahen

Zaahen’s a little weak post-nerf, so he’s getting power back. Riot is also taking the chance to add a consistency fix to his Q behavior after reviving, which previously could desync and leave players with an awkwardly short window to use Q2.

Champion nerfs

Seraphine

Seraphine has landed in the top three of Riot’s patch frustration surveys for several patches running, and her Ashe bot lane pairing has been one of the most oppressive combos in pro play.

Riot’s being unusually direct about the tradeoffs. Seraphine’s playerbase splits across three roles, and by their own numbers, Support is where she’s most popular by a wide margin — so that’s where continued support (no pun intended) will be prioritized.

Mid and Bot will get attention where possible, but Riot is openly flagging that trying to serve all three audiences at once risks satisfying none of them.

“I also wanted to address directly the nerf to her AP ratios on Q from several patches ago, as that’s been a pain point amongst some in the community,” Riot Phroxzon wrote.

Riot’s reasoning is that the Q ratio is one of the main levers separating her farming-role power from her support power, and with recent reliability adjustments making it easier to land Q at max range, a 1.4 AP ratio at full multiplier is still considered strong — especially since Q already outdamages E overall.

The message is essentially: this wasn’t a mistake, it’s a deliberate balance lever, though Riot leaves the door open to revisiting it if the numbers don’t hold up.

Zeri

Hurricane’s rework landed well and feels good on the item itself, but Zeri’s absorbed too much of that power, especially at Elite given her mastery profile.

Riot’s “balance-items-first, then-champions” philosophy means the fix comes from Zeri directly rather than another Hurricane nerf.

Champion adjustments

Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia’s had a quietly dominant run since Deathfire Touch came back into the game, and nowhere is that more obvious than pro play, where her laning phase has made her one of the most consistently picked champions in the game right now.

Riot Phroxzon went into detail: Her stat line tells three different stories — rough for average players (~47% WR), strong in pro play, above average at Elite.

The fix isn’t a flat nerf or buff; it’s a shift toward AP ratios over base damage, since average players tend to itemize more AP.

Her Q’s synergy with Deathfire Touch is also getting trimmed at rank 1, even though Riot’s clear that item synergies like this are a fun part of her kit. The goal is to keep her early-game identity (which naturally favors pros) while giving regular players some of that power back — not remove her from the meta.

But that same strength doesn’t translate evenly — at a regular player level, her power feels considerably softer.

Riot is shaving power out of her early game and reinvesting it into her scaling, with the explicit goal of making her lane wins feel less automatic, especially in those games where her Q accuracy isn’t perfect.

Importantly, the stated intent is to keep her laning identity intact; this isn’t an attempt to turn her into a scaling-only pick, just to stop her from winning lane almost by default.

Worth watching: whether “power neutral” actually lands as neutral once this hits pro play, where Cassiopeia’s laning has been the whole point of picking her.

System buffs

Rageblade: Fixing an accidental nerf

Back in LoL patch 26.14, Rageblade got a re-script. Buried in that change was a shift that pushed the Phantom Hit trigger from the 6th attack to the 7th — a small tweak on paper, but one that quietly gutted the item’s value for anyone relying on fast, stacking attack speed to spike online.

Champions like Master Yi, for example, took a disproportionate hit.

LoL patch 26.18 walks some of that power back. It should feel meaningfully better on the champions who got caught in the crossfire of a change that wasn’t really aimed at them in the first place.