5 things you need to know about League of Legends patch 9.6

League of Legends’ latest patch is here. Patch 9.6 isn’t exactly heavy on the changes, and mostly looks to clean up some of the balance outliers from the last several patches.

The biggest change this time around is coming to Kayle who is getting a slight nerf after her patch 9.5 rework. Jayce is also getting hit with a nerf, while Gnar, Urgot, and Ornn are all getting buffs alongside a few others.

This patch is also the one to bring about the ranked reset, which happens on March 20, the same day the patch goes live. This reset will include all Diamond+ players in one way or another. For those in Diamond, they’ll go down one division — don’t worry if you’re in Diamond IV, you’ll just get 0 LP instead of being demoted. Meanwhile, everyone in Masters and above will be reset to Masters with 0 LP, in an attempt to correct some of the early season issues that ranked was facing.

For a look at all the changes coming to the game in patch 9.6, you can check out the full patch notes.

Riot Games

New Kayle is already getting nerfed

Kayle’s rework has only been out for a couple of weeks, but she’s already a little too strong. To help pull back her strengths a bit, Riot is nerfing Kayle’s attack speed growth and her damage growth. These don’t necessarily make her unplayable, but they should keep her from completely taking over games like she could on release.

Urgot is getting a late game buff

It wasn’t too many patches ago that Riot gave Urgot a sizable nerf that cut him out of the current meta. With patch 9.6, Riot isn’t going back on his nerf, but it is giving him a little bit of power in other areas to help bring him back up to speed with the rest of top lane. In this case, that means moving his shield to his E instead of his W, and letting his W be on all the time in the late game. This should turn Urgot into a walking turret late in games and let him be a little more useful.

Riot Games

Double Tear Ezreal (and everyone else) is gone

Double Tear is a thing of the past as of patch 9.6 and while that’s bad for everyone, it’s especially bad for Ezreal, the most notable user of the double tear build. In order to take this out of the game, Riot chose to make Tear of the Goddess items all part of one group which only allows players to have one in their inventory at a time. That means if you already have a Manamune, you can’t also buy an Archangel’s Staff, or even another Tear of the Goddess.

Minion Bounties work a little bit differently

Bounties has been a contentious topic all season and Riot’s still adjusting them to make sure they’re just right. This time around, Riot is increasing the lead you need to have a minion bounty from 150 to 200 more minion or monster gold than the enemy team’s average. If that’s too much math for you, just know that it means you need to have a bigger lead to start getting a minion bounty. Also new is the fact that if you lose your minion or monster gold lead your bounty will now decrease.

Riot Games

April fools pet skins have arrived

This year’s Versus event looks like it’s tied to April Fools and because it’s cats vs dogs, that means we get more pet skins. This time around, Corki and Fizz both get dog skins while Rengar and Yorick are getting cat themed skins. If you didn’t like Pug’Maw you aren’t gonna like some of these, but for everyone else, a new animal in the game is always a plus.