Patch 26.7 is shaping up to be a cleanup operation. League of Legends lead designer Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison dropped the full preview on March 25, and the headline is that Shyvana is still giving Riot headaches, while Kalista and Rell are finally getting some love after spending too long on the sidelines.
Shyvana's fury problem isn't solved yet
Here's the thing with Shyvana: her rework created a balancing situation that Riot is still actively untangling. Patch 26.7 addresses one specific piece of it, changing how Ultimate Haste interacts with her passive fury generation. Previously, Ultimate Haste provided a flat passive 0.015 fury generation per second. The new version makes Ultimate Haste amplify all fury generation by 1% per 1 Ultimate Haste, which is a more systemic fix than a raw number tweak.
The bigger issue is the Sylas bug. When Sylas steals Shyvana's ultimate, he's been dealing obscene amounts of damage, which is clearly unintended. Riot is patching that interaction here, but Phroxzon's preview indicates a larger set of Shyvana changes is still being finalized and will land in a future patch. She remains a work in progress.
Kalista and Rell buffed as a package deal
Phroxzon was direct about the reasoning: Kalista has fallen out of favor at the pro level, which means she's safe to buff in solo queue for once. She's historically been "pro-jailed," kept weak to prevent her from warping competitive play. The buff targets her E AD scaling on bonus damage per additional stack, moving from +20/25/30/35/40% AD up to +20/27.5/35/42.5/50% AD at max rank. Not massive, but it rewards the stacking gameplay she's built around.
Rell is getting buffed alongside her most common lane partner, which feels intentional. Her E movement speed gets a bump from 10% (25% when facing an ally or visible enemy) to a flat 15% (30% in those conditions). Her ultimate damage also shifts: the early ranks go up significantly from 120/200 to 150/250, though the max rank stays at 380... wait, actually it drops to 250 at rank three. The key here is the early game burst, which will be more punishing for supports and junglers who run into her before she has items.
The nerfs: Graves, Ornn, Veigar, and more
Graves loses 2 base AD (68 down to 66), which sounds minor but compounds across his jungle clear in the early game. Ornn takes a hit to his Brittle passive trigger damage, dropping from 10-18% target max HP to 9-16% across levels 1-18. Players who consistently land the three-Brittle proc combo will feel that more than casual Ornn players.
Veigar gets his ultimate cooldown pushed out at early ranks, going from 100/80/60 seconds to 120/90/60. This is aimed squarely at bot lane Veigar, who leans heavily on his all-in window, but mid lane Veigar takes the same hit.
Karma sees her R+E shield values trimmed across the board (50/100/150/200 down to 45/85/125/165 with the same AP ratio), keeping her as a lane bully but reducing her ability to bail out teammates. Singed loses some of the bonus stats from his ultimate at ranks 2 and 3 (60 to 55, 95 to 85). Nami's W bounce modifier gets adjusted in a way that's actually an early-game nerf but breaks even at 200 AP, so AP-focused Nami players won't feel it late.
Cassiopeia is the outlier on the buff side, picking up 30 base mana and increased E damage at higher ranks (up to 20/45/70/95/120 from 20/43/66/89/112). For one of the most mana-hungry champions in the game, that base mana increase could translate directly into one extra Twin Fang in a full all-in.
Support farming penalty removed entirely
This is the change that will ripple beyond any individual champion buff or nerf. Removing the penalty gives supports more agency in the early game, but it also makes it easier to starve your ADC of farm by accident (or on purpose). The League of Legends developer blog hasn't published a detailed breakdown of the intent behind this change yet, but Riot clearly wants supports to have more decision-making freedom in the lane phase.
Patch 26.7 hits live servers soon. The Shyvana situation will be one to watch, because Riot has signaled that the larger rework adjustments are still coming. Make sure to check out more:
