Ahoy matey's, @captenredbeard here, dropping by for a quick chat about the patch notes that dropped yesterday for patch 8.4. HUGE patch. Let's get into it.

This week's landing page can be found HERE

Patch 8.4

So I'm not going to go over every detail of this patch and I likely won't do this for every patch, however, this patch has some major changes in a variety of areas, and it will 100% have an effect on pro play as well as solo.

Firstly...mage items

Typically most mage would build the same build path. Need mana, start morello's then get the same damage items that every other mage gets. Well Riot decided to update this by making 'lost chapter' a core build item for multiple other items, allowing for some different build paths. It will build into Luden's Echo, Hextech GLP-800, and Archangel's Staff. Each item has been rebalanced to focus on what it was intended to be: poke, chasing, and spamming spells (respectively).

Additionally Liandry's and Morello's have been rebalanced similiarly. Liandry's is 100% focused on fighting tanks and Morello's is all about stopping those champs that heal for days.

They've also added 3 new items. Oblivion orb (for flat magic pen), Spellbinder (for staying in big fights), andTwin Shadows (for getting onto an enemy).

Lastly there were a few balance changes to existing AP items, to align them power/cost ratio-wise.

Top lane adjustments

Darius was buffed, who the hell knows why.

Gangplank slightly nerfed in order to reduce his sustain in lane and encourage him to not just sit back and farm passively. This was an obvious change, based on how often he's being abused in pro play.

Gnar got a nerf/buff. Reducing his Q spam, but increasing his jump damage. Rewarding him for getting into fights. I think this is a nice change and should really just improve his playstyle.

Ornn got some massive nerfs. I don't play him, but it looks like a lot of adjustments.

Poppy gets a minor buff, haven't seen her in forever, so that's good.

Renekton got a slight buff, not sure if needed since I don't play him either, perhaps @belcam can chime in on it?

Sometime you have to love Riot's sense of humor. Jax got a bug fixed.

If you were paying attention recently, a popular streamer Hashinshin completely raged out when he was dueling in lane, and an ability "went through" his counterstrike (which is hilarious, since he came out on top of the exchange anyway). Looks like Riot took note, and even teased him about it in this bug fix. Take a look if you're interested (rage begins at ~54s, if it doesn't jump to it automatically).

And finally, Frozen mallet lost some slow-ness.

Other champ changes

I'm not going to go over each champ, but I'll list the champs and you can just jump to the ones you care about in Riot's full post.

Evelynn (small buff)
Fiddlesticks (small buff)
Kalista (nerf/buff tiny rework)
Kog'maw (slight buff)
Rengar (big change, revert back to previous Rengar)
Shyvana (nerfed slightly, sorry @parallax6)
Swain (nerf/buff style balance chance)
Talon (nerf/buff to improve his resistance to mages in lane)
Tristana (minor nerf, imo, longer ult cooldown)
Twitch (slight nerf)
Volibear (interesting mini rework of sorts)
Xin Zhao (nerf)
Zed (later game buff, who knows why...)
Zoe (pretty decent nerf/rework)

Other changes

Some other item changes to the support item lines of Ancient Coin & Relic Shield.

Tracker's Knife is gone and Wit's End Buffed.

A few runes have been changed in precision, resolve, and inspiration trees.

The jungle blast cones will spawn a bit later to protect early game laners.

and finally... the last major change was to Baron and Elder. Essentially both objectives were massively buffed for late game. So if your team is getting either of these on the second spawn and beyond...you should be ending the game right then.

Well, that about sums up the changes. It is a big patch and it would be best to look at the full notes if you really want to understand the changes that affect your gameplay. Feel free to start up a conversation about any and all of it, tell me a joke, or just chitchat.

Source: All from Giphy.com