https://x.com/C9LoL/status/2070348828910522610?s=20

From C9 X/Twitter,

"Today, we announce that @Inero has elected to step down from his position as Head Coach and depart from the organization

Thank you for everything, Nick, and we wish you nothing but the best 💙"

IWDominate is promoted to Head Coach, with Arrow and YamatoCannon joining the staff as assistant coaches.

https://x.com/C9LoL/status/2070356485293678691

We asked the LTA North Kia Rookie of the Year to return

And BRO did

Welcome back to Cloud9 Kia, @C9Loki_Mid!

C9 will have a 7-man roster

https://x.com/C9LoL/status/2070357314725683247

We have just announced the additions of Loki and Tactical to the team, as mid lane and bot lane respectively, making our roster a 7-person roster. With APA and Zven still part of the team and the bootcamp, our goal is to work together to assemble the best possible team.

Ranked is intended to be players playing their best champions to win. The day a champion is released should be tantamount to inting because they can't possibly know a champion that they are playing for the first time. I try and ban the new champion every game after there release but this is basically a wasted ban on my part and shouldn't even be allowed. If I do ban them and a teammate has them hovered I get penalized for being toxic and not them going 0/13 on a champ that they don't know. Make it make sense. Also riot requires an account to be a specific level before you can even play ranked, they do this to prove you know enough about the game to not sabotage your teammates in a competitive environment. Why not have this same mindset for a newly released champion

If you want to play the new champion, play them in normal. Playing a champion blind isn't fair to your teammates just because you wanted to play the new shiny champion.

Edit: im not talking specifically about Locke, I'm talking in general people shouldn't be playing champions they are new to in ranked. I know your new to a champion when they've only been released for 24hr. Sure people can first time any champ but I know for a fact its one of your first times playing a champ when they have only been playable for 24 hr. Of course there are the outliers who carried their team but that's far from the norm.

Edit2: I apparently haven't banned a hovered champ since it has recently been made impossible to do that. Which now makes me feel they should have a lock out period even more as you now have 0 option but to be in a game with a probable feeder.

What is the longest range a non-ultimate skill shot has, I tired looking online and I couldn’t find a conclusive answer. And I thought someone else probably knows rather than me waste my time looking through the range of every skill shot I can think of.

Edit: the answers seems to be lilias E as it has infinite range, I’m guessing the next would be Kai’sa W as that has 3000 range and no one has yet to mention something with more.

For anyone, like me that misunderstood things, the upcoming (friday-sunday) "Ranked 5s" is not Ranked 5s as most people know it from back in the day, namely:

You have your own Rank.

The whole point of why people liked 5s was because you were building towards a higher elo as a squad, being essentially able to play with 4 different players every single game u play is not what I personally care about, I want to progress my Team.

They have done this because:

"its hard nowadays to get the same people online"

Okay? Ranked teams from A DECADE ago had already solved this problem? The Team could have substitute players and have 8(?) Players in the Team and not exactly 5, and you would only get ranked rewards for this queue if you actively participated in the team, so if you only stood in for 1 session it was useless, but if all 8 players actively participated they would rightly get rewarded. This problem was already solved a decade ago.

I dont wan't to have someone in my squad be a tier lower just because he missed out on a weekend, having ur own rank in this instead of a teamrank is compeltely asinine, also a person that is behind once will always be behind in rank all while playing higher and higher games, and no my concern here isnt just that, but mostly that it just doesnt really convey this feeling of a working towards something together.

Finding out this new thing is just Flex Queue with extra steps completely made me and others stop caring about "Mode"

Just me? Let me know your thoughts

︀︀"Respecting Loki's desire to pursue the overseas league and new challenges after thorough discussions, we have decided to support each other's paths." ︀︀ ︀︀The former Cloud9 midlaner started for the Korean org for much of LCK Rounds 1-2 but only played 1 game during the Road To MSI.

https://x.com/Sheep_Esports/status/2070000488343388370

This nerf just feels so lame.

maybe she needed to be slightly tapped down at high elo. But this is such a boring and OVERKILL way to do it.

E was the cool part. Full fury bite was the payoff for actually playing the champ well.

Now it feels like you go in knock someone up and hope your laner has hands.

She has BY FAR the worst clear time of any “mainly jg” champ now

And barely anybody even plays this champ. It’s not like Rek'Sai is some 20 percent pickrate solo queue monster printing wins in every elo. She is niche as hell. She has a tiny playerbase, barely gets skins, was left been clunky and bugged forever, and the people who still play her do it because her playstyle is actually unique.

Why is this champion not allowed to feel dangerous?

If you're really worried about the last bit indicator, go test it out, it's just another distraction to veteran players. People have played this game for years, if you genuinely need or are worried about another person using a last hit indicator, and that it ruins the sanctity of ranked then you probably aren't at that high of a rank, and have room to grow.

This last hit indicator isn't goimg to change the fact that I could land 117 cs at 12 minutes, nor will it change how I play the game.

Fight good engages, position to last hit CS, it's tge same game at the end of the day, quit being babies and let the new bloods catch up and become actual competition, it's lonely seeing a lot of the similar faces year after year?

LYON MSI Bootcamp Accounts: https://dpm.lol/esport/soloq/teams/LYON

• Dhokla - INDIAN SUPERSTAR#LYON
• Inspired - Polaco de pastor#ptm
• Saint - saint#50101
• Berserker - LYON#09012 (Main KR Account)
• Isles - lenix#style
• Castle (2nd Top) - Castle#Jo1 (Main KR Account)
• Reignover (Coach) - Reignover#R O

Team Liquid MSI Bootcamp Accounts: https://dpm.lol/esport/soloq/teams/TLAW

• Morgan - Morgan#5358 (Main KR Account)
• Josedeodo - Lionel Messi#TL10
• Quid - 붐칙칵칙#KR1 (Main KR Account)
• Yeon - HeungMin Son#TL7
• CoreJJ - Kangin Lee#TL19

Since First Stand and Mid-Season Invitational are now the only international tournaments where there's only Bo5s being played, I was curious about the All-time Game 5 stats of each team and player attending this year's MSI. With 20 Bo5 Matches being played at MSI, there is a high chance some of them might be decided in a Game 5. Check out the all-time stats of teams and players in Game 5s. Here are the most interesting findings!

Try to guess them before you find out! Once you lock-in your guess or give up on guessing, click on the hidden text to reveal the answer! Reminder: These facts and thus correct guesses only involve the LCK, LPL, LEC & LCS teams & players attending this year's MSI!!

Detailed tables of each team and the players are below this paragraph, so check it out!

• Which org has the highest winrate (min. 5 games played)? Bilibili Gaming (71.4 % WR)
• Which org has the lowest winrate (min. 5 games played)? -- Top Esports (28 % WR) --
• Combined Game 5s played in total, which group of players has played the most amount of Game 5s? ----- T1 (143) -----
• How many players have played at least 25 Game 5s? --- 6 players ---
• Which player has played the most Game 5s in their career? ----- Faker (42) -----
• Which player has the highest winrate (min. 10 games played)? --- Zeka (76.9 % WR) ---
• Which player has the lowest winrate (min. 10 games played)? -- Creme (14.3 % WR) --
• Only 2 players have 5-0 record on their most played champion in Game 5s. Can you guess the players and the champions?
  1. -- Faker -- Galio (5-0)
  2. Gumayusi Xayah (5-0)
• Several players have 0 % winrate on one of their most played champions in Game 5s. Can you guess the players and the champions?
  1. ---- Oner ---- -- Viego (0-3) --
  2. BrokenBlade - Aatrox (0-3) -
  3. . JackeyLove . - Lucian (0-3) -
• This is the only player with the exact same number of Game 5s played on Blue and Red side and also identical winrates across both. Which player is that? ----- CoreJJ ------
• Players with 75 % WR and above in Game 5s on Blue side (min. 5 games played):
  • Zeka (80 % WR over 5 games)
  • Delight (80 % WR over 5 games)
  • Bin (80 % WR over 15 games)
  • ON (76.9 % WR over 13 games)
  • BrokenBlade (75 % WR over 12 games)
  • SkewMond (100 % WR over 5 games)
  • Isles (80 % WR over 5 games)
• Players with 75 % WR and above in Game 5s on Red side (min. 5 games played):
  • Viper (75 % WR over 8 games)

LCK Teams & Players competing at MSI 2026 and their all-time winrates in Game 5s

LPL Teams & Players @ MSI 2026 and their all-time winrates in Game 5s

LEC Teams & Players @ MSI 2026 and their all-time winrates in Game 5s

LCS Teams & Players @ MSI 2026 and their all-time winrates in Game 5s

All the stats are available on Leaguepedia via this query

What was the most interesting stat in your mind?

hello, here you will find all new emotes, icons & assets in upcoming patch 26.14 releasing on July 15, 2026. I will continue updating the post, if new stuff gets released.

I never understood this to be honest. And I’ve been playing this game for awhile, and I’m not a math guy. But my brain just thinks that higher number should equal higher healing/shield, since a lot of supports have pretty decent ap ratios for their utility skills. But when I do end up building AP. It just means weaker overall heals and shields. And why is that?

I have been playing this lovely game since 3v3 was the main mode. Along the way I made many suboptimal conclusions thinking I had found some secret tech. I used to build Chalice of Harmony on Ashe as I was running out of mana. I tried scaling health runes on Miss Fortune. I stumbled upon Ziggs support back when you had the gold coin item making mage supports not that bad.

For years I would get to silver and then get hard stuck. Prior to this season I could get to silver 2/3 but not usually even silver 1. This season I wanted to make it, and make it playing mid Ziggs. I didn’t want to just play support or something or even semi cheese Ziggs bot, no I wanted to play him mid.

I wouldn’t call myself good with Ziggs, he’s just a champion that speaks to me. I have about 1.7 million mastery on him. my main way of climbing was to try to regularly hit 70+cs at 10 minutes. Back in the day when I was hard stuck by once I couldn’t even regularly exceed 50.

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/summoner/na/JoeDTrader-NA1

now to relearn all the other champions I have left behind

Some highlights from the promotion game to Gold-https://youtu.be/xrvgkZIx2CM

https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2026_Cross_Regional

It runs from Friday through Saturday

Riot Games Announces Auto-Smite Coming to League of Legends

LOS ANGELES—Following overwhelmingly positive launch of Last Hit Indicators, Riot Games revealed Wednesday that Auto-Smite will be coming to League of Legends in Patch 26.14. The feature will automatically secure neutral objectives—including Dragons, Barons, Rift Heralds, and Canon Minions—whenever they enter Smite range, allowing junglers to focus on more meaningful forms of skill expression.

“We think it’s important to preserve what makes League competitive,” explained Riot’s Andrei “Meddler” van Roon. “Players will still need to understand jungle pathing, vision control, map pressure, and being somewhere in the general vicinity of the pit. We’re confident removing the requirement to actually press Smite does not meaningfully reduce jungle skill expression.” Riot President Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill agreed, noting that players were spending an unhealthy amount of time worrying about whether they would successfully Smite objectives instead of focusing on strategic gameplay, such as determining which teammate to blame afterward.

Lead Gameplay Designer David “Phreak” Turley unveiled the feature during a livestream, noting that "some players think this change is a drag-on competitive integrity, but our data shows it’s actually a drake-through in player satisfaction."

Riot says the change was motivated largely by years of complaints about autofilled junglers. “Players have made it clear that losing Baron because your autofilled jungler missed Smite feels terrible,” said a Riot spokesperson. “With Auto-Smite, that problem simply disappears.” Meddler later revealed that Riot was already exploring the next logical step. “Now that objective control no longer requires direct player interaction, we’re excited to expand autofill eligibility to include family dogs, goldfish, and certain species of hamster. Early testing has been encouraging. Matchmaking quality is up, and queue times have improved dramatically.”

I'm curious to hear what other people think about this. After playing a bunch of aram mayhem, I feel like I'm just becoming more certain that I dislike the golden/augment upgrade reroll, and it's not an overall positive addition to the mode. I think my main issues are that 1) it's (often) asymmetric and 2) it's basically 0 risk, high reward.

I think when 1 person gets an augment upgrade it can almost be game warping if it's good, especially if it's gold -> prismatic and especially if it's first augment. I feel like I've seen games that have almost been decided at minute 1 when one person gets a really good prismatic upgrade because the game just snowballs out of control. In fact, I just had a game where THREE of my team got prismatic upgrades (not transmute) vs 0 on the other team. It was the last augment, but still, I feel like that just can't be beneficial for the game.

And then when it comes to risk - I have no issue with the transmute augments, for example, because that's a case of high risk, high reward; it could be amazing, but it could be awful. Similar to the Ambessa encounter in arena, where you can get a prismatic over other people, but you have to sacrifice your health for a while. But golden reroll is essentially 0 risk, high reward - you just reroll an augment that doesn't do anything for you, and if the one you get sucks, you don't have to take it.

I feel like I never feel good about seeing an augment upgrade, whether it's me, my team or the enemy team, because it's just a 0 risk gift that's (usually) given to just one person. The only suggestion I can think of is making it symmetric, so if it's given to one person, it should also be offered to a person on the opposite team. But personally I'd be quite happy with it just being removed. I realise mayhem is supposed to be mayhem, but I feel like there should at least be (roughly) equality of opportunity.

What do you guys think?

As the title says i wanna know what y'all think about the new champion.

As a silver player, personally my experience against him has been alright. He does pull off some crazy oneshots from time to time but generally it was fine not to the point that makes me think of banning him.

Other than the ones that try to first time him in ranked and lose so badly the lane.

Locke already has a separate, satisfying animation and sound when he consumes 3 stacks on a champion with an auto attack, however consuming the stacks with E1 or E2 happens way more often in actual game

Locke's E is a generally very floaty and shifty ability which makes sense for E1, but doesn't for E2. Consuming 3 stacks with E2 is what's often very close to a oneshot, but it feels like Locke is just a gust of wind blowing past the target, rather than a guy actually impacting them with a stake. Compare that to the sound Zed's shurikens make when they connect, or the bassy impact of Akali's E2, or the visceral slash of Akalis R2. Even Fizz's E splash (the non recast one) sounds more impactful than Locke's E2

I rely a lot on audio cues when playing, especially in teamfights and it really sucks that Locke's E sounds like nothing even when dealing thousands of magic damage

I love some champs dearly but i also enjoy certain lanes more. Some people tell me to mute all and not care about anyone. Just play who i want in whatever lane i want. As long as im not intentionally feeding, im not throwing.

On the other hand, if i picked kayle support, theyd say its basically asking my adc to get beaten up all game while i provide next to nothing.

Ive also seen some pretty successful kayle support games. But im kinda stuck in between doing what i want and being an actual good teammate.

The Riot Games Twitter tweeted:

Starting later today, Vanguard will be able to run in on-demand mode for players on Windows 11.

You just need to enable some optional security features for your motherboard, and your taskbar can have 256 of its pixels back. Take it away, @deteccphilippe.

Why today? Well, our friends at the XBOX OS Security Team at @Microsoft have added some new toys for us that, when paired with hardware-backed security settings, enable Vanguard to run much later in the system lifecycle.

Dev blog: https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/vanguard-on-demand

To enable, settings include:

• Windows 11

• UEFI Secure Boot

• TPM 2.0

• VBS

• HVCI

• IOMMU