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Riot Games gave Summoner’s Insights readers a look behind the curtain of League of Legends Patch 26.16. Changes on the client side will help League’s balance team move bot lane away from mages, without killing them as a lane composition entirely.
Lead Gameplay Designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison explained that mage has slowly increased their lane share throughout the season 2026. Coming into MSI, mage comprised around 20 percent of bot lane picks.
The lane comp popped up again during later tournaments and into ranked.The culprit? Riot cited melee support buffs, enchanter nerfs, and players figuring out how to bypass LoL’s anti-roaming and anti-lane swap mechanics in Patch 26.11.
Even though mage picks can be frustrating to play against, Riot says mage have not overgrown bot lane to a debilitating degree. Traditional ADC champions should be “the expected go-to class for bot lane,” especially among pros, Riot says.
Rather than kill mage picks entirely, Riot wants to close the gap between them and marksmen.League 26.16 will enact several changes that should incentivize players back towards marksmen in bot. Most notably, out of lane support gold and XP penalty has increased from 25 percent until level three to 33 percent until level five. This nerfs early game roaming substantially.
ADCs are getting several individual buffs as well. Both Berserker’s Greaves and Fleet Footwork will be buffed, and all marksmen will gain more base magic resistance. This should help ADCs play better against early-game mage pressure.
Additionally, Riot is buffing Heal so that early 2v2 skirmishes in bot lane are more impactful.Phroxzon pointed out that some mage win rates are inflated. Brand, Swain, Ziggs, Veigar, Seraphine, and Xerath don’t require high mechanical skill to play like traditional ADCs, so they tend to have high win rates among all players.
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