Greetings, Summoners.

Welcome to patch 5.11 - the one where we buff Caitlyn and roll out some pretty significant changes to Twisted Treeline. That Caitlyn is being buffed isn't a milestone in itself, but when you consider how long it's been since we've given the Sheriff of Piltover any attention (hint: a long time), it's at least worth a novelty mention in the foreword. So here you go, Caitlyn. A foreword mention and a patch note.

Moving on.

As League continues to evolve through the regular season, we remain committed to our pursuit of champion diversity in as many different ways as possible. Today we looked at some of the highs and lows of the champion viability ladder and chose a few we could prod closer to the center. In some cases (like Katarina, LeBlanc, and Hecarim), we had champions putting out high amounts of oppressive (one might say frustrating) power, which ultimately translated to investigation tasks for us to deflate some strengths (or highlight weaknesses) without just kicking them to the curb. On the other end of the spectrum, we wanted to highlight certain unique strengths on undervalued champs with things like Caitlyn's Headshot upgrade, Aatrox's bloodier passive, or Kha'Zix's buffed isolation range (technically it's reduced, but in a good way).

We also have some pretty big updates heading to everyone's favorite (one might say only) Twisted Treeline. We were in the process of doing a large cross-map consistency pass for all alternative map modes in League of Legends (you might remember our work on the Howling Abyss), and felt we could also do some broad balance adjustments while we were here. Check out the Twisted Treeline section of the patch notes for more information, because there's a lot of it.

And that about encapsulates the contents of this patch. For those of you struggling to keep up in your games of League, we're always striving to ensure you won't be stuck up the river without a paddle. That said, if conventional means don't work, be careful who you call when seeking help; there's all sorts of things out there, preying on the wishes of desperate people. Mope, and you mope alone - laugh, and the world laughs with you. Or so they say.

Boy that was cryptic.

Look at this continued support. We're just throwing in some tweaks to address popular floating combat text concerns; specifically, recognizing critical strikes faster and better communicating individual sources of damage when damage-over-time abilities are running rampant.