Patch 8.1 will be the first patch of the new season, and it brings a couple things to clean up the preseason patches and prepare the game for the start of the LCS spring season. The patch is slightly small considering the most recent patch, but it comes with some important changes I want to discuss. The patch will come into effect on the 16th with the end of the preseason.

One change, which won't affect many casual players, that I am interested in is allowing challenger players to now duo queue. I think this will really help with professional player practice to form bot synergy and or jungle and other lanes. As an ADC main, being able to duo queue with my support when I played for Wake's team was super helpful in helping us grow as laners and form a cohesive synergy.

Buffs

A slight damage increase on Brand's passive burn, from 2 percent to 4 percent. Good damage increase of him on clearing waves and getting a little more damage in when trading. More importantly, it will help support Brand and really hurt the ablity for the enemy botlane to heal very much at all.

Grave's received some small buffs to his Q, lowering cost and cooldown time and then upping the slow on his E but lowered slow duration. This helps him clear early game and gives him some consistency as well in clearing camps.

Skarner is getting some nice buffs to his E proc damage and upping the stun by half a second. The damage is very small so it's not huge. He also got 50 more mana from start, which I don't see why. Once you get his shrines activated, mana doesn't become a problem at all. And most of his builds require him to get some mana, so the buff seems unneeded really.

Lastly, some buffs to predator and using resolve as a second path in runes. Not big deals, but some nice buffs none the less.

Nerfs

The Donger is getting nerfed? I mean I know he does mad amounts of damage but I think for a champion like Heimer, who has never really been strong maybe let him be strong. He still has an absurd amount of weaknesses and counters that I feel like the damage nerf on his ult turret is unneeded. It's only a small nerf tho early and mid game, once he gets a good amount of AP, it's not that big of a deal.

Kayle's passive attach increase and attack speed got cut slightly, not huge but still will affect her damage outfit slightly. The increase cooldown pre E rank 3 though is something of the concern for her. While again not huge, this will be noticeable in lane early on until level 4 or 5.

Lastly, there were some minor nerfs on Zoe. The time to arm her stun is very slightly increased. And the location of her exit portal is no longer delayed. Both of these seem minuscule to me, considering how strong she is right now in meta and in general. Professionals and casual players have complained about her a ton and yet she is still in a super strong place, which I think Riot is making a mistake in now combatting with this patch.

Bug Fixes

This patch had a ton of bug fixes. From cleaning up Syndra's R with around eight bug fixes to rune bug fixes and more. I recommend reading the patch notes for more detail because there is a ton of fixes. Which is always important prior to the start of the season.

Skins

Jax is getting a new skin with this patch, God Staff, and it looks really cool. But, it doesn't compare to the AMAZING Mighty Ducks Jax skin.

Also today, skins were released on the PBE. These include: Arctic Ops Gragas, Sweetheart Rakan, Sweetheart Xayah, Lunar Guardian Warwick, Lunar Guardian Nasus and Lunar Empress Lux

People haven't been happy with Rakan and Xayah, the moment they were shown there was a huge post on the League Reddit complaining. I do agree with the post, the skins seem very basic and lazy. However the Warwick and Nasus skins are just so cool, and their recall animation is mad fresh. You can check out the video of the skins here

To read the patch notes yourself, you can see the notes here