LoL Patch 14.4: Tether Changes – What Does This Mean For Your Solo Queue Games?

Riot is changing how Tethers work. This means Nocturne Fear, Karma Stun and many more! Let's figure out what impact those changes will have!

Riot Endpoint has recently reworked all the tethers on the PBE. He completely changed how they work overall which should help with the gameplay flow a lot. 

Tethers can break and every tether except Aatrox W use the same method to determine whether a tether has been broken or not. How it works on Patch 14.3 is that every few frames the server will check if the both tether characters are still in range of one another, and then it will or will not break. 

The new changes that Riot Endpoint wants to implement is that these tethers become range limited. What is that for? Well, for example, a Nocturne that presses E on you and flashes after you very quickly while you flash away will (in most scenarios) keep the tether up. With the changes, that will not happen anymore.

LoL: How Will This Change Affect You?

The new tethers are going to work a little bit different. Instead of checking frames, tethers will now have an area trigger. Riot Endpoint wanted to change these to make them work more how you would actually expect tethers to work. So how will this work on the tethers? 

First, we have to find out what tethers even exist.

These champions have a tether:

• Aatrox (not affected)
• Fiddlesticks
• Illaoi
• Karma
• Kled (not affected)
• LeBlanc
• Malzahar (not affected)
• Nocturne
• Morgana
• Renata
• Zac

Riot Endpoint has confirmed that some of these changes might actually be small nerfs to the respective champion but has also stated that if that would be the case, champions would also be getting compensation buffs.

Fiddlesticks:

So Fiddlesticks usually doesn't move when his tether is on (mainly because that cancels it) so checking better if it is still connected would be a nerf. Thankfully, Riot has already pushed a small tether range buff to fiddle so that he should feel the same.

Illaoi:

This affects the tether between the soul and the enemy, who just got his soul joinked. This makes it more consistent to get out of the range.

Karma:

Again, just a change for some more consistence where you can possibly leave the tether range with a dash or speed buff where it wouldn't count beforehand.

LeBlanc:

This should also change nothing of significance gameplay wise, but it will feel much better to play against since the chain has such a long range, and maybe you can finally flash out of it.

Nocturne:

The tether change will impact Nocturne the most, as his is kinda small, and he has to be very close to an enemy. This should make it easier to get away from him, and he might get some buffs for that.

Morgana:

The changes should make it slightly more consistent to get out of the ultimate.

Renata:

Riot Endpoint has specifically stated that this doesn't affect gameplay at all except in a single situation that is incredibly unlikely. So just coding clean up.

Zac:

Zac got changed the most. The spell was previously a center check meaning that it took the core of a champion and not the outline. This could've led to issues with big champions such as a Cho'Gath. Now it is a boundary check. Riot Endpoint also changed some range values so that it shows correctly.

All of these changes seem to not have any big impact on the game but could theoretically be seen as minor nerfs. Im glad that they are already evaluating buffing champions that actually suffer from this, and I'm always glad that developers make mechanics feel more “correct”.

We will see all or most of this in Patch 14.4. 

More League of Legends:

• League of Legends: Skins On Sale This Week
• LoL Patch 14.4 Patch Notes: All Changes On The PBE Server
• Aurelion Sol In Lol Patch 14.3: Why He's Still Broken After The Hotfix