Wild Rift Patch 7.3 Notes: Every Change, Number by Number

Patch 7.3b update (October 14): what changed since release

Patch 7.3 has already had two balance passes: 7.3a on September 29 (nerfs to Hwei, Malphite, Rammus, Caitlyn, Syndra and Yuumi, buffs to Samira, Tristana, Draven and Viego, a weaker Smite burn, the Nexus back to 4,000 HP) and then 7.3b, whose notes came out on October 14, 2026. Riot lifts the champions who had not found their place in the new meta, reins in Hwei and Senna a second time, and gives assassins the tools to convert a won early game. The lines below are the official notes' numbers; the card-by-card breakdown, with spell icons, lives in the 7.3b panel of the Meta page.

Quick read: Jhin, Yasuo and Tryndamere get back the crit the 7.3 overhaul took from them; Senna loses scaling for the second time and Hwei takes his second nerf in two weeks. For builds, Locket is a natural second buy for tank supports again, and Thornmail slips a wave or two down the tank build order. The tier list is recomputed every day from Master+ ranked games: the 7.3b effects show up there over the next automatic updates.

Patch 7.3 at a glance: the numbers that matter

If you only read one table, make it this one. It sums up the changes that move games the most, with the exact values from the notes.

Each line is detailed below, theme by theme. To see these changes applied to the champion hierarchy, keep the tier list and the Patch meta page open alongside.

Marksmen: 200% crits and a 3.0 attack speed cap

Riot's starting point: crit marksmen and on-hit marksmen had both become too reliant on attack speed, and their builds looked alike. Patch 7.3 pulls the two families apart with three levers.

• Base critical damage: 175% → 200%. Every critical strike hits harder, which rewards attack damage and crit chance over stacking attack speed.
• Attack speed cap: 2.5 → 3 attacks per second. Champions who live on attack speed (Kog'Maw, Twitch, Zeri) get 20% more headroom before they cap.
• Individual attack speed ratios. There is no shared melee or ranged ratio anymore: each champion has their own. Riot's own example: Caitlyn gets higher base attack speed and growth but a lower ratio — she has enough attack speed "naturally" and should buy hard-hitting attack damage items.

So the crit increase doesn't blow up certain kits, several champions get an explicit cap: Jhin's crits deal only 80% of normal critical damage, Yasuo, Yone and Senna 90%. Meanwhile several marksman spells now scale with crit (Tristana's Explosive Charge, Sivir's Boomerang Blade, Caitlyn's ultimate): Infinity Edge, at 75 AD and 230% critical damage, becomes the capstone of crit builds.

Lethal Tempo is reworked: it no longer provides power on its own, it amplifies the attack speed you already have. Each attack on a champion grants 8% (melee) or 6.4% (ranged) attack speed, up to 6 stacks for 6 seconds; at max stacks your attacks also fire a bullet dealing 9–30 adaptive damage (melee) or 6–24 (ranged), increased by 1% (melee) or 0.67% (ranged) per percentage point of bonus attack speed. It remains the rune for high attack speed profiles, not a universal pick.

Marksman champions: winners and losers

The numbers below are official; the "read" column is our projection, to be confirmed by the first ranked data.

Marksmen — main Patch 7.3 changes

Champion	Key changes	Read
Caitlyn	Base AD 54 → 60; Q 50/100/150/200 + 125–185% AD; W: Headshots on trapped targets deal 40–190 (+30% bonus AD); ultimate 250/450/650 + 100% bonus AD, multiplied by crit	Winner — more lane damage and an ultimate that scales with crit
Vayne	Base AD 54 → 60; Q 50–80% AD (was 35–65%); W 6/7/8/9% max HP (was 2/5/8/11%); ultimate +30/40/50 AD	Winner — especially early
Ashe	AD per level 2.65 → 4; W 70/110/150/190 + 100% bonus AD, 15/12/9/6 s cooldown; passive slow 20–30%	Winner
Tristana	Base AD 54 → 60; active E (80–140 + 100% bonus AD) multiplied by crit; ultimate 300/350/400 + 70% bonus AD + 100% AP	Adjusted — stronger on a full crit build
Sivir	Base AD 58 → 60; passive movement speed 55–70 (was 31–45); Q multiplied by crit	Adjusted
Lucian	Base AD 58 → 60; Q 75/125/175/225 + 100% bonus AD; ultimate bullet count tied to crit, less damage per bullet	Adjusted — better late
Twitch	Rework: Q grants 35–50% attack speed for 6 s after leaving camouflage; E can only be cast within 1,200 units of a poisoned target and gains 35% AP magic damage per stack	Rework — ambush playstyle
Ezreal	Base AD 58 → 60; Q 25/55/85/115 (was 50/85/120/155), 5.5–4 s cooldown; ultimate cooldown 80/70/60 s	Loser — less Q pressure
Jinx	AD per level 4.5 → 4; ultimate cooldown 60/50/40 s, ratio 150% → 120% bonus AD	Loser
Kai'Sa	Base AD 62 → 59; Q 130% AD / 50% AP; passive rewritten around plasma stacks	Adjusted — leans more on AD
Draven	AD per level 4.5 → 3.8; Q 80–110% AD (was 100–130%); ultimate now executes champions whose HP is below his Adoration stacks	Adjusted — less raw damage, an execute on top
Samira	Base AD 62 → 60; Q 110% AD; E 25–40% attack speed; ultimate 6 s cooldown, no mana, 66.7% life steal	Adjusted
Jhin	Base AD 58 → 60; crits at 80%; base HP 600 → 630	Adjusted
Kog'Maw, Varus, Kalista	Base AD 54 → 58 (57 for Kalista)	Winners — plus the higher attack speed cap

The other marksmen (Miss Fortune, Zeri, Xayah, Akshan, Corki, Senna, Yunara) get formula adjustments to follow the new crit scale; the full spell-by-spell breakdown is on the Patch meta page.

Patch 7.3 new items: stats, prices and role

Nine items arrive for marksmen — three of them familiar to PC players — and four for supports. The principle: each item has one clear job, instead of one item doing everything (the removed Magnetic Blaster gave range, waveclear, burst and kiting all at once).

New items — official values

Item	Price	Stats	Effect
Yun Tal Wildarrows	3,100	50 AD, 25% AS, 0% crit to start	Each attack adds 0.2% (ranged) or 0.4% (melee) crit, up to 25%; attacking a champion grants 25% AS for 6 s
Hexoptics C44	2,900	55 AD, 25% crit	Up to +10% damage based on distance (max at 550 units); +100 range for 8 s after a takedown
Fiendhunter Bolts	2,650	45% AS, 25% crit, 4% MS	+20 ultimate haste; after your ultimate, 3 attacks with +50% AS that always crit (at 80% crit damage)
Immortal Shieldbow	3,000	55 AD, 25% crit	Below 35% HP: a 300–550 (ranged) shield for 3 s, 70 s cooldown
Stormrazor	3,000	50 AD, 25% crit, 20% AS	Energized attack: 120 magic damage + 45% movement speed for 1.5 s
Rapid Firecannon	2,650	40% AS, 25% crit, 4% MS	Energized attack: 80 magic damage + 35% range (max 150)
Statikk Shiv	3,000	40 AD, 40 AP, 30% AS, 4% MS	Chain lightning with 3–6 bounces (60 damage, 90 vs minions and monsters) that applies on-hit effects
Hearthbound Axe	1,200	20 AD, 15% AS	Mid-tier AD + AS component
Pickaxe	800	20 AD	Component
Echoes of Helia	2,400	200 HP, 40 AP, 20 haste	30% of damage dealt is stored (80–250) and released as healing on the ally you heal or shield
Whispering Circlet	2,400	200 HP, 500 mana, 8% heal & shield power	Upgrades into Diadem of Songs (1,200 mana) after spending enough mana
Bandleglass Mirror	900	20 AP, 10 haste	Support component

The real decision for crit marksmen in 7.3 is the first item: Yun Tal Wildarrows or something that pays off right away. Wildarrows is very gold-efficient but starts at 0% crit and needs about 125 ranged attacks to reach 25%; in a game decided early, Stormrazor or Hexoptics C44 give their power immediately. The Stormrazor, Rapid Firecannon and Statikk Shiv item pages are updated with the 7.3 values.

Changed items, removed items and the new Lifesteal stat

More than 60 items are touched. Two guidelines: cleaner stat profiles (fewer do-everything items), and most items with 5% movement speed dropping to 4%, to rein in late-game speed.

Lifesteal is a new stat: it only heals on basic attacks, on-hit effects and abilities treated as basic attacks. It replaces the old physical vamp or omnivamp on Vampiric Scepter (8%), Bloodthirster (15%), Blade of the Ruined King (12%), Mercurial Scimitar (12%) and Gunmetal Greaves (5%). The consequence: champions who healed off their abilities through these items lose that healing.

Changed items — highlights

Item	Change
Infinity Edge	AD 65 → 75; 230% critical damage; Limit Break removed
Bloodthirster	3,000 → 3,200 gold; AD 55 → 75; 15% Lifesteal; no more crit or HP
Kraken Slayer	2,900 gold; 45 AD, 35% AS; every 3rd attack: 150–210 (120–168 ranged), up to +75% based on missing HP
Guinsoo's Rageblade	3,000 gold; +35 AD and +30 AP; crit restriction removed
Mortal Reminder	3,300 → 3,000 gold; 35 AD; 30% armor penetration built in
Serylda's Grudge	3,300 → 3,100 gold; 50 AD; 35% penetration; Frostbite removed
Force of Nature	Loses its percentage magic damage reduction; 70 bonus MR at 4 stacks
Sunfire Aegis	Simplified burn: 20 + 1.5% bonus HP per second
Abyssal Mask	3,000 → 2,400 gold; nearby enemies take 12% more magic damage
Ardent Censer	2,700 → 2,400 gold; 50 AP; buff: 30% AS and 25 magic damage

Removed from the game: Magnetic Blaster, Soul Transfer, Cloak of Agility, Nashor's Talon, Searing Crown, Surging Scales, Stinger and Shimmering Spark. If one of your usual builds includes any of them, rebuild it before your first ranked game.

Runes: Lethal Tempo reworked, Legend: Haste replaces Legend: Tenacity

• Lethal Tempo — reworked (see the marksman section): it amplifies existing attack speed instead of providing it.
• Legend: Haste replaces Legend: Tenacity. Takedowns and monster or minion kills grant 1.5 ability haste per stack, up to 15. Riot's reason: Mercury's Treads already give a lot of tenacity, and tenacity should stay a deliberate item choice.
• Conqueror — per-stack scaling is standardized: 3–5 bonus AD or 5–8.33 AP (was 4–8).
• Demolish — after 3 attacks on a turret, 85 + 28% max HP (melee) or 50 + 20% (ranged) bonus physical damage.
• Ingenious Hunter is removed, for lack of healthy item synergies.

Jungle: the new Smite, number by number

Riot has four goals: more jungler diversity, clear speeds closer across classes, jungle resources protected from laners, and more impact for junglers who don't carry.

• Smite burn. A champion with Smite deals 30–225 (by level) + 10% bonus AD + 12% AP + 20% bonus armor + 20% bonus MR + 3% bonus HP true damage to monsters, continuing up to 2 more times after you stop attacking. They also heal 5–35 HP per second. Tanks and mages now clear with their own build, no dedicated jungle item needed.
• Upgrading Smite: 600 true damage to start, 1,000 after 8 stacks consumed, 1,400 after 20.
• Monsters: their level follows the average champion level, not game time; non-epic monsters deal only 50% damage to the jungler, but hit laners harder. Killing a large monster restores 100–260 HP.
• Economy: one stack every 20 s; consuming one on a camp grants 45 gold (70 if your team is behind on gold). Junglers get only 30–100% of lane experience before 15 minutes, and laners 50–80% of monster experience.
• Epic objectives: Baron Nashor has 14,000–18,500 HP (levels 9–15); Rift Scuttler first spawns at 1:30.

The clearest consequence: it becomes much harder for a laner to steal an objective with a single burst, and junglers regain control of their own objectives.

Turrets, permanent plating and Crystalline Overgrowth

The change that alters game pace the most. Every turret now has plating, and it no longer falls off at 6 minutes: a turret loses a plate at 90, 75, 55, 30 and 0% HP.

First turret: 150 bonus gold. Turrets take 20% more damage from melee champions. Crystalline Overgrowth is new: 50 seconds after a turret spawns, crystals build up on it; a champion's first attack shatters them for true damage, from 2–8.7% of the turret's max HP at minimum up to 3.3–18.9% at maximum, depending on the attacking team's level. A short split push is now worth something, even without Demolish.

Minions and Hand of Baron

• All minions now deal only 60% damage to champions.
• From 5:30, they gain 25 movement speed every 150 seconds, up to 6 times (instead of an out-of-combat bonus).
• Super minions: 800 → 1,100 HP; cannon minions deal a fixed 84% damage to structures.
• Hand of Baron: flat AD bonus (+10 melee, +30 casters, +100 siege and cannon), 50–70% damage reduction against champions for melee and caster minions, and a minimum movement speed so slows can no longer stall the push.

An early Baron is therefore worth more than before, which especially helps teams whose jungler is not a carry.

Champion durability: Tryndamere reworked, 50 profiles revised

Tryndamere is the biggest fighter change: 64 base AD (was 54), his passive attack speed is removed, his Q no longer grants flat AD but 0.3–0.9 AD per percent of missing HP, and his W's attack damage reduction goes from 40% to 20/40/60/80% by rank. He now hits harder per swing instead of chaining many weak attacks.

About fifty champions also get HP and armor revisions: less base durability, more HP per level for those who dive into fights. Examples: Garen (HP 660 → 690, armor 52 → 44), Vi (HP 690 → 660, HP per level 112 → 130), Lee Sin (HP 690 → 660, HP per level 120 → 132), Gragas (HP 720 → 660, HP per level 120 → 140), Thresh (HP per level 120 → 140). In practice these champions are a bit squishier at level 1 and a bit sturdier late. Zed loses his damage penalties against monsters, which helps him in the jungle.

Ranked S23: 5 bans from Platinum and a Priority Role Bonus

• Dates: Season S23 starts on September 23, 2026 at 03:00 UTC and is expected to end in January 2027. Reward: the Glorious Eminence Milio skin.
• Bans: from Platinum to Diamond, teams go from 3 to 5 bans, from the first day of the season (the two-week restriction is gone). It is the most concrete draft change of the season: prepare your bans with our draft tool.
• Priority Role Bonus (Platinum to Challenger): extra points for playing an in-demand role. This season: Support, Jungle and Any Position.
• Evaluation: S/A ratings and MVP weigh role responsibilities more, and a new Legendary S rating sits above S.
• Legendary Ranked: open from Master this season (or Grandmaster last season), a new Legendary Trial, and Champion Record Score no longer drops after a loss.

Hwei, Sylas, Rek'Sai and Rift Rumble: what the notes say

The September 21 notes list one new champion: Hwei, the Ionian painter, a mid or support mage whose gameplay is built on spell combinations. Riot adds that "content will be released throughout the patch": Hwei is not necessarily playable on day one.

Sylas and Rek'Sai, confirmed by Riot for the 7.3 cycle in the September 9 preview, are not in these notes: they are expected mid-patch, like Cho'Gath during 7.2. The same goes for the Rift Rumble mode (3v3v3): it is absent from the September 21 notes, which instead add a 1v1 custom mode, Rift Trials, on Baron Lane. We will update this page with each release.

What we called correctly, and what we underestimated

In June 2026, this page had flagged a precise distinction in Riot's wording: “one of the champions” (plural, several champions) versus “which one of our suspects” (singular, a single Roadmap suspect). From that, we deduced that only one of the two unresolved exhibits — Hwei or Sylas, never both together — would be part of Patch 7.3.

On September 9, 2026, Riot confirmed both: Hwei and Sylas arrive together in 7.3, joined by Rek'Sai, a champion no Roadmap 2026 exhibit describes. The plural/singular reading itself wasn't wrong — Riot really was distinguishing several champions on one hand, and an invitation to identify one specific suspect on the other — but we drew too narrow a conclusion from it: a grammatical singular on “which one” didn't cap how many Roadmap suspects could ship in the patch, it was only inviting readers to resolve each exhibit individually.

This is the mirror image of the mistake this page usually tries to avoid: instead of over-reading a rumor as confirmation, we under-read an official confirmation through too narrow a lens. What still holds, and is verifiable in hindsight: both evidence chains, Exhibit C → Hwei and Exhibit D → Sylas, documented below since March 2026, checked out word for word. That is the part of the analysis that survived the official reveal.

Exhibit C 'The Curator of Catastrophe': how Riot teased Hwei six months early

The Champion Roadmap 2026, published on 13 March 2026, is built like a case file: four “exhibits”, each described through clues, none of them named. Two have since been resolved — Exhibit A “Crystal Clear” was Skarner, Exhibit B “Escalating Appetite” was Cho'Gath, both now playable.

For Exhibit C, Riot gave four clues:

• “Unique casting patterns and combos, something that has not yet been seen on our Rift to date.”
• “High skill ceiling, will require you to prime, mix, and apply your skills before trying this champion out.”
• “Can manipulate combat with a stroke of a finger.”
• “Mechanical precision.”

The verb prime was the most discriminating clue. It is not a generic word: it is the exact term Riot uses for Hwei's passive on his official champion page — “Hwei primes enemy champions he damages with his abilities for his signature finishing touch. Hitting an enemy with a second damaging spell completes his signature”. “Prime, mix, and apply” literally described Hwei's gameplay loop: prime a target, mix in a second spell, trigger the signature.

The rest lined up: Riot rates Hwei's difficulty as High, and his kit runs on three distinct spell sets — Subject: Disaster, Subject: Serenity, Subject: Torment — which matched “casting patterns never seen before” precisely. On Wild Rift, where no champion then operated on a two-layer spell grid, “not yet been seen on our Rift to date” carried real weight.

The deduction was strong. Riot confirmed it on September 9, 2026: it is Hwei.

Exhibit D 'Borrowed Authority': how Riot teased Sylas six months early

Riot described Exhibit D in three beats:

• “Historically, this champion has been known to shake up the meta. Chaos is a guarantee, you can't chain this one down.”
• “Turns foes strengths into their own team's advantage.”
• “Flips the script.”

The exhibit's title already did half the work. “Borrowed Authority” described a power-theft mechanic. On League of Legends, exactly one champion is built around that: Sylas, whose ultimate Hijack steals an enemy's ultimate.

“You can't chain this one down” was a deliberate double meaning. Sylas is Demacia's escaped prisoner; his entire visual identity rests on the chains he uses as a weapon. Riot's official page describes him as imprisoned “for turning those same powers against them”, now living “using the magic of those around him to destroy the kingdom he once served”. “Turns foes strengths into their own team's advantage” was an almost word-for-word restatement of that description.

As for “shake up the meta”: Sylas's 2019 arrival on League forced Riot to rebalance several ultimates, precisely because a champion who can steal any ultimate changes the value of all the others. The clue was not a figure of speech — it was a historical precedent.

Again: a very clean match, confirmed by Riot on September 9, 2026.

K/DA: two independent signals, and a third that does not exist

This is the one thread of this tracker that remains fully open, and also the topic where confusion sets in fastest. Two distinct things are circulating, and they do not carry the same evidential weight.

The first is a datamine: new K/DA skin categories spotted in the game files for Ahri, Akali, Evelynn and Kai'Sa. The second is a rights filing: a track called “WATCH ME” declared to ASCAP with K/DA as the performer.

What makes the combination credible is that these two signals are independent of each other. A datamine and a copyright registry cannot copy from one another: they come from two different production chains inside Riot, one technical, one legal. When two independent sources point the same way, the hypothesis gains real weight — which is never the case when twenty sites repost the same leak.

But that is where their reach stops. Neither of them says anything about Patch 7.3, and the September 9 reveal changed nothing about that. An ASCAP filing has no release date. An asset sitting in the game files has no patch assignment — that is precisely why studios prepare content months ahead. The “K/DA in 7.3” link is carried by neither source: it is added by the coverage.

A second nuance almost nobody raises: K/DA is a Riot Games project, not a Wild Rift one. It has historically launched around League of Legends on PC, with Wild Rift receiving the adaptation. A 2026 K/DA return is therefore perfectly compatible with Wild Rift skins landing later than the track, on a patch that is not 7.3.

The third item going around — “K/DA FIRESTARTER” as a project or EP name — has no primary source at all. Neither the ASCAP filing nor the game files carry it. It is a name in circulation, and for now nothing more.