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Ahri

It's safe to say that Ahri's return back to her kitier, mage-ier (that is a word) roots has been a success, but her new-found mobility has left her feeling a tad overbearing. For someone that skirts the edge of fights so well, Ahri wasn't taking enough risk for the reward (less dashing in, more dashing out). Forcing this fox-girl to walk the line for her guaranteed damage makes expert use of her Orb-speed and Charm, which is where we'd like to leave her feeling - skillful and satisfying to play, but vulnerable when making mistakes.

Q - Orb of Deception

W - Fox-Fire

R - Spirit Rush

Azir

Hyper-carries are often defined by a weaker early to mid-game (think Tristana, Jax) as they 'ramp up' into their core items and ability scaling. Lane bullies are the reverse - powerful up-front until their less-than-impressive late-games (like Renekton or Quinn).

Enter Azir. Who is both.

As it stands, the emperor's strengths are at odds with themselves. On one hand, he's a hyper-carry with monstrous late-game damage to both champions and structures; on the other, he's a powerful lane-bully with the ability to shove even the most aggressive opposition back to base. When a champion can cover their weaknesses so well, something's gotta give.

Enhancing Azir's end-game effectiveness goes well with our intended goals for the sand mage, so we're softening his spikes to achieve a more manageable lane along with a little bump to his AD to help him last-hit when his soldiers are slacking off. Which they do. Often.

General

Q - Conquering Sands

W - Arise!

Diana

It's been a while since Diana's fall from orbit, so we're sending a care package to tide her over. Her passive shows you how long it lasts until you need to use it, and quicker orbs on Pale Cascade give her more consistency when embodying the vengeful moon.

Passive - Moonsilver Blade

W - Pale Cascade

Fiddlesticks

Drain's mechanics are simple - break the tether and you're good. Stay around, and risk losing a duel to a stick figure. Fiddlesticks can still lock you down with Terrify to ensure his success, but lowering Tether's range makes sure enemies can actually escape when he fails to scare them good and proper.

W - Drain

Gnar

From concept to release, Gnar has always been built around his unique transformation trigger and its inherent inconsistency. Will the enemy engage because Mega Gnar's losing steam? Should we begin a fight and have Gnar transform as it begins? These are the types of questions we want his teammates to ask, and the type of situations the Gnar player to manage. When a champion based on unreliability becomes a staple competitive pick (where reliability reigns supreme), we felt like something was up.

Due to a bug since his release (oops), Mega Gnar was lasting a good bit longer than intended - discovering this, we thought it would be a good time to tighten the windows Gnar has to go crazy so we can really accentuate his highs and lows. We're not trying to make Gnar disappear, but teams should have to work a little harder than just picking Jarvan IV. Shots fired.

Passive - Rage Gene

Gragas

Gragas's last round of nerfs weighed heavy on his effectiveness against minion waves, so we wanted to give him better incentives to roll out the barrel against champions. This buff's on the house.

Q - Barrel Roll

Kassadin

Let's talk about Kassadin. Near unparalleled mobility coupled with high damage and precise target selection has historically made Kass among the League's most resilient champions. Right now, our best method of 'gating' this guy (that is, trying to keep him from facerolling over the game) is by intentionally keeping his lane weak in the hopes of staving off what can feel like an inevitable riftwalking nightmare. While we want to preserve Kassadin's mobility-driven identity, he doesn't really have windows of vulnerability necessary for opponents to smack him in the face, meaning most fights are his to lose rather than any outplays his opponents can make.

With all of that said, this is not the change to do that. Sorry. We'll be kicking of some deeper investigations in the future (who'd have thought an ultra-mobile assassin would have game health difficulties), but for now we're just looking to tune him down. Very precisely.

Q - Null Sphere

Katarina

As we called out in the foreword, DFG's removal didn't really impact some its frequent buyers quite in the ways we expected. While we were experimenting with some compensation, one thing from our data became very clear - Katarina is still a very strong champion.

We went back to brainstorming small ways to add power to Kat, but quickly found that buffing an already strong champ might not be the right course of action. This isn't to say she's exempt from further tweaks in the future, but forcing the issue on anything other than quality-of-life changes could very likely cause more problems than it would fix.

General

Kennen

For someone that runs into your entire team (talk about a big risk), it's pretty lame when the difference between a game-winning 5-man stun or an over-confident failure comes down to random chance. Slicing Maelstrom's unique feel as a multi-hit storm is cool, so we're just looking for ways to amp up that electric party. Haaayaaa!

W - Electrical Surge

R - Slicing Maelstrom

Nidalee

Not much to see here. Last patch when Nidalee became a monster-hunter we added functionality that rooted them (because it's a huge bummer to trigger the hunt from fog of war, only to pounce and miss everything you just hunted), but we forgot to add it to the notes. This patch we remembered. Hooray! 

UPDATED 2/10/2015: We actually misrepresented this so we're going to reformat it accurately to reflect the change properly. Specifically Nidalee was able to reliably reset some of her ability cooldowns through specific mechanics, and this lead to a pretty decent power spike for players who knew how to properly use it. We've since fixed the issue in 5.3 

General

Passive - Prowl

Twisted Fate

We're always looking for ways to help out champions in need, so we've slipped TF a few extra cards under the table. Stacked Deck now builds up on towers so you can pressure enemies even while pushing, and Gate uses an 'On My Way!' ping a la Rek'Sai to make coordinating cross-map ganks less of a gamble. Still a gamble. Just less.

E - Stacked Deck

R - Destiny

Varus

Varus's unique team-disengage has always been near the top of marksmen when it comes to strategic niches, and it's something we're excited to see more of. In an attempt to brighten his mood, we're amping up a bit of that reliability.

R - Chain of Corruption

Zyra

In our never-ending Crusade for Clarity (tm), Zyra's getting hooked up with sweet range indicators for each of her plants to help her really appreciate the things they do for her. Appreciate your plants, Zyra. Please.

Q - Deadly Bloom

E - Grasping Roots

Farsight Orb

Map vision is actually an underestimated tool that teams can use to press an advantage or come back from a deficit, but not many players think about it like that, so we're suggesting you should. Relating specifically to Farsight Orb, if your first idea was that now you can place long-distance teleport points for the most amazing ganks ever, TOO BAD. This little guy's untargetable to ally teammates to prevent just that (and free ward hops).

Greater Stealth Totem

Map vision is actually an underestimated tool that teams can use to press an advantage or come back from a deficit, but not many players think about it like that, so we're suggesting you should. Yes, we're repeating ourselves. As for Greater Stealth Totem, the change itself is straightforward - we're hoping to give some extra tools back for teams trying to recover from a deficit, and this lets them (somewhat) combat aggressive sweeping teams.

Spectre's Cowl

Just giving fighters and tanks a little help when dealing with mages in lane.

Ignite

Fire's pretty distracting, man.