ARAM Mayhem update flops as champion augments miss the mark

Naerlyn Published June 30, 2026

On June 10, Riot delivered a massive update to ARAM Mayhem. With patch 26.12, augments were overhauled to drastically change the pool, remove the sets, and instead add ability-empowering augments.

With League of Legends’ fan-favorite game mode remaining as popular eight months after its release, Riot wanted to keep things fresh. Unfortunately, the community’s response to champion augments has been strongly negative.

ARAM Mayhem switches its focus from augments to champions

To preface the changes, Riot explained that sets made it feel like one was playing the set rather than their champion. They defined augment choices too much, and investing into one without finding the matching augments was frustrating. Additionally, every champion launches snowballs the same way with a full Snowday set, erasing the importance of their kits.

Therefore, Riot removed sets and instead put the focus back where it was meant to be: on champions and their abilities. Now, about half of the augments in the pool empower champions’ abilities. Increasing damage, reducing cooldowns, splitting projectiles, the new augments serve kits instead of supplanting them.

However, this didn’t land right. After the update, the community responded with immediate and sustained frustration.

The new ARAM Mayhem update leaves fans disappointed. Image Source: Riot Games

ARAM Mayhem: Undercooked champion augments and frustrating gameplay

Since patch 26.12, players have widely expressed their discontent toward the state of the game mode. All of this stems from three sources of frustration.

Champion augments miss the mark

First, many of the augments are invisible stat boosts. The whole point of Mayhem is to provide crazy gameplay, and to break the limits of the game in creative ways.

Most of the added content merely increases the damage of an ability, reduces its cooldown, or provides minor buffs. Extra power that doesn’t add anything and goes unnoticed even when strong.

New augments like Multishot or Echo cast do actually fit what players expect from Mayhem. However, they’re few and far between, and they also suffer from the second issue.

New additions don’t work

Beyond the design miss of the new augments, the ARAM Mayhem update severely lacks polish. Many additions do not work in the expected or intended ways, as if the mode was never tested. To give a list of examples:

• Ability-related augments can be offered to League of Legends champions who cannot use them (From Downtown, Echo Cast, Killing Time, damage or haste power-ups)
• Quest trackers occasionally stop counting
• Ability-altering augments don’t work on many champions (Spell Split, Triple Shot, Echo Cast)
• Augments don’t work as listed (Combusting Interest, Titan’s Resolve, High Roller)

While Riot has put work into refactoring the entire system, the actual outcome doesn’t feel ready for live. Players are commenting that this version of the game is about figuring out which augments actually work rather than focusing on playing.

The strongest options are broken

In the middle of all this, the strongest combinations became stronger than before. Prior to this patch, the best options were Jayce with Slow and Steady, Brand with Infernal Conduit, or Gangplank with Back to Basics.

On the current Mayhem, the new additions have brought even stronger pairings, such as Overloaded Zilean or even more ways to make Brand powerful. And with the number of lackluster options, there’s even less of a chance to fight back against those.

Riot responds with hotfixes

On June 12, Riot put out an undocumented micropatch to fix some of these issues. This patch included changes to the way augments were offered, several bug fixes, and balance changes regarding augments’ numbers or tiers. While this helped some, the general outcome remained the same.

Following up, a second update dropped on June 17. This time, Riot removed a whole 450 ability augments from the pool.

Essentially, this takes out all augments that either don’t match the ability or don’t work. The healing augment on long cooldown abilities such as Ashe’s E, Multishot on abilities that don’t work with it, quests that fail to track progress, the update targeted those.

The new Mayhem released by giving the augments’ options to all abilities with the corresponding tag. The tags indicate whether an ability is a dash, a projectile, or long-ranged, for example. Now, Riot is taking a more hands-on approach by selecting what makes sense rather than automating the process.

This new patch is definitely promising. However, one flaw that 26.13 introduced and that hasn’t gone away is a massive rise in popularity for mages.

With all the power siphoned into abilities and few ways to reach faraway targets, teams regularly run three to five mages each game, creating a frustrating and less diverse experience for the game mode.

Featured image credit: Riot Games