League of Legends Patch 25.16 breakdown — ranked queue times, jungle changes, and the new event pass

Patch 25.16 lands

Riot ships Patch 25.16 this week, and it's a mid-split patch with three changes that actually matter: jungle XP catch-up buffs, ranked queue time tweaks, and the Spirit Blossom event pass.

Jungle catch-up XP

Jungle gets a meaningful buff in 25.16. The catch-up XP mechanic — which gives bonus XP to junglers who are behind on CS — is increased by ~12% for camps and ~6% for scuttle crabs.

The intent: reduce the snowballing effect from early invades. If the enemy jungler successfully invades you and steals your red buff, the catch-up XP now gives you a more realistic path back into the game.

For ranked play, this means:

1. First clear optimisation matters less. You can lose a few camps to an invade and still hit level 6 on your gank timers.
2. Counter-jungling is riskier. A failed invade that gives away a kill now also gives away the catch-up XP, which is a bigger swing than before.
3. Lee Sin, Rek'Sai, and Kha'Zix mains are happy. The aggressive early-game junglers are the biggest beneficiaries.

If you're a low-elo jungler, the new catch-up XP is a net positive. You can focus on ganks and objectives instead of micromanaging your camp clear order.

Ranked queue time adjustments

Riot is testing longer queue time tolerances for off-role and off-meta picks. The new logic:

• Duo queue — duo partners can now queue with a 2-rank gap (up from 1).
• Off-role fill — players who get filled to their off-role now get bonus LP on win, loss forgiveness on loss.
• Off-meta picks — picks below a 3% play rate threshold no longer trigger longer queue times for the whole team.

The off-meta change is the most impactful. If you've been wanting to play your one-trick at a high rank without burning 8 minutes in queue, this patch helps.

Spirit Blossom event pass

The new event is a 4-week Spirit Blossom-themed pass. Free track has 200 tokens, 1 skin shard, and a few ward skins. Premium pass ($14.99) has 800 tokens, 2 legendary skin shards, and an Ahri prestige skin that's gated behind the premium pass.

If you buy the premium pass and grind every event mission, you earn back ~75% of the cost in blue essence value (assuming you disenchant everything you don't want). If you're not a regular pass buyer, the free track is the better value.

What to play

The patch lands two days before the next ranked split. The smart play is to wait for the queue time tweaks to settle, then push ranked once the meta is stable.

If you want to climb now:

• Jungle: Lee Sin, Viego, Hecarim. The XP buffs don't change the meta, but they smooth out the bad early games.
• Mid: Ahri, Syndra, Yone. Standard control mage and skirmisher pool.
• ADC: Jinx, Caitlyn, Kai'Sa. No changes to bot lane this patch.

---

Check our LoL champion tier list for the full rankings, or browse all 173 champions in the database.