Honor of Kings - S23 English Patch Notes

S23 is now live and with it a lot of changes to the game has been made.
The most notable changes are:
Mid/Mage heroes are now slightly stronger.
Jungle, Jungle Items and Jungle Heroes have seen a small revamp.
Summit queue and Glory Power now work differently
And of course, there is a new hero: Irene.

Map changes

Changes to Dragon/Tyrants

The slowing debuff effect from killing a Dragon with arm evolution is now more clear.
The extra range and damage effect from killing a dragon with head evolution is now more clear.
A text will pop up on your character telling you what evolution effect you gain after killing a Tyrant
The buff gained from killing a Tyrant with torso evolution after 10 minutes have been changed from 80 to 110

Changes to midlane/mage heroes

Minions on sidelanes now move a bit faster, meaning the time difference between midlane minions and sideland minions arriving at their lanes is now smaller.
Jungle mobs now have lower magical defense.
Some Magic Attack items have been buffed: Book of Sages now adds 460 Magic Attack (up from 400), Flow of Twilight now adds 200 Magic Attack (180).
Witch's Cloak has been nerfed. It's Magic Defense has been changed to 300 (200) and it's magic shield has been lowered to 100(+100/lvl) (300(100/lvl)). A new passive has been added to the item giving 8*Hero Level Magic Defense.
Two new Magic items have been added to the game. View them in our Items page (Under Magic, the gold cost of the 2 new items are 870 and 970). A lot of Magical items have had their synthesis paths changed.

Jungle Changes

All Jungle Mobs have had their Physical Defense buffed by about 10%, Magic Defense nerfed by 10%, and Maximum Health nerfed by 5% (Numbers are not precise, but very close)

Luna Third Skill nerfed: 500(+125/Lvl)(+0.6AP) → 440(+125/Lv)(+0.6AP)
Li Yuanfang Passive: extra damage to Jungle Mobs nerfed: 15% → 10%. Third skill buffed: 75(+18/Lvl)(+0.3AD) → 75(+18/Lv)(+0.35AD)
Chang'e Second ability base damage nerfed : 35(+7/Lv)(+0.07AP) → 30(+7/Lv)(+0.07AP)
Mi Yue Damage to minions and monsters nerfed: 150(+6*lvl)(+0.21AP) → 80(+6*lvl)(+0.14AP)

The -50% damage debuff that makes it hard to kill 2 dragons/tyrants in a row is now calculated seperately from other buffs/debuffs now. For example if you have the jungle blade (+60% damage) you would still deal 110% (1+60%-50%) damage before, now you will deal 80% (1+60%)*(1-50%). To put simply: its a modifier that halves your final damage to any dragon/tyrant now.

Smite Damage no longer gets increased by the extra damage from Jungle Blades.
Purple Smite Damage increased： 1000(+60/Lv) → 1500(+50/Lv)
Frost Smite Damage increased： 1000(+60/Lv) → 1600(+100/Lv)
Fire Smite Damage increased： 1250(+85/Lv) → 1600(+100/Lv)

Golden Jungle Blade (Stage 1) Replaced the Bounty Gold Passive (the 100 stacks = 100 gold passive) with a new passive that gives enemy heroes an 'injury' debuff that damages them depending on how many stacks of the debuff they have received.
Golden Jungle Blade (Stage 2) Replaced the Bounty Gold Passive (the 100 stacks = 100 gold passive) with a new passive that gives enemy heroes an 'injury' debuff that damages them depending on how many stacks of the debuff they have received. New passive added: Gain 20% Extra Gold when killing a Jungle Mob
Golden Jungle Blade (Final stage) Replaced the Bounty Gold Passive (the 100 stacks = 100 gold passive) with a new passive that gives enemy heroes an 'injury' debuff that damages them depending on how many stacks of the debuff they have received. New passive added: Gain 20% Extra Gold when killing a Jungle Mob. The stats on this item has been completely changed, it now gives: +120 Physical Defense, +120 Magical Defense, +10% Movement Speed

Blue Jungle Blade (Stage 2) New passive skill added: Leaves an AoE on the ground after hitting a skill, continually exploding for 2 seconds dealing a total of 200+10% Magical Damage (Cooldown:5 sec).
Blue Jungle Blade (Final stage) New passive skill added: Leaves an AoE on the ground after hitting a skill, dealing 150+10% Magic Damage on impact and continually explodes for 2 seconds dealing a total of 200+10% Magical Damage (Cooldown:5 sec). All stats removed and new ones added: 80 Magical Damage, 5% Cooldown Reduction, 7% Movement Speed.

Purple Jungle Blade (Stage 2) Maximum number of stacks: 10 → 15. Maximum Health per stack: 50 → 40.
Purple Jungle Blade (Final stage) 1800 gold → 1960 gold. Physical/Magical Defense stat removed, now has 600 Maximum Health stat instead. Maximum number of stacks: 15 → 25. Maximum Health per stack: 50 → 40.

Red Jungle Blade (Final stage) 40 → 60 Physical Damage. Attack Speed 20% → 0%. Added a Passive that increases Physical Penetration by 30 points (lvl1) to 100 points (lvl15)

Sunfire Heart/Cape now deal twice as much damage to minions (2%/4% damage per second to minions). This effect now stacks with Purple Jungle Blades as well.

Summit/Peak Match Changes

The way Glory Power is calculated has been slightly changed, the stat "Qualifying Wins" is now called "Victory Power" and can also be gained in summit games.
Summit hours have been expanded from 12:00 to 24:00 for people that have less 2100 summit points.
Players who are in the top 10 000 summit points at 5am Mondays now receive a weekly badge showing their rank in loading screens.
There is a new summit challenge mode - you can participate 18:00 to 24:00 on Friday to Saturday. You can play this mode until you have lost a total of 3 times in one week, at which point you cannot participate anymore until next week. I'm not sure what rewards this new mode has - but you can gain extra Glory Power in it.

New Hero: Irene

Visit the hero page for Irene.
You can obtain her by buying her hero boxes for 600 gold each. 50 boxes guarantees that you get her.
You can also obtain her if you play 10 games where someone in your team uses her.

Other Hero Changes

Pangu:
buffed

Lan:
Skill 1 CD 9(-0.2/Lv)→11(-0.6/Lv)
Skill 2: Damage: 40(+10/Lv)(+0.6Ad)→30(+10/Lv)(+0.7Ad)
Skill 2: Maximum attack distance: 400→350, the logic of finding enemies is adjusted to be the same as the normal attack
Skill 3: effect adjustment: the first dagger causes stun for 0.5 seconds → the first dagger causes 90% slow for 0.5 seconds

Genghis Khan
buffed

Nakoruru:
There is now a 0.3 second skill cooldown shared between her abilities, meaning she can't do all her abilities at the same time, but has to wait for 0.3 seconds between them.

Sikong Zhen:
His ulti is easier to charge up, but its also weaker.

Yang Jian:
buffed

Nv Wa:
Her ulti now easier to aim.

Birdman:
buffed

Other Item Changes

Twilight Bow's movement speed has been nerfed from 40% to 20%
Deep (Twilight Bow's upgrade / 日渊) movement speed nerfed from 40% to 30%
Pure Sky's Damage Reduction now lasts for 3 seconds instead of 1.5 seconds but has had it's Damage Reduced nerfed from 50% to 30%.
Fury now deducts 4% of your and nearby enemy heroes every 0.5 seconds for a maximum of 3 seconds. When finished charging it gives you 8% of your Maximum Health and 80 Physical Damage for every 0.5 seconds you charged it.

Personality system

Basically there's emojis that you can use in chatrooms and ingame now.

Demo viewer changes

The match demo viewer has had a (small) overhaul.

Full Patch Notes can be found in Chinese here.