In this article
Riot’s 22 October 2026 Varus hotfix restores reduced Piercing Arrow damage on subsequent targets, correcting a bug introduced during patch 26.21’s changes to his Q and W. The fix comes with compensation buffs to Q’s minimum damage and his passive’s bonus attack damage and ability power on kills or takedowns.
The distinction is important when firing through a wave: Riot says Q had stopped reducing its damage for later targets. The hotfix removes that unintended behaviour; it is not simply another across-the-board Q damage increase.
The two compensation buffs
In the update at the top of the 26.21 patch notes, Riot lists:
- Passive bonus AD and AP on kill/takedown: from 1.1 per 10% attack speed to 1.4 per 10% attack speed.
- Q minimum-damage range: from 50–230 to 50–250.
The lower end of Q’s listed range stays at 50; the upper end rises by 20. This is the minimum-damage value, not a claim that every arrow now deals 20 extra damage regardless of rank, charge time or targets hit.
Why Riot changed Q and W in the first place
The original 26.21 changes aimed to reduce top-lane Varus’s strength while giving Riot more room to tune him for bot lane. Riot says top-lane Varus tends to maximise W, whereas Q is the more common priority in bot lane.
That initial update increased the damage gained over Q’s channel from up to 50% to up to 70%, while changing W’s on-hit damage, Blight damage, active missing-health damage and cooldown refund. The 22 October entry sits above those original notes: read it as a subsequent correction and compensation, not as an alternative version of the same launch-day numbers.
Live-game changes, not a Worlds patch change
Worlds is played on patch 26.20. Riot’s 26.21 introduction explicitly separates the live-game update from the locked tournament patch, so these changes should not be applied to the Varus damage you see in a Worlds match.
For the tournament itself, our Swiss-stage guide covers the schedule and qualification format. For your own match review, use the current live patch and the hotfix entry together rather than the original 26.21 table alone.