League of Legends patches typically rebalance the state of the game to tune down powerful and dominant picks, keystones, runes, and items and to bring champions, items, or dkes that are struggling to become relevant in the meta to a state of viability. Aside from that, Riot Games looks to directly influence the state of the meta by tweaking experience gains from the jungle and lane minions and intectable objects on Summoner’s Rift like Honeyfruit. Such changes, no matter how big or small they might be, oftentimes reshape the meta until the end of the season or until the devs intervene again.
The latest League patch, Patch 13.1, will, aside from a series of balancing changes to champions like Xayah, Sion, Twisted Fate, and others, fine-tune tank and mage items with an emphasis on items for battle mages. The patch will, without a shred of doubt, leave a mark on the beginning-of-the-season meta by most likely bringing back battle mages.