The heroes in League of Legends must really hate patches by this point. Ne’er a month goes by without one of them being slapped about the face with a nerf. Sure, every now and then a patch might come along and give them a boost, but by now they must have grown wary of this false sense of security. One month may be a boost but the next kicks out your teeth. Just, look at what the latest public beta patch does for poor Rengar:
“After his initial release, we made a series of improvements to help Rengar live up to his reputation as the ultimate predator,” writes Riot Games’ Phreak, “They worked – so well, in fact, that even after one round of nerfs Rengar’s still wreaking havoc all over the Fields of Justice.
“To dial back some of the extra kick that we gave the Pridestalker, we’ve got a series of upcoming changes. Step one was taking the bonus from a Ferocity-charged Savagery attack down to a more reasonable level. We’re also reducing his base Health Regen to make him less sustainable in lane. Because his base survivability was so high, Rengar players were able to dump a disproportionate amount of their Ferocity into raw damage potential. This made him an incredibly frustrating lane bully. With his Health Regen at a more reasonable level, Rengar will now have to balance his Ferocity between sustaining with Battle Roar and raw ganking potential.
“In addition to his laning presence, Rengar was able to abuse his ultimate to escape from sticky situations a little too easily. Since we wanted this ability to be about hunting people down and killing them, rather than split pushing and vanishing into the woods, we decided to reduce total stealth duration on Thrill of the Hunt and increase the cooldown. This should give the decision to go on the hunt a bit more gravitas.”
It’s not just Rengar who’s feeling the kick:
- “Since the remake, the Widowmaker has really been living up to her name, and Agony’s Embrace has been causing tragic moments for champions all across the Fields of Justice. In an effort to mitigate the number of traumatized players Eve’s been leaving in her wake, we’re going to be dialing back the Ability Power ratio on her ultimate quite a bit.”
- we’ll be scaling back stat bonuses attached to [Deathfire Grasp]. We’re also scaling back the base damage on the active effect, but increasing the AP ratio to move it more toward the intended function of dealing with big, beefy tanks later in the game when you’ve had time to build up a bunch of Ability Power.
- “Jayce is proving a bit more formidable than we’d intended. The combination of Acceleration Gate and Shock Blast provides him with too much low cost poke, particularly for how difficult it can be to dodge the combo. To make Jayce players choose their shots a bit more carefully, we’re increasing the Mana cost on Acceleration Gate to make him a bit less frustrating to fight against.”
- “Sona and Blitzcrank are two supports who both bring a lot to the table, but both are actually too durable for the functions their currently serve. To make sure they pay the price for mistakes they might make in lane, we’ll be dialing back the base stats on both of these popular support champions.”
- Ezreal: “In the upcoming patch, we’re removing the Attack Speed debuff on Essence Flux to prevent the Prodigal Explorer from simply casting his W on an adversary and then finishing off his crippled opponent with repeated attacks. This should force Ezreal players to be quicker on their feet and win duels through superior positioning rather than a brutal debuff.”
- “we’re also bringing the slow effect on both Phage and Trinity Force down a peg. While this isn’t a direct nerf, both Ezreal and Corki (the two prime Trinity Force customers) can snowball pretty heavily through the added chasing potential that these items provide. To give injured opponents a better chance to escape from attackers both in top and bottom lane, we are reducing the slow effect applied by ranged attacks on both items, and reducing the slow duration on Phage.”
So, who’s feeling thebenevolenthand of patch? “Syndra is getting a ton of quality of life improvements in the upcoming patch that should make her a lot easier to use effectively. While her overall utility placed her in a pretty strong position, getting the most out of the Dark Sovereign could be prohibitively tricky. In the new patch, her abilities should function much more intuitively. We also fixed a couple of nasty bugs that could prevent Force of Will, Scatter the Weak, or even Unleashed Power from functioning as intended, which could really hurt your game if you were relying on one them to keep an enemy at bay, set up a combo, or burst somebody down.”
That’s not the complete list of changes, and they’re subject to change through the patch’s beta, but they’re what Riot are willing to talk about a the moment.