League of Legends, Patch 10.2: Balance Changes, Highlights, Notes And Rundown By Scairtin

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A new week, a new patch has come to League of Legends.

This patch focuses on fixing some bugs, nerfing overperforming champions and releasing the Guardian of Sands alongside Dragonslayers skins.

General

               Clash will become operational during later patches, it is being tweaked currently to ensure smooth gameplay like the latest Clash weekend. Rift Herald will have less health to allow teams to take her down quicker. It was not a top priority early game due to the amount of time required to PvE her. One significant bugfix, which needs to be mentioned is Caitlyn. If you learned the combo with your trap, you could do 3 autos in a split second and unleash a ton of damage. This has been removed as of this patch.

Champions

1) Aphelios – the invoker of League. 3 nerfs across his 3 main weapons: Calibrum (sniper rifle), Crescendum (chakram), Severum (scythe pistol). Less base damage on each of them, alongside less scaling, based on AD. He is still overloaded and he needs more than just nerfs to his weapons, it’s hard to identify what he is doing if you are an enemy.

2) Draven – increase to R damage scaling, from 1.1 AD to 1.1/1.3/1.5 AD. Draven’s issue is being immobile, this increase in damage scaling for his ultimate will not impact his win rate at all.

3) Jinx – passive movement speed bonus applies to Epic monsters as well. While this is a welcome buff, her being immobile in the current meta keeps her out of it.

4) Karma – increased Q/W base damage. While everyone remembers the horror of Karma top, the 10 damage buff should not be enough for her to come back and terrorize top laners.

5) Lulu – less CD on E, will make her a niche pick with Twitch or another hard-scaling AS such as Tristana.

6) Nautilus – Q base damage decreased by 10 per level. Nautilus is too tanky and has too much CC in his kit, the nerf in base damage will not impact his win rate a lot.

7) Qiyana – flat attack speed on W converted to scaling attack speed, nerf to her jungle mostly as in mid lane she does not benefit from holding her W to auto too much.

8) Sona – self-movement speed increase to a flat 25% from level 1. While this is not a significant buff, it is a welcome buff for OTPs.

9) Trundle – the king of anti-tanks received a movement speed buff on his W and increased slow % on his E. He is very strong, especially in current meta of tanky champions, he can completely obliterate the resistances of a tank and turn fights around.

10) Ziggs – increased Q damage, increased knockback distance on W and increased slow on E. Ziggs was already picked in the bottom lane instead of ADC in some match-ups to win the lane and force side lanes. Great buff for Ziggs players who still play him to this day.

Items

1) Cloak of Agility – 5% crit chance, down to 20% from 25%. Many ADCs started stacking them early game instead of purchasing BF/Pickaxe and this is apparently an issue in Riot’s eyes, items should have a clear hierarchy according to them and so Cloak should be less valued compared to Pickaxe.

2) Frozen Heart – niche item against heavy attack speed champions received a neat +10 armor buff. While it does not seem like a lot, a free buff is always nice.

3) Stormrazor – nerfed AD by 5 since it’s overperforming on certain champions. While it is indeed overpowered, the slow should have been targeted instead since it is the main problem with the item.

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Overall the patch is nice, but more nerfs could have been given to overperforming champions such as Aphelios, Senna, and Sett. They are currently pick/ban in high-elo due to their overloaded kit, which zones out other champions from the game.