Riot Games has today announced some upcoming nerfs to runes, potions (pots) and TP (teleport), as well as changes to drakes – and the LoL pro community on Twitter isn’t happy.
Update (July 19th): Riot has confirmed it is pulling the proposed TP changes (see the tweet from Riot Phroxzon further in this article.
Matt Leung-Harrison, aka Riot Phroxzon, the lead designer on the League balance team and pre-season, part of the Summoner’s Rift team, made the following announcement about upcoming patch 12.14 changes.
Phroxzon said that players can expect nerfs to healing, Gangplank’s top end barrels and other balance changes, with a particular focus on the pro play meta.
A ton of runes are being nerfed, with less healing coming from biscuit delivery and second wind, as well as health potions giving 120 healing instead of the usual 150. Rebillable and corrupting pots will also heal 100 health instead of the current 125.
Other rune nerfs include longer cooldowns on bone plating and guardian, and slower move speed on time warp tonic.
However, there are marginal buffs to scorch and sudden impact expected.
Summoner spell TP (teleport) is being further nerfed, with the cooldown rising from 360 seconds (six minutes) to 420 seconds (seven minutes).
And exhaust’s damage reduction is being tweaked from 40% to 30-40% scaling from levels one to nine.
Furthermore, drakes are getting a lot of adjustments.
Base AD and damage from the various drakes is being lowered, making it easier for players to kill them, and doing so will also grant improved buffs.
For example, the infernal drake buff of 4% AD/AP will rise to 6%, and mountain drake’s 6% armour/MR will be increased to 9%.
Drakes are also getting more health:
- Pre-rift transformation: 2,650 (+240 per level) to 3,450 (+380 per level)
- Post-rift transformation: 4,350 (+240 per level) to 6,950 (+380 per level)
Rift herald will also now give 200 local gold to the team, as well as 100 gold to the killer. The second rift herald mercenary will now also have 75% more health when summoned.
The drake changes are being made after Phroxzon said he “griefed the patch notes a bit”.
“The [previous] Objective Bounty changes to Dragons and Turrets are a nerf to their valuation,” he said. “This means that Dragon and turret advantages are less likely to trigger objective bounties, which relatively means XP and Gold make up more of the share.”
The news comes after changes to objective bounties were made, with bounties starting to fall off earlier if a team who are behind reduce the lead, and how claiming a bounty cancels other bounties on the map (only reactivated if/when a large lead is made again).
Other changes coming in LoL patch 12.14
Tim ‘TheTruexy’, an associate game designer on the Summoner’s Rift team, also posted about changes to champions like Aatrox:
Phroxzon also later outlined other tweaks for champions in 12.14, and revealed the proposed teleport changes are being withdrawn, plus red (challenging) smite is being nerfed, as shown by Spideraxe below:
He went into more detail on Gangplank’s nerfs too:
‘Changes will make top lane essentially useless as a role’
The community reacted vocally, with the general consensus that top lane will now have less impact on the map.
Evil Geniuses LCS analyst Beora said he really disagrees with the direction for the game:
Rly disagree with this direction for the game, just ends up putting top lane in an even worse position where they are essentially useless as a role with the only fix being bandaid fixes like hullbreaker
— Beora (@_Beora) July 16, 2022
When dragons are too strong the meta gets so boringhttps://t.co/qpcOttvcTS
Phroxzon responded: “While Dragon reward is being buffed, we’re also increasing the required time investment which should increase teams’ abilities to either mount a successful contest or trade sides and get a dive/Herald trade -> dive off. Open to hearing suggestions on alternate ways of solving though.”
Tolkin, a top-laner who previously played for Excel Esports, Mouz and others, added:
I just cannot understand why its good for the game if the role with the least kill participation, objective control is getting hit once more this season
— Tolkin (@TolkinLoL) July 16, 2022
Peter Dun, Evil Geniuses head of coaching staff for League of Legends, who won the LCS Spring 2022 split, gave a detailed response in a Twitter thread.
He said: “Making such large changes like this mid way through a split with playoffs two patches away is very scary for competitive integrity.
“Although I personally dislike changes that make the game more formulaic and remove skill expression, I don’t think sky is falling. It’ll make the game easier to understand for casual fans with an NA worlds coming soon.”
The news comes after Patch 12.13 dropped, bringing Evelynn buffs, Corki nerfs and Divine Sunderer changes to LoL.
Shortly afterwards, live servers were hotfixed with nerfs to Gwen, Master Yi and Sivir.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
