In the recent 2022 Pre-Season, two factors that League of Legends players complained about the most were Chemtech Dragon and the Deadly Tempo rune. The reason is that this rune was making some champions too overpowered and compensating for many weaknesses they faced during the laning phase. In fact, this rune even made champions like Yasuo, Yone, and Jax extremely strong at level 1, while a slew of marksmen such as Caitlyn, Jinx, and Aphelios became the meta in professional tournaments.
Listening to the community’s feedback, Riot recently announced a nerf to the Deadly Tempo rune in the upcoming 12.2 patch. This news brought joy to the League of Legends community as this overpowered rune was finally going to be adjusted. However, the joy was short-lived when players discovered how Riot modified this rune on the PBE server, quickly turning excitement into anger as they made this rune even more unbalanced.
Specifically, on the PBE server, Riot will adjust this rune so that the added attack speed will scale with level. However, for some unknown reason, Riot made it so that Deadly Tempo provides up to 21% attack speed per stack at level 3 with melee champions (a number greater than what this rune currently provides). By level 15, it grants up to 75% attack speed per stack, making champions using Deadly Tempo extremely overpowered.
The initial idea from Riot might have been to set the 75% attack speed bonus as the stat at 6 stacks that champions receive from level 15 onwards. However, due to some coding error in League of Legends, Deadly Tempo is providing 75% attack speed for each stack with melee champions. The consequence is a series of absurd situations such as Tryndamere reaching 4.03 attack speed without any items or Diana having 7.52 attack speed, for example.
Hopefully, Riot Games will recognize this error and promptly work on adjusting the Deadly Tempo rune. Essentially, balancing it so that the amount of attack speed this rune provides scales with champion levels is correct; however, it must be at a reasonable number, as 75% per stack is too high.