In recent years, Riot Games has earned a rather unflattering title of “the game company that makes better videos than games” due to the imbalance in quality between their media products and the game balancing in League of Legends. It’s no coincidence that on the same night, the video “The Lesson” featuring Akali and Shen received praise, while the announcement of patch 10.9 was met with a barrage of criticism from players.
Riot Mark Yetter, head of champion design for League of Legends, announced update 10.9:
Bloodthirster: Cost reduced from 1100 to 1000 gold, AD increased from 50 to 55.
Champion Nerfs
Wukong
Base armor reduced from 34 to 31.
Q – Crushing Blow: Base damage reduced from 30-130 to 20-120.
W – Decoy: Clone damage reduced from 40-60% to 35-55%.
Karthus
Movement speed reduced from 335 to 325.
Trundle
R – Subjugate: Cooldown increased by 20 seconds at each rank.
Bard
W – Cosmic Binding: Movement speed buff for allied champions reduced from 50% to 30%, cooldown increased from 12 to 14 seconds.
E – Magical Journey: Cooldown increased from 18-14 to 22-16.
Nami
Base health reduced from 489.32 to 475.
Base mana reduced from 277.24 to 265.
Additional movement speed from passive reduced from 60 to 45.
Champion Buffs
Kayn
Q – Reaping Slash: Cooldown reduced from 7-5 seconds to 6-4 seconds, bonus damage also applies to minions.
W – Blade’s Reach: Slow increased from 70% to 90%.
Lissandra
Q – Ice Shard: Cooldown reduced from 12-4 seconds to 8-4 seconds.
Fiddlesticks
E – Harvest: Damage increased from 70-190 to 70-210.
Quinn
Vision reduction duration increased from 1.5 seconds to 1.75 seconds.
Gnar
Q – Boomerang Throw (Mega Gnar form): Cooldown reduction when Gnar picks up a rock increased from 60% to 70%.
E – Crunch (Mega Gnar form): Damage increased from 50-190 to 80-220.
Cho’Gath
E – Vorpal Spikes: Damage increased from 22-70 to 22-84.
Yassuo (the ‘god’ Yasuo from North America): “Karthus has been S-tier, meaning extremely dominant in the jungle for over a year now, can we get a real nerf?”
Harambe (one-champ player Wukong): “Why do you nerf Wukong’s damage when that wasn’t the issue? What needs to be addressed here is removing the ability to knock up the same target twice with that ultimate, it’s extremely unbalanced but you guys don’t seem to realize. Bring that ultimate back (just the version that doesn’t knock up twice in a row) instead of nerfing damage to compensate for Wukong having such a game-breaking ultimate.”
Player Revenge (top laner of Fly Quest Academy): This champion will continue to be banned in the next two patches, well done Riot.”
Not only are the irrationalities pointed out by streamers and professional players above, but the recently announced patch 10.9 also has other quite absurd balancing points. For example, Kayn faces a huge problem with controlling his transformation time as the Rhaast form is vastly superior to the Shadow Assassin form, yet Riot chose to buff Kayn’s… wave clear ability. Are they suggesting this champion should leave the jungle for the lane?
It’s unclear whether Riot Games intends to change what they have announced, but for now, this patch will receive quite a bit of criticism from the community.