Almost all League of Legends players understand that the meta plays a crucial role in a team’s gameplay. The changes made by Riot to champions can be hard to notice from the perspective of a casual player climbing ranks. However, for professional players, a champion could be significantly impacted by just a reduction of 5 damage points or an increase of 10 armor points, affecting their strategic choices greatly. Especially in regions like the LCK, players study and understand these subtle adjustments even more. For instance, Faker has admitted that he reads and researches the patch notes of every update meticulously.
However, according to some information regarding the upcoming update, T1 may be preparing to receive bad news. Specifically, in the next patch, the champion Rell will see a significant increase in magic resistance (both base stats and per level). However, Rell’s skills will see a drastic reduction in damage to jungle monsters, as Q (Piercing Charge), W (Steel Shield: Battle Armor), and E (Water Piercer) will no longer deal additional damage to jungle monsters.
This means that after a long reign in the Jungle position, Rell will officially be eliminated from this role. The simple reason is that Rell previously had a skill set that dealt a lot of damage, allowing for quick jungle clear and significant advantages in contesting buffs. One could say that with Rell, a jungler effectively had an extra Smite that dealt half the damage of the original Smite. In a contest, the Rell player could deal over 1370 damage to jungle monsters compared to just about 900 from opponents.
This is bad news for T1 because player Oner specializes in jungle champions that are aggressive and prefer team fights. The champions he most often uses are Rell and Poppy. In the Spring 2024 LCK, Oner used Rell 8 times with a win rate of over 87%. This demonstrates how important Rell has been for T1.
Of course, as a championship-contending team, T1 must recognize the upcoming challenges and find alternative strategies. However, clearly, Rell’s disappearance from the Jungle role will leave many players disappointed as she is a well-rounded champion in the current gameplay, possessing robust durability, area damage, and excellent combo coordination with teammates.