If you’ve noticed, right from Teamfight Tactics season 6, Riot Games introduced a lot of tribe-emblems into the game through the core technology system. To balance this out, Riot designed champions so that they wouldn’t become overly broken when wielding these tribe-emblems. However, as we move into season 7, it seems Riot has forgotten this with the case of Aurelion Sol.
In case you didn’t know, Aurelion Sol’s skill in season 7 is to create a black hole and deal damage, subtracting the opponent’s attack damage, and the black hole’s size increases after casting the skill. Combined with the ability to cast spells twice when Aurelion Sol has the Mage core, the speed at which this champion expands the black hole is extremely fast. As a result, opponents of Aurelion Sol Mage players have almost no chance to retaliate and win.
Even in his latest tweets, the director of Teamfight Tactics, Riot Mortdog, had to admit that this playstyle is too strong. In addition to the excellent interaction with the Mage emblem, Aurelion Sol also encounters two major bugs that make him incredibly dominant. Essentially, Aurelion Sol takes 2.3 seconds to cast but is only locked for energy for 1 second; moreover, all Mages will not be locked for energy when casting their second skill.
The consequence is that Aurelion Sol with the Mage emblem will have no cooldown time between spell casts, leaving opponents with no way to counter. Even if you use an Assassin composition, it’s still hard to take down Aurelion Sol Mage because this unit’s skill also subtracts attack damage. Therefore, Riot is forced to release a patch to nerf Aurelion Sol by increasing his maximum energy and the mana lock time for this unit.
However, these changes can only be applied in patch 12.12 as Riot needs more time to adjust the entire Mage system. Hopefully, the Aurelion Sol Mage playstyle will not become too overpowered in patch 12.11 because no one wants a new season experience to be ruined.