After the complete overhaul of League of Legends items during the Pre-Season 2021, it has become evident that the Fighter class has received a significant amount of favoritism. Essentially, the items that Fighters typically build have excellent damage, healing, and health stats. Not to mention the fact that their stats and passives are tightly interconnected, making Fighters extremely difficult to take down when adequately equipped.
This situation has persisted for over a year and may come to an end in the upcoming patch 12.3, as Riot has decided to “rework” Fighter items. According to Riot Phlox, a member of the League of Legends design team, Fighters are not required to take many risks but still have a significant impact on the game. Therefore, they have decided to increase the attack stats for many items while reducing the health or healing they provide.
The most significant change we can see is with the Sterak’s Claw item, which completely removes the healing over time effect and no longer directly increases AD. Instead, this item will increase AD based on the champion’s base damage. This makes Sterak’s Claw extremely powerful in the late game (when champions have high base AD) and no longer serves as a “safety net” for Fighters with high health and healing like before.
The Death Dance item has also received noteworthy changes, now featuring a damage reduction against magic damage and its healing will depend on additional AD. This means you will need to build damage items to fully utilize the passive of Death Dance, rather than stacking health items as before. Clearly, building more damage items will make your champion much easier to take down than before.
The final notable change pertains to the Malmortius Spike, which has been buffed across the board in terms of AD and cooldown. Furthermore, the shield passive of this item is no longer unreasonable, as it will now interact with additional AD instead of health. It seems that not only Fighters will be pleased, but also Marksmen will be thrilled to see this change from Riot. This is because more and more champions are capable of dealing high magic damage, and the buff to Malmortius Spike will provide them with better protection.
Looking at these changes, it is evident that they hold great promise in reducing the tankiness of Fighters. We hope this round of adjustments from Riot Games will bring positive signals and help balance the meta of League of Legends.