One of the highlights of patch 12.10 is that Riot Games significantly buffed health, armor, and magic resistance for all champions. Additionally, they nerfed many items that provided healing stats, shield abilities, and adjusted the effects of Grievous Wounds. Essentially, making all champions “tougher” has slowed down the pace of League of Legends matches, eliminating the issue of champions “disappearing” too quickly as before.
However, this is still not a perfect update as Riot Games seemingly “forgot” about the power of the Divine Sledgehammer. When patch 12.10 officially launched, this item instantly became extremely overpowered due to its damage and healing capabilities interacting with the maximum health of enemy champions. Clearly, with all champions having more health thanks to patch 12.10, the damage dealt by the Divine Sledgehammer will be significantly increased.
Not stopping there, the rapid power growth of the Divine Sledgehammer has made champions using this item suddenly “as strong as a god.” A prime example is Wukong, who has climbed into the top 5 most picked champions in solo queue with a 17.8% pick rate. Furthermore, Wukong’s win rate has also risen to 53.1%.
We must remember that Wukong has already been a very strong champion in the Jungle role from previous patches, notably in patch 12.8 when he consistently appeared at MSI 2022. Therefore, Wukong continuing to get stronger due to the overpowered nature of the Divine Sledgehammer is extremely unreasonable. As a result, Riot Games has faced a wave of criticism from players and has had to publicly acknowledge their mistake, promising to adjust this item in the future.
One of the overpowered aspects of the Divine Sledgehammer is that the healing from this item is calculated before the Grievous Wounds effect takes place. Moreover, this healing effect only interacts with enemy health, so regardless of how much armor the opponent has, the Divine Sledgehammer still has the potential to heal extremely well. Perhaps Riot Games should look for ways to adjust or remove these excessively overpowered interactions in the next patch.