On the evening of May 11 (Vietnam time), Riot Mortdog – the lead engineer of the Teamfight Tactics project officially released the final information about the 11.10 update. The update is expected to be applied across all servers in the coming days.
According to Mortdog’s announcement, Vayne and Lissandra – two one-cost champions that have been too dominant since their introduction until now. Especially, when LeBlanc was nerfed after patch 11.9b, Lissandra became an incredibly strong carry. As for Vayne, this champion has always been regarded as one of the most “broken damage” pieces in TFT season 5 with true damage, meaning, as long as you reach the right level and build the right items, climbing to top 4 is almost guaranteed with Vayne in the lineup.
In patch 11.10, after numerous complaints about Lissandra and especially Vayne, Riot decided to “kill” the two metas associated with these two champions. The damage from Vayne’s Silver Bolts was significantly reduced from 90/120/160 to 65/90/140, while her basic attack damage was increased from 25 to 30.
As for Lissandra, the damage from her Ice Shard was reduced from 40/40/60% to 40/40/40%. Additionally, the damage from the first hit of Frozen Shard decreased from 300/400/500 to 250/300/400, while the second hit’s damage was lowered from 150/200/250 to 125/150/200.
Vayne was strong thanks to the true damage from Silver Bolts. But now, this champion has seen her damage cut down nearly by half, which has been her signature feature. Although Riot has buffed her basic attack damage by an additional 5 points, it still isn’t enough because this piece has never been strong with basic attacks.
While Vayne’s Death Mark has a slight adjustment in additional damage for attacks and skills (30/80/140 ⇒ 30/70/160), it is still insufficient during the mid-game phase, meaning at level 2 of champions, this amount of damage is too little to finish off sturdy opponents.
As for Lissandra, this piece is also considered “killed” and it is likely that with the nerf to LeBlanc (reduced crowd control duration at level 3 from 1.5/2/3 seconds down to 1.5/2/2.5 seconds), the Dark Mystic meta could either disappear or require the use of other champions like Vladimir to dominate.
The commonality of both Lissandra and Vayne lies in the fact that both champions are 1-cost and have good damage, with some players even evaluating that a 2-star Vayne could easily compete against 4 or 5-cost champions like Jax or Aphelios. A 3-star Lissandra could easily burst down at least 2 targets in a single strike. However, the heavy nerf on Lissandra has also raised concerns among players.
However, this update also includes buffs for Katarina that have left the community utterly confused. Specifically, this champion received up to 3 buffs, one of which was a buff to Death Mark as mentioned earlier. For Katarina, besides receiving an increase to 700 health, the damage from her Shuriken has increased to 200/250/450, and the secondary damage was also raised to 100/125/225.
The issue here is that Katarina has never been considered a weak champion, especially if equipped with Gunblade and Infinity Edge, Katarina can become an incredibly powerful source of damage for the Assassin – Death Mark lineup. Her only weakness is that she has to dive into the enemy team, making her susceptible to being burst down too quickly.
While many agree that nerfing Vayne is the right decision, the fact that Riot has “killed” Lissandra and overly buffed a already strong champion like Katarina has left many puzzled. Many believe that Katarina was not weak enough to warrant such buffs, while Lissandra was only truly strong when fitting into a single meta: Dark Mystic.