Matt Leung-Harrison@RiotPhroxzon
25.20 Patch Preview!
Jungle Power
- This patch, we're targeting a few junglers (and one flex) that are posting up really strong performances in regular play; Volibear, Warwick, Briar.
- These 3 are strong statchecks in regular play where spacing gameplay is harder to access, so we're taking them down a bit
Pantheon
- Pantheon was overnerfed last patch and it wasn't our intention to remove him completely from the meta, so we're looking to claw some of that back
Mastery Curve Buffs
- Each of the other buffs in the list are aimed at champions that facially look statistically fine (typically >50% winrate), but are actually on the weaker side when taking into account their mastery curve
- Take for example Malphite; a champion who only grows 2-3% Winrate when fully mastered
- This typically manifests most strongly with champions who are quite performant on game 1, who don't grow that much with high amounts of play, have a high "novice share" (people who are new to playing the champion) or all of them
- On the flip side here is Katarina, an interesting case study, who has a pretty steep mastery curve, while also having one of the highest expert shares (and therefore lower novice shares) in the game
- This pushes up her public Winrate required to be balanced, when taking these factors into account
- Most other champions with similarly steep mastery curves tend to have higher novice rates (which pulls their public Winrate down) while also having a pretty disastrously low game 1
Graves
- Graves has been going pretty much full lethality one shot builds for a while
- We're looking at some adjustments here to correct his builds and open up some different types of more durable builds (within reason)
Pro
- With Pantheon and Poppy both nerfed, we expect Wukong to rise
- We're looking to bring him down to be closer to the rest of the frontrunners in Jungle as a result
- We're seeing a lot of different meta reads going into Worlds and are interested to see how the clash of regions shakes up and not looking to change things dramatically
- So, we're looking at adjustments to just 2 other champs
- Camille is a champion who's just on the fringe of viability and we're looking to give her a power neutral bump that helps some of the Pro attributes in an effort to increase viable options amongst scaling "1v9" AD fighters
- On the flip side, Azir is still looking too strong in Pro, but net nerfing him from his current state for regular play feels pretty bad.
- Instead, we're looking for a power neutral change that shifts some power away from some of the Pro attributes to other parts of his kit to give him some more clear strengths and weaknesses that hopefully gives some power back to regular players in the process
