Caitlyn’s headshot is getting a huge buff, but in this case it is literally getting bigger, and firing faster. Speaking of big, Cho’Gath’s been too tough to get ramping up, so we’re giving our hungriest, voidiest, boy a nice base buff to keep him nomming and growing. With Timebreaker’s rework, we’re hoping to see Ezreal emerge as a reroll carry, so a small buff to his floor should see him scaling easier into the late game. Finally for the one-costs, we’ve fixed a Talon bug that had Omnivamp not correctly applying to his bleed. Since Talon’s already one of our most powerful one-costs, we’ve got a compensation nerf with a bit more tagged onto it to keep the accumulation of these changes safely in the nerf zone.
If you couldn’t tell from our Ezreal buff, we really want to see more creative uses of our Timebreakers, so we’ve got a Milio buff to keep him kicking into the meta.
With our biggest Arbiter outliers in check, we’re able to give Diana more power both in her ability damage and durability. Maokai lags behind our other tanks, so we’re upping his bonus HP hook, which alongside a Bruiser buff should feel a lot sturdier than the 5% looks on paper.
Samira has been popping up as a consistent comp somewhat recently as we write these notes (8 days before the patch goes live). We’ve got a decent sized nerf for her here, but we’re tracking her rise as the meta develops in case we have to increase/decrease it. Viktor, on the other hand, is getting the largest nerf of the patch. He’s certainly put the Vik in Viktory with his dramatic performance even after our B-patch nerf, so we’re responding with a dramatic nerf that also allows us to put some power into the Psionic items and underperforming Psionic champions (Gragas).
Corki’s our only four-cost carry lagging behind his peers, and he’s only a tad behind, so we’re giving him a very light buff since he’ll also be aided by the power ceiling of the set coming down.
Not hitting a primary tank and being able to two-star them is an issue this set. While we have stronger 3-cost tanks this time around, we’re working to add more frontline options both this patch and next patch. For 17.2, we’re buffing our under-performing low-cost tank options, making the Mighty Mech a playable tank without needing to transform him into his two-slot form, and giving Tahm Kench one more follow-up change to make him a better tank option than loot printer. We believe this will make the race to Nunu (who is getting nerfed) less important, and solve many of the “where is my front-line” situations, but we’ve got one more solve for this planned in 17.3. I’ll give you a hint as to what that is so it doesn’t come out of nowhere from the dark. That was the hint by the way.
As for our five-costs, we’re rebalancing Grave’s tech tree to lower the power of his dominant Assault Frame while improving his Marksman tree. Finally, while we think five-costs are generally balanced this set (slightly weaker than their Lore & Legends counterparts, but strong 5-costs was part of that set’s identity), one has been overperforming the rest by a vexing margin. The bulk of our Vex nerf is coming in the form of her absurd range because how can a Yordle cast a shadow that long anyways? But, jokes aside, we’ve got a smaller damage nerf for her too.