Explaining the big Leona changes on the PBE

Riot came out of nowhere with some big Leona changes.

Don’t throw the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” cliche in Riot’s face, because they are most likely going to laugh at you while watching chaos ensue.

They have been giving multiple supports a hard look lately, and one of those champions is none other than Leona. Riot must have seen a lot of things they wanted to change when looking at her because there are some big changes to the support currently on the PBE.

The damage from her passive has been lowered from 20 + 15 per two levels to 20 + five per level.

The damage on her Q has been lowered from 40/70/100/130/160 to 30/55/80/105/130, but its cooldown reduction has also been lowered from 11/10/9/8/7 seconds to 9/8/7/6/5 seconds.

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Leona’s W is also getting a damage reduction: from 60/110/160/210/260 to 60/100/140/180/220.

The root duration from her E has been increased from .25 seconds to .5 seconds.

Finally, her ultimate is seeing the biggest change. The damage from it is lowered from 150/250/350 to 100/175/250, but it is also getting a new effect. Leona’s sword remains charged with Incandescence which causes her next 3/4/5 basic attacks to gain 100 range and deal 30/50/70 (+15 percent AP) bonus magic damage on-hit. Incandescence also applies Leona’s passive.

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These changes came out of nowhere, so someone asked on the League of Legends boards what the goal of these changes are. Meddler (Lead Gameplay Designer) responded by saying, “We’re looking to give Leona more stuff to do in a teamfight. At present she blows her combo quickly and then can’t contribute much meaningfully until her CDs are back up. Given she’s putting herself in the middle of the fight by necessity we’d like her to have things she can do there that matter, hence the auto attack reward on the ult and the CD decrease on the Q.”

When Meddler explains Riot’s stance on Leona, these changes make a lot of sense. Her entire kit is built around engaging for your team, but then she can’t do much of anything once the fight breaks out. With these changes, Leona will be able to stick around and feel like a real threat with the new effect from her ultimate.

It’s rare to see such drastic changes on a champion that is already in a good place, so it will be interesting to see how Leona does after all of this.

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