Top 3 Changes Coming to League in Patch 8.11
Riot’s 8.11 preview gave us a lot to think about. Let’s look at the coming change’s to items, the early game, and yes, crit.
Riot released a Dev Blog detailing some of their plans for Patch 8.11 on Monday, and it seems ADC’s are going to have their role shaken up pretty hard. The post, which can be read here if you’ve not already seen it, makes its very clear that the marksmen of the rift are champions of the hour.
With that, item, rune, and stat changes were listed and explained. BlogofLegends.com has made a list of three of what we think the best changes brought by the patch will be. Lets dig in.
The list
1. Critical Strike will stay out of the early game
As most of you know, Infinity Edge is not only the most popular item on ADC’s, but is also getting some pretty huge alterations in 8.11. Namely, to the way it interacts with crit. chance.
We won’t go into too much detail, but basically the change to I.E. means that the item will only double crit. chance you have from other items and won’t give you flat percentage on its own.
In essence, this puts I.E. firmly in a ‘late game only’ item. That in tandem with the increase in cost for any crit. item means that the early game will no longer be plagued with the RNG-fest that Crit. items can create.
It’s true that League of Legends, in its current state, can have a lot of games decided by a bot lane’s luck in Critically striking during important moments of the game. This patch looks like its taking steps to change this, and we couldn’t be happier.
We look forward to a more consistent bot lane experience and experimenting with those early game builds. (Tactical BORKS, incoming.)
2. Essence Reaver
With the huge host of item updates, we were pleased to read that the least-popular of the ADC items, “Essence Reaver”, would be getting a slight re-work and to be completely honest, the effects are looking pretty sweet in theory crafting.
For those unaware, a new unique passive for the item gives its wearer an attack speed buff when he or she fires off an ultimate ability. On top of that, the ADC’s non-ultimate abilities get reduced CD times whenever an auto is made during the buff.
It would look intelligent to go on about the necessity to create a wide equality between items’ usefulness and how its healthy to have a League that requires a lot of situation awareness to make informed purchases, but honestly we’re just excited to throw Kog’maw down and abuse his R + speedy autos mechanic with this item.
Did we mention it still gives mana back on every basic attack? Well it still does, so don’t worry. Ezreals everywhere will still be able to spam q into their infinite Klepto wealth.
3. “Less AD early, More late.”
As we’ve said, this patch is focused on ADC’s and ADC’s only. There has been some circulation of negativity around League and its current state that doesn’t allow one person to hyper carry his team, and this is especially true when it comes to the AD carry role.Not only is it in the name, but in the history of MOBA’s the carry has been the one to turn to when a team is in doubt.
A good ADC should be able to make or break a game between two evenly matched teams. As it stands, this is not the case with League.A carry in the current state of league cannot win his team the match all too often, but he can certainly lose it very easily.
This patch looks to change that with this seemingly small early game nerf / mid-late game buff to AD growth values.It might not be enough in the end, but the fact that Riot recognizes where they want their game to go and where we want it to go is a sign of good things for the future, and I have all the confidence in the world that they’ll do what they need to in 8.11 and beyond to keep improving the game.Until then, all we can do is wait for future patches, eh?