League of Legends: Teamfight Tactics Patch 9.17 breakdown – Pantheon man drops onto the Arena

Champion changes

Nidalee

"Total Mana: 100 ⇒ 85"

Making it easier for her to hit that transformation a bit earlier. Nidalee is actually slightly underrated as an early game unit because of that Wild synergy. Perhaps with Nobles getting nerfed there will be more room for Wild openings.

Jayce

"Armor: 30 ⇒ 35 Jayce will now transform at max mana, even if there is no one in range to knock away."

Jayce is probably the worst Hextech unit, in part because of how underwhelming his second synergy is. These are two nice quality of life changes.

However, Hextech really doesn’t become an impactful buff until after the third carousel or so (i.e. once players have one or two completed items built). By that point, Jayce is probably getting outpaced by Vi and the question will be if you think his Shapeshifter synergy is better than Camille’s Blademaster. In the current meta, I’d say no.

Shyvana

"Total Mana: 100 ⇒ 85"

Between this change, making it easier for Shyvana to transform and the addition of a new Dragon unit to pair her with, this already strong unit should be in an even better spot now.

Gnar

"Total Mana: 125 ⇒ 100"

A similar change for Gnar, although his Wild Origin still limits him given how much worse it is late game than Dragon. However, I think Gnar is massively underrated and people should pair him with 2 or 3-star Nidalee or Warwick because he’s never picked up late game.

Graves

"Adjusted his interaction with Rapidfire Cannon. He maintains the range bonus but it now narrows his bullet spread, like a shotgun choke."

A needed bugfix for Graves, but I think he’ll still be in a fine spot considering how strong Gunslingers are early (with Tristana, Lucian, and Gangplank being easy matches early) and then late (obviously, with Jinx).

Warwick

"Health: 600 ⇒ 650"

I mentioned him a bit earlier, but Wild champions are getting buffed all over the place. It might be possible to bring the Nidalee/Warwick open back in Patch 9.17.

Lissandra

"Health: 450 ⇒ 500 Starting Mana/Total Mana: 50/125 ⇒ 0/85 Ability Damage: 150/275/400 ⇒ 175/325/475"

They’re actually giving Lissandra a pretty massive buff to her survivability and damage, while the mana changes just mean that she scales a lot better with items like Seraph’s. However, the fact that her ult is still kind of useless and that Elementalists are in a bad spot right now makes these buffs not really that impactful.

Lucian

"Relentless Pursuit’s second shot now scales with Lucian’s attack speed."

I honestly expected Lucian to get a bigger nerf than this considering how strong he is in the early game, but I suppose this makes sense. His Origin got nerfed and now this will keep him out of those weird cases where he attacks quicker on one shot and not the other.

Gangplank

"Ability Damage: 200/325/450 ⇒ 150/250/350"

GP was sleeper good in Teamfight Tactics for a while, but especially after Gunslingers became even stronger. I honestly don’t think he should have that extra trait, but as long as they’re going to give him two good Classes (and one awful Origin) to synergize with his ult cannot be that strong. I do fear that the nerf early might be too heavy, but time will tell.

Leona

"Stun Duration: 5/8/11 seconds ⇒ 5/7/9 seconds"

If you got a 2-star Leona and the right items, her ult was basically off cooldown by the time the stun wore off. She’s still great because of her synergies and the fact she still has a five-second stun at 1-star is nuts.

Overall thoughts

• I’m a bit disappointed that Riot didn’t take this opportunity to hit some of the Classes (Sorcerer and Elementalist) and Origins (Pirate and Ninja) that have been suffering.
• Nobles will probably be worse overall, but Garen/Fiora/Lucian/Vayne are all going to be fine to build early and Leona/Kayle are still monsters late game.
• Dragons will have a lot higher priority with buffs to Shyvana and Pantheon coming.
• So will Guardians, now that you can pair Leona with Pantheon.
• Glacials will probably remain a good “versus all” Origin because of how strong the synergy is.
• Hextech and Yordles are both better, but still not good.

What are your thoughts on the Teamfight Tactics changes coming in Patch 9.17? Let us know in the comments!