League of Legends: Previewing the item changes in Patch 9.23

ADC Items

Season 9 was a wild ride for ADCs, as they started out so weak that Bruisers and Mages were being played in the bot lane, but ending back in an AD-dominated meta. For Patch 9.23 and preseason 10, Riot will again attempt to find a balance between late game dominance not coming at the expense of early game uselessness.

First up, the Zeal items are being changed in that they will all have greater crit strike chance and less attack speed due to the Zeal recipe being changed from Brawler’s Gloves plus Dagger to Dagger plus Cloak of Agility. I’m not sure how the math will work in trading off attack speed for crit chance early, so we’ll have to see if this is a net buff or nerf.

Stormrazor is getting yet another rework and will now have 25% crit chance on it, in exchange for an increased cost and decreased attack speed. Overall, this will make it more attractive to more ADCs, but we’ll have to see if the gold efficiency makes it strong enough to be bought.

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Finally, items with Energized passives will now stack, allowing for more bonus on-hit magic damage for champions who want to build Statikk Shiv, Rapid Firecannon, and/or Stormrazor. Karcheis Shard will, therefore, have its cost increased to compensate this increased power but its upgrades will just have their combined cost lowered.

Overall, these Patch 9.23 ADC item changes seem directly geared towards helping late-game multi-item ADCs power up earlier with the increased crit chance early and the ability to stack Energized attacks. It’s unclear how this will interact with the Energized effect on Fleet Footwork, but definitely this helps crit ADs.

Who this helps: Late game, crit-based hyper carry ADCs (Jinx, Caitlyn, Tristana) and on-hit ADCs who want to stack Energized items (Kog’Maw, Varus).

Who this hurts: Early game bully ADCs and ADs who build lethality (Draven, Jhin, Lucian).