Turret Plating
"Gold per Plate: 120 -> 160 [New] Ranged Resistance: Turret plates take 17% reduced damage from ranged champions Outer Turret Armor & MR: 40/80/120/160/200 -> 15/50/75/120/155 Bulwark Resistances: 35 per nearby enemy champion past the second -> 45 per nearby enemy champion past the second"
The current meta revolves around a stagnant top lane while the game focusing on rotating bot laners who push towers quickly and claim turret plate gold in the first fourteen minutes of the game.
Now there’s greater incentive for top laners to win their lane match-up and push down their opponent’s tower early on for some quick gold income due to the fact that plates are much easier to take.
The decreased tower resistances have, of course, been offset by reduced damage from ranged champions, which gives melee champions the edge from this buff.
Items
Blade of the Ruined King
"Unique Passive: Basic attacks deal bonus physical damage on hit equal to 8% target’s current health -> Basic attacks deal bonus physical damage on hit equal to 8% target’s current health for ranged users, 12% target’s current health for melee users"
Making Blade of the Ruined King deal more percent health damage for melees is definitely a good sign for fighters in the top lane, which is what the balance team is aiming for.
This should not only allow them to deal with tanks a little more effectively but also be able to burst squishies at the start of a fight.
Champions like Jax, Tryndamere, Fiora, and Kled will probably benefit from this a ton.
Ravenous Hydra
"Life Steal: 12% -> 18% Active Radius: 400 -> 450 Active Centre Point: 125 distance in front of champion -> At champion’s basic attack range"
Greater life steal and a larger active radius should give split-pushers a lot more power and utility. While the life steal increase is definitely huge, I don’t know how big the change will be overall.
Right now, split-pushers are limited not by how fast they can push, but by how they have limited vision to cover their flanks and how much harder objectives are to take for their team without Mountain Dragon. This might help a bit, but I’m unsure how much.
Titanic Hydra
"Passive Damage to Primary Target: 5 (+1% user’s max health) -> 5 (+1.5% user’s max health) Passive Damage to Secondary Targets: 40 (+2.5% user’s max health) -> 40 (+3% user’s max health)"
This is definitely going to be the go-to item for tanky bruisers if it wasn’t already.
Unlike Ravenous, Titanic Hydra is just getting pure damage scaling off the user’s health, so it won’t give more pushing/dueling power. That said, champions who build tanky will likely benefit at least a bit.
Spellthief’s Edge
"[New] Tribute procs now require an ally champion (even dead ally champions within 2000 range"
I think this change is great, not only because they’re gating the support income off this item to being near a champion, but also because dead champions count!
This way, there is an incentive for a support to not take the CS and freeze waves if they can when their laner dies, since that will preserve the passive from going on cooldown.
Spectral Sickle
"[New] Tribute procs now require an ally champion (even dead ally champions within 2000 range"
Similar to Spellthief’s, I like this change because it is aimed at making support items more geared towards supports.
While some people might think this change makes the items a bit more constricted in their use, we already have items that are ranged/melee only and jungle items require a certain Summoner Spell to purchase so I’m fine with this.
Boots of Mobility
"Cost: 900 gold -> 1000 gold"
Mobis are super strong on supports early, especially now that they don’t have to invest any gold into upgrading their vision item.
Raising the cost of Mobis probably won’t stop anyone from building them, but it should delay that time window when supports can begin to roam.
Boots of Swiftness
"Movement Speed: 55 -> 60"
Remember way back when Swifties were super strong and dominated League of Legends? That was back in Season 6 when Riot finally had to remove 5 MS from these boots to keep them reigned in.
Now they’re walking back that nerf four years later. We’ll see if that makes Swifties more viable.
Are you happy with the Patch 10.5 changes? What other buffs/nerfs would you have liked to see? Let us know what you think!