Riot Games has confirmed that it will be testing new soft counters for some League of Legends champions ahead of Patch 9.14. These changes also include the new shield-breaking abilities the team has added to the PBE for Renekton and Blitzcrank.
“Goal there is to add a bit of extra weakness to champions who could do with another way to deal with them without going so far as to make it so a game is overly decided in champ select,” Riot’s design director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon said. “Expectation is that blind picking certain champs should become a bit riskier, especially in organized play where teams are more likely to counterpick.”
There are several champions that Riot will be experimenting with some new ability changes for. The team is testing out some changes to Ahri’s charm, for example, which will allow her to stop dashes in progress. This would be a new anti-mobility spell that could help her in certain matchups.
Cassiopeia’s W and Poppy’s W are being tested with some buffs, with no minimum cast range on Cassiopeia’s Miasma and Poppy’s Steadfast Presence grounding and slowing enemies that it stops during their dash.
Riot is also possibly nerfing Akali and making her Twilight Shroud provide standard invisibility, in order to give other champions with reveal abilities a better chance of fighting back against her. Katarina and Kled will also be getting a higher percent of Grievous Wounds and Leona will gain some flat damage reduction as well.
“If it goes well we’ll look at using this approach again certainly, though I wouldn’t expect it to be a really widespread thing, given a lot of champions have sufficient weaknesses already,” Meddler said.
