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Champion diversity took a big hit at the 2019 Mid-Season invitational. Last year at MSi and Worlds, there wasn’t a single champion that was picked or banned in every game. This time around there were three, with Jarvan IV just one game behind.
It’s no surprise then that in Patch 9.11, Riot is dropping the nerf hammer on three of the strongest champions in competitive play: Akali, Galio, and Jayce. Akali and Jayce were part of the 100 percent pick-ban club, while Galio wasn’t far behind. In fact, Jayce was banned in all but three games—his 39 bans were 10 ahead of second place, which was, you guessed it, Akali.
Jayce’s nerf is simple: he’s losing 25 damage on his rank five Q. The new Q’s base damage will scale at 70/115/160/205/250/295, down from 70/120/170/220/270/320. It’s also getting an AD ration nerf down from 1.20 to 1.00. This will make it so his late game isn’t as oppressive and one empowered Q won’t do the entire health bar of a squishy target.
Thing is, that’s not what made Jayce in his current form good anyway. He’ll come down a peg, but he’ll still be plenty good in the early game.
Akali is also getting a mid- to late-game nerf, where her passive refunds less energy. Instead of 10/20/30 energy at levels 1/8/13, it will give 10/15/20 energy instead. And the empowered auto attack on her passive will also lose some ratios, going from 0.9x bonus AD and 0.7x AP to 0.6x bonus AD and 0.5x AP.
Galio wasn’t as ridiculous as Akali and Jayce, but among supports at MSI, he was a god. His nerfs hit hardest in the early game where he loses damage on both his W and E. His W’s AP ratio will increase from 0.2x AP to 0.3x, which encourages players to take him mid lane, or at least build him very aggressively as a support.
The interesting thing about these nerfs is that other strong champions like Sylas and Taric aren’t being touched. It looks like we’ll see more of Sylas as a flex pick solo laner and Taric as part of the Sona-Taric combination in bot lane when the Summer Split starts this week.
