Even after several rounds of nerfs, Aphelios has remained one of the better ADCs to play in League of Legends, especially at the pro level. As a result, he’ll be receiving another set of nerfs to “attack his power curve as well as his ability to deal with the tanky front line threats,” Riot Games announced today.
First, Aphelios’ passive will no longer grant the player bonus armor penetration and will instead gain 2/4/6/8/10/12 lethality per level. This way, he won’t be as effective against really tanky champions that have to stand in his way to protect their own squishy backline.
Next, all of his weapons’ ability level scaling will now take longer for base damage and cooldowns to help lower how quickly he ramps up in strength as the game goes on. The active base damage and cooldowns will now scale over levels one to 13, instead of levels one to nine.
Each gun’s damage ratio has been affected as well and will now ramp up based on level:
- Moonshot damage AD ratio
- 0.6 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.42 to 0.6 (from levels one to 13) bonus attack damage
- Onslaught damage AD ratio
- 0.3 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.21 to 0.3 (from levels one to 13) bonus attack damage
- Binding Eclipse damage ratio
- 0.35 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.26 to 0.35 (from levels one to 13) bonus attack damage
- Duskwave damage ratio
- 0.8 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.56 to 0.8 (from levels one to 13) bonus attack damage
- Sentry damage ratio
- 0.5 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.35 to 0.5 (from levels one to 13) bonus attack damage
It’s unclear if these changes will affect his prominence in the ranked scene, as well as at the pro level. Aphelios has the lowest win rate of any ADC in the game at 46.2 percent right now. But on stage, he’s had the highest pick-ban rate of any champion in both the LCS, LEC, and LCK.
