Evelynn’s damage is about to go way up thanks to a sizable buff to her Whiplash ability in the next patch, according to the latest PBE update.
The Widowmaker spent the last three months at the top of her game as League of Legends’ premier jungle AP assassin. After running the show for so long, Riot’s balance team doled out nerfs to try to reel her back in, but they were too much. Since then, her performance has plummeted more than intended, and now, buffs are coming to repair some of the damage.
Nothing helps a champion’s performance quite as much as a very straightforward damage buff, so that’s what Evelynn is getting. Whiplash, which was the primary cause for concern when the balance team addressed her nerfs originally, is the target. Both the ability’s base damage and empowered damage are going up by significant margins.
The base damage will increase by 25 across all ranks, and the empowered version will go up by 35 at all ranks.
This is about as plain as it gets—more damage means more powerful ganks and faster farming. By avoiding adding more to the ability’s AP ratio, and instead opting into a base damage buff, Riot will also boost her ability to clear jungler camps earlier in the game. This opens up a healthier clear time for her, which can lead to more ganks. Likewise, the damage buff will obviously also help her gank—more damage means the enemy dies faster. Can’t argue with that.
This buff should be exactly what she needs without tipping her too much into the realm of OP. The ability’s percent-health damage remains untouched, and the AP ratio is the same, so it won’t scale absurdly well. It’s just a good chunk of base damage to elevate her to a stronger state.
If these buffs make it through the PBE’s testing, she can look forward to receiving them in about two weeks when Patch 8.4 goes live.
Published: Feb 7, 2018 01:12 pm