‘Completely problematic’: LoL players are tired of Riot reworking newer champs

The next League of Legends champion set to receive a rework is… K’Sante? Wait, that can’t be right. He just came out, like, last year. Nope, don’t adjust your monitors, folks, K’Sante is the next champion set to get reworked by Riot—and League players aren’t happy about it. 

In a thread on the official League subreddit earlier today, the player base universally agreed that Riot’s practice of reworking champions so soon after they get released is a problem that’s caused by oversights during champions’ developmental cycles. When a champion like K’Sante needs to get overhauled less than one year after being released, it’s clear there were issues with the champion’s launch—and players are noticing this isn’t the first time Riot has done something like this. 

In the thread, League players cited not just K’Sante’s impending rework, but also reworks for Yuumi and Zeri as pain points for the game. These champions, who are all mainstays in professional play, don’t often see that level of dominance translate into the everyday player population. 

“Yuumi was a mess for ages. She had 2 Worlds of being pick/ban tier already while not being great in solo queue,” a Reddit user named 13yearsand4monthss said. “It took way too long to deal with that—and honestly they didn’t even really fix it. They just killed the champion by making it too underpowered. Now comes K’Sante. Another rework so soon after release. Another completely problematic kit. Dogshit solo queue winrate and permanently meta in pro play.” 

Across the entire 2023 season, K’Sante was the second-most popular champion in pro play, while in back-to-back editions of the World Championship, Yuumi hovered at or near a 100-percent pick/ban rate, according to League stats site Games of Legends. Zeri had the highest pick/ban rate in the game last season, too. 

These three specific champions are monstrously strong in professional play, but in the hands of average players, they just don’t hit as hard. In Patch 13.19, Yuumi, Zeri, and K’Sante are borderline unplayable, with K’Sante and Yuumi having the second-lowest win rates among all champions at their main positions, and Zeri having the absolute lowest for all ADCs across all ranks, according to LoL solo queue stats site U.gg. 

“Hypermobility and untargetability are gamebreaking concepts by default. They should never exists in the current forms,” another League player named Kordben said in the comments. “And now we have K’sante, who just targets someone mid-late game for a 1v1 and honestly, [I’ve] rarely seen a K’Sante lose that 1v1. His scaling from tank into skirmisher with those tank item passives are crazy powerful. I don’t believe this [version] of changes will answer to whatever issue he has.”

This year’s World Championship begins on Oct. 9, and while we don’t expect any of these three champions to have an outlandish, near-100 percent pick/ban rate at the tournament, we wouldn’t be surprised if pros pick them up here and there simply due to how comfortable they are with the champions. K’Sante in particular has been so popular among pro top laners this year that he might actually fit the wording of a “comfort pick.” Let’s see how comfortable top laners are once that rework hits, though. 

There’s no current timetable for K’Sante’s extensive rework, though it’s likely that it’ll go live sometime during the 2024 preseason and possibly be ready in time for the start of the next season of pro play.