Two core items for Ezreal that are barely used by other champions, Essence Reaver and Manamune, are getting nerfed on the latest Public Beta Environment build for League of Legends.
Manamune’s cost is increasing by 100 total gold, from 2,900 to 3,000. Its combine cost will also jump from 1,050 to 1,150.
Essence Reaver will have 10 less AD, granting its users only 45 instead of 55. The nerfs to both of these items seem to heavily target Ezreal, who’s been climbing in popularity in recent patches.
It’s unclear why is Riot targeting these two items since there are a couple of outliers right now that are defining the meta, such as Verdant Barrier, Moonstone Renewer, and Goredrinker. With few champions building Manamune and Essence Reaver right now, it’d arguably be better to target overperforming champions with other direct nerfs instead of making these items worse for all of League‘s champions.
If these nerfs reach the live servers, Ezreal will most likely fall out of favor once again after being negatively impacted by the item changes during the latest preseason. His previous builds aren’t as strong now since the damage spike they provided isn’t as impactful and they cost more gold in the long run.
All of the changes on the PBE are tentative and subject to alteration prior to hitting the live servers. With Patch 11.4 just being released, these changes will most likely be shipped during Patch 11.5—unless Riot pulls them back.
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