The League of Legends World Championship is knocking on our doors with Oct. 2 just around the corner. Riot Games is making preparations for the biggest event of the year and polishing the final buffs for Patch 13.18.
On Sept. 7, League lead designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison shared the full list of changes scheduled to roll out on live servers in the next patch.
This patch is bringing hefty buffs to Irelia, jungle Gwen, Kennen, Senna, Thresh, and the forgotten AD carry item Stormrazor, shaping up the Worlds 2023 meta to be quite spicy and intriguing to watch.
While Irelia, a historically hard champion to balance due to innate sustain, mobility, and damage, will have a shorter cooldown on her ultimate, Gwen will once again be able to take on monsters and safely scale in the jungle.
This patch is buffing Gwen’s health growth and increasing the monster cap damage. Gwen has only really found success in the top lane as a scaling pick, but these buffs mean we could potentially be looking at a scaling junglers meta at Worlds with other possible picks including Lillia, Hecarim, and Udyr.
“Gwen is a fun champ for JGL, adds value to the JGL ecosystem as an AP, but is usually ceilinged by Pro flex. We’ll be closely monitoring how these go,” Phroxzon explained.
You can’t really have Worlds without Kennen, right? That’s why this little electric ball is getting buffs to Lightning Rush with lesser energy costs, and of course, a shorter cooldown on his ultimate to crush his opponents.
The most intriguing change by far is the buff to AD carry Senna with a focus on critical strike. Senna has mostly fit in the support role this year. But after buffs to her critical strike damage, which will now be 100 percent, and Last Embrace now counting toward passive proc, she could make her way to the marksman role.
Finally, Thresh, the iconic support pick for Worlds, will become slightly more durable after he drops his lantern, and he will scale way better into the late game because his passive souls will make up for a stronger shield.
Overall, these changes seem promising and could make up for the weirdest meta fans has ever seen. Hopefully, pro players will lean into these picks.
Patch 13.18 hits the live servers on Sept. 13.
Published: Sep 7, 2023 03:49 am