While tomorrow’s Patch 8.3 won’t be quite as large as League of Legends’ last patch in terms of balance changes, there are still some big nerfs and buffs that will undoubtedly affect the meta.
The patch’s balance change portion is headlined by nerfs to extremely annoying champions like Zoe and Sejuani, and it also brings some big buffs to resident basic-attack-bots Tryndamere and Master Yi. Here are the most important changes in tomorrow’s patch.
Zoe – Less spam
Players have been calling for a Zoe nerf for the last few weeks, simply because she’s ridiculously irritating to play against. You can dodge all of her long-range skillshots, and if you get hit by just one max-range Paddle Star, your whole lane is over. In other words, there’s absolutely no room for error.
To remedy this, Riot is increasing the cooldown on Paddle Star, but unfortunately, it isn’t by much. It’s going up by one second at rank one, and by max rank, it will only be about 0.25 seconds higher. Essentially, this means she’ll be able to spam it slightly less at early levels, but by the time it’s maxed out, you won’t notice a difference.
Sejuani – Weaker ganks
Just like before the preseason, Sejuani has been ruling the jungle meta these last couple weeks. Her ganks are filled with more crowd control than almost any other jungler, and she deals decent damage to boot.
To hurt her ganks, Riot is cranking up the early cooldown of her Arctic Assault by a whopping four seconds at first rank. It won’t be any different at max rank, but it’s her ability to control the pace of the early game and then scale into lategame that makes Sejuani really scary, so this is a much needed nerf.
Azir – Less zoning pressure
Most of Azir’s pressure in the early stages of laning come from his ability to slide his soldiers over to you whenever he sees fit. In tomorrow’s patch, Riot is reducing the early cooldown of his Conquering Sands to lower his ability to do that. It’s another big four-second nerf, so it should hit him pretty hard.
The attacks of his soldiers will now draw full minion aggro to Azir, too, which should scare him away from poking you so much.
Ryze – No more Ult + Zhonya’s combo
This change won’t affect Ryze’s solo queue performance so much, but the combo of his ultimate ability and Zhonya’s Hourglass or the Stopwatch add a level of safety that makes him very attractive to professional players. After tomorrow’s patch, activating the stasis of either the Stopwatch of the Hourglass will interrupt his ultimate’s cast, rendering the combo ineffective.
Master Yi and Tryndamere – More damage
As much as it sucks to hear that two of the most oppressive basic-attack-bots in the game are getting buffed, we have to be honest with ourselves—they really need it. These buffs are very straightforward, and they should help bring some popularity to the duo in solo queue.
Master Yi’s Wuju Style will grant him more passive damage, and activating it will cause it to deal more true damage. The mana cost of his Alpha Strike is also going down at later levels, improving his lategame. Similarly, Tryndamere’s base attack damage growth per level is going slightly up, and his spin will deal a good chunk more damage.
All of these changes, as well as the rest of Patch 8.3, go live tomorrow at 6am ET on the North American server.
