Riot is answering the prayers of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of ADC mains—it’s finally buffing Ezreal. The buff is on the PBE right now, and it’s actually pretty huge. It’s simple, but it’ll definitely make a difference.
Before everyone starts to chant in unison, “Riot’s doing this on purpose so people will buy his new Star Guardian skin,” let’s all remember how desperately Ezreal needs this buff. He’s been struggling a lot lately, and it’s much more likely that he’s being buffed because Riot realizes he needs it rather than the fact that the developer is trying to hike up skin sales. Trust us, they don’t need to do that. The skin is awesome enough.
In a meta where almost every single ADC in the game is a viable option, Ezreal has consistently remained as perhaps the only exception. He’s downright bad. Riot has stated that he’s going to be targeted for a small gameplay update to bring some identity to his very lame W, but until then, something needs to be done so he’s playable in the mean time. And don’t worry, after this buff, he’s definitely going to be playable.
What’s the buff, you ask? His Q, Mystic Shot, is getting a damage increase. Its AD ratio is being raised from 110 percent of his total AD to 125 percent. It doesn’t sound like a lot, we know, but let’s put it into perspective.
At max rank, his Q is on a three second cooldown. It’s reduced to 1.5 if you actually hit the champion with the Q, so let’s assume that Ezreal is slinging a Q every 1.5 seconds into an enemy. At 200 AD, that ability is dealing 115 base damage and 220 more based on his current AD. That means that right now in the game, and assuming he lands all of his Q’s, Ezreal can deal 1,340 damage in six seconds with only that ability.
After this buff hits, his Q would deal 115 base damage and 250 more, or 125 percent of his total AD of 200. That means that in six seconds, again assuming he lands all of his Q’s, he can deal 1,460 damage. That’s a 30 damage buff for each Q, and over 100 more damage in six seconds. That’s insane. In other words, Ezreal will deal 30 more damage every 1.5 seconds—a major increase to DPS.
Ezreal isn’t the only one getting buffed either. Urgot, League’s newest member of the major gameplay redesign family, has been underperforming since his big rework last patch, and he’s getting buffs too. The duration on his ultimate is being hiked up to four seconds from three, and his Purge will now stay locked onto one target for its entire duration if they’re locked onto when the ability begins. This is also a huge buff, and both Urgot and Ezreal will likely be seeing a lot more play time when Patch 7.17 rolls around as early as next week.
