If you’ve been a fan of the charismatic support champion Rakan, you might want to take a look at some of the changes he is going through on the League of Legends Public Beta Environment. His engage combos are going to be drastically different than what you are used to.
First, Rakan will no longer be able to use his W or E abilities during his ultimate. This means that he cannot pop his ultimate and use his Grand Entrance to engage, which he has been doing for the past few years. The combo is a crucial part of his playstyle, but Riot says that “the goal is to remove this interaction to give power elsewhere.”
Instead of being able to pop in and out of an enemy team, Rakan is getting a big increase in his movement speed during the ultimate. His movement speed is increasing from 50 percent to 100 percent, while hitting an enemy champion gives him 200 percent bonus movement speed.
Also, the ultimate is no longer limited to one champion for the bonus speed, meaning hitting more than one champion will refresh the bonuses given. Finally, the duration of the ultimate has been decreased from four seconds to three. Blake “Squad5” Smith, a game designer at Riot, says that he has seen “skeptical Rakan players change their mind after testing it.”
Unfortunately, it looks like many people are having a pretty bad first impression of these changes. Fans of the champion are saying that Rakan is now “dead,” because he lacks the sustainability to engage without dying instantly to crowd control. We will have to wait and see if Riot continues with the changes, or if it ends up reverting them in the future.
