Pyke has become a menace in solo lanes for many pro teams. That’s not gone unnoticed by Riot, which is giving him a number of nerfs in the upcoming Patch 9.13.
Pyke’s strengths lie in his ability to stay healthy in difficult poke matchups, while also using his great mobility to roam around and affect other lanes. His passive, Gift of the Drowned ones, allows him to sustain and not worry about health in the laning phase.
Afterward, he has some great movement abilities and crowd control to set up ganks and roams across the map for himself and his teammates. Additionally, if a teamfight starts to go awry, you need to avoid giving him resets on ultimate, Death from Above. There’s a reason he has been in use by multiple top teams across the world, including the 2019 MSI champions, G2 Esports.
“We’re targeting solo lane Pyke because his strong anti-harass tools make him an impossible-to-avoid death trap if he gets too far ahead,” The team said. “To help curb that, we’re specifically hitting his wave clear.”
The big change Riot has made is how the stab on Pyke’s Q ability affects targets. Now, the stab is no longer an area-of-effect ability and instead affects a single target, prioritizing champions. Bone Skewer’s stab cast also no longer deals 15 percent bonus damage.
To balance these changes out, the cooldown has been reduced from 14/12.5/11/9.5/8 seconds to 12/11/10/9/8 seconds. Riot has also made the movement speed on Ghostwater Dive scale with levels and his E, Phantom Undertow, no longer affects non-champions. All of these changes will make farming a lot more difficult for Pyke in solo lanes, which should allow for better counterattack from his opposition.
Published: Jun 25, 2019 01:00 pm