Over the past couple of patches, Aphelios and Senna have become two of the stronger picks in the competitive League of Legends scene. Both champions hover above a 90 percent presence in both the LEC and LCS. Riot started deploying significant nerfs to them over the last few patches, but it was not enough to stop them being prioritized.
Senna has risen in play after the professional teams found a new way to play her with a feasting playstyle. Aphelios has been a constant pick or ban since his inception. His presumed weaknesses are not existent due to every weapon combination being powerful with no downsides.
The nerf to Senna’s soul stacking should make her feasting playstyle weaker and return her to the traditional ADC role if she wants to be more powerful. The Weakened Soul cooldown change will also make it harder for Senna to stack since from level one to level six, she will be gaining souls from champions 50 percent less often.
Aphelios, on the other hand, got his lifesteal weapon nerfed, which will allow the opponents to harass him early on and make it easier for them to kill him later in team fights as well. The Infernum weapon damage nerf to minions will make it harder for Aphelios to instantly clear waves without his Ruunan’s Hurricane early on, allowing for more counter-play from opponents.
The Darius nerf is warranted since his priority went up with the jungle specific buffs to his kit. While before he was a lane bully in the top-lane, he quickly shifted to being one for the enemy jungler—now he can walk into the jungle and steal camps with ease due to the increased damage.
Other non-popular champs received small buffs, which should increase their play rate and win rate by a small margin and leave room for improvement.
Twisted Fate might come back into the meta after his blue card ratio has been practically doubled, from 0.5 to 0.9. Will Reginald make his back into the professional scene if these buffs go through?
Riot should be cautious with Soraka buffs, even though she received significant nerfs recently. It will want to avoid a situation where Soraka goes back to a solo lane. But in case you want to pick her up for the solo lane and see if she can still harass and zone out all enemy laners, we’ve got you covered.
Patch 10.6 should be coming out next week, on Wednesday, March 18, along with the various changes to autofill, duo parity, and other various champions.
