Tomorrow might just be the best day of the year for League of Legends. If it isn’t the best day, it will certainly be in the running.
Patch 7.21 is dropping—and with it, Sejuani, the Ardent Censer, and Rammus are all getting nerfed.
Sejuani will be the third and final tank from the Midseason Update in April to receive big nerfs. Both Maokai and Zac took their turns at the top of the jungle meta, and she has risen up after their nerfs over the course of the last four months. As a late game monster tank, Sejuani’s early game just has too much impact. She doesn’t struggle at all—even against high damage early game junglers that should be able to knock her down.
The Ardent Censer has had a stranglehold on the support meta for the entire summer and so far this fall. If you’re not playing an Ardent Censer support like Janna, Lulu, Karma, or Soraka, you’re automatically at a disadvantage simply because you can’t build this powerhouse item.
Rammus hasn’t been quite as much of a problem as Sej or the Censer, but he’s still too strong in a myriad of situations without really having a downside. That, along with the incontestable strengths of Sejuani and the Ardent Censer, should finally come to an end tomorrow.
Censing the problem
We don’t really have to spell out the issues with the Ardent Censer. If supports run gold runes and rush into buying it every single game even before a Sightstone, the problem becomes glaringly obvious. No one item should be rushed every single game, and the entirety of a role’s meta shouldn’t revolve around it, either.
Riot tried tweaking the Censer in Patch 7.19 to move the item’s strengths around to make it only super helpful in specific circumstances, but that ended up making the problem worse. This time around, it’s just getting nerfed. In fact, it’s a big, giant, enormous nerf—and the enchanter meta of supports should absolutely take a hit because of it.
The attack speed buff is being dropped from 20-35 percent way down to 10-30 percent. Now that the item will start out at 10 percent attack speed, it will be much weaker during the early game, which is when it was at its strongest prior to this nerf. That’s not all, though. The on-hit magic damage given by the item is also being dropped—all the way down from 20-35 to 5-20. That’s right, it’s now going to give you five damage on-hit now when you first buy it, which is almost worthless.
The dueling capabilities of the Censer are going to be nigh nonexistent after this absurd nerf tomorrow, and with that, the enchanter meta will be knocked down a few pegs.
That’s a big boar
Sejuani’s early game power is a little too high for such a scaling champion. And by a little too high, we actually mean out of control. She’s been the queen of the jungle for months, and she’s gone without a significant nerf the entire ride. Truth be told she’s one of the few tank junglers left in the meta—and after tomorrow, we may see a significant rise in damage junglers yet again.
As for the nerfs themselves, her early game is being targeted the most. They’re almost entirely base stat changes. Her base armor is taking a nerf from 27 down to 22, her armor per level is being dropped from four to three, her base MR is being dropped from 32.1 to 27.1, and her MR per level is dropping from 1.25 to 0.75. The MR nerf isn’t as major—but a five armor nerf and one per level is a lot larger than you think. Jungle camps are going to pack quite a punch to her now, and she won’t be able to stay healthy long enough to farm and gank nearly as often.
Her abilities are all being tweaked—a small cooldown change here, and some resistance changes to her passive there, but her base stats being hit is the big ticket item. With a significantly weaker jungle clear, early game junglers will be able to abuse her through crafty invades and counterganks, and suddenly, locking in Sejuani isn’t such a safe option anymore.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That’s the terrifying noise you hear just before you see the Righteous Glory Rammus fly out of the river and smack you in the face. This wasn’t so much a problem earlier this summer after his rework in Patch 7.10. After huge nerfs to the frontrunner tank junglers Zac and Maokai, and after Sejuani started to be banned almost every game, players started to realize just how strong Rammus can be.
As it turns out, he’s a little too strong. He’s not quite as big of an issue as Sejuani, but he still has his own problems. Where Sejuani is too useful at all points in a game, Rammus is too useful against any type of team, even though he was designed to be a counter to heavy AD team comps.
That being said, the goal of his changes tomorrow isn’t just to flat out nerf him, but instead to make him less useful against magic comps while at the same time solidifying his role as an anti-AD tank. The MR bonus from his Defensive Ball Curl will now only scale from 25 to 45 percent, way down from 50 to 70. The base MR from the ability is also being lowered from 20 to 10. On the flip side, the bonus armor is actually increasing from 50 to 70 percent all the way up to 50 to 90 percent, which is actually a significant buff.
After that, Rammus will be much weaker against mages, but even stronger against AD champions. In an ADC focused meta, this should actually make him stronger, but at least he’ll be easier to counter.
