Riot confirms that PBE changes to Cut Down, Shield Bash, and Fleet Footwork were unintended

Designer Riot Beluga recently revealed on Reddit that the rune changes in Tuesday’s PBE patch were the result of “version stomping” and won’t be making it to the live League of Legends servers.

Testers of the latest League PBE patch were surprised to find that some runes had been reverted to what Riot has indicated are old versions, according to Surrender at 20.

Cut Down (P4)

• Tooltip changed: “Deal five percent more damage to champions with 0.1 more max health than you, increasing to 15 percent at one more max health.”

Shield Bash (R2)

• Next basic attack after gaining a new shield damage lowered from five to 30 to four to 21.

Fleet Footwork (Precision Keystone)

• Rules changed from [Healing from minions is 20 percent effective for Ranged Champions.] to [Healing is 100 percent as effective when used on a minion (50 percent effective for ranged). Healing is increased by zero percent of your critical damage modifier when triggered by a critical hit.]

A Reddit user informed the community of Riot’s seemingly surprising choice to give Fleet Footwork scaling with crit, something that hasn’t been the case since May 2018. The other changes were equally unexpected, with the underutilized Shield Bash getting a damage nerf and Cut Down suddenly dealing full damage to any champion with one more health than your own as opposed to 100 percent more health on the live servers. 

This gave Riot Beluga the opportunity to confirm the error. The impact of these changes had been tested by Riot “a year ago,” according to Beluga, and they weren’t on the schedule for this patch. 

These changes will likely be reverted shortly. But if you’re a PBE tester looking for the most accurate experience of the new patch, it might be best to take the day off.