League of Legends: Potential Ezreal Mini-Rework Incoming!

Ask any ADC what their favorite champion in League of Legends is, and you'll get two different responses. Every ADC in Bronze and Silver will invariably cite Vayne as their favorite, while those in any other rating will almost certainly say Ezreal, though Jhin will likely get an honorable mention. Ezreal belongs to a select group of evergreen champions that includes names like Thresh, Ahri, and Lee Sin. No matter how many nerfs these champion get, and no matter how terribly they fit in the current metagame, they'll invariably be one of the most popular picks in the game.

Unfortunately, Ezreal is very much on the downswing as of late. While he was quite powerful at the end of Season 6 and theoretically only saw his items get buffed since then, he just hasn't managed to fit into the Blade of the Ruined King-centric metagame that Season 7 has (d)evolved into. While Ezreal does typically pick up Bork, he does so as his third item in most cases, and it's difficult to lane against a champion with a BorK when all you have is a Tear of the Goddess and a Sheen. Sure, you could rush a BorK on Ezreal, but then why aren't you just playing Lucian?

Thankfully, Riot knows how to keep ADC mains and Korean players happy. Meddler took to the forums today and said that Ezreal would certainly have some buffs incoming and that those buff could come in the form of a mini-rework that would change Essence Flux into another spell entirely.

"Ez looks pretty weak at the moment," Meddler said, leading with the obvious. "Some of that makes sense with the current meta, state of items in particular, which aren't so favorable to him. Something we'll want to consider before buffing him however is whether this is finally the time to do some work on his W, make it a more satisfying spell. Lot of value from doing that, main downside is that we've got some other small updates in the queue already (Azir, LB being the main two). Would be looking for a W that had interesting skill expression, still felt right thematically for Ezreal and didn't remove gameplay or intended weaknesses from him (so not just W affecting minions or W removing the skilltest on who E hits for example)."

While this all sounds wonderful for fans of the traditional ADC Ezreal style of play, there is one category of Ezreal mains that weren't acknowledged in the announcement, and who fear that their build might soon cease to exist. These players are, of course, AP Ezreal players, who tend to rely on Essence Flux as their main AOE damage tool. There's so far been no word as to whether Essense Flux would get replaced by another AP-scaling ability or not, but for the sake of all the AP Ezreal players out there, we sure hope it is, or else Riot best prepared for some vitriolic backlash.