League Of Legends Pulls Strong Malphite Changes From PBE

League of Legends' Malphite won't receive some powerful buffs to Seismic Shard and Brutal Strikes in the next patch that were recently being tested on the PBE.

The proposed changes tweaked both abilities in multiple ways that would allow Malphite to stick closer to enemies and last longer in fights at a damage and speed duration trade-off.

Below are the exact changes being tested on the PBE as reported by Surrender@20:

• Seismic Shard (Q):
• Cooldown changed from 8 at all ranks to 11/10/9/8/7
• Mana cost lowered from 70/75/80/85/90 to 50/55/60/65/70
• Magic damage lowered from 70/120/170/220/270 to 60/90/120/150/180
• Movement speed steal changed from 14/17/20/23/26% to 20% at all ranks
• Movement speed steal duration lowered from 4 seconds to 3 seconds

• Brutal Strikes (W):
• [New Effect] "While Granite Shield holds, this bonus is tripled to x."
• Armor lowered from 15/20/25/30/35% to 10/15/20/25/30%

Regarding the changes, Riot Axes noted that the buffs were sizing up to be pretty significant so far.

"The buffs are testing as very powerful, something has to give," Riot Axes commented. "That said, I hear you on the concern that this isn't the Malphite that people are attached to, and I'm raising that with the team. Most likely outcome is we go live with this, maybe with a bit more tuning, but keep an extra close eye on reaction (and not just metrics) once Malphite players get to play with it."

An hour later, Axes responded to the initial comment to say that they would indeed be removing the changes from the upcoming patch.

"Talked it over with the team," Axes said. "We're pulling the changes from this patch. We believe that it is still a good overall direction, but we're going to do a further tuning pass on the Q. Expect it back on PBE with some tuning next week, but it's now unlikely to ship before 7.19 because 7.18 is the Worlds patch."

Providing more detail on the changes, Axes said that they still intend to change Malphite's Seismic Shard and that the Brutal Strikes does a sufficient job of reinforcing the tank's identity vs. physical damage-dealers.

Further changes are expected to come soon for Malphite and his tanky abilities, just not during this coming patch.