League of Legends: Locket's Shield Might Only Block Magic Damage Soon

The Locket of the Iron Solari support item in League of Legends is being considered for nerfs in the future as well as other changes that might make its shield only effective against magic attacks.

Locket, along with Ardent Censer and other support items such as Redemption, are almost mandatory parts of your typical support's builds. They offer quite a bit of power when used at the right time, but Locket appears to have some unhealthy results when used against certain champions. Riot Meddler says that the item is being examined for nerfs for a variety of reasons, particularly when it comes to combining it with other effects to shut down initiations.

"Big concern is about how much Locket shuts down burst champs that have to commit to a fight (assassins and divers mainly)," Meddler said. "By itself Locket's not so much of a problem, when stacked with other ally defending effects however it can make otherwise vulnerable targets excessively hard to kill. One of the directions we're looking at as a result is pushing it so it's still a strong option on tanks but isn't nearly as effective on enchanters."

If you're a support or an ADC, you'll probably be thinking that the whole point of Locket is to protect yourself and your team from these types of attacks. But from an assassin or diver's perspective, you'll likely relate just as well to the bitter feeling of having a support shield or heal their allies, then pop Locket and whatever else they have as they add layer after layer of defense.

As for the routes that they'll take to change Locket, there's more than one option being looked at, one of the most interesting ones being it's shield only being effective against magic attacks.

"For Locket one of the paths we're looking at is making it more dependent on building really tanky," Meddler continued. "That might mean less base/more HP ratio, could also mean things like an Armor/MR ratio instead however. We've also been considering other approaches to make it somewhat situational too, like a magic damage only shield."

No changes have been firmly decided on for Patch 7.21, but Meddler indicated that more details would come as they test out potential avenues for change.