League of Legends Buffs Crit Marksmen With Hotfix

A League of Legends hotfix has been announced today that's releasing to buff items that crit marksmen frequently purchase.

The bottom of Summoner's Rift has been a tumultuous area to be in recently – a clown fiesta, as League of Legends players would say – where marksmen are no longer the only champions that get played. Amid bruisers, hypercarries, mages, and the less frequent traditional marksmen, the champions that perform best with items that increase critical chance have been doing noticeably worse in the current non-meta meta. Lucian's been seen quite often in the bot lane along with Kai'Sa, a champ who's known for being able to diversify builds, but crit marksmen haven't been nearly as popular.

Riot Games isn't looking to push the meta wholly back to marksmen in the bot lane, specifically those who use crit items, but it does want to even the playing field just a bit. League of Legends product lead Richard "Riot Maple" Henkel tweeted that a hotfix would be going live today that increased the crit items' power through several slight buffs. Infinity Edge, Stormrazor, and Essence Reaver were all included in the changelist that was shared by Henkel who later clarified one of the Essence Reaver changes.

We have a few tweaks to crit itemization shipping today via hotfix. We don't want to risk overbuffing crit marksman and losing the bot diversity we have at the moment, but do believe crit marksman are presently a touch too weak.

— Richard Henkel (@Riot_Maple) June 18, 2018

As a result, we're going to ship the item buffs today and then observe what individual champ followup is or is not necessary on 8.13 and future patches. Current changes are included on the image. pic.twitter.com/ZlwRbkOeSX

— Richard Henkel (@Riot_Maple) June 18, 2018

Sorry! I should clarify that the Essence Reaver passive activation model isn't changing. Ignore the bracketed part of the image for ER

— Richard Henkel (@Riot_Maple) June 18, 2018

Of course, it's not just crit marksmen that use these items, so the buffs will also help out other champions who have elected to pick up the updated versions of these items since they were reworked. Stormrazor's been used both in the bot lane and on other champions like junglers and top laners while Essence Reaver has found new homes as well. Renketon comes to mind as a champ that's been buying Essence Reaver as a second or third item with the top lane menace writing off the mana-restoring part of the item as a small price to pay for the lowered cooldowns and increased burst potential that it offers.

The League of Legends crit hotfix is scheduled to go live on Monday.