League of Legends Is Testing a Nerf to Healing, Shielding Items

A nerf for the Forbidden Idol item in League of Legends and the items that build out of it is being tested to reduce the effectiveness of the items' heals and shields.

Considering how many healing and shielding items grow out of Forbidden Idol, nerfing the item is a perfect place to start if you want to affect the completed items. The timing of the nerf now has to do with the fact that Enchanters – the subclass of champions that includes characters like Janna and Lulu – have access to more gold now and are able to easily stack the power of shields and heals.

"We're testing a nerf to Forbidden Idol, and items that build from it, where they give less Heal/Shield power," Riot Meddler said. "That's driven by the belief that too much of Enchanter power especially is coming from that stat, which was previously balanced at those numbers when Enchanters had less gold income and therefore weren't stacking the effect as much."

But as far as when the nerf for the item component will go live, that remains to be seen. Rolling it out sooner rather than later is one option that Meddler said will help in the long run, but there is a concern about how it'll affect the current state of Enchanters.

"We feel pretty good about that nerf long term. A complicating factor though is that Enchanters aren't generally looking out of line at present. We're confident it's a good change overall, but not necessarily in the short term however. We're still discussing whether it's something we should ship now, and then adjust around it in following patches. Or whether we should hold it until we have other changes to go with it. Or until enchanter strength is high. Or at the least we until won't have as large a gap between patches as the upcoming holiday period, so if follow up is needed it's not as delayed."

The nerf will hit the PBE before it goes live, whenever that may be, so look for it there first to test out the changes yourself.