League of Legends' Xin Zhao Has Updated Abilities, Visuals on PBE

The League of Legends PBE was updated on Tuesday after the release of Patch 7.18’s notes, and [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

The League of Legends PBE was updated on Tuesday after the release of Patch 7.18's notes, and Xin Zhao's mini-rework is now available to preview.

Xin Zhao has been in line for a smaller-scale update for a few months now after a minor rework for the champion was discussed in a recent Champion Roadmap, and due to the smaller size of his changes, he's already almost ready to go. With a series of changes shipping to several of his abilities while preserving his dive-and-duel persona, the update breathes a breath of fresh air into Xin and looks fantastic on the PBE.

The jungler's Q, Three Talon Strike, is the only one of his abilities that was left untouched during the update. It'll still pop the enemy with three enhanced auto attacks, the last one launching them upwards. Full details on each one of Xin Zhao's ability changes were outlined in a recent post from Riot Xenogenic, the designer who worked on the champion's update.

Courtesy of some stats pulled by Surrender@20 regarding Xin Zhao's PBE update, the champion also has slightly increased attack speed per level now, the gains raised to 3.5 per level as opposed to 2.6. His new passive, Determination, also received some stat details that shows its attack damage and ability power scalings:

Determination

  • "Every third attack deals [20/40/60/80% AD at 1/6/11/16] as bonus damage and heals Xin Zhao for x (+10% tAD) (+40% AP).
    • Heal value: 8/11/14/17/20/23/26/29/32/35/38/41/44/47/50/53/56/59

His new W, Wind Becomes Lightning, has a pretty long range on the second half of the two-part attack that can be seen in the above video from Skin Spotlights. The ability deals 50 percent less damage to minions, and lifesteal applies to both attacks but only at 33 percent.

The new ultimate was a point of concern for players who thought that it would make it too difficult to damage the champion with what seemed like a combination of Shen's AOE block and Poppy's old ultimate, but the range on it seems pretty fair. There's still room to kite Xin inside or escape, depending on what players want to do, and the zone is big enough to allow multiple champions inside to fight Xin.

You'll also notice that the above video shows several updates to Xin's visuals, sound effects, and animations, all of which refine his identity as a spear-wielding duelist.

Xin's update is currently testable on the PBE before it eventually goes live for everyone.

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