Winners and Losers in League of Legends Patch 7.13

Maokai

 

Ever since the death of AP support Maokai (a phrase that I never thought I’d type in my life) the Twisted Treant as had some trouble finding a place on Summoner’s Rift. He brings less to the table than the other popular top lane tanks at the moment – while also getting directly countered by most of them – and jungle Maokai is unlikely to ever become a viable pick unless Riot give him some rather ill-advised buffs. Despite all that, there’s still hope for everyone’s favorite angry tree, as he’s getting some love in patch 7.13. They aren’t major, but they’re all just about all that we can hope for, as Riot is understandably very cautious when it comes to balancing Maokai.

Still, buffs don’t need to be major in order to be impactful, and these buffs are tailored towards giving Maokai a strong identity, which is what he needs in order to see play. Nature’s Grasp is a very potent ultimate, and giving him more ready access to it while also improving it’s effectiveness may just be what Maokai needs. He’s still going to be weak in lane – 25 hp isn’t anywhere near enough to solve that – but at least there’s now an obvious light at the end of the tunnel. With max cooldown reduction Maokai will soon have access to Nature’s Grasp once every minute, which is just outstanding for games that end up decided by team fights. If a huge AOE snare isn’t enough of a reason to suffer through Maokai’s abysmal laning phase, then I’m not sure what will be.

 

Galio

 

At this point, I’m done assuming that any change short of removing Galio from the game outright will be enough to kill him.He’s already survived so many nerfs that at this point my money is on the giant statue, not on the nerf bat. Galio’s sole change in patch 7.13, while subtle on the surface, is actually his biggest nerf yet, but it’s still hard to say whether he’ll actually disappear or not. He survived having all of his skills nerfed, he survived having Doran Ring stacking taken away, he’ll probably survive having his waveclear taken away. And make no mistake, that’s all this nerf is, as it ensures that Galio won’t be one-shotting creep waves until he’s made a substantial investment into ability power, something most Galio players are loath to do.

So will mid Galio still be viable if he has to use Winds of War twice in order to clear the mid lane instead of once? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but it’s probably enough of a nerf to dissuade most of the solo queue players who have been playing him recently.

 

Rek’sai

 

Rek’sai has already rebounded with force after an initially lukewarm reception after her rework. She’s now one of the ten best junglers in solo queue according to her win rate, and she’s even starting to make appearances on the competitive stage, though she’s not doing an altogether stellar job there.

7.14 includes a round of bug fixes and buffs that will, technically, increase Rek’sai’s power, but will, on average, have less of an impact for you the lower in rank you are. In the upper echelons of play Rek’sai rarely buys enough attack damage to make the small buff to her ultimate’s scaling relevant. The traditional Black Cleaver and Warrior Enchantment build won’t even do thirty more damage from Void Rush after these changes, which isn’t enough to matter.

For lower level players, however, all bets are off. Rek’sai certainly has the AD scaling to support a pure damage build, and such a build is much more likely to succeed when you’re facing inexperienced and disorganized opponents. Furthermore, the bug fix to Unburrow is quite important for less experienced Rek’sai players, who might not have been aware of the long-standing bug and were thus sacrificing some of their potential damage output.

The changes aren’t large in scope, and certainly aren’t enough to put Rek’sai over the top, but they do still indicate that Riot thinks Rek’sai is underpowered, which is definitely not the case. Buff that go any further than these aren’t likely to receive such a cool response, as Rek’sai isn’t that far from being straight up overpowered.

 

Kennen

 

We all knew it was coming. Kennen has been a dominant force in the top lane ever since the Blade of the Ruined King changes, and has recently even started to see play in the bottom lane as an ADC. Unfortunately, the changes in 7.13 only affect Kennen’s ability to play one of those roles, and it probably isn’t the one that Riot intended.

The fact of the matter is that the Electrical Surge changes look much worse than they are. A Kennen with the default runes and masteries is only going to be doing around 15 less damage per proc for most of the game after these changes, which doesn’t mean much. The reason why Kennen has been dominant top lane pick for so long has little to do with his pre-Blade of the Ruined King damage and everything to do with how much control he has on his lane. Fifteen less damage means nothing because Kennen is already, in most cases, stunning his target and kiting them to death. Sure, it will take him one more auto attack to actually kill his target now, but that’s not going to stop people from playing top lane Kennen.

However, the second major change to AD Kennen will effectively remove him from the ADC pool. The strength of ADC Kennen is that he offers unparalleled teamfight control for an ADC, as the synergy between Electrical Surge and Runaan’s Hurricane allow him to chain stun targets with impunity. Removing the synergy between those two won’t hurt split push top lane Kennen all that much, but it completely destroys his teamfight strength, a strength that ADC Kennen heavily leaned upon in order ot remain viable. With that removed there’s little chance you’ll see too many more ADC Kennen’s either on the LCS stage or in solo queue.

Now let us all join together in prayer for Rekkles’ career, which is about to embark upon a downward spiral…

 

Shaco

 

Depending on your ranking, Shaco either got slightly nerfed or slightly buffed by patch 7.13. Two-Shiv poison had it’s scaling changed in such a way that Shaco will have to actually build AD in order to get any mileage of the ability. Now, if you were planning on building a Ravenous Hydra and a Trinity Force, that’s no problem whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the most successful Shaco players were all picking up Cinderhulk and a smattering of bruiser/tank items. For those players, Two-Shiv Poison just ate a huge nerf, as not only is it now the ability that you must max first now, it also requires 100 bonus attack damage to do as much as it did before. Granted, a Titanic Hydra and a Black Cleaver will cover that, but the damage will still be significantly worse than it was before, and Deceive will also be weaker for the majority of the game.

Suffice it to say that you can safely assume that any Shaco you see from now on will be an AD Shaco. The bruiser builds just take too long to scale into relevance now unless you manage to get obscenely fed.