The newest League of Legends champion Naafiri has taken to the Rift by force, with the Hound of a Hundred Bites already leaving a mark on the mid lane meta. This hasn’t fazed the Riot Games dev team, however, who are pleased so far with how the champion has landed despite releasing a “micropatch” to nerf her slightly.
Naafiri is already recording a 54 percent win rate across the board when played in mid and is at parity at the highest ranks according to Riot champion design manager Stephen “Raptorr” Auker. “We are thus far happy with the shape of where she’s landing and are not seeing any major systemic problems,” he went on to say, noting that it was only day one and players were still settling into the new champ.
That said, Raptorr identified her growing mid-lane win rate would only rise as players became accustomed to her abilities, so has tweaked the champion slightly to account for this. Naafiri’s Q, Darkin Daggers, will deal less damage after level one as her power spike when maxing the ability was “a tad over.” The ability will also deal less damage to minions, citing her wave clear was too fast.
Her E, Eviscerate, has also been adjusted heavily given her strength in the mid-game, where Raptorr noted Naafiri would take over games even with a slight gold advantage. Both the passthrough and explosion damage has been reduced by as much as 20 percent after level one.
Alongside Eviscerate, her ultimate The Call of the Pack has copped a hefty nerf in the early and mid-game. The AD boost received has been reduced by nearly 50 percent, with Raptorr also targeting the ability as a pressure point for players taking her on in the mid-game. At max level, the ultimate is basically untouched.
Related: The dogs are out: League’s newest champion, Naafiri, is now live
The dev team had noted over half of Naafiri’s games were in the jungle role, despite this being a preferred secondary role for the champion. But given her abysmal 41 percent win rate at elite ranks, Naafiri’s jungle viability is in question—something Raptorr and the dev team have said they’ll work on investigating.
“We will be exploring jungle changes for Naafiri to bring it up to viability,” Raptorr said but added these changes weren’t likely to arrive before patch 13.15 in early August.
Item-wise, Naafiri was intended to build Lethality Mythic items like Duskblade of Draktharr or Prowler’s Claw, with Edge of Night and Serylda’s Grudge to follow up. All early signs are pointing to this being accurate, with Duskblade her most purchased Mythic according to stats site U.GG.
Some players had tried working attack speed or tanky items into her build, but Raptorr pointed out these builds had limited to no success as was the intention of the team. Naafiri’s intended skill build was the same; some had attempted a Q-W-E order, but Q-E-W was always the plan for Naafiri and players had stuck to this formula—at least on day one.
The patch is now live, with all eyes on Naafiri’s win rate now to see if these changes have their intended effect.
