Patch 7.10 will be here tomorrow in League of Legends, and there are a ton of champion changes arriving with it, according to the official patch notes.
It can be difficult to sort through all of the changes a patch brings and truly understand what each one means for the game. Fortunately, you don’t have to. There are some updates in Patch 7.10 that stand out among the rest, and it’s important to know what they are and what they’ll do to the meta of League.
Here are the five most important champion changes of Patch 7.10.
1) Raise your dongers, because Heimerdinger is being reworked ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ
Heimerdinger isn’t going to be so mindless anymore, as his ability to place turrets in lane and stand still while they shred apart his enemies won’t be plausible anymore. Let’s rephrase that. You can do it, it just won’t help you at all.
All of the Lord of the Dings’ abilities are being tweaked, including his passive, in an effort to make him more challenging, fun, and less of a pain in the ass. The basic attacks from his turrets are going to deal much less damage, but the special beam attacks will deal more. Likewise, it will take much longer for the turrets to charge up the beam attack. When Heimer lands his other abilities, it charges up the beam attack by a large margin. In fact, when landing his grenade (which does a lot more damage now, by the way), it fully stacks the beam attack on all nearby turrets. That’s right, he’s now a skillshot-oriented mage. Land abilities to prompt the turrets to launch their beefed-up beam attacks, and watch your enemies die.
His passive won’t grant him health regeneration anymore either. It will instead boost his movement speed when he’s near turrets, so he can weave in and out of them while launching spells. We did say he’d be less of a pain in the ass, but that doesn’t mean his annoying days are totally behind him. Overall, this rework is a huge buff for Donger for all stages of the game, and he’ll work best on objective siege team comps.
2) Okay. (That means Rammus is getting a rework, too)
The armordillo is going to be a bit more terrifying after this rework. His entire kit is being switched around to revolve entirely around his new passive. The passive, Spiked Shell, will now make Rammus deal magic damage on every auto attack that scales up with his armor. Yes, this means that the new Abyssal Scepter will be a great item on him, which will also amp up any Thornmails he happens to buy.
His new Powerball (Q) is basically the same, but it’s been updated to be a much healthier spell. It doesn’t last quite as long, but it’s been buffed on all other fronts. A lower cooldown, higher speed, tighter collision radius, more damage, and higher slow are all coming for his Q. The only downside is that it’s a channeled effect now, so it can be more easily interrupted.
The new version of Defensive Ball Curl (W) is really where his new passive starts to shine. When it’s active, his passive damage is increased by 50 percent, and his attacks will take his passive’s damage when they hit him as well (the damage increase is included there). The ability now slows Rammus while it’s active, but he can reactivate it to cancel the effect. Likewise, his new Frenzying Taunt (E) increases his attack speed by a lot while the taunt is active, which means more hits from his passive. The attack speed boost duration refreshes while his other abilities are active.
His ultimate is basically the same, but it deals more damage to structures and slows anyone caught in it now. Overall, this is a massive buff to Rammus. It may actually be enough to toss Rammus into the meta as a very strong pick.
3) Break out the confetti and party hats, because Lulu is finally getting nerfed
It’s no secret that Lulu is ridiculously OP right now in League, and it’s mostly because of the support item meta right now. With Redemption and Ardent Censor and a shield from Locket of the Iron Solari, her shields are simply too strong. Combine that with her crowd control, disruption, and respectable damage, and you have one scary little Yordle.
With this patch, her shield power is being lowered at all ranks. No, this probably won’t be enough to make her weak, but she’ll definitely be more tolerable.
4) The happy little tree is a little too happy
We thought the last round of nerfs would be enough to knock Ivern down a few pegs, but we were very wrong. Not only did Ivern continue to dominate the meta, his win-rate actually went up after all those nerfs, defying all science and reason.
Clearly, Riot needed to keep whacking him with the nerf hammer, and keep whacking it shall. Clearing camps with his passive will now consume a considerably higher amount of health and mana. Oh, and his movement speed is being lowered by five.
5) Graves, for the love of all that is good, please just stop pub-stomping everyone
Graves has been walking all over the jungle meta for the past six months. Despite lethality getting nerfed earlier this year and tanks getting buffed in the last patch, Graves is still trotting around like he owns the place. That would be because he does own the place.
No matter who you’re playing as, it’s hard to contest a Graves after he picks up an item or two, and that kind of oppressive snowballing isn’t very healthy for the game. Damage on his main damaging ability, End of the Line, is being lowered at all ranks, but the bonus AD scaling is getting a slight buff. That means that the ability will deal less damage up front, and it requires Graves to get enough gold to build up AD items to get much use out of it.
This shouldn’t be enough to knock Graves out of the meta, but he’ll definitely be a weaker pick. Kha’zix and Rengar may surge up in the jungle as a result of fewer Graves (Graveses?) running around. Other early game heavy-hitters may also rise up, like Elise and Xin Zhao.
We didn’t get into some of the smaller champion changes coming with tomorrow’s patch, so if you’d like to find out what’s happening, check out the full patch notes. This patch shouldn’t be enough to alter the meta in any crazy way, but it will shake things up a bit.
