League of Legends‘ Patch 13.22 included big changes to Janna, and now the champion is suffering from a decline in her win rate.
Over the past several patches heading into the end of the 2023 season, Riot Games has opted to bring closer attention to champions that may be performing well in some places while doing poorly in others through massive adjustments and overhauls. Though the problems with these champions aren’t solved immediately, some enjoy the success of revitalized kits quicker than others.
But this hasn’t been the case for Janna just yet.
As part of Patch 13.22, Riot sought to acknowledge the woes of players of the Storm’s Fury by taking another look at her place in the ever-changing meta, moving the support champion away from her “low-interaction” disengage playstyle and back into a more active enchanter by reverting some changes made to her last year. Yet this massive change in playstyle back to one that hasn’t been favored in over a year is making it harder for Janna, who currently sits at around a 50-percent win rate according to data from OP.GG, U.GG, and champion.gg—four percent lower than just one patch ago.
In Patch 12.2, Janna’s kit was almost entirely overhauled, changing her identity from the long-standing aggressive enchanter who could poke at enemies with ease while providing ample support to her allies, into one who flourished in solely disengaging enemy advantages and ganks. It appeared Riot felt her supportive capabilities were too strong at the time, as even her E and ultimate—the only ways Janna can directly assist her allies without items—had their power shifted around, thus also impacting her itemization.
With how League has evolved since then, however, Riot has reevaluated this playstyle Janna held for a number of years and found it could be reimplemented into the current version of the game while not taking away the new identity as a strong counterpick to dive and frontline-heavy compositions. Unfortunately, since players had become accustomed to Janna’s new identity in the support role, it’s been difficult to figure out the new best way to play her.
Part of the reverted changes to Janna brings power back into her W, Zephyr, which acts as her primary poking tool. Thanks to a small update to her passive, she can now deal bonus magic damage with both her W and auto attack scaling with her movement speed, which synergizes greatly with her speedy niche. Though this opens the build path Janna can now take, it has players experimenting with whether this new (yet traditional) W-max build is to be the norm, or whether a more supportive E-max build—which has been standard for over a year—remains superior.
But these changes have certainly enticed a number of League players, even outside of just those who have been anticipating some updates to the Storm’s Fury for some time. Janna’s pick rate has soared to seven percent—up from three percent in Patch 13.22—meaning that, with more time, players are likely to find out just where she sits in the current state of the game and if these reverts to her abilities to a former state are just what she needed to blow away the competition.
