Riot Games developers are shipping emergency K’Sante changes today, just hours after League of Legends Patch 13.21 went live, as the Pride of Nezumah’s win rate and presence continue to rocket in ranked play.
Even before League Patch 13.21 hit servers early on Thursday, the top laner was already starting to see sharp jumps in wins on Summoner’s Rift and how many players were selecting him in each ranked lobby. That surge has only been helped along by his sweeping mini-rework, and Riot devs quickly realized something needed to be rolled back—namely, damage.
The devs responded by pushing a K’Sante-focused patch live, targeting how much power his Q ability Ntofo Strikes has before he reaches three items.
The hotfix update, which landed on servers around 6pm CT on Thursday, has done little to move the dial at the time of writing, but that is no great surprise considering only a few thousand matches have been played.
Heading into this week’s patch—one of the last for League’s 2023 season—the Pride of Nezumah had already climbed to a 51.77 percent win rate when played in the top lane according to stats tracking site Lolalytics. Just two weeks ago, K’Sante had struggled to win more than 48.88 percent of matches. Similarly, in the mid lane, he had enjoyed a nine percent turnaround in the same timeframe.
That sharp upward trend only kept rising once 13.21 went live. His ban rates have also followed suit, exploding from a hair over two percent last week all the way up to 7.92 at the time of writing.
Dot Esports does expect things to fall away a little when it comes to K’Sante’s victories across the next two weeks, especially as players get their heads around the essay of tweaks and stat changes.
Riot is obviously a little worried about his long-term strength considering how quickly this hotfix went live, so we can probably expect the devs to keep a very close eye on him as things unfold through to the end of the season. Don’t be surprised if Patch 13.22 arrives stuffed full of more small K’Sante changes.
Today’s extra Oct. 26 update also included a small Ivern change which stopped any Rift Heralds from ignoring Daisy to instead aggressively target Ivern.
