Patch 9.2 is shaping up to be one of the largest balance patches League of Legends has received in months, even right after the pre-season’s end. And now, another round of nerfs aimed at popular mid laners has arrived on the PBE.
Cassiopeia, Kassadin, Brand, and more champions took some hits to their damage and cooldowns. If you’ve been playing League lately, you probably know exactly why. They’ve been running rampant as some of the most successful champions in any role, and as they have current control of the meta, these changes will likely result in some larger scale meta changes, too.
Cassiopeia’s changes are some of the largest, lowering the damage and cooldown of her Miasma. Since she doesn’t max that ability really ever, it’s not as potent a nerf as it could have been, but it’s still significant. Kassadin’s alterations are mostly tweaks to the changes that were already on the PBE, further lowering his armor and armor scaling. This will open him up to more AD counters, widening the pool of champions that hurt him the most.
Brand’s change is pretty big, too. The percentage of maximum health damaged by his passive was lowered from four to three percent, which isn’t a major amount unless you have a lot of health. Still, it adds up as the game goes on, and can result in a lot of lost damage for Brand throughout an entire game.
Galio’s nerfs are all still on the PBE, including the AP scaling reduction and base damage reduction to the tornado. It also takes more mana to use now, which reduces how often he can spam it. His laning will be noticeably weaker when these changes go live. They’ll have to make it through testing first, though.
All of these changes and more should arrive next week with Patch 9.2.
