Rek’sai was originally intended to be an AD-heavy diver in League of Legends, but she turned into a tank. Riot plans to bring her back to form.
Do you remember when Rek’sai came out? Well, if you don’t remember or you’re a new player, let us remind you. When she came out, she built a ton of attack damage (AD) and, using a couple of kills to get a proper snowball rolling, she could blow-up nearly any target she wanted to.
This was because she was released to be an AD-diver, or a champion that is very good at getting to the carries in the back of a fight and dealing a ton of damage. The drawback (usually) is that a diver isn’t great at getting back out of a fight. Well, Rek’sai was much too powerful upon release in late 2014, so Riot had to nerf her considerably.
After several nerfs, it turned out that Rek’sai didn’t actually do much damage anymore. Instead, she became most useful for her ability to get to the carries and knock up them so damage-dealers could get to them more easily. Because of this, players realized that building her as a tank was much more effective. She dealt at least some damage, and she was able to live long enough to trudge to the back and knock-up as many enemies as possible.
Realizing that the community has now dubbed Rek’sai more useful for a different goal than she was originally intended for, Riot now intends to fix the problem.
A small update is on the way for Rek’sai—one that emphasizes her ability to dive but takes away her ability to tank, Riot announced yesterday. On the League message boards, Andre ‘Meddler’ van Roon, the lead champion designer, mentioned that the design team is looking to make an AD-centered build more rewarding for her and turn her knock-up into a single-target ability.
Riot tried the same thing with Ekko. He was released as an assassin, but after several nerfs to damage, he ended up being used as a tank for his area-of-effect stun, utility, and percent-health damage. In the assassin update of 6.22 back in November, Riot attempted to change him back by taking away the slow on his passive and increasing the AP-scaling on his abilities.
This seemed to work. Ekko’s most popular build on Champion.gg, a League statistics website, is now a high-damage assassin build. We can only hope that Rek’sai’s rework accomplishes the same goal without making her OP.
