It looks like Riot Games doesn’t want anyone playing Neeko as an ADC. A micropatch is being sent out that will effectively nerf the Curious Chameleon’s attack speed, as well as her on-hit capabilities.
According to Andrei “Meddler” Van Roon, the patch will be lowering both Neeko’s base attack damage and attack speed. Her attack speed will be significantly lowered from 3.5 percent per level to 1.5 percent. Her attack damage is changing from three percent per level to two percent. Meanwhile, her on-hit damage on her W ability is being reduced from 50 to 170 to 50 to 130.
With the drastic nerfs to her attack speed and on-hit damage, the on-hit Neeko builds that had taken solo queue by storm are officially dead. The unique item path gave some relevance to a normally untouched champion in Patch 9.5 as players realized on-hit Neeko’s potential.
People rarely played Neeko before the on-hit builds, with the champion sporting a laughable 0.14 percent playrate during Patch 9.4. During Patch 9.5, however, she skyrocketed to an impressive 3.05 percent playrate. She also had the highest winrate of any ADC champion at the time with a strong 54.56 percent. In fact, she had the highest winrate of any champion, almost reaching a 60 percent win percentage before getting micropatched.
It’s tough to see Riot nerf another champion who was reconfigured with a new item build. The League of Legends community has had mixed reactions to the nerf, with one side saying that the nerfs were justified due to her being way too strong. But others say that Riot should have tried to balance the build instead of outright killing it. Either way, we won’t be seeing much of on-hit Neeko on the Summoner’s Rift anymore.
