Riot testing massive ultimate-based changes for Kayle on LoL’s PBE

The Righteous may soon become a more viable pick.

Image via Riot Games

The scaling fantasies that a handful of champions in League of Legends have are often hard to reach. To compensate for how powerful these champions are the later games go, their early games are very weak and can lead to massive deficits for their teams.

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Riot Games is stepping in to help one of these hyper-scaling champions—Kayle—with a handful of changes that could make her more than a niche top lane option.

Riot August provided a list of these adjustments on Twitter today, which are centered around Kayle’s ultimate and how it functions when used on herself. These changes are currently available on League’s PBE, though it is unclear when they will reach the live servers.

A recent change to Kayle’s ultimate on the PBE allowed her to auto attack enemies while using her ultimate, something that she has not been able to do since her rework in 2019. These new adjustments push this further, reducing the ability’s cast time, expanding the radius in which the swords rain down upon the expiration of the ultimate, and removing the range limitations Kayle previously had when using this ability on herself.

In turn, Riot is pulling back a bit of the damage that the ultimate does, as well as the time in which the swords fall. The invulnerability duration will also now last a static 2.5 seconds regardless of who Kayle places it on.

Related: A rising mid lane pick now has the highest win rate in LoL through the start of Patch 13.8

Kayle’s E is also being slightly tuned to make it a less oppressive ability against enemy champions, receiving a lowered AP ratio. But Riot is buffing how much damage the ability does to minions once Kayle reaches level 11, making minions a non-factor for The Righteous as the game progresses.

All of these changes to Kayle are now available on League’s PBE and are expected to remain there for an extended testing period before they are released on the live servers. It is unclear if these changes will be implemented in time for MSI, which starts on May 2. Riot has already announced that League’s newest champion, Milio, and Yuumi will be disabled from play at that event.

Author
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Ethan Garcia
Ethan Garcia is a freelance writer for Dot Esports, having been part of the company for three years. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Magazine Journalism from Syracuse University and specializes particularly in coverage of League of Legends, various Nintendo IPs, and beyond.