The long awaited Shen balance changes will be hitting League of Legends in the next patch. But do they hit the mark?
Shen’s changes will focus on his ultimate’s strength, his E’s width, and removing bonus damage to non-champions on his Q, Riot’s core gameplay lead designer, Andrei “Meddler” van Roon, said in a recent dev post.
His ultimate will now scale with the target’s missing health. The change is being built around defensive play so the less health your target has, the better. The changes should hopefully stop Shen ults from making tankier targets even harder to kill in the latter stages of the game.
In his current state, Shen’s E, Shadow Dash, can create situations where it looks like the player manages to hit his opponent, but doesn’t. Increasing the width of his E will make the prospect of hitting an opponent more likely and increase his overall lane pressure and team fight potential because of the extra width he’ll be able to cover.
Lastly, by removing the bonus damage to non-champions on Shen’s Q, Twilight Assault, Shen’s wave-pushing potential will be significantly reduced, giving the enemy team a chance to deal with his split-pushing pressure.
It removes a large chunk of what makes shen so powerful in the first place.
Shen isn’t the only champion to be getting some balance changes in Patch 7.8 however. Meddler has said that Heimerdinger is a stretch goal for the next patch.
Riot is unsure if it will make the patch deadline but if not, then 7.9 or 7.10 is the more likely alternative to see some changes to the smartest Yordle on the rift.
Heimerdinger hasn’t seen change to his kit in a while now and many fans are hoping to see some much needed buffs to make him more viable in the mid-lane. Riot has not given details on what these changes could be, but has said in the dev post its hope they’ll hit the PBE in the next few days.
