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The early rough and tumble of any new League of Legends season is felt particularly hard in the game’s balance, and with the addition of new mythic items alongside class-wide changes, Patch 13.2 represents another big swing by Riot to try and make the game healthier.
In a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, lead League balance team designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison laid out a preliminary list of the champions, systems, and items set to be changed in the game’s upcoming January patch.
The League champions on the chopping block this time around include Kassadin, Yuumi, Maokai, Gangplank, Ryze, Lucian, Heimerdinger, Udyr, Kindred, and Nami.
Some of these nerfs are preemptive of the coming Critical Strike changes looming in League Patch 13.2, as detailed by caster-turned-balance dev Phreak. Those changes are to Infinity Edge and Navori Quickblades. They both have a threshold of 60 percent Critical Strike chance, which, when reached, gives 35 percent Critical Strike damage to users of the former, and for the latter, allows basic attacks to reduce basic abilities’ current cooldown.
Read: Here’s the early League of Legends Patch 13.2 patch notes
In Patch 13.2, both of these thresholds will be lowered to just 40 percent Critical Strike chance. This means that with an ADC mythic item plus just one of either of those two items, players will hit that threshold and a major power spike as a result.
Crit-focused champions like Kindred and Gangplank will need to be tuned down slightly as a result. The changes are mostly intended to give AD carries more of an early spike to counter the power of tanks early in Season 13.
The return of Rod of Ages, despite its rough re-introduction, has seen champions that used to love it stay infatuated with the item’s new look, such as Kassadin and Ryze, who are dominating pro play. Heimerdinger support has been in everyone’s games ever since it was played successfully at the highest level by reigning world champion BeryL. Supports like Heimerdinger, Lux, Lulu, Karma, Nami, and even Jhin have dominated a bot lane meta favoring damage-heavy lanes as opposed to “engage” supports like Leona, Nautilus, Rakan, and Thresh.
Lucian and Nami are set for nerfs too, with the former likely in line for a power decrease because of the aforementioned buffs to crit items he loves building, along with Maokai, who is very strong in multiple roles as an AP bruiser.
League Patch 13.2 is set to hit live servers on Wednesday, Jan. 25.
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