League Of Legends Is Balancing Jungling In Patch 10.8

The latest update for League of Legends seeks to bring some new changes to the jungle position, evening out the weakness of the junglers in early game and nerfing the late game power these positions tend to bring. For a full rundown on 10.8, check out the developer’s blog.

Riot is seeking to restructure the jungle position, changing up the aggressive tactics that some junglers use during the start of the matches, instead offering bigger rewards for farming in early game. Extra sustain is also being added to allow those who fall to low health in the jungle, keeping a jungler alive in a tough position.

According to the developers, "Junglers are appropriately influential as a role, but we want to reduce the perception that they have to have an aggressive early presence to be effective. Instead, we're giving them opportunities for more personal power through proper farming as the game progresses."

"We also want to make sure the jungle is accessible to players who can't kite perfectly or who don't have proper setups for the cutthroat role, so we're giving some extra sustain to people who fall critically low in the jungle, helping them stay alive when the going gets rough," the post explains.

Jungle camp XP is being bumped up to 1.35x more at levels 9+, allowing for an additional 10-13 XP per camp. A range of jungle items have also been buffed:

• Hunter’s Machete Unique Passive - Nail: Now heals for 50% more when below 30% max health.

• Hunter’s Talisman Unique Passive - Tooth: Now heals for 50% more when below 30% max health.

• Skirmisher’s Sabre Unique Passive - Tooth/Nail: Now heals for 50% more when below 30% max health.

• Stalker’s Blade Unique Passive - Tooth/Nail: Now heals for 50% more when below 30% max health.

As always, some champions are being re-balanced to fit the current meta:

Aphelios

• Aphelios will now receive 2/4/6/8/10/12 lethality instead of 3/6/9/12/15/18 percent bonus armor penetration.

• Nerf: Weapon active’s base damage and cooldowns now scale over 13 levels, instead of 9. This is the same for moonshot, onslaught, binding eclipse, duskwave, and sentry.

Ash

• Buff: Ashe’s Ranger’s focus attack speed will now scale to 20/30/40/50/60%, instead of 20/25/30/35/40%.

Evelynn

• Buff: Evelynn’s Hate Spike base damage has been increased to 30/35/40/45/50 (90/105/120/135/150 max damage).

Kalista

• Nerf: Kalista’s base armor has been decreased from 23 to 21.

• Nerf: Kalista’s Rend slowing effects have been decreased to 10/18/26/34/42%

Master Yi

• Nerf: Master Yi’s Highlander bonus attack speed has been reduced to 25/45/65%.

Orianna

• Buff: Orinanna’s Command: Dissonance ally haste/enemy slow has been increased to 30/35/40/45/50%

• Buff: Orinanna’s Command: Protect shield ratio has been increased to 0.5 ability power.

Ryze

• Buff: Ryze’s base stats have been increased. Health (575), armor (22), and attack damage (56) have all gone up by a small increment.

• Buff: Ryze’s Overlord bonus movement speed has been increased to 28/32/36/40/44% when consuming 2 runes.

Seena

• Nerf: Senna’s passive Absolution mist wraith spawn chance has been reduced to 22% on minions Senna didn’t kill.

Sett

• Nerf: Sett’s Haymaker base damage has been reduced down to 80/105/130/155/180.

Soraka

• Buff: Soraka’s base mana pool has been increased to 425.

• Buff: Soraka’s Starcall mana costs have been decreased down to 45/50/55/60/65.

Tristana

• Buff: Tristana’s Explosive Charge explosion damage ratio has been increased to 50/75/100/125/150%.

Urgot

• Bugfix: The bug that caused Ugrot’s Disdain extra movement speed dash not occuring has been fixed.

• Bugfix: Urgot now properly has a total CC duration of 1.5 seconds, including stun duration and time elapsed when enemy champion is flung, as intended from patch 10.6.

• Buff: Urgot’s Fear Beyond Death cooldown has been decreased to 100/85/70 seconds.

Varus

• Nerf: Varus’ Chain of Corruption cooldown has been increased to 130/100/70 seconds.

Xayah

• Buff: Xayah’s Bladecaller additional feather hit damage has been increased to 5% less damage per feather.

A number of bug fixes will be addressed in this update, along with some new skins being added to the in-game Riot Store.

In other news, Riot’s new tactical shooter Valorant is scoring big numbers on Twitch while still in the closed beta stage. Those lucky enough to have gotten a beta code have been loving the game so far, with the full version set to release Summer 2020.