Easily one of the most recognizable themes for any League of Legends champion is Jhin’s obsession with the number four.
From the four bullets in his weapon to the number of bounces in his grenade and the four shots that ring out of his ultimate, the number is everywhere in his kit, and almost every League player is familiar with that. But one League fan has an idea to make Jhin’s fascination with the number even more prevalent in his kit. In a thread posted to the League subreddit earlier today, one person recommended a change that would give Jhin’s trap, Captive Audience (E), one extra hit point, bumping the number of hits it would take to kill the trap from three to four.
While the proposed change would fit the theme of the champion, the community at large wasn’t all too impressed with the idea. Many players had divided opinions over the proposed, flavorful idea, claiming it would upset the balance of the game by making Jhin marginally stronger.
In the thread, many League players came back with sarcastic ideas in comments of their own. “Let’s also give him [four] item slots and a level cap of 16 (4×4) while we are at it,” one player said. “When Jhin is in the game each team should only have [four] players,” said another.
Altering Jhin’s trap to give it four hit points would, undoubtedly, be a thematic change that would fit the character, but three is a perfect number to keep the ability counterable by certain champions. Plus, melee champions deal an extra 0.5 damage to traps per auto attack, meaning they can dispatch them quickly, as another League player in the thread noted. Bringing the amount of HP they have up by even one number would disrupt that evenness and make it easier for Jhin to establish control over a skirmish with that ability.
The fact that Jhin’s Captive Audience (E) has only three hit points makes it so that the trap can be destroyed easily by two players in the bottom lane, or one champion with an auto-attack reset or ability that counts as an auto attack. Champions like Leona and Vayne can easily get rid of Jhin’s traps by resetting their autos in between their attacks on the Jhin trap.
Jhin has not received any balance changes in 2024, and we doubt that the first will be an update to the number of hit points his trap has, no matter how thematically pleasing the idea might be.
