For those of you who enjoy quality League of Legends or are lactose intolerant, we’re sorry to say the cheesiest strategy in the game will continue to exist, despite nerfs.
That’s right, gold funneling will continue to dominate the professional scene and your solo queue games. While the main perpetrators of it—Master Yi, Taric, and Nunu—are going to be less amazing at what they do, no changes were made to the strategy overall.
Gold funneling revolves around one champion, designated the carry, being donated farm from both the jungle and the mid lane. A supportive champion, usually one that has utility regardless of items or levels, follows the carry around the jungle and helps them stay healthy through the clear. This support then spends the rest of the game buffing the carry, allowing them to gain a major gold and experience advantage over opponents.
One of the most popular carries, Master Yi, took a hit to his waveclear, with his Q, Alpha Strike, no longer dealing bonus damage to minions. Since he’ll have a harder time stopping enemy mid laners from hard shoving waves into his tower, his usefulness as a gold-funneled carry will diminish significantly. Slower waveclear translates to less time farming the jungle, and he will be countered even harder by champions that can quickly push waves.
The two most common supports also suffered nerfs. Nunu’s W, Blood Boil, will offer less in terms of base stats when used on an ally. The attack speed buff on it will drop from five to 10 percent compared to previous values, depending on level, and the bonus ability power it grants is dropping 20 percent. Both will scale up harder the more ability power Nunu has. The Yeti Rider will be less useful as a support, since he does significantly less without gold.
Taric received nerfs in a similar vein. The base damage on his E, Dazzle, dropped by 15 at all ranks, while its armor ratio increased from 0.3 to 0.5. He does significantly more damage once he has enough items to take advantage of this new ratio but, like Nunu, will be weaker earlier on. He also saw an increase on his ultimate’s cooldown.
While nerfing these problem champions was a good decision on the part of Riot Games, these changes are only a band-aid solution to the gold funnel problem. Already in the LCS we have seen champions like Lucian or Kai’Sa take advantage of the extra gold much more efficiently than Master Yi, and supports like Braum are being used in favor of Nunu or Taric. No direct nerfs to the strategy itself means that, while the most popular choices may no longer be on vogue, new ones will undoubtedly rise to take their place.
Buckle your seatbelts everyone, as the Kai’Sa hype train will be leaving shortly. Gold funneling is going to continue to ruin games, with people either stomping with it or feeding if they don’t understand how to run it. What a time to be a League player.
