The League of Legends meta has been plagued with its newest threat—the zero farm Spellthief’s Edge top laner.
The strategy, as you’ve probably seen by now if you watched the LCS this week or have played solo queue recently, involved taking an AP champion that can constantly harass their lane opponent. Using Kleptomancy and Spellthief’s they can rack up more gold than their lane opponent while saying, “Psh, farming minions is so 2018!”
Luckily, for our sanity, Riot is pushing a change to the item immediately via hotfix to combat this swarm of sadists. The change will essentially limit the gold on-hit to only trigger if an ally is nearby, but it will still consumer a charge. While that does sound great for anyone who plays top lane that will no longer have to deal with this horrible strategy, there are many supports in the League Reddit community that aren’t happy with it.
The post complaining about the change has now reached the front page of the Reddit community with over 1,800 upvotes at the time of publishing. Unlike most things on Reddit, this complaint makes a lot of sense. Right now, supports who run the Spellthief’s Edge are punished for being in lane without their carry. Like, say, when their carry dies and they’re forced to cover the tower. Why? Because farming minions pauses their gold generation.
After this change, the concern is centered around the premise that it will be worse for supports who need to remain in lane to cover for their bot laner. Mostly, because gold generation will once again slow down for them, but now it will just hurt in general rather than only when they farm minions under tower.
Realistically, that probably won’t be a massive issue. The amount of times a support is in lane without a carry while pushed up and continuing to harass the enemy is rare, even rarer than a support farming under tower while the carry is dead. But it’s still a concern, and another hindrance on a support during a time of the game that they’re already hindered.
The hotfix should go live today, so we’ll be able to tell truly how much of an impact this will have on the bot lane.
