League of Legends’ patch 11.17 is targeting a wide range of champions with changes mainly focused on solo queue since no professional games will be played on the patch.
This window for relatively low-stakes changes is giving the dev team a chance to try reworks to certain champions at a fundamental level. Along with Akshan and Viego, Amumu is getting changes across his kit to make him more playable at higher elos, Lucian is being pushed back into the bottom lane, and Gangplank is getting a lot more liberties and combo potential with his barrels.
Amumu is one of the oldest champions in the game. Like many others that were released early on in the game’s lifespan, certain fundamental aspects of his kit have kept him locked into lower elos. His base durability stats of health and armor are taking a hit and losing a lot of scaling potential with five and 0.3 fewer of each per level, respectively. The biggest change to the Sad Mummy is coming to his Q, Bandage Toss. It now holds two charges on a 16-second cooldown early and a 14-second cooldown late for a new charge. The ability itself has a flat three-second cooldown.
His W, Despair, is gaining four base damage per second at each rank but losing some scaling, and finally, his ultimate, Curse of the Sad Mummy, now has a stun duration of 1.5 seconds across all ranks instead of scaling up by 0.25 seconds every rank.
Lucian has been a solo lane counterpick for most of recent history. His intended place in the bottom lane has seen less play at the highest level than even his top lane flex. Riot is hoping to change that with some synergistic changes that can only be maximized if he’s laning with a friend.
His base AD is going from 64 to 62, but his passive is getting a huge buff that empowers his next two basic attacks to deal additional magic damage that hits harder and harder as the game goes on any time he’s buffed by an ally. Additionally, Lucian can now hold up to four max Auto stacks instead of two. Another bot-lane-friendly buff is to his W, Ardent Blaze, which now speeds up allies as well (as opposed to just Lucian) if they proc the mark on enemies. Finally, his ultimate is losing base damage but making up for it by uncapping the number of shots it fires and having it scale with Critical Strike Chance.
Gangplank is another meta mainstay these days, but Riot felt he was also in need of changes. His Q active currently applies on-hit effects, but will now be specifically designated as a ranged basic attack. Many items differentiate between the two in their effects, so this distinction could see his build path change.
The bonus movement speed that his passive provides is no longer a flat 30 percent, but rather halved to 15 percent at level one before scaling back up to its original amount at level 18. Finally, Gangplank’s E, Powder Keg, now allows him to store four barrels at ranks three and four, and five at rank five. The barrels will also now benefit from Critical Strike at 125% effectiveness, and the recharge cooldown is also going down by four at max rank.
League Patch 11.17 will go live on Aug. 25, according to the game’s official patch schedule.
Make sure to follow us on YouTube for more esports news and analysis.
