Mage items have been quite strong in League of Legends season 14, and Riot Games is slowly trimming down their power. In the upcoming Patch 14.5, Riot has a ton of changes for mage items in the store.
According to a post from lead gameplay designer Matt “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison on X (formerly Twitter) on Feb. 28, Patch 14.5 will reduce the power of Lich Bane, give Stormsurge some of its power back, and aim to readjust the item build order for mages. The changes are mainly focused on AP assassins like Evelynn, Akali, and Ekko.
“We’re taking stock of the AP systems and are noting that 1st item choice structure for AP Assassin types is pretty good between Lich / Rocketbelt / Ludens, but some of these items are stronger and weaker than others.This is prompting us to want to put Stormsurge into more of the 2nd item space and bring Lich down and Rocketbelt up in the 1st item space to put everything more in line,” the post reads.
In Patch 14.5, Lich Bane’s Spell Blade AP ratio is being decreased from 50 to 45 percent, and Stormsurge will grant eight percent movement speed instead of the usual five. Besides that, completing Hextech Rocketbelt will award you 70 AP starting with Patch 14.5, but its cost will go up from 2500 to 2600 gold.
Even though some fans have complained about the proc damage of Stormsurge, Riot intentionally won’t make any changes to it. The idea is to keep the damage values around 200, and buffs to Stormsurge would push over that limit.
On top of this, Patch 14.5 will feature changes to tank and support items. While tanks could be getting more damage to Sunfire Aegis and Heartsteel, support items will be adjusted to make them weaker in the early game and scale better in mid-to-late-game.
This will be a large patch with tons of changes coming to League, including the ones to Smolder. The cute dragon has been dominating Summoner’s Rift ever since his release, and Riot is looking to make adjustments focused on tankier builds.
