The OP Senna build plaguing League of Legends has caught Riot’s eye.
One fan discussed Guinsoo’s Rageblade in a lengthy Reddit post today, explaining that Senna abusing the item affects how it’s balanced for other champions. Principal champ designer August Browning responded to the thread, commenting that Riot’s “currently investigating” the build.
“Rageblade is double strong on Senna because, as you mentioned, it ignores her crit damage mod (the damage penalty she pays for gaining increased crit) AND it allows her to ‘overcap’ on crit chance by converting it to on-hit damage,” Browning said. “We’re currently investigating whether or not we should fix/change both of these interactions.”
When pairing Kraken Slayer with Rageblade, Senna can deal massive on-hit damage with her passive. Both items deal bonus damage every third hit, with Rageblade ramping up in power based on the user’s critical strike chance. Senna’s Absolution passive allows her to scale infinitely, collecting wraiths to further increase her crit chance. Instead of her crit chance getting capped, it gets converted to more on-hit damage.
Senna’s ADC win rate doesn’t seem incredibly high in Platinum ranks and above, hovering just over 50 percent in Patch 11.4, according to Champion.gg. But her ban rate is a whopping 17.3 percent. And because the Redeemer benefits so strongly from this interaction, it’s now on Riot’s radar.
One of the League fan’s main concerns is that Rageblade is weak on its intended users and needs to be better balanced. In a Patch 10.23 hotfix, the item’s cost was increased and its on-hit damage was decreased. While this adversely affected its usage with many ADCs, it remained strong on Senna.
Riot seemingly has a plan for these situations, however.
“I will note that we don’t tend to balance items around singular users,” Browning said. “If an item is weak but OP on 1 champ, we would investigate buffing the item so more people could use it and then nerf the champ if needed.”
Guinsoo’s Rageblade was slightly buffed in Patch 11.4, increasing it’s attack speed from 40 to 45 percent. Riot hasn’t confirmed any other changes to Rageblade or Senna yet.
Update Feb. 22 3:35pm CT: Guinsoo’s Rageblade got tweaked on the PBE today, according to Surrender at 20. The item’s on-hit damage can no longer benefit from more than 100-percent critical strike chance, which should limit Senna’s late game power. The PBE update is tentative and liable to change before going live, however.
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Update Feb. 23 9:02am CT: Gameplay design director Mark “Scruffy” Yetter confirmed changes for Rageblade Senna in yesterday’s Patch 11.5 preview.
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