Riot Games devs have revealed the tentative changes they’re hoping to bring in League of Legends Patch 13.7. Aside from nerfing some of the best-performing champions across various ranks, such as Zeri, Annie, and Veigar, the devs are looking to shift the jungle meta once again, with a couple of impactful nerfs to some junglers, including Vi.
Earlier this week, game designer Riot Phroxzon mentioned Vi among the champions receiving nerfs, and yesterday, Riot August shared the numbers change for the Piltover Enforcer.
Vi will receive lower base and AD scaling on her Vault Breaker (Q), as well as getting a reduction in base damage for her Relentless Force (E). While there is a small compensating buff with a 10 percent increase on the E’s AD and AP scalings, this is going to be an overall heavy nerf for the champion.
Vi has been performing at a decent level since the start of season 13 after players realized she was strong with the new item Radiant Virtue. Even though the item did get nerfed, Vi had an indirect buff with the fighter item changes, especially the Black Cleaver buffs. The low gold cost and great stats made it a perfect first-item purchase, allowing her to get a good amount of damage, ability haste, and armor penetration.
Now that her AD ratios on the Q are going to be decreasing, Vi will lose out on a lot of damage. This forces players to build attack-damage builds if they want to retain the same damage outputs, but they will inevitably lose out on resistances in the process.
Related: Riot details buffs coming to some of LoL’s weakest champs in Patch 13.7
While it’s a fair trade-off for solo queue, these nerfs have the potential of killing Vi in professional play. She has been the most-picked jungler across the four major regions so far (according to Games of Legends), boasting a 54 percent win rate. These changes will likely push her out of the meta, as she will lose out on early-game trading and won’t be able to recover with her current build (Black Cleaver plus Radiant Virtue).
If these nerfs were to hit the live servers next week, then she will definitely fall in priority in pro play. She might not become obsolete, but you can be sure that she won’t have such a high presence as she did in the past couple of months. With the Mid-Season Invitational approaching in one month’s time, players will have to find a new build to work around these nerfs.
Patch 13.7 is expected to go live next Wednesday, April 5, according to the official patch schedule.
