The arrival of Patch 7.7 might have a heavy impact on the current meta of League of Legends. Shaco, Graves, and Galio head the list of nerfs being dished out when the patch goes live tomorrow.
Graves
Graves has been right up there with Kha’zix and Rengar dominating the jungle meta. After this big nerf though, he’s going to be a little less reliable. Graves’ biggest issue is that he deals a lot of damage, but still works well on teams with no tanks due to the impressive resistance he gains from his passive. The passive, called True Grit, gives him chunks of magic resist (MR) and armor as he remains in combat, making him a viable alternative to running a tank jungler if your team is too squishy.
As of this patch, however, the MR he gains from his passive is getting stripped, so he’ll be less versatile. When a team needs a tank to round out the comp, you should feel as if you should be playing a tank, not a marksman that can kill anyone in three shots, but that also dies about as slowly as a tank.
Galio
The colossus himself is being nerfed shortly after his major champion update from last month. It’s not unusual for a champ to need tweaking after being released or having gone through a major rework.
Upon release, Galio was a tad too strong. He works viably in too many positions, including every single role aside from ADC.
That being said, he’s being dialed down a bit to bring him out of the “instaban” category of champions in League. The damage from his passive and the tornado damage-over-time from his Q are both being brought down significantly. He is getting a small buff though to compensate for these large nerfs. The initial damage from his Q being launched is being buffed by its ability power ratio. Running tanky magic items like Rod of Ages and Abyssal Scepter will be most effective with his Q after the patch goes live.
Shaco may be League’s cheesiest champion. He relies on making overly aggressive plays on the enemy jungler and demoralizing his enemy team to win games rather than making mechanically good decisions like most. That unique spin isn’t a bad thing, and under the right circumstances it makes Shaco a healthy alternative option for traditional junglers.
The problem is, he does his job a little too well. Shaco can be played efficiently as an AD assassin, AP assassin, and more recently, even a tank. No champion should have that much power with that many types of builds, so he’s being tackled by the balance team at Riot.
The AP ratio on his Q is being removed and an AP ratio is instead being added to his passive, Backstab. It’s a smaller ratio, though, so AP Shaco should be less possible. On the other hand, his Backstab can proc more often than his Q can be used, so it remains to be seen if this is an actual nerf or not.
The base damage from Shaco’s Q has also been completely removed, meaning it will deal much, much less damage.
Camille
Camille has been a problem child since her initial release only a few months ago. When we say “problem child,” we actually mean, “ridiculously OP.” We covered these changes when they were first brought up by Riot as a possibility, and now, Camille’s third patch full of nerfs is here.
The heal from her W is being completely removed from non-champions. That means that she’ll no longer be able to use her W on waves of minions to bring herself back up to full health after a trade. Instead, it will have to be used in the midst of a fight on an enemy champion to give her a burst of health and an edge on her opponent.
This should take away some significant power from the Steel Shadow, and her laning presence should be less dominant. After three rounds full of nerfs, we’re hoping poor Camille will be able to rest easy for a while.
Patch 7.7 brings with it even more nerfs than these, so if you’d like to update yourself on some of the smaller nerfs to champions like Katarina, Rengar, and Rumble, be sure to check out the official patch notes. Some titans were hit hard with nerfs this patch. That, along with buffs to previously weak champions this patch, may be enough to change the meta around completely.
