In this second Wild Rift: League of Legends balance patch, Riot Games has implemented a bunch of balance changes. Most notably, they have replaced Cooldown Reduction with Ability Haste that mirrors the ongoing League of Legends preseason 2021 on PC.
There will be three new champions as well. Darius and Draven from Noxus, as well as Wukong will join the lineup. In Riot’s dev diary video, they also hinted that players can expect Teemo to make an appearance next year.
Here are the biggest winners and losers of Wild Rift patch 1.1:
Winner: Janna
Base stats
- Attack Damage increased from 46 to 52
Second ability – Zephyr
- Damage increased from 55/115/175/235 + 50% AP + 25% MS to 65/125/185/245 + 60% AP + 25% MS
Third ability – Eye of the Storm
- Base shield increased from 80/130/180/230HP to 90/140/190/240HP
- Cooldown decreased from 16/14/12/10s to 13/12/11/10s
According to the patch notes, the reason for this buff is that “Janna has slowly fallen off”. As a highly mobile poke and protect champion, Riot wants to keep her competitive alongside other support choices by buffing Zephyr and Eye of the Storm.
Looking at LoL history, because one of Janna’s main tool is her shield, Riot always had a hard time balancing this ability. It now has an extra 10HP at every level, and lowered cooldown in the early levels which seems fair.
Zephyr received a bigger buff, as its damage increased by ten at all levels, with an extra 10% in AP scaling. AP poke Janna with max Zephyr incoming!
Winner: Tanks
Bramble Vest
- Grievous Wounds duration increased from 1s to 3s
Thornmail
- Grievous Wounds duration increased from 1s to 3s
Mercury’s Treads
- Tenacity increased from 30% to 35%
Ninja Tabi
- Armor increased from 10 to 15
- Auto attack damage reduction increased from 10% to 15%
Gargoyle Enchant
- Health bonus increased from 40/100% to 65/130%
Based on Riot’s explanation, “Merc Treads are being outclassed by other boot upgrades” and Gargoyle’s was too weak and not worth buying. They’re hoping that buffing these two items will make them viable choices.
Likewise, Tabi’s armor and auto attack reduction has been increased, while Grievous Wounds’ duration has been upped by an extra two seconds. With these items combined, tanks are getting buffed overall.
Loser: Shyvana
Third ability – Flame Breath
- Dragon form damage decreased from [75 + level*5 + 30% AD + 30% AP] to [45 + level*5 + 20% AD + 30% AP]
- Dragon form Scorch damage decreased from [45 + level*5 + 10% AD + 20% AP] to [30 + level*4 + 10% AD + 20% AP]
The strongest Shyvana build in Wild Rift is AP. All she needed to do was to build up enough Fury, then jump into a team fight to dish out massive burst damage with her third AoE ability, Flame Breath. Taking a significant nerf to AP numbers in Dragon form, she will no longer be a premiere jungler choice.
Loser: Spell reliant champions
Ability Haste
Cooldown Reduction was a straightforward percentage system. For example, for an ability with a 100 second CD, your 31st point of CDR will shave one more second off its remaining 70 second CD.
According to Riot, this means that “this reduction is more than 1% of its current value”, such that “each point of CDR became more and more valuable as you stacked it”. Hence, there was a maximum cap at 40%.
Ability Haste on the other hand, will allow you to cast abilities 1% more frequently. Having 100 AH means that you can cast abilities 100% more frequently — but getting AH in-game through items is very limited.
As such, on the PC version, mages that previously relied on CDR are not getting the same value off AH in preseason 2021. They fell in win rate, as champions with innately low cooldowns who aren’t previously on CDR (and therefore AH), rose to S-tier, namely assassins.
For the math nerds, the exact formula for how much Ability Haste equates to CDR is as follows:
CDR = 1 – (1/(1+Ability Haste))
Mana regen
If you’ve been playing LoL on PC, the first thing you would have noticed in the open beta is how much less spamming spells in the early game costs. Riot has finally acknowledged that they’ve been too generous in this area.
The full list of champions who received mana regen nerfs are:
- Ahri
- Alistar
- Amumu
- Ashe
- Aurelion Sol
- Blitzcrank
- Camille
- Evelynn
- Ezreal
- Fiora
- Fizz
- Graves
- Jax
- Janna
- Jhin
- Jinx
- Kai’Sa
- Lux
- Master Yi
- Nami
- Nasus
- Soraka
- Twisted Fate
- Vayne
- Vi
- Xin Zhao
For Amumu, Twisted Fate, and Vi, the cost of their game-changing ultimates were adjusted to 100 mana in order to compensate for the reduced mana regen. For Vayne, her ultimate, Final Hour, increased in cost from 80 to 100 at all levels.
Naturally, these champions’ early game power will be dampened, many of whom are supports.
Click here for the full Wild Rift patch 1.1 notes.
