After a slight hitch, Riot is moving forward with their planned Janna rework for League of Legends Season 12. Taking on player feedback, Janna’s new kit will enable an aggressive shielding playstyle while cutting back on her poke damage.
As far as enchanter supports go in League of Legends, Janna manages to fly under the radar compared to the likes of Lulu, Yuumi, and Nami.
Unchanged since League patch 10.11 almost two years ago, Janna has maintained a stable win rate around 51% in solo queue for the majority of that time. However, Riot firmly have the Storm’s Fury in their sights break that streak.
Janna is getting one of the now-iconic mini-reworks Riot has been shipping to a handful of League of Legends champions over the last year — and after delays put it on hold, it’s finally coming out in patch 12.2.
The overall goal of the changes, in the words of developer August ‘August’ Browning, are to “drain lane poke power out of her W [Zephyr] and focusing it into utility.”
While Riot initially liked the “overall direction” of their first set of changes, they brought it back to the drawing board in December 2021 to add some quality-of-life changes. A month on, and Riot has now shared those exact changes with players.
New Janna list for 12.2 heading to PBE!-Empowering your shield with CC was missed, so we're retaining a version of it.-Janna players didn't seem to care about damage in Q, so we cut the damage buff to add power elsewhere-Added a couple QoL changes pic.twitter.com/tQf6V1hVlG
— August (@RiotAugust) January 10, 2022
Janna rework to target support’s poke power
The main target of Janna’s rework in League of Legends Season 12 is the support’s poke power.
Her auto attacks and W are taking a hit early, with her basic attack range is being cut from 550 to 500. Janna will no longer gain bonus magic damage based on her movement speed too. To compensate for these changes, she’s getting a slight AD and move speed buff.
Her W is having its range adjusted, slow duration increased, and damage raised, but at the cost of a significantly longer cooldown so it can’t be spammed in lane.
Most of the “utility” buffs are being funneled into her Q. It now costs less mana, goes further with a longer minimum range, and will travel a lot faster.
“The thing that makes the Q stronger offensively is the min range and travel speed. Max charge Qs are much harder to dodge and snapcast knockups are easier to hit, especially when combo’d with W,” August explained.
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The big change since Riot’s initial set of changes was adding a new passive to her E, which increases her healing and shielding power after impairing a champion’s movement. Her ultimate is also getting an increased tick rate, meaning the healing should come through faster.
While some players fear the changes will push the Storm’s Fury towards being a “shield spam goddess“, Riot believes the “skill expression” is still there.
“I do want to point out that the Q travel time change (while slightly better for being aggressive), makes peel [and] disruption much better for the Janna player, where the live version is pretty inconsistent,” developer ‘TheTruexy’ added.
“There’s definitely some parts of power that are being drawn from, but overall there’s still a lot of skill expression added with August’s changes beyond just spamming your E.”
You can find the full Janna changes planned for League of Legends Season 12 below.
Janna rework in League of Legends Season 12 details
Base stats
- Attack range: 550 >>> 500
- Move speed: 315 >>> 330
- Attack damage: 46 + 1.5/level >>> 52 + 3/level
Passive: Tailwind
- Janna gains 8% move speed >>> Janna gains 8% move speed while moving towards allies
- Janna’s attacks and W no longer deal bonus magic damage based on her bonus move speed
Q: Howling Gale
- Mana cost: 60-140 >>> 60-100
- Minimum range: 1000 >>> 1100
- Maximum range: 1750 >>> 1760
- Travel time: 1.5 seconds >>> 1.25 seconds
- Investigating adding an indicator that shows Janna’s team where Q will go
W: Zephyr
- Range: 550 (edge-to-edge) >>> 650 (center-to-center)
- Slow duration: 2 seconds >>> 3 seconds
- Cooldown: 8-6 seconds >>> 12 seconds
- Damage: 55-175 >>> 70-190
- Passive move speed: 6-10% >>> 8-12%
E: Eye Of The Storm
- Shield amount: 80-220 (70% AP) >>> 80-200 (65% AP)
- Cooldown: 16-12 seconds >>> 15-9 seconds
- Time before decay: 0.75 seconds >>> 1.25 seconds
- Slowing or knocking up an enemy champion no longer reduces cooldown by 20%
- [NEW]: Impairing an enemy champion’s movement grants 20% heal and shield power for 5 seconds.
R: Monsoon
- Healing tick rate: 0.5 seconds >>> 0.25 seconds
- Total healing remains the same