League devs beg for mercy as AD Ahri top replaces “broken” LeBlanc build

Balancing a game like League of Legends is hard, but a recent string of off-meta builds involving Statikk Shiv have been the bane of the balance team’s existence despite several nerfs to the item and champions that abuse it.

LeBlanc has been an absolute pain to balance for the developers behind League of Legends since Statikk Shiv was re-introduced to the game. Even after they nerfed the item and its interactions, LeBlanc continued to take advantage of it.

This led to her ultimately becoming an AD top laner, a build that was quickly nerfed once pros started abusing it. The balance team didn’t want pros to be abusing the build at Worlds 2023.

However, LeBlanc expert Bobqin has already developed a new build, this time for Ahri. And it has the potential to be even stronger than the one that required LeBlanc to be heavily nerfed. It’s such a problem that even the dev team is discouraged.

League devs throw in the towel as AD Ahri is born

LeBlanc one-trick streamer Bobqin was a huge part of how AD LeBlanc gained so much popularity and notoriety in the short time before it was nerfed into the ground, and he made a point of winning as many games as he could before it was nerfed.

However, just a short time after LeBlanc top was nerfed to the point of being unusable, Bobqin cooked up the nefarious idea to try out the very same build on Ahri. The champion’s AD and attack speed scaling has not been nerfed in the same way LeBlanc’s was, and is a perfect test subject for the same build.

It’s safe to say he’s found an all-new overpowered build even in the short time he’s been testing, as AD Ahri has become just as good for many of the same reasons LeBlanc was. Bobqin was convinced that Shiv was dead and off-meta builds that revolved around it were in the grave with it, but he proved himself wrong just hours later.

Her high mobility with her ult, ability to easily proc Trinity Force’s Spellblade, and a hard-to-miss CC ability in the form of her charm have made her a replacement that could be, in some ways, better than its predecessor.

People are begging Bobqin to stop cooking up these builds, but he just keeps them coming. This is much to the chagrin of even the balance team, as lead gameplay designer Phroxzon just wants him to stop making the task of balancing the game harder.

With it likely being impossible to change the Worlds patch any further now that it’s live, AD Ahri will likely be open for players to try at Worlds 2023. If it catches on, she may be the next meta-defining pick that fills the hole LeBlanc left.

And, while it’s hard not to empathize with the balance team’s never-ending job of whack-a-mole with a game that’s constantly evolving, it seems as if Statikk Shiv’s streak of meta-degeneracy will continue.

Season 14 promises sweeping item changes, and it’s hard to wonder whether or not Shiv will be on the chopping block despite its recent re-introduction.