Riot Games have announced that Lucian and Ezreal will no longer be getting nerfed in the next League of Legends update.
Lucian and Ezreal have both enjoyed positions at or near the top of the power ranking for AD Carries over the last few patches. In the various professional leagues around the world, both picks have been among the most common in the bot lane when available, and their popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed.
In order to put other AD Carry champions on a more even footing, in patch 9.3 Riot will be making changes to several items typically built by champions who rely more on increased critical hit chance, as many of the traditional marksmen do.
Those changes, while intended as an overall improvement for crit AD Carries, will actually act as a minor nerf at one item – precisely when Lucian is already strongest relative to most of his opponents – before gaining a larger boost at their second and third items.
In order to preemptively keep Lucian from becoming even more dominant in lane, Riot had intended to nerf him, along with Ezreal, at the same time. Now, though they’ll be keeping an eye on both, they’ve decided to hold off on those changes for the time being.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
predominant lane bully in bot lane he has potential to make life continually rough for crit adcs who we intend to feel better going into this patch. We will be avoiding the Riot Special though, and will wait to see how things shake out. Him and Ezreal are super high on our radar.
— Richard Henkel (@RiotMapleNectar) January 30, 2019
Riot has a history of making preemptive changes that prove heavy-handed in one direction or another once they’re actually put into practice on the live servers, so many players will undoubtedly be happy to see a slightly more measured approach this time around.
The state of the classic AD Carry champions has been a subject of contention recently, with many players feeling like they have less agency than ever before to impact the outcome of a game, but it looks at least that Riot is attempting to address these concerns with the upcoming changes.