The League of Legends developers made a quick change to their approach on how they’re balancing Rakan after the company received a wave of backlash for planned nerf for the champion.
Riot Games are always willing to give characters in their MOBA major overhauls if they see fit. While big changes typically follow a problematic trend, some players were grasping at straws wondering why the devs were planning huge nerfs to The Charmer.
After the changes from the 9.8 patch hit the live servers, Riot dev Blake ‘Squad5’ Smith announced some of the balances the team were thinking of making to the Support champion.
Controversial changes to The Charmer
Changes included taking away Rakan’s W and E while using his ultimate, The Quickness. This immediately drew up mountains of ire from the League of Legends community because it would essentially leave the champion without an escape after initiating a fight.
For ease of reading the whole changelist, I'll add an image with the whole list currently. pic.twitter.com/D7dOGmta6Z
— Blake Smith (@Squad5lol) April 16, 2019
Though there were plans to give Rakan an insane amount of Move Speed following his ultimate, it still left him without a lot of options to get out from the heat of battle.
- Read more: Worlds skins and major champion balance in League of Legends patch 9.8 – full patch notes
Squad5 said the change was to “remove this interaction to give power elsewhere. The R, in this case, is heavily buffed.” But the community was having none of it.
PLEASE listen to Treatz. This is an AWFUL change.
— Ram Djemal (@brokenshard) April 16, 2019
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Quick turn around with better changes
Riot Games maintains a solid track record of listening to their audience, so the proposed changes were instantly scrapped.
Squad5 revealed what the balance team is thinking of changing to better suit one of the game’s more exciting playmakers.
Instead of giving Rakan a heap of move speed, the devs are increasing his base HP and Armor to give him some more survivability. Though his ultimate ability will now have a cast time of 0.5 seconds in order
These are looking much healthier – good job. Still don't think adding clunkiness to R is something that would increase his playrate but I can see where you are coming from. Appreciate the reconsideration.
— Erik Wessén (@TreatzLoL) April 17, 2019
Rakan mains and support players alike were eased by the new set of changes. Though a lot of players actually like where Rakan is in the game’s state, Squad5 thinks that he’s “significantly weak” and hopes the changes can get his winrate to 50%.
With big pro League of Legends events around the corner, Riot Games will be hard-pressed to find suitable changes that accommodates the higher echelon of skilled players as well as everyone in SoloQ.