Hecarim, Miss Fortune and Stopwatch changes on PBE

The first of two League patches geared towards the World Championship is dropping next week and brings a lot of notable changes.

Hecarim balancing

Since the Mythic item rehaul happened in preseason 11, Hecarim has been stuck in limbo. His passive and the rest of his kit which thrives on movement speed got a major boost from the new tank and mana items. This created a build with which Hecarim has been able to build full tank items and yet still do enough damage to kill squishy targets. Riot continuously nerfed and buffed him trying to find the perfect balance, until the durability update happened. Now even designated assassins rarely have enough damage to kill squishy targets. This has left Hecarim in an even worse position. Not having enough crowd control or sustain to justify picking him over regular tanks, nor doing enough damage to take out key targets. With this update, Riot hopes to push him more towards a more skirmish-heavy playstyle suited to bruisers.

Hecarim changes

His Q ability will do less flat damage but scale much better with attack damage, receiving a 3-5% increase on the scalings. They also increased the number of stacks on it from two to three, making them fall off one by one instead of losing them all at once, and a flat mana cost of 30 at all ranks.

To compensate for these buffs, his E ability will now scale worse with attack damage, knockback a smaller distance, and have a flat cooldown of 17 seconds at all ranks. His ultimate ability will also fear for a shorter duration, down to 1,5 seconds instead of the previous two.

Miss Fortune balancing

Miss Fortune on the other hand has been able to find a spot in every meta due to her build versatility. Riot recognized that the poke builds with spamming the E ability is annoying, regardless if she is building ability power or attack damage. That’s why with these changes they are adding more incentives to use the Crit build, by making her Q ability more powerful.

Miss Fortune changes

Her Q ability will now do more flat damage but instead of a 0,25 second cast time, it will cast as fast as her auto attacks. This makes her benefit more from building crit items with attack speed in their components. Her W ability will cost less mana and give a larger attack speed boost, and the bonus critical damage on each wave of her ultimate ability will now be 30% instead of the previous 20%. Her E ability will now have a longer cooldown, do less flat damage and slow for less, but the damage and slow will scale better with ability power. This ensures that the build remains somewhat viable, depending on the circumstances. 

Stopwatch/ Zhonya balancing

Another result of the durability changes is the rise of enchanters into the meta. With engage supports finding it harder and harder to be as useful as before when there were not that many tanks in the meta, they have started abusing the most valuable item in the game. Stopwatch has probably been the most impactful item ever added to League, creating plays and outplay windows in both the competitive and ranked scene. But now a lot of supports and tanks in the jungle have started building it purely for the active. At just 2600 gold, Zhonya’s Hourglass which builds out of Stopwatch was also a cheaper alternative than Guardian Angel.  Never mind the stats and the flexibility of usage it offers.

Stopwatch and Zhonya nerfs

That’s why Riot are making Stopwatch cost 700 gold instead of 650, and increasing the total price of Zhonya’s Hourglass to 3000 gold from the previous 2600. To compensate for this and make sure mages are still fine building this item, it will also receive an ability power increase of 15 and an ability haste increase of 5. Seeker’s Armguard, the second component that builds into Zhonya’s Hourglass, will also give more ability power but fewer stacks of armor.

Header: Riot Games