5 Things We Don't Want in League of Legends Patch 10.4
By Blake Toman
League of Legends Patch 10.4 will come out next week and expects to be much larger than the recently-releases Patch 10.3. The new patch will feature the release of new Bloodmoon skins. Although we look forward to the skins, here are the five things we don't want to see in League of Legends Patch 10.4.
1. Garen Buffs
The Garen and Yuumi bot lane meta in Season 9 was during a time where most traditional AD carries were weak relative to bruisers and mages in other lanes. The pairing became viable enough to be played professionally until changes were eventually made to Garen's kit that reduced his synergy with Yuumi.
With the recent buffs to Yuumi, any buffs to Garen's kit that would give him more health would come close to making him viable in professional play as a bot lane duo. Buffs to Garen should look to change his AD ratios in Decisive Strike (Q) rather than giving him more magic resist, armor, and a stronger shield.
2. Blade of the Ruined King Buffs
Blade of the Ruined King has traditionally been an early item on late game scaling AD carries that need sustain to survive the laning phase or early game AD carries that need additional movement speed to stick to their opponents.
But there are currently rumors that the item will now be buffed for melee champions, allowing them to deal up to 11 percent of a target's health as bonus damage. This change would serve to prevent tanks from being played in the top lane and would indirectly buff a host of melee champions such as Yasuo and Garen.
3. Sunfire Cape Buffs
The change to Blade of the Ruin King is more understandable when paired with changes to a common tank item, Sunfire Cape. The proposed changes to Sunfire Cape would allow it to periodically deal five percent of your bonus health as magic damage when casting an immobilizing spell.
Just like the proposed changes to Blade of the Ruined King, these item changes would push tanks into the center the meta and return the game closer to how it was in Season 8. A smaller buff with only two percent of bonus health as magic damage may be a way to help tanks back into top lane without making them a dominant force in the game.
4. Ekko Nerfs
Riot Games found the right place for Ekko in the jungle on Patch 10.3. The nerf to his bonus damage dealt to jungle monsters helped make his early game clear weak enough to punish and created a clear choice for players in how to effectively shut down the pick.
Any additional nerfs would only push Ekko out of the jungle entirely or even push him out of mid lane. Ekko was fairly balanced on Patch 10.3 and there's no reason for that to change on Patch 10.4.
5. A Badly-Tuned Wukong Rework
Wukong has been slowly reworked over the past few months in preparation for his eventual release during Season 10. But based on the information we've seen on the Public Beta Environment, Wukong is hardly where he needs to be in terms of balance.
The shield Wukong gets from Strength of Stone (Passive) every 16 seconds, combined with a 30 percent attack speed steroid from Nimbus Strike (E) would make his jungle clear almost unrivaled. He would be able to out-sustain even the top tier junglers, making his clear speed and timings difficult to handle even at the highest levels of competition.
Wukong needs changes, but those changes have to be balanced and effective in order to see the champion return to solo queue.