Summoner’s Rift Lead Designer Matt “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison is back with the next patch 12.15 preview.
All energy champions, namely Zed, Lee Sin, Akali, Kennen, and Shen, will receive buffs in the next update.
“These are mainly champions whose energy costs haven’t kept up with the game post durability,” wrote Riot Phroxzon. “We like where Kennen’s energy costs are, so we’re buffing something else instead.”
Surprisingly, a handful of tanks are also slated for buffs. Unsurprisingly, strong meta AD carries Kalista and reworked Sivir will likely get nerfed. Despite the patch 12.13 hotfix, it seems Riot Games still wants to take Master Yi down a notch.
Among the energy champions, Zed and Shen still hold a positive win rate in high Elo solo queue at rank Platinum and above. Top lane Shen in particular, has a 52.34% win rate in patch 12.14 with a decent 4.9% pick rate according to U.GG. With these buffs, his win rate and popularity will only increase.
Akali and Kennen have been struggling since the patch 12.10 Durability Update, but the biggest loser is Lee Sin, who currently holds a 45.62% win rate in solo queue. Even before the Durability Update, he received a series of nerfs to all his abilities since patch 11.11 last season. Only in patch 12.11 did he get some buffs to his base attack damage, Sonic Wave, and Resonating Strike, but clearly they haven’t been enough.
Riot Phroxzon’s Twitter post about the LoL patch 12.14 preview can be found here.
