When Riot stated that they wanted to change the bot lane diversity they weren’t kidding. After taking a whole bunch of power away from AD carries we now have the weirdest League meta since season 1. Bruisers and mages are dominating bot lane and Heimerdinger even has a 100% win rate in the LCS, definitely absurd.
While these changes make the game fresh and exciting, AD carry players are less than happy, thus Riot is hotfixing some items to give crit AD carries some breathing room. Three items are buffed that will supposedly help out crit AD carries with a stronger and slightly earlier late game.
As a result, we’re going to ship the item buffs today and then observe what individual champ followup is or is not necessary on 8.13 and future patches. Current changes are included on the image. pic.twitter.com/ZlwRbkOeSX
— Richard Henkel (@Riot_Maple) June 18, 2018
Richard Henkel, a lead producer at Riot posted the changes coming in the hotfix on Twitter, coupled with a small explanation on why the hotfix is happening and how it might impact the game. As can be seen from his post on Twitter, Riot is clearly satisfied by the diversity that is now playable in the bot lane and thus they have no intentions of buffing AD carries to the point where they were at before. The buffs are also specifically aimed at crit AD carries rather than AD carries in general, as some of them still see regular play.
The problem with crit AD carries in the current meta is that they take too much time to ramp up to an acceptable power level. The game has become extremely tempo focused and the first team that takes the baron often takes the game. You want to have strong lanes to snowball the game in your favor but that’s simply not possible with the weak early game that crit AD carries bring to the table.
The small tweaks that are being made to the items will make crit AD carries better of course, but it probably won’t bring them back in the game any time soon. The changes are too small to bring an entire class of slow power building champions into a fast-paced meta. The champions that might get stronger with these changes though are the champions that are already building these items.
Stormrazer’s is a great rush item for lane bullies that give them an oppressive early game power spike and the essence reaver is great for bruisers like Renekton and Illaoi to follow up with huge damage after using their ults. These changes might make these champions even stronger than they already were but we will just have to wait and see how the meta adepts.
