The League of Legends devs decided to dedicate a large portion of patch 12.19 to improving champions in a somewhat unique way. The goal of this update was not to increase character performance in general, but rather the performance they could deliver by equipping items that weren’t as common in their builds. For example, Nunu and Tahm Kench’s damage has been increased when they accumulate AP or Garen’s damage when he buys critical hit items. This is something that shouldn’t affect ranked games, though.
A paradox created by the League of Legends community
Instead of increasing their performance, most of the champions that Riot Games upgraded with these changes saw their win rate drop significantly. If we consider only the improvements, there is no reason for this, because in no case were they combined with power reductions in various areas of the skill set (Shyvana received a small modification but it does not override his buff). However, the human factor had not been considered upstream. The main problem was that too many players chose to ignore the studio’s warning not to modify the build of champions.
Tahm Kench | 51.7% | 50.3% |
 Shyvana | 52% | 51.3% |
 Nunu | 52.3% | 51.9% |
 Kai’Sa | 51.2% | 51% |
 Malphite (mid) | 50% | 48.4% |
With several days of patches behind us, we can put aside doubts about a possible lack of data. All champions have participated in thousands of games (Kai’Sa has already participated in more than 138,400) and show a clear downward trend. Moreover, the observation is identical when we delve into the individual analysis of each character. What is happening, is that the community is much more likely to choose items that perform worse than those used in the previous patch. A good example is Shyvana, a character whose Night Harvester item pick rate has doubled.
Although this champion performs better with the Cryo Gauntlet (53.36%) and has access to a much better overall build, three out of ten players choose to play her by focusing on the accumulation of power. The same goes for Nunu, who wins 54.2% of matches with the Solar Cloak and sees more and more community members opting for the Hextech Rocketbelt.
The most curious case remains that of Kai’Sa. If the number of games in which she is chosen makes her decline in terms of win rate undeniable, the fact is that the improvement of Riot Games has made the champion more versatile. The item that could be wrong here is the Tooth of Nashor. However, its performance is almost identical to that of the best options for this champion. In this sense, we can even be grateful to him in games where we lack magic damage in the team. This is why its drop in performance is so discreet.
In case you think you’re blaming this on an alleged group of new players who significantly reduced the win rate of these champions, nothing could be further from the truth. Although, like all League of Legends developer buffed characters, these champions saw their pick rate increase, in all cases except Kai’Sa the increase was less than 0.4 %. In this regard, only regular fans of the character in question can be singled out for getting carried away when purchasing items.
Remark : The data in the table corresponds to games played at ranks higher than Platinum.
Blitzcrank received improvements in League of Legends patch 12.19, including possibly allowing him to go toplane and jungle. Now, with patch 12.20, Riot is emphasizing this role shift, while reducing its power to the support role.