LoL patch 10.11 targets ADC with buffs

AD carries are about to get some loving with Riot Games’ next patch to League of Legends. The role has been on Riot’s checklist for a while now with regard to needing some changes made. But now it looks like some major changes are coming to make the role somewhat easier to play.

Mark “Scruffy” Yetter, lead gameplay designer for League of Legends, went through these “offense and defense” changes. First of all, these changes are just a draft. But casual and professional players alike should expect something along the lines of what Scruffy described in three weeks’ time.

Increasing attack speed with Zeal items

At around the beginning of League of Legends Season 10, attack speed items received a major beating for ADCs. Despite critical strike increasing, the role felt a major loss with reliable DPS. Ranged characters like Xayah and Kai’Sa became less popular, while others like Miss Fortune, Senna, and Varus — champions less reliant on attack speed items — shot up in usage.

But now these characters are going to get a helping hand. Zeal is receiving an extra 3% attack speed bump, putting it back up to its Season 9 level. Additionally, an extra 5% is going toward Rapidfire Cannon, Phantom Dancer, Statikkm Shiv, and Runaan’s Hurrican, which build out of Zeal.

Riot Games is treading carefully when it comes to the implications of these changes. Buffing any other stats on a 1,400-gold item could create some massive consequences with regard to crit stacking for champions like Jhin and Yasuo. But Riot will monitor the changes.

Making ADCs into tanks

ADCs have had it rough when it comes to being one-shot by assassins. Riot decided to address this problem with the 10.11 patch. Now, on top of the Zeal changes, all marksmen are receiving a 30 health increase at level 1, as well as an extra 5 health per level.

League statistician Shakarez examined the change in numbers, and this is going to be a massive boost for the role. Many AD carries can expect to find at least a 110 health increase at level 18. Factoring in the minimal resistances granted to this role, that health bump is considerable.

As a result of these changes, this could cultivate a rise in ADCs in solo lanes as well. Champions such as Lucian, Tristana, and even Kalista have found their way to both top and mid lanes. Boosts to their health could help them survive trades and increase bullying power in lane.

Though these are still “rough draft” announcements by Scruffy, we can still expect to see something along these lines in Patch 10.11. The release date for that is still several weeks away (May 28). Though the changes were originally planned for 10.10, Riot decided to instead plan for a “tuning pass” before making the changes live.

The next League of Legends planned update is to take place on May 13, and includes some nerfs to mid-laners like Katarina and Diana. However, champions like Annie and Udyr will receive some loving.

Ryan Goodrich

Ryan has been writing since long before he could even write. He's written resumes, software user guides, consumer electronic reviews, and myriad web content spanning a variety of industries. But now he's writing about video games, which is much more interesting.

View all posts