LoL Patch 14.13 weirdest but OP builds

Aatrox Overlord’s Bloodmail

The Aatrox Bruiser build made a strong comeback in 14.12 when the champion received a significant buff in his ultimate. No longer equipped with Lethality, Aatrox returns to familiar items such as Black Cleaver and Sundered Sky with stats suitable for dealing damage and staying long in combat.

However, there was one item that few people noticed that was very suitable for Aatrox, and that was Overlord’s Bloodmail. With Passives increasing AD based on missing health, this item will provide Aatrox with significant damange in combat, or 1v1 solos. In addition, the increase in AD is also significant as the current Aatrox is built according to the Bruiser gameplay.

Olaf Zeke’s

After Hecarim, another champion that is very suitable for Zeke’s build is Olaf. With a cheap price and extremely suitable defensive stats, Zeke’s is considered the third item that helps Olaf expand his power in a superior way in the middle and end of the match.

The passives from this item not only give Olaf more damage, but also provide the ability to slow down, which makes it better to chase down enemies when this champion does not have hard control. With the role of sweeping into combat thanks to his ultimate, Olaf is the most suitable champion to optimize the power of this equipment.

Of course, before that, Olaf couldn’t do it without some items with strong healing ability, at the moment, it is the Ravenous Hydra and the Sundered Sky.

Katarina AD Bruiser

Having emerged many times and then disappeared due to various edits, AD Katarina build is back in patch 14.13 with a very high efficiency in the Mid Lane.

Instead of the usual Blade of the Ruined King, Katarina’s first piece of item would be the Stridebreaker. Not only does it provide damage, the ability to slow down opponents, but the 450 Health stat from this item also makes Katarina stronger in the early stages. This makes it possible for Katarina players to be more active in combos to close down on enemy champions early.

Next, this champion will aim for attack effect items to increase her DPS, of which Kraken Slayer and Terminus are the most optimal choices. With this Bruiser playstyle, Katarina will find it easier to close in on enemy champions, taking advantage of mobility to disrupt the fight.

Nilah Death’s Dance

Instead of building in the usual crit build, Nilah is being tested by many masters with new item upgrades. The Essence Reaver will be available as soon as possible to ensure early damage, especially the ability to suck mana to spam while on the lane.

However, the second item will be more unique with the Death’s Dance, which is a common item in bruisers. Obviously, for a melee ADC like Nilah, this item will help players feel more confident in the fight. Especially with the bonus of 40 Armor, Nilah will have a great advantage when facing other Marksmen. In the end, Dominik’s Crossbow was chosen as the 3rd item.

Bard Warmogs

An extremely interesting gameplay in the emerging Support position is Bard in the direction of dealing Damage. This champion will be able to take advantage of Passives to create a unique set of items, thereby creating discomfort for opponents when laning.

Blood Song will be a necessary upgrade to increase Damage from auto attacks, while Wits End will give Bard more AD as well as a certain amount of MR.

However, just like the trend in recent times, Warmogs is the main dish that needs to be put on first as Bard’s unique build. With the ability to kite and inflict constant control, Bard has time to pull in combat, thereby making good use of Warmogs’ passive.

League of Legends continues with Patch 14.12, following the substantial changes introduced in Patch 14.10. The developers are focused on making further adjustments to balance the game better. Although the update is still in its preliminary phase, the main goal is to enhance the performance of Naafiri and Aatrox, with a particular emphasis on increasing Naafiri’s play rate.

League of Legends Patch 14.12 early notes

Champions

Aatrox

Base Stats

• Health regen growth reduced: 1.0 >>> 0.5
• Armor growth increased: 4.45 >>> 4.8

E: Umbral Dash

• Healing changed: 18-24% >>> 16%
• Healing now scales with 0.8% bonus HP
• Healing is no longer increased to 20-36% during R

R: World Ender

• Bonus healing increased: 40-80% >>> 50-100% (25-45% live)
• Bonus AD reduced: 20-45% >>> 20-40%

Naafiri

Passive: We Are More

• Packmate’s base AD increased: 6-30 >>> 10-30

Q: Darkin Daggers

• Cooldown reduced: 11-7 seconds >>> 9-7 seconds

E: Eviscerate

• Cooldown reduced: 10-8 seconds >>> 8 seconds flat

Both Aatrox and Naafiri will undergo changes. Riot Games is especially keen on buffing Naafiri’s presence in lower brackets, where she was initially designed to excel. To achieve this, Riot is buffing her passive, which is expected to make her more viable and appealing to players.

Aatrox and Naafiri, both of whom have faced challenges in remaining competitive, are set to receive these buffs to make them more effective in matches. Riot Games hopes that these changes will encourage more players to pick Naafiri, thus increasing her overall play rate.

According to the patch schedule, the release of League of Legends Patch 14.12 is scheduled for June 12, 2024.

It’s surprising to think that Riot Games, with its extensive experience spanning 200 years collectively, would let these mechanics endure in League of Legends. However, let’s delve into the champion abilities that have caused historical uproar due to their overwhelming nature.

Mechanics that got removed from League of Legends

Irelia’s disarmed ultimate

Take the original version of Irelia, for example, which birthed the infamous “Better nerf Irelia” meme within League of Legends. This version of Irelia, with her powerful mechanics, seemed to excel in every aspect a champion needed.

From bonus damage and attack speed upon landing abilities, to dealing increased damage to shielded opponents, and even possessing healing abilities and cooldown resets, Irelia seemed unstoppable. Her kit, featuring reductions in all incoming damage and a disarming effect that left opponents helpless, made her nearly unbeatable in duels. Consequently, Riot Games had to continuously trim her abilities and apply nerfs to maintain balance.

Akali’s smoked bomb

Similarly, the original Akali remake stirred controversy with its overwhelming kit, including high damage output, healing abilities, and the ability to maneuver through terrain. One particularly contentious feature was the stealth mechanism within her Smoke Bomb, making it nearly impossible for opponents to navigate.

Despite player outcry, it took Riot Games several iterations and seasons to address these issues, gradually toning down Akali’s abilities and restoring balance into a normal champion in League of Legends.

Mordekaiser’s pet

The Gladiator of the Bottom Lane, Mordekaiser, introduced one of the most polarizing versions in League of Legends history. His ability to summon a dragon spirit as a pet and push lanes with ease became a staple strategy, dominating professional tournaments with near-perfect ban/pick ratios.

Mordekaiser’s overwhelming strength in the bot lane, coupled with the supportive meta of League of Legends that time, allowed him to snowball to victory effortlessly. Eventually, Riot Games had to remove this mechanic in subsequent versions in preparation for a Mordekaiser rework.

Aatrox revival

The post-rework version of Aatrox tackled the problem of his previously straightforward kit by introducing flashy abilities. These abilities encompassed everything from hard CC, to soft CC like slowing and pulling opponents, and even increased mobility with a dash.

Additionally, he could heal from both basic and ultimate abilities. Perhaps most frustratingly, he gained the ability to transform into an untargetable target (in the first rework) and then resurrect upon his death (in the second rework).

Although Riot Games eventually removed the resurrection aspect from his kit, Aatrox remains a strategic pick in League of Legends, favored by many professional players even today.

Jax ‘doging’ turrets

Jax recently underwent a rework, but his signature ability, Counter Strike, remained unchanged. This ability allows him to dodge all basic attacks (excluding those from towers) for a brief period. However, this ability is now considerably weaker compared to its original iteration.

Initially, Jax’s Counter Strike was a passive ability that granted him a bonus dodge chance of 10-18%. Upon successfully dodging an attack, he could activate the ability to stun nearby enemies. Coupled with items and runes that further boosted his dodge chance, Jax could achieve a dodge rate of up to 34.5%, meaning he could dodge at least one out of every three attacks.

Furthermore, this ability even allowed him to dodge attacks from structures like towers and inhibitors. Recognizing the imbalance, Riot Games removed the passive dodge chance and reworked Jax to prevent him from dodging attacks from structures.

In fights where champions need to stay alive while dealing damage, having gear that can steal back health is really important. One of the most popular items for this is the Ravenous Hydra, which many fighters rely on to stay tough in team fights.

Some champions, like Aatrox or Lee Sin, have their own built-in abilities to life steal, and they become even stronger when they get their hands on items like the Ravenous Hydra. But lately, players are saying that dealing with all this healing stuff is getting harder. When they face champions with these abilities, it’s like facing the toughest bosses in hard games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne.

One champion causing a stir is Lee Sin, who’s equipped with a Ravenous Hydra, a Doran Sword, and a few other things. Players are sharing stories on Reddit of fighting against him, like one where Ahri faces him and manages to chip away at his health, only to see it shoot right back up again. People are comparing it to fighting a tough boss in a game.

Lee Sin’s second W is a big reason for his crazy healing. It boosts his healing power by 26%, and with the two items he has, that’s another 42%. And when he activates the Ravenous Hydra, his healing gets even stronger—up to 150% more! So every time he hits someone, he’s getting back a lot of health. In one example, his move called E is enough to heal him by a huge amount—almost bringing him back to full health in the middle of a fight!

There are ways to deal with this, like using champions who can stop healing. But not everyone has access to those champions, like Ahri. So, lots of players are saying the game’s balancing team needs to step in and make some changes. They hope that by adjusting Lee Sin, things will be fairer for everyone, making the game more fun and balanced for all players.

Riot Games, in its ongoing efforts to maintain a dynamic and engaging gaming environment, frequently introduces patches that can significantly impact the meta and gameplay.

Despite the constant evolution of the game, certain champions can sometimes be overlooked or experience bugs, especially if they aren’t among the player community’s most favored choices.

A notable exception to this is Aatrox, a champion enjoying substantial popularity. However, the recent buff intended to improve Aatrox’s passive, Deathbringer Stance, has inadvertently given rise to a troubling bug.

As demonstrated by League of Legends content creator Vandiril, the change to Aatrox’s passive on the PBE prevents its cancellation, providing a quality-of-life improvement to the ability.

Regrettably, this seemingly positive adjustment has introduced a more significant problem. When Aatrox uses his Q ability immediately following his passive, the Q fails to deal damage on any enemies.

This bug significantly impacts Aatrox’s gameplay, especially considering that his Q is a fundamental source of damage, and it disrupts the fluidity of his combos. Players are now forced to wait for the complete animation of his passive before launching the next attack, resulting in a slower and less effective combat experience.

As of now, this bug is limited to the PBE, suggesting that Riot Games may address and rectify the issue before the changes hit the live servers.

Top laners have been feeling a little forgotten as bot lane has seen major changes to the role’s items and relative power in any given match. As a result, rather than attempting to build pricey top-lane bruiser items, many of the top-tier players have resorted to purchasing support items. Redemption Urgot and Evenshroud Aatrox are two builds that have recently gained popularity.

Top lane players prefer support items rather than bruiser items

Top laners have been feeling a little ignored with the most crucial goal in the early game and the scaling champion on the team all centred in the bot lane.

Furthermore, top lane items are notoriously pricey. Almost every top lane Mythic items exceeds 3000 gold. They’re powerful items, to be sure, but getting enough of them developed before the opponent ADC hard scales is no easy task. As a result, top laners have brought about the change by fundamentally rethinking how they build.

An Urgot one-trick demonstrating the build behind creating Redemption on his primary champion is one of the most renowned instances. Redemption allows top laners to not only impact different sections of the map while pressing their lanes, but it also helps them to accept trades efficiently by healing themselves and punishing opponents.

Aatrox is yet another top lane champion that has been accumulating support items, and veteran pro player Gabril ‘Bwipo’ Rau discussed why he chose Evenshroud over other strong Aatrox Mythic items.

The 10% additional damage passive not only procs on every hit of Aatrox’s Q if you hit it, but it also offers some decent base stats and a powerful passive for the price of 2300 gold. Furthermore, Evenshroud provides the player extra resistances for each Legendary item finished, increasing the worth of the purchase as the game progresses.

It will be interesting to see what other off-meta strategies top laners come up with, but they are definitely striving to innovate to stay relevant in the meta game.

Last year, we received the EDG skin line, which has been a fantastic cosmetic addition to League of Legends. The splash image alone for that release is fantastic, and the skins themselves support that.

Moving on to the current year, skins celebrating DRX’s amazing run at the 2022 World Championship will soon be available in League. Riot has officially released the new skins, with the first Worlds Prestige skin arriving this year.

Riot Games stated that the champions receiving skins are Aatrox, Kindred, Maokai, Akali, Ashe, and Caitlyn.

The Aatrox skin emphasises Kingen, Kindred presents out Pyosik’s dedication, Maokai serves as the skin for the team’s substitutes Juhan, Akali as Zeka, Caitlyn to finish Deft’s story of a nearly decade-long climb towards the title, and BeryL efficiently piloted the much-loved meta support Ashe.

Each of the champions picked to receive a memorial skin was played at least once by the DRX players—and were all their best selections, as they acknowledged just a few weeks after Worlds ended.

Each of these skins is coated in blue and white to match the DRX emblem and jerseys. Furthermore, the players collaborated with the creators on these skins, thus their effect can be seen in the appearance of these skins as well as their recall animations—complete with their signatures. The DRX emblem and the Summoner’s Cup may also be seen throughout the champions’ animations.

Furthermore, these DRX skins would be the first in the world champions skin line to contain a Prestige Edition, which would be earned during an in-game event or purchased in the Mythic store. The finals MVP Kingen is the recipient of this unique edition, which depicts Aatrox with diamond-like characteristics.

The skins will be available for testing on the PBE in the next days, with an official release scheduled for June 1 with Patch 13.11.

Sustain changes on Fighter champions 

While fans are delighted about all of the improvements revealed for Patch 13.1, the devs have one more surprise in store for them in the coming weeks that is connected to a whole class of champions.

According to Riot Phlox, the devs are looking into some changes toward the sustainability of the Fighter class, one of the most broken classes in recent days.

Fighter champions are high-risk, high-reward champions that specialize in skirmishing and battling and have mid-game potential due to their durable builds and strong damage output.

Normally, this type of champions doesn’t have the durability like tanks, However, it has recently felt as though fighters are the new tanks, with an extra pile of damage in their kit making them hard to play against.

Champions like Irelia, Aatrox, and Fiora are just some examples, and with the inclusion of the new tank items, Jak’Sho, The Protean and Heartsteel, they appear to be even more unkillable than before.

When going off against long ranged champions, their low range, which should be their vulnerability, doesn’t really matter because no amount of damage can take them down. Eventually, they will catch up with the long-ranged champions, and that’s the end for them.

One of the concerns with Fighters right now is the amount of healing and sustain they’ve been gaining, which means they can take a critical blow and recover back up before dying owing to their natural durability, making it feel unfair to play them.

While these modifications should be implemented in the next patches, no formal details have been released. More information, though, should be available in the following weeks.

DWG KIA top laner Jang “Nuguri” Ha-gwon chose Jayce in his team’s group stage match against North America’s Evil Geniuses, being the 100th champion to be either selected or banned in the tournament’s Play-In stage and Main Event. The historic selection took place less than halfway through the group stage. With more knockouts on the way, the list has the potential to climb even further.

Casters Max “Atlus” Anderson, Marc Robert “Caedrel” Lamont, and Sam “Kobe” Hartman-Kenzler were among the first to notice the 100th pick/ban, however, it took them longer to comprehend. Later in the game, Atlus revealed the achievement.

The number of highlighted champions at a Worlds tournament has reached a new high of 100. It implies a robust meta-diversity at the end of the competition season. This is especially intriguing given that several champions were disabled during the event.

A handful of champions have shown prominently in the tournament thus far, with top lane Aatrox leading the charge with a 96% presence in Play-Ins and a 100% presence in the Main Event.

Maokai has also emerged as a top priority for teams, his presence growing from the Play-Ins to groups. This is due in part to his versatility as a flex pick between top, jungle, and even support.

Other well-known champions include Sylas, Kalista, Azir, and, to the chagrin of many fans and players, Yummi.

With so many matches remaining at Worlds 2022, the number of disputed champions may increase even more.

Riot Games can now start on bringing enjoyable things to League of Legends now that the pro-focused updates are done and the 2023 preseason is approaching.

The lead designer on Riot’s balancing team, Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, has revealed a list of changes for Patch 12.20. And, according to Riot, with the next patch coming, they will make Blitzcrank more viable in the jungle by removing part of his support strength.

Furthermore, Rammus, Jayce, Wukong, Gwen, Evelynn, and Ziggs are scheduled to gain further buffs in patch 12.20.

Riot also says Aatrox is still “too strong” after the Eclipse adjustments. As a consequence, Aatrox will be nerfed in the next patch. Furthermore, Sett and Maokai, one of the most picked and banned champions of Worlds 2022, are slated to be nerfed.

League Patch 12.20 Preview

Champion Buffs

• Jayce
• Wukong (Top)
• Gwen
• Evelynn
• Ziggs
• Rammus

Champion Nerfs

• Sett
• Aatrox
• Maokai

Champion Adjustments

• Elise Q Range QoL
• Blitzcrank (Support nerf, Jungle buff)

System Buffs

• Mortal Reminder
  • Consecutive attacks required to trigger empowered Grevious Wounds reduced 2 >>> 1
  • Sterak’s Gage

System Nerfs

• Lethal Tempo
• Frozen Heart
  • Cost increased 2500 >>> 2700
  • Rock Solid base reduction reduced 7 >>> 5

System Adjustments

• Demonic Embrace
  • Health reduced 450 >>> 350
  • AP increased 60 >>> 70

All of the updates are presently available for testing on the PBE. In addition, League of Legends patch 12.20 is set to be released on October 19.