The latest League of Legends patch is here. League of Legends patch 10.4 includes long-awaited changes to champions such as Soraka and Sona. Additionally, the new Blood Moon skins will be available for purchase starting February 20.
No more healers in the top lane in patch 10.4
Recently, Soraka and Sona have been taking over both the ranked ladder and professional play. Riot August, the senior champion designer at Riot Games, first rumored the upcoming nerfs to the healing supports in the top lane before patch 10.3. However, the changes went through another two weeks of balancing on the Public Beta Environment (PBE) before being included with this update.
Soraka is now a tier 1 support champion
Soraka’s base stats have shifted drastically. However, they are not an essential part of this update. The main change to Soraka comes from changes to the Rejuvenation passive and Q – Starfall. Soraka’s passive ability, Rejuvenation, grants her healing and a decaying movement speed buff.
With this update, however, the duration of Rejuvenation is reduced from 5 to 2.5 seconds. Besides this, Starfall’s self-healing got lowered significantly. The self-healing is both nerfed in its base healing, and now scales far worse with the ability power stat.
The nerf to top lane Soraka is remedied by the new passive added to W – Astral Infusion, Soraka’s single-target healing spell. The new passive, “Me after a massage and ice cream,” reduces the max-health cost of using Astral infusion by 40 to 100%. This cost reduction only works when the Rejuvenation passive is active. However, this will make support Soraka much stronger in the teamfight stages.
Sona, the back-up Soraka
Sona has also changed in this update. The consensus was that Sona was effectively a worse version of Soraka in the top lane. However, to prevent Sona replacing Soraka in the top lane meta, her abilities have been changed slightly. The cost of all Sona’s non-ultimate skills has been increased by 25.
To make up for this increase, however, Sona’s abilities now have a new passive, “Mana Restore”. Mana Restore grants Sona 30 mana whenever the aura of one of her abilities affects an ally. This simple change buffs Sona in the bot lane, while effectively removing her from the top lane meta.
Rammus and the new Immolate passive
Included in this update is an unexpected buff to a certain tank item. Bami’s Cinder, Cinderhulk, and Sunfire Cape have all been given a new passive, Immolate. Immolate allows champions to put out a massive amount of damage upon immobilizing a champion. The damage starts out quite low but scales with the champion’s bonus health at a generous rate, ranging from 0.02 to 0.05 damage per bonus health.
The main champions affected by this update are those who already played with the Sunfire Cape or Cinderhulk items. For example, Rammus is certain to make his way back into the meta. This update to one of his core items, alongside the increase in base attack speed, makes him a very prominent champion in the upcoming meta.
League of Legends patch 10.4 Jungle damage changes
The final part of this patch includes changes to the passives of seven champions and damage-over-time to jungle camps. While most of these changes won’t affect much, two stand out above the rest. Gnar’s W – Hyper now deals 300 (maximum) damage at all levels to jungle camps on every third attack. Some players in the solo queue had already been toying with Gnar in the Jungle before this update. This buff might be what it takes for Gnar to enter the meta.
The other interesting change is Garen’s E – Judgment. Garen’s Judgment (spin) now deals 150% damage against non-epic monsters, drastically increasing his clearing speed. It will be very interesting to see how these changes affect jungle champions played in the League of Legends patch 10.4 update.
For more League of Legends news, be sure to read all about Faker becoming a part-owner of T1.
