The release of Teamfight Tactics: Reckoning has been rather smooth. However, the first week of the fifth TFT expansion has had a couple of problematic meta warpers. To combat some of the more oppressive champions, TFT lead designer Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer announced on Tuesday that there will be a “B-patch” for the TFT 11.9 patch to tone down a few champions. The patch will go live Wednesday, May 5 at around 7 p.m. ET.
Among the champions being hit are Mordekaiser, Kennen, Ziggs, Aphelios and a couple of others. Two champions of the infamous Heimerdinger/Ivern/Volibear combo are also being nerfed with Ivern and Volibear getting the nerf bat. The most problematic champion on a lot of players lists is Leblanc. Riot Games agrees with the grievances as she will also be nerfed in Wednesday’s hotfix.
In approximately 24 hours, we'll be applying a B-Patch to hit some balance outliers. In order to give you time to theory craft, here are the notes.
Some bigger swings that we hope will open things up. More coming in 11.10 as well. Will post again once it's live. pic.twitter.com/EXaowxuwi7
— Riot Mort (@Mortdog) May 4, 2021
Mordekaiser is getting his damage and attack speed put in check
To many players, Mordekaiser is the most over-performing champion on the current patch. The Dragonslayer Legionnaire started off the first couple of days being the secondary carry behind Draven in the Legionnaire composition, but players quickly found out that Mordekaiser should be the one doing the heavy lifting.
Mordekaiser’s ability, Infernal Rise, is oppressive. Infernal Rise gives Mordekaiser a gigantic shield, extra hex range for his autos while active and does increased magic damage on his autos. To compensate for how powerful the ability is, Mordekaiser has low attack speed. But thanks to the Legionnaire trait, that trade-off is irrelevant. With six Legionnaires, Mordekaiser has 150% increased attack speed, making the four cost unit an often un-killable monster.
The TFT 11.9 B-patch nerf will bring the attack speed buff of the Legionnaire trait down from 150% at the six champion bonus, to 110%. The eight champion bonus will also go down from 250% to 180%. Mordekaiser is also losing 50 bonus damage on the empowered autos on his ability cast, down from 650 to 600 at two star and 500 to 450 at one star.
Leblanc’s chain crowd control is getting locked out
With the introduction of the new “shadow item” mechanic, one of the new items, Very Dark Blue Buff, has already been taken advantage of. The shadow version of Blue Buff gives its holder 50 mana after their spell cast, if they are below 60% HP. Thanks to Guardian Angel, that only revives its holder with 400 HP, while Leblanc is able to infinitely cast her 50 mana ability after she is revived with GA. This makes a problematic game state, as if there is no way to get onto Leblanc, she will chain cc every member on the enemy team until they all die. Even though Leblanc isn’t the best performing champion, this interaction has been drawn to Riot’s attention.
After the b-patch, Leblanc will no longer have a 50 mana ability. It will cost 60, which will end the infinite stun lock combo with Very Dark Blue Buff. Also, her spellcast mana lock will increase from one second to one and a half, to slow down the chain Crowd Control even more. She will also be receiving some minor bug fixes in the update.
Ivern and Volibear are getting knocked down because of their knock ups
It only took a couple of days for players to realize how broken the Volibear/Ivern combo is. The revenant duo have been the kings of Area of Effect CC for the first week of the new set. The duo not only have insane knock-up abilities, they also live long enough to do it a couple of times in a fight, thanks to them having built in Guardian Angels with the Revenant trait. To make the duo a little more balanced, Riot decided to hit them hard.
Before the TFT 11.9 B-patch, the Voli/Ivern combo would revive with 30% of their maximum health off of the Revenant trait, but after the B-patch, the duo will only revive with 10%. This nerf is a big one, as it won’t effectively let them cast more than once. When it comes to champion-specific nerfs, Ivern’s “Daisy” ability is getting touched. Outside of being a huge wall, Daisy also has an ability of her own that knocks up champions in a two-hex radius. Going forward, the knock-up will only affect champions within a one-hex radius.
Volibear has by far the most impactful CC ability in the game, as he should. The five cost champion effectively knocks up more than half of the board. He was also doing it multiple times in a fight, being able to cast very quickly. Going forward, Volibear’s Doombringer ability will cost 200 mana instead of 170. He will also only start with 80 mana, instead of the previously afforded 100. This is an effective first cast nerf of 50 total mana. As a result, players will have to itemize Volibear if they want him to cast his ability before death.
Aphelios and a couple of Hellions round out the nerfs
Aphelion has been a little overpowered too, so included in the B-patch is a 10 AD nerf. He is also getting a slight 0.05 attack speed decrease as well. These nerfs will still make Aphelios effective but a lot more balanced.
Kennen is receiving a few nerfs. Outside of Volibear, Kennen who is only a two cost champion, being one of the games premier CC champions while also doing a decent bit of damage. To make him more balanced, Riot is nerfing his mana, damage and stun duration. Kennen will now start with 10 less mana and do 50 less damage at three star. His stun duration at three star will also be 0.5 seconds shorter.
Ziggs is also receiving a nerf to his attack speed. Thanks to the Hellion bonus, Ziggs was attacking a little too fast for a one cost carry. Ziggs will now have 0.75 attack speed instead of 0.85.
The TFT 11.9 B-patch will be going live after the conclusion of Wednesday’s Twitch Rivals TFT event. This is to give the players participating in the Twitch Rivals event the chance to complete their event without a massive shake up to the meta. This is a very good decision, as events in the past have been hit by unexpected “B-patches”, changing the competition. The patch is expected to hit the TFT servers around 7 p.m. ET.
