Patch 26.4
Champions
Gwen nerfed
Rumble nerfed
Naafiri nerfed
Kennen nerfed
Swain nerfed
Kayle nerfed
Zac nerfed
Camille buffed
Graves buffed
Illaoi buffed
Udyr buffed
Hey Friends,
We have another, larger than average patch notes again, but most of the changes are not too relevant for Toplane. The changes I’m most excited to cover today are Gwen, Rumble, Kennen and Camille. Let’s dig in!
First, let’s talk about the champions changes that won’t have much impact on the overall meta game.
Swain, Naafiri and Zac nerfs are intended for their primary roles which “indirectly” hurt their Toplane performance. Zac nerfs look the most impactful so far, but with a limited sample size. None of these champions were very relevant to the top lane meta game, so they will become an even rarer occurrence from now on.
Kayle nerfs don’t make any difference in the lower tiers of gameplay, yet she lost up to 1.5-2% win rate in the apex tiers (with limited data). Keep in mind that her “balanced” win rate is always higher than the average champion. Q max still appears to be optimal, though by only a small margin, indicating that you can now alternate Q or E max based on the matchup if you haven’t been doing so already. Kayle is still doing just fine in the solo queue department, just not as strong.
Udyr and Graves buffs are jungle focused (don’t get baited to play them toplane), while Illaoi buff is irrelevant for the most part as she is an early game skewed champion that struggles in the late game against the buffed ADCs in the season 16.
Camille buff is a nice qualify of life change that she desperately needs. It’s insanely hard to showcase consistent performances on this champion no matter the player skill level. She is only strong for the first 3 levels of the game and after the trinity force. This is a terrible power spike pattern due to heavy reliance on the jungler to help you snowball the game in the season where ganking is very hard and not as rewarding as clearing camps. I was hopeful that the E QoL will help Camille reappear as a jungler, but it just does not seem to be good enough. For toplane though, the buff is greatly appreciated as it will allow you to push waves faster and burst better during ultimate. You’re also not completely screwed in trades if an enemy dodges the E2. I’m expecting players to at least experiment with Camille again in the “historically” playable matchups like Aatrox, Ambessa and Gnar. Don’t be fooled though, the buff won’t bring Camille back to her old glory.
Now, the three big changes of the patch.
Gwen has been trending since the start of the season 16 due to Dusk and Dawn. The nerfs to Q and R damage are impacting her quite hard (~2-3%, as the damage nerfs always do). Gwen has always relied on her ability to deal damage to define how powerful she is. You need 3 items to become thanos, but with these nerfs you will feel weaker at every point in the game until you reach that power spike. Gwen is going down to the counter pick tier, but she is still going to do just fine into the tanks and other favorable matchups.
Kennen R cd nerf appears to be about a 1-1.5% win rate loss. TLDR is that Kennen is still chilling in solo queue and won’t be dethroned from the S tier. The nerfs are only going to be noticable after the laning phase, in the sidelane where Kennen relies on the ultimate to have any sort of pressure, notably against the champions that can force you to R defensively. You will have to be more mindful about the ultimate usage in order to have it up for important objectives. Also, players are experimenting with gunblade + rocketbelt to compensate for the cooldown nerf (if you are building gunblade as the 1st item), but keep in mind that you are losing a lot of damage if you don’t build shadowflame as your 2nd item.
Rumble finally got nerfed, but not in a way that will matter unfortunately. I spent almost an hour testing different rune setups to see if any of them make a difference in compensating the nerfs to the rank 1 ultimate damage. While you could go arcanist, double adaptive shard and use the elixir of force to almost reach the base damage of the pre-nerfed ultimate, it is just not worth the investment in order to clear a cannon wave on level 6. Good gameplay will allow you to base anyway, so there is no need to overcompensate. I’m doubtful that these nerfs are going to be enough to dethrone Rumble from the competitive play as the best blind pick in the game.
Gnar priority is rising. He’s answering the meta game well, along side Gwen (though her priority will go down with nerfs in 16.4) while the counter picks like Jax are not performing well into Gnar at the moment. The reason for the priority spike is the higher Ambessa ban rate and more Renekton blind picks.
Ambessa jungle nerfs are interesting, though I am unsure if they’re good enough to stop teams from exploiting the power of the top/jungle flexibility.
Jayce is still in the jungle jail, but I did want to mention the Bastionbreaker item. It is very powerful in the jungle where you can afford to build pure damage. Toplane jayce unfortunately does not have the luxury to build it most of the time, but it is very good if you’re snowballing the game.
Quick tip: if you’re struggling with Kennen, try and see if you can make niche counterpicks like Nasus and Yorick work against it!
Rumble, Gwen and Kayle down a tier. Camille back to the bottom of A tier. Rest of the tier list remains fairly stable. Reminder: champions like Varus, Aurora and even Jayce are A tier in the apex tiers of solo queue (M+).
Until next time o7.