Patch 26.7
Champions
Cassiopeia buffed
Ornn nerfed
Singed nerfed
Hey Friends,
Happy April Fools’ Day! Today we have lowkey the smallest patch of all time for the fellow Toplaners. I have also decided to separate patch notes and the tier list updates going forward for clarity and the ease of finding the information.
Cassiopeia received a nice buff (for real this time as these changes didn’t actually make it through in the previous patch) to her base mana and E bonus damage when the target is poisoned. She was already quite strong in solo queue and this will only make her even better. She was already showing up as a niche pick into matchups like Rumble. Her Toplane pick rate will, no doubt, increase which will make the buffs seem lesser than they actually are. Keep in mind that Cassiopeia is a high mastery champion and I’m sure that Midlaners will make better use of this buff in the short term.
Ornn is one of those League tanks that has a really powerful kit, but needs to gain levels “on curve” to keep up with the game state in order to provide the full benefits unlike champions such as Malphite. The Toplane quest helped him greatly in this regard since the start of Season 16. Losing 1% max hp per brittle proc will hurt overall and will be noticeable vs HP stacking tanks and bruisers, Ornn will still overkill important targets if he’s allowed to chain his abilities. I don’t expect this change to hit him beyond the -1% win rate mark (max), therefore he will comfortably remain in the upper echelon of the tier list.
Singed has been an absolute menace in the season 16 due to many systemic changes new season brought along (including items, minion changes, homeguards, free teleport and so on). Notably, this nerf(-5/10 to given stats) hits only his rank 2 and 3 ultimate which are far less relevant for defining the quality of the Singed’s game (aka how well are you using those first few ultimates from level 6-11 to position yourself well in any given game). Still, for each “1 stat lost which is a combo of 6 stats Singed ultimate provides, you are losing around 170~ gold. This equates to losing around 840 gold worth of stats on level 11 and around 1680 gold worth of stats on level 16. This is a nerf that will impact lower elo Singed player a bit more as they naturally rely more on stat checking opponents, while it’s a bit less relevant for high elo where concepts like good positioning (flanking) or cooldowns decide the correctness of the play more. Regardless, I’m expecting a loss of ~1.5% in higher elo and ~2% win rate loss in the lower elo, though he is still going to perform better than the average Toplane champion. Once we have more data, we can conclude a result that is statistically significant.
Until next time o7.
