Naafiri has already left an impact on the mid lane meta, and the newest League of Legends champion has seized the Rift by storm.
The Riot Games development team, despite delivering a “micropatch” to somewhat weaken the champion, is nonetheless happy with how she has performed thus far.
Naafiri receives nerfs just after her debut
According to Riot champion design manager Stephen “Raptorr” Auker, Naafiri is already showing a 54% win rate across the Rift when played in mid and is mildly at the highest rankings.
“We are thus far happy with the shape of where she’s landing and are not seeing any major systemic problems,”
Raptorr adjusted the champion somewhat to account for the fact that her rising mid-lane win rate will only increase as players grew acclimated to her powers.
- Movement speed: 340 >> 335
- Q:
- Bleed: 30/65/100/135/170 + 80% bonus AD >> 30/60/90/120/150 + 80% bonus AD
- Damage to minions: 70% >> 60%
- E:
- Passthrough Damage: 35/55/75/95/115 + 70% bonus AD >> 35/50/65/80/95 + 60% bonus AD
- Explosion Damage: 65/105/145/185/225 + 100% bonus AD >> 65/100/135/170/205 + 90% bonus AD
- R:
- AD boost: 10/20/30 (+15/20/25%) >> 5/15/25 (+8/16/24%)
After level one, Naafiri’s Q, Darkin Daggers, will cause less damage because the power surge she experienced when she maxed the ability was a bit high. Due to her wave clear being too quick, the ability will also do less damage to minions.
Given Naafiri’s prowess in the mid-game, where Raptorr saw she would seize control of games even with a tiny gold advantage, her E, Eviscerate, has also undergone significant adjustment. After level 1, the damage from explosions and passthrough has been decreased by 20%.
In the early and midgame, her ultimate has seen a significant nerf. The AD boost obtained has been decreased by about 50%, though, the ultimate is almost untouched in the late game.
Although the jungle is the champion’s secondary role, the dev team had seen that more over half of Naafiri’s games were played in this position. However, her viability in the jungle is in doubt considering her 41% win rate at higher ranks.
Riot also noted that changes to the Hound of a Hundred Bites in the jungle should be implemented but not anytime soon.
All eyes are now on Naafiri’s win rate to determine whether the improvements are having the desired impact. The patch is now live for players to test out the champion.