After the “very very experimental” changes to Pyke, the League of Legends developers are looking to add a new passive to his kit
Pyke has always been an aggressive champion, relying on large ultimate executions with a massive chunk of gold to share with his teammates. Riot is considering modifying his playstyle in League of Legends patch 12.9 by highlighting the strength of his ultimate and making it infinitely scale. The ultimate changes to the Bloodharbor, however, were not the only update for him.
The most recent modification to hit the PBE focuses on his passive, providing a new level to the champion. According to Riot Games, Gift of the Drowned Ones, Pyke’s Passive, now shares a new passive The Gift within it.
The Gift: If there is a nearby ally champion, Pyke’s basic attack will execute minions or wards and grant that ally the kill gold instead of himself. This has a 50s cooldown.
This update follows Riot’s “very” experimental modifications to Pyke on April 27. His new passive, as the name implies, would theoretically raise the threshold of his ultimate as the game progressed, making the champion more of a late-game danger. On the live servers, the execution threshold for Death from Below ranges from 250 to 550 health at level 18. The alterations made to Pyke’s passive and ultimate would almost certainly surpass this damage threshold by a significant scaling. In other words, he will be able to easily execute opponent champions in the late game.
If these adjustments were to be made, the champion’s win rate across all tiers would likely improve. Pyke main has already been irritated by the modification to his ultimate, which permanently increases its damage threshold, but this is mitigated by nerfs to the rest of his kit. Hopefully, the passive change can somewhat help.