Despite her ability to perform a variety of roles, Neeko hasn’t been seen much in the meta. For that, she has been given some love in League of Legends patch 12.4, said Riot Games, as two of her abilities have been buffed and an additional adjustment to her passive that will make passive more useful.
Base Stats
- Gameplay (hitbox) radius decreased from 80 to 65
Q – Blooming Burst
- Additional Bloom damage increased from 40/60/80/100/120 (+20% AP) to 40/65/90/115/140 (+20% AP)
W – Shapesplitter
- Cooldown decreased from 20/19/18/17/16 seconds to 16/15/14/13/12 seconds
Quality of life changes
- When playing as Neeko, your center HUD (i.e. the buff icons above your skills) will now always display your actual buffs, rather than the buffs of the ally you are disguised as if you’re using Passive – Inherent Glamour. Enemies who click on you will still see the buffs of the ally you are disguised as in the target UI at the top of their screen.
Aside from these Neeko adjustments, the devs are also decreasing her hitbox to match that of similar characters.
Neeko can finally have her disguise more effective
Riot expects that these improvements will aid her waveclear in the mid lane, encouraging players to roam. However, in the current meta, these Neeko improvements also make her a stronger support.
The Blooming Burst buffs, on the other hand, only improve its base damage at levels three and higher, which means that Neeko will only begin to profit from level five onwards, rather than earlier in the game.
Also, the new addition to her passive – Inherent Glamour can potentially make her trick players more often. If you don’t recall, back in patch 11.25, Neeko received some serious bugs that negatively affected her identity, this also leads to players abandoning her from the mid-lane meta. Neeko can finally leave behind these bugs as enemies who click on her will still see the buffs the champion she is disguising have.
Likewise, because the roaming meta is such a broken playstyle lately, her new updated passive can assist her into roaming and tricking the enemies easier.