TL:DR
- The current iteration of Summoner Sin is probably dead. However, having Summoners with Zed and Kha’Zix might still be viable.
- Blender got massive nerfs. It's still probably one of the best comps, but the two best comps might be Zerkers and Preds right now.
- Playing Senna is griefing.
- Electric Wardens were cute for one week. Now they’re dead.
Game Changing
- Three Assassins deal 33.4 percent less crit damage. Summoner Sins may be dead.
- Zyra does 21.4 percent, 18.75 percent and 16.7 percent less damage at levels one, two and three. She is still one of the best one-costs and one of the best Morello appliers, but probably isn’t an early-game, one v. four crank anymore.
- Hush now has a 24.2 percent lower chance to proc. Is this what kills Blender?
- Swordbreaker now has a 24.2 percent lower chance to proc. Is this also what kills Blender?
Major
- Three Shadows deal 14.3 percent less damage. I’m not sure how much this impacts Kindred comps, but it still should be fine, especially since Ashe got buffed.
- Nocturne heals for 25 percent less at level two. This along with the Hush and Sowrdbreaker nerfs may push Blademaster Sins out of S-tier.
- Senna is even more trash than before. Literal worst champion in the game, I’m not doing the math, don’t @ me.
- Amumu takes 25 percent less mana to ult for the first time, and 16.7 percent less after first ult. Also, his level one ult hits 50 percent more squares. Expect to see a lot more of this champion, especially in Warden comps. I still prefer Malphite, but Amumu for Inferno or as opposed to Taric may be a thought. I also got a tip that Amumu counters Zerks, so test that boi out.
- Electric now deals 20 percent and 16.7 percent less damage. Zerkers are still fine, but I think this puts Electric Wardens out of commission.
- Twitch takes 22.2 percent less mana to ult and has 8.3 percent more base AD. This is a pretty sizable buff to Preds.
Minor
- Three-star units now have 10 percent less health. Other than slightly affecting Preds, this shouldn’t have much of an impact. Also, this is the opposite of what I want.
- Zed has 12.5 percent less base attack damage and takes 3 percent more physical damage. This is mostly a placebo nerf. The Assassin nerf is the big one, not this.
- Brand requires 11.1 percent less mana to ult. Although he’s a solid stand-alone unit, Ocean Mages suck. We’ll get into that later.
- Ashe now does 20 and 16.7 percent more ability damage. Neat.
Insignificant
- Rek’Sai now has 7.7 percent less base AD. Wow.
- Six and nine Infernos now deal more damage. My silver friend assures me this is viable. I remain unconvinced.
Compositions
I'll be going over the five best compositions and a few more after this section. Nothing much has changed, but there are some things I missed from my patch notes last week.
Zerkers
This is the easiest comp in the world to play. Just buy Zerks 4Head. Put a Hush and two other items on Olaf and stack Solaris on Voli. Throw in Ornn and Kha'zix, bench Kha'zix for Zed, then just put Zed in level nine. EZPZ.
Oh, and put the important Zerks in the middle, and the expendable ones on the side. Like put Jax, Renekton on the edges and Voli, Olaf, Sion in the middle.
Preds
Preds got a decent buff with the Twitch and Ashe buffs, and a slight early-game nerf with the Nocturne nerf. However, everything else, even Zerkers, got nerfed, so they got a pretty big indirect buff.
Overall, Preds may be the strongest comp, but I put them in second place just to be safe. You can read a brief guide at the bottom of this article, but they pretty much play the same as always. I may make a guide soon, but my only notes after testing is Red Buff, Hurricane is better than Luden's stacking on Kog'Maw.
Blademaster Sins
This had the highest winrate from the research I did. Although the comp got nerfed heavily, it still should be one of the top comps, especially since not everyone will be trying to go for it.
You can also find what I wrote in the previous patch, but I don't really have much experience on the comp. One note I've found after playing a lot of Qiyana: you're eighth unit can be Malphite or Nautilus if you're on a Mountain or Ocean map. If not, steel or Crystal Lux is probably best, and you can replace Qiyana with Zed.
Kindred
As it turns out, Kindred is a fucking crank™. The ideal comp if you aren't getting pressured is four Rangers, three Shadows, a Skarner and an Amumu, but you can do whatever the hell you want.
As long as you have AP items on Kindred and she has a Seraph's or Shojin, throw two other Shadows in and enjoy top four. Also, I'm not sure if the fourth Ranger should be Ezreal or Twitch, but I think paying nine gold as opposed to 12 is preferable, so Ezreal is probably more correct.
Summoner Sins
So, I knew you could splash Summoners with Sins, but it turns out that this had the second-highest win rate in top-10 challenger, slightly behind Blender.
The comp changes with every map. Basically, you take out one of the Wardens for Qiyana depending on the Hex. Put Morello on Zyra along with a Shojin, hopefully a GA or Redemption on Zed, and you're good to go.
After the nerf, I'm tentatively giving what I think the best composition may look like. After testing, it feels really hard to get a level two Kha'Zix, so it seems like what I've come up with should be a solid comp.
Meta Update
Being trained in traditional journalism, I feel very strongly in issuing corrections, updating stories and generally correcting yourself when you mess up.
Despite being top 1,500 NA and researching challenger games, there's still stuff I didn't even know about. I was originally going to do a meta update today, but then this patch hit, so now it's part of the patch notes!
What I Got Right
So, I either got everything really right, or really wrong. There wasn't really anything I kinda got right or wrong.
I was dead-on with Preds being a solid, but not top comp. With all the changes, I think it may be the best or second-best comp.
I put Blademaster Sins as the third-best comp. It's actually the best, but close enough. With the changes, I think it may only be the fourth-best comp.
Senna still sucks. She was good with four Rangers, so we'll go with kinda right on this one. She's definitely the worst unit in the game now though.
Malphite was even better than I thought. That unit is an actual crank.
Finally, I was right about Electric being strong early-game, but had no idea two major comps would be built around Electrics because of it.
What I Got Wrong
Oh boy, this was bad dude. I feel pretty justified about one of these, but I made some really bold predictions that were very, very wrong.
I not only thought Lights were strong, but called them the best comp this patch. Not only was I horribly wrong, but their top-10 challenger win-rate dropped from seven games out of 100 to one.
Now, I do feel justified about this one because seven was actually pretty high as Ocean Mage and Preds dominated the meta. Most other comps had less than five wins, so I thought huge buff plus solid win-rate equals number one comp.
To put this in perspective, Summ Sins won two out of 100 games in 9.23 and now have the second-highest win-rate. So, time to analyze my data a bit differently.
Now, for the bad ones.
I called Ocean Wardens really strong. This was dead wrong. Holy moley. I did an experiment in a normal game, and not even FIVE GOLD UNITS could get first place with that comp. Never play Mages until they get heavily buffed.
Not even this could get first place against bronze players
Six Sins isn't really viable. It's okay, but it's definitely not first-place comp. Just go Summ Sins.
I called Shadows bad. Ya, uh, my bad. It turns out Kindred is a one v. eight crank.
Finally, I said the buff to Zerkers was irrelevant. Honestly, I have no idea how this is the best comp in the game. I still disagree with reality, but it turns out I'm wrong. So play some Zerkers, Preds and maybe some Kindred.
What I Didn't Know About
This category is stuff I completely didn't know about and found out through playing or watching streams. This is pretty much what I got wrong, but broken up for aesthetic purposes.
Surprisingly, there were only three big things I didn't know about.
Firstly, like I said before, I knew you could splash Summoners into a Sin comp, but I didn't know it would be a meta comp or how to build it. This, along with Preds, has been the comp I've spammed the most.
Elecrtic Wardens came out of nowhere. Looking at the individual champions, the comp looks like a bait, but it actually had a really high win-rate in challenger. The third-highest actually. The comp is dead now because of the Electric nerfs, but basically it was four Wardens, three Electrics, two Mystics and you stack either Braum or Malphite.
Finally, I'm also going to put Zerkers here. Literally no idea this would be a comp, nor that you would splash Electrics into it. Also, I now think Solari is stronger because of this week, so neat.
