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League of Legends patch 4.7 brings competitive play changes

• Egon Kilin
• May 9th, 2014

The latest League of Legends patch doesn’t bring a whole lot of changes to the game. Instead, 4.7 looks to be more focused on tweaking a few elements that were having a big impact on the meta. Riot’s main priority seems to be “high-damage junglers who are entering the mid-game with more gold and more experience than even the solo laners who had to scrap out their gains against another opponent.”

A first step towards this goal is a significant nerf to the Feral Flare, an item often used by carry junglers. Riot feels Feral Flare still remains of importance for players who wish to jungle, however a power reduction was needed as the item was beginning to have a negative impact on the game. Maim passive was reduced to +75 damage against monsters, attack damage is now only +12, and attack speed was lowered to +30%. Additionally,  heal scaling and transform stat bonus were completely removed.

“Because Feral Flare’s power is essentially tied to how long junglers can ignore their team, the optimal strategy has been to hide away for as long as possible before making a first appearance as the strongest champion on the map – even in comparison to solo laners who have to scrap out their gold against equally matched opponents.”

League of Legends patch 4.7 also brings a few changes aimed at discouraging fast-push strategies, which were dominant in high-level competitive play lately. The starting cooldown for trinkets has been reduced to 30 seconds, Dragon now provides 145 global gold reward, and outer turrets now have a new Fortification ability. Riot says these changes wont have a big impact on regular play, but they do hope it will change the meta at higher levels.

A few of the important Champion tweaks for patch 4.7 include:

–  Gragas: Barrel Roll’s size indicator was reduced in order to better represent the actual radius, the ability now also grants vision once the destination was reached.

– Kassadin: Null Sphere’ shield strength was reduced to 40/70/100/130/160 (+0.3 ability power).

–  Jarvan IV: Martial Cadence damage was changed to 10% at all levels while same-target cooldown is now 10/8/6 seconds (at levels 1/7/13). Also, Golden Aegis now only costs 30 mana at all ranks.

– Malphite: Granite Shield’s recharge rate is now 10/8/6 seconds (at levels 1/7/13). Brutal Strikes only costs 25 mana now.

Riot also mentions that Braum, the new champion is not yet available but he will be released a bit later during  4.7. That’s most of the important stuff that came with the update, unless I’m missing something. In any case, if you want to read the full list of patch notes just click here.