Riot is releasing some last minute hotfixes to prepare for the World Championships. Most of them are bug fixes or quality of life improvements, but there are some actual balance changes that warrant attention.
The buff to Caitlyn's Q is notable in that it increases her ability to clear waves and her damage in team fights. It's not huge, but it's significant. The change to her primary escape simply brings it in line with similar abilities, though it does constitute a nerf. Overall neither of these changes should dramatically affect Caitlyn.
Jayce's Hammer Form E contributes a lot to his laning strength, so it's no surprise that Riot targeted it for a nerf. The increase in mana cost is a conservative change, suggesting Riot believes Jayce's problem isn't damage but mana-independance. Small nerfs such as these typically test the waters; more nerfs will follow if Jayce continues to dominate top lanes.
Miss Fortune's buffs carefully target the weak areas of her kit. Strut isn't bad, but it does take forever to ramp it back up after a hit. With this change it will take a reasonable 10 seconds, down from 20, to hit full speed. Lowering the windup time on her ultimate is the bigger of the two buffs. It allows Miss Fortune to react in a timely manner to AoE initiation. Previously her ult would often be interrupted before firing a single wave, or would simply arrive too late to be meaningful.
Rengar received the greatest number of changes, though a significant number solely affect his quality of life. The damage increase on his Q is largely inconsequential, but the attack speed change is not. Because Q's attack speed buff didn't apply to his first attack he lost at least a third of the effect every time, severely dampening the buff's strength. The AP ratio on Rengar's W has been nerfed, with good reason. Being able to spam W twice every 7 seconds was extremely deadly when its ratio was 1.0. That may be the end of AP Rengar, but I think with all the other changes the more obvious bruiser style will do quite well.
As a small tangent, allowing Rengar's W to be cast while moving represents the latest design fad at Riot. Starting with Skarner Riot has favored making point blank AoEs castable while moving, including the mechanic with many new champions and applying it to old champions as well. I predict it's only a matter of time before Akali's E gets the same treatment.
Getting back on topic, Yorick's ghouls got nerfed during the early game. Players familiar with how sluggish Malzahar's voidlings were at launch will instantly recognize how big of a difference this hotfix will make. It will be fairly trivial for players to outrun Yorick's ghouls during the early phases, and at the same time it will cost more mana for Yorick to spawn the critical ghoul that slows. These changes should be a big step in bringing Yorick's laning to a sane level.
Those are the major/notable changes in the hotfix. I'm looking forward to giving Rengar a second look. He always seemed fun, but simply had a number of unfortunate bugs and quality of life issues which all appear to have been addressed at this point.
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