Kennen, Yordles, and Gangplank Hit by Impactful Nerfs – Emergency Hotfix Live!

Through the Legends of Runeterra twitter, the game developers have officially informed us about numerous hotfixes coming to the game today. As of the time of writing, all the changes listed below are already live in the client.

These changes are unexpected, drastic, and welcome.

Their message from Twitter is as follows:

We have been watching the meta since release of the new set, and some cards have proved to be… a bit too dominant.
Later today we will be deploying a hotfix to adjust a few cards ahead of our scheduled January 5 balance patch.

As always, we appreciate your input and are constantly working to make Legends of Runeterra an enjoyable experience for everyone.
Thank you for playing!

It’s too early to tell what effect this will have on the metagame, but the effects will be felt in the three strongest decks at present: Kennen Ezreal, Yordle Swarm, and Plunder.

The combo potential of Kennen Ezreal is slowed drastically, with God-Willow Seedling taking an extra turn to develop counter play. Kinkou Wayfinder pulling two different cards keeps the spirit of the card alive but makes it a far weaker combo piece.

With Poppy now a 2/3, severely under-statted at four mana, I have to wonder if she’s even still playable in the Yordle decks. Yordle Explorer got the Grand Plaza treatment. That nerf to Grand Plaza largely stopped its playability. The power of the Yordle tribe may keep this card in playability, but has much less late game staying power.

The change to Gangplank will make him much easier to handle in the Plunder mirrors, now dying to Monster Harpoon after level up, but largely he remains a very strong finisher in decks with Sejuani or Bandle City.

This sets a unique precedent for the LoR developers. Never have the devs swooped in to save us from decks this fast. I, and many players, were prepared to wait until the fabled January update. This changes everything.

The suddenness to make these changes comes from the time of year. Soon, the Riot staff will be going on Winter vacations, and may want to put these changes up now, rather than wait until after the holidays.

Will we see more hands-on hotfixes like this in future, or did the state of the meta force their hands?

We can only guess how the meta will look when these changes go live today, December 14th. Stay tuned to RuneterraCCG for more news on the game and decks suited to the new state of the game given by these changes.