League of Legends newest patch has hit the game and with it Riot is rolling out some pretty massive gameplay changes for two champions in an effort to promote more meaningful champion choices for competitive play. Patch 4.17 also features slight tweaks and balance adjustments for 18 champions.
The two champions that received an overhaul with this newest update are Soraka the Starchild and Viktor the Machine Herald, and with the patch the entire playstyle of these two champions has changed. For instance, Soraka has always been one of the few support champions devoted to healing – and the only champion devoted to it so heavily. In light of this focus, Riot has adjusted her Passive, Q, W, E, and R all in an effort to give her just a little more Crowd Control and utility.
The gameplay changes to Soraka and Viktor represent a new design direction that Riot will be implementing systematically with many less-played champions in upcoming patches.
Prior to the update, Viktor was also a champion with a very unique role not seen in any other. His passive has remained thematically unchanged, but the goal with Viktor has always been to play up the evolution aspect of his machine upgrades. In short: Viktor is a highly adaptive champion that should be able to adapt to any enemy comp on the fly.
His previous design didn’t really represent this as Riot intended so with Patch 4.17 Viktor can now augment all of his abilities by spending gold – and his ultimate augment comes free once he has all the others. The goal of his design change is to give Viktor a bit more offense along with his adaptable playstyle.
The full patch notes can be found here, and Riot has dedicated a page to each of the revamped champions outlining their design changes and the choices behind them.
