Riot dev reveals Ornn ability buffs for League 2021 preseason

Daniel Cleary
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A Riot Games developer has revealed League of Legends 2021 preseason buffs for Ornn’s Masterwork passive ability after the latest set of changes were expected to nerf the champion during the massive item overhaul.

While there are 150 unique champions in League of Legends, Ornn could be one of the characters affected most by the upcoming item overhaul, as his Passive ability can upgrade items for himself and teammates.

Ornn is currently one of the most played top lane champions in League of Legends, particularly in pro play, after becoming the leading champion for picks and bans at Worlds 2020, appearing in 90.4% of champion select phases, but he may soon fall out of the meta.

Ornn from league of legends
Ornn’s ‘Living Forge’ skills are set to receive some buffs in the preseason.

Concerns were raised for the future of the Forgelord after Riot devs initially revealed changes to his passive ability that would remove one of his masterwork items, resulting in a considerable nerf of around 400 HP.

However, Riot developer Phlox has now responded to the concerns, sharing some new changes that the LoL design team is testing on PBE, to buff the fan-favorite Freljordian’s passive once again.

The League of Legends dev explained that, while Ornn would not be able to upgrade two items at the level 13 mark, there would be other ways for him to gain resistances to opponents’ damage.

“Put an experimental change to Ornn for preseason on PBE,” he explained, “now every time he upgrades any mythic to a masterwork his passive Armor/MR amp increases by 5% (10% without upgrades, same as live).”

Unlike the current version of Ornn, the champion’s new passive ability would gain Magic Resist and Armor from simply upgrading Mythic items for himself or others.

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While this was listed as an “experimental change,” Phlox also indicated on the Ornn Mains subreddit that this was the direction they wanted to take with Ornn and that there may be more changes with the statistics before live release.

As of now, the start date for the League of Legends 2021 preseason has yet to be announced by Riot but is expected to go live in November.