League devs push emergency Janna nerfs as Storm’s Fury dominates meta
Riot GamesRiot Games have released a hotfix for League of Legends enchanter Janna to tone down the support’s power after her rework quickly transformed the Storm’s Fury into one of the strongest champions on Summoner’s Rift.
In League’s patch 12.2, Riot finally shipped Janna’s long-awaited rework. The changes for the enchanter shifted her power from dealing poke damage into a more aggressive shielding playstyle.
The rework gave her more power than intended, however. She currently sits at above a 54% winrate in high elo soloqueue, highest for all support champions.
She’s been so effective that players, like Twitch streamer Lourlo, have popularized playing Janna top lane and taking the summoner spell Smite, roaming around the map in a move that has completely broken Season 12 soloqueue.
Riot is now rushing out a hotfix to nerf the enchanter, and while it isn’t intended to resolve the Janna top lane issue, it will certainly tone her down in her traditional support role strength.
Riot GamesRiot sends out Janna hotfix
On February 4, the League devs put out a hotfix nerf that targeted Janna’s reworked abilities.
In the notes for the nerf, Riot explained their reasoning for nerfing Janna even after hotfixing a Glacial Augment bug that interacted with her Q and R abilities.
“Even after the hotfix, Janna remains very strong with Glacial and other runes, so we’re lowering her early roaming power and her enhanced heal and shield window.”
Janna’s base movement speed is being weakened, going from 330 to 325. Her W base movement speed bonus is getting reduced for each level, and her E enhanced heal & shield is going from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
Riot made it clear the Janna hotifx was not intended to address her top lane strategy, and assured the devs are “working on a separate solution for that and will update as soon as we have an accurate forecast.”
While it’s yet to be seen what Riot will do to change the enchanter top lane meta, it could bring more sizeable changes to Summoner’s Rift.