Caitlyn cops secret nerfs in her League update despite Riot promising otherwise

The League of Legends community is slamming Riot Games’ response to Caitlyn’s long overdue graphic update that also changes major gameplay people have grown to love.

Mechanics like Caitlyn’s headshot cancel and, by extension, her synergy with Galeforce are going to get nerfed once the LoL update lands on the live servers on November 17.

Players can already try out The Sheriff of Piltover’s updated design in the Public Beta Environment (PBE) and have found concerning updates to her gameplay.

“Auto-cancel mechanics have been a massive part of Caitlyn’s gameplay for many years now,” redditor and Caitlyn main ‘JacquesZhang’ said. “Removing them will dramatically change the way Caitlyn functions as a champion and removes a massive part of her skill expression.”

Riot visual update ‘fixes’ Caitlyn auto-reset mechanic

Riot Design Lead Daniel ‘Rovient’ Leaver addressed concerns about the change after players noticed “almost all her combos are gone” and said there are no plans to revert the changes to Caitlyn.

“The Summoner’s Rift team already tried to patch out the machine-gun Cait mechanics a while back and felt they had successfully done so,” Rovient explained. “What they didn’t realize was that this fix was ineffective if you switched to a different target as Cait. As such, the ‘bug/exploit’ somewhat remained.

“When the ASU [Art & Sustainability updates] team fixed up how Cait’s headshots code works… they removed the attack resets unintentionally. They’re gone because her headshots are now finally working as they always should have.”

Neither of Riot’s ASU or Gameplay teams believes these auto-cancels should be in Caitlyn’s kit and, as of now, they don’t plan on bringing them back.

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“We shouldn’t make her script/code worse to try and reintroduce the auto resets,” Rovient said. “If she needs any buffs/nerfs/adjustments as a result of the ASU, I’m sure she’ll get them.

“But, as for whether auto resets should be part of Caitlyn’s power budget in the long run, that’s ultimately up to the gameplay team.”

League players want Caitlyn auto-reset revert

Players felt blindsided by a visual update changing the gameplay mechanic and weren’t convinced by the company’s decision.

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Though Riot settled on taking them out to balance her ‘machine gun’ attributes, Caitlyn players were left unsatisfied by the reasoning.

Another League champ, Riven, is being used as a prime example of why Riot shouldn’t tamper with Caitlyn. Not only does that champion have auto-resets built into her kit, high-level Riven skill expression basically demands using the mechanic.

“Riven without cancels isn’t a champion anymore and would have to be reworked entirely,” another person said. “I’m not a fan of this change for Caitlyn, as watching reset clips is the only thing that has made me want to play Caitlyn outside of 4head trap play.”

Though people agreed that any bugs as a consequence of her typical gameplay should be addressed, the change could have huge ramifications on how she performs on the Rift.