LoL devs tease major changes coming to controversial champion Aphelios

Riot Phreak from the League of Legends development team has teased that AD carry Aphelios will be receiving some major changes in the future, particularly aimed at making the champion more focused on attacking than abilities.

League of Legends has one of the biggest rosters in all of gaming. The developers at Riot have strived to make a champion with a playstyle for everyone, whether that be a terrifying bruiser or a sneaky assassin.

One of the most popular roles to play in the MOBA is the AD carry, a role primarily focused on kiting and auto-attacking from range to deal damage. Due to the nature of the role, there’s a fine line between dealing damage through auto attacks and abilities.

Often times this can shift depending on what items are good, and right now Aphelios is very much focused on using abilities. However, the devs want to change that, explaining that they have plans to significantly shake up the champion in an upcoming patch.

Riot Phreak explained on his patch 14.14 preview the way the devs would like to take the champion.

“We actually aren’t huge fans of the fact that Aphelios is kind of a caster right now. His primary build is E max second, and rush Collector… We’d really rather he be more of an auto-attacker and less of a 5000 range burst mage.”

Aphelios was already considered a very controversial champion on release, particularly with his ability to deal massive amounts of on-hit damage thanks to his white Chakram gun. The devs have since nerfed Aphleios a hefty amount since that time, leaving the champion a little more underwhelming than most.

“I’ve got some ideas here. It’s possible that we find some patchwork for Aphelios in 14.15 or 14.16 or something where we try to make him more of a traditional auto-attack carry, and a little bit less about what can feel like kind of abusive gun combos.”

According to the League of Legends patch schedule, Patch 14.15 is currently slated for July 31, with Patch 14.16 following two weeks after on August 14, meaning we may see many of these changes come to fruition shortly.