Riot responds to player pleas as Rengar suffers from LoL Season 12 changes

League of Legends Season 12 changes have launched, and one champion has suffered particularly hard: Rengar. The Pridestalker has not taken to the new items or Dragon Rifts, with Riot responding to player pleas to buff him.

Preseason is always a big time in League of Legends, and Season 12 is no different. The changes, which launched on LoL patch 11.23, include two new Dragons, new runes and items, and the contentious Objective Bounties.

Some champions were going to fare better than others, but Rengar has copped the short end of the stick.

While the Pridestalker sat at a lowly 47.61% win rate in the jungle when the patch shipped, he’s since plummeted to 44.87% according to stats from LoLalytics. His win rate is the second-worst in the game behind Ryze’s mid lane win rate at 44.36%.

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Top lane Rengar ⁠— which rose in popularity during Season 11 ⁠— wasn’t spared either. Its winrate has also fallen from 50.16% to 48.13%, and it’s still getting slashed. It was also the harshest fall in win rate any champion suffered as a result of the preseason patch.

There are two primary reasons for this. Rengar didn’t really benefit from the item changes unlike other assassins, who can make solid use out of Axiom Arc. The second is the Chemtech Rift basically removes all bushes from the jungle, rendering one of Rengar’s main mechanics useless.

With mains mounting a chorus of complaints, Riot have responded to their pleas. They are looking at buffs for Rengar, although they don’t want to change his “core gameplay pattern.”

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“We are investigating solutions to this issue currently. I have no promises and nothing to share, but we would like to address this pain point without significantly altering his core bush/gameplay pattern,” developer ‘GalaxySmash’ said on November 20.

It comes after Riot promised a Rengar mini-rework in the coming months. Originally planned for Season 11, the changes to make Rengar easier to play in low elo were delayed indefinitely.

However, with Rengar suffering big time in League of Legends Season 12, that planned mini-rework might ship sooner than expected.