League of Legends is constantly and routinely updated, with significant balance changes hitting live servers roughly every two weeks. On top of the regular schedule of updates came the end of the first split of the season and the launch of the second split, which brought more changes than ever before, including new and altered existing items, champion updates, and changes to the game’s bounty system. Riot Games has released a follow-up micro patch for 14.10, which snuck in a significant change to a beloved champion nobody saw coming.
Draven players in League of Legends can be a difficult bunch to manage. Out of all the players in the popular MOBA, Draven players love to play aggressively, especially in the early stages of the match. Throughout Season 14, Draven had experienced relative stability on Summoner’s Rift, managing to stay competitively viable for long stretches.
That steadiness has now taken a massive hit. On May 16, League devs dropped a follow-up to patch 14.10, which made some balancing updates. The most major of these is that Draven’s passive, Adoration, was gashed with the nerf hammer. Adoration allows Draven to build up stacks by killing torrents, catching his spinning axes, or killing minions. These stacks can be cashed in when Draven lands a champion kill, granting him tons of gold.
With this latest patch, revealed by Game Designer on League Riot Phreak, Draven’s passive bound gold went from 40 + 2.5 per Adoration to just 10 + 2 per Adoration. On top of that, the damage on his Q ability, Spinning Axe, was reduced from 45-65 to 40-60.
Since these changes went live, Draven has been one of the worst ADC champions in the game. According to stats site lolalytics, Draven has gone from a 51.47% win rate in patch 14.9 to a 48.3% win rate in patch 14.10.
This massive drop-off is undoubtedly due to these new changes to his passive and Spinning Axe ability. With such an enormous dip, Riot may take a look at beefing him back up in future balancing updates. For now, Draven players might be better off switching to Jinx or Samira.
If you haven’t played the new patch yet, look at our LoL tier list to see which champs you can play that aren’t Draven. Or, if you’re a cosmetic collector, we have a rundown of what’s currently on sale in the League of Legends Mythic shop.
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