Is the Durability Update of Patch 12.10 Ruining LoL?

League of Legends recently released Patch 12.10, which includes huge changes to the game that would completely revamped how the game is played. The LoL meta has been completely flipped as the changes in durability, healing, and shielding all affect the entire champion lineup. With so many complaints from the community, we have to ask if this patch is ruining the integrity of the game and is making League of Legends unplayable.

Patch 12.10: The Durability Patch

The 12.10 patch introduced changes that gave every champion more armor per level, magic resist per level, base health, and health gain per level. This means that non-tank champions will feel extremely tough to kill throughout all stages of the game, making the assassin meta completely irrelevant since it’s very difficult to one-shot enemy champions if you’re not already extremely far ahead in terms of gold.

Aside from durability, the patch also nerfed healing, shielding, lifestealing, and grievous wounds. A bulk of the current champions have also been adjusted to balance out the nerfs in these aspects to ensure that as few champions whose identities rely on healing, shielding, and lifestealing aren’t heavily affected by their core mechanic being tuned down. Items also received some adjustment in this regard. Finally, turrets have been buffed to deal more damage per hit.

How Does This Affect the Meta?

The new Patch 12.10 introduces a big change in League of Legends core mechanics. This means that despite scaling in overall tankiness, champions won’t exactly be harder to kill in the long-run. This change only really affects assassin and burst-damage champions because they don’t really care about healing and shielding but are heavily nerfed by the fact that their targets have higher base defenses and health.

Despite changes in durability, the games are expected to be shorter since it involves devastating changes to mechanics that make teamfights and extended fights longer. Healing, shielding, and lifesteal make it so that carries survive longer in fights, preventing the game from ending abruptly. Now, it’s pretty difficult not to die in a straight teamfight because you don’t have a big enough window to regenerate your HP before you die.

The Community’s Take on Patch 12.10

The community did not take the changes on Patch 12.10 positively with many of them thinking that Riot Games has once again messed up. However, we know that the community tends to exaggerate the nature of game changes, which turn out to be more reasonable than they make it out to be. Regardless, the fact that AD carries and burst mages are a lot safer during the laning phase and can’t exactly be assassinated anymore means that one demographic is unhappy while the other appreciates it more.

There’s always two sides to the coin of League of Legends and Riot Games won’t always make the playerbase happy. Just like when they create new champions. Despite all the hate this patch is getting from the community, we don’t think its relevant enough to affect the player count of League of Legends. In fact, the vast majority of fans who don’t take to social media don’t even care about the changes and are playing it like any other patch that came before it.

Things to Keep in Mind On Patch 12.10

The latest patch is so huge that it’s not simply having champions being weaker or stronger anymore. The game’s entire mechanics have been turned around so much that you’ll need to devise entirely new playstyles to accommodate the changes that they’ve made. There are two keypoints that you need to learn when playing on this new patch:

1. Don’t Towerdive!

The Turrets have been buffed to deal significantly more damage per hit, scaling even more as the game progresses. Despite the numbers looking small, this increase is actually something that you can feel in-game since each hit deals about 5-10% more damage. This makes it almost impossible for towerdiving to be a legitimate strategy to secure kills without you suffering the consequences immediately.

If you’re trying to towerdive an enemy champion at about 10-20% HP during the laning phase, you might want to reconsider this decision because it’s a lot easier to turn a fight around when the enemy draws turret aggro. With the addition of champion durability being increased, it’s a lot harder to burst down the enemy champion even if they’re really low.

2. Avoiding Greedy Plays

It’s so easy to turn fights around in this patch that you can’t simply go for greedy plays. Healing and shielding are nerfed heavily, but that doesn’t mean that the increased durability of a champion isn’t enough to give them enough time to wait for their cooldowns to go down. We suggest playing conservatively and avoiding greedy plays and overchasing opponents.

This is especially true if you’re playing the 2v2 in the bot lane. Before patch 12.10, the support could easily take down an AD Carry but this patch sees the marksmen being able to withstand more punishment during the laning phase. If you think you can chase down the low-health AD Carry after your bot lane partner has died, you may want to reconsider since it might end up being a double-kill instead.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Buy Healing and Shield Items

Even though healing and shielding items are nerfed, that doesn’t mean you should totally avoid playing these items overall. They are still relevant and can make a big impact in fights since most skirmishes come down to the smallest of margins. Just don’t expect these items to feel really good since their values have gone down significantly.

Grievous Wounds and Omnivamp have also received significant nerfs, but there’s really no reason not to take these items because they are necessary for any state of the game. You may think that you don’t need Grievous Wounds anymore since enemies don’t heal as much, but if you allow them to freely refund a portion of their HP then it won’t matter how little their healing is because they’ll be able to do a lot with that in an extended fight.