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Pridestalker Rengar is one of the most ruthless predators in League of Legends. He is a living nightmare for carries on the mid and bot lane, and the squishy support on the enemy team for he can one-shot them with his swift combos. With Patch 12.5 already rolled out and live on the servers, Riot Games is testing and trialing a bunch of new changes for the next patch. With an aim to make Rengar a more balanced champion, Riot is changing, essentially buffing, his ability kit.
Initially, a Reddit user pointed out some of the changes they noticed while playing Rengar on the Public Beta Environment (PBE). They wrote, “NEW RENGAR CHANGES ON PBE! holy moly?! crit scaling on q? the jump height is also changed.”
Responding to this, game designer Ezra “Phlox” Lynn wrote that a full list with all the changes would be revealed soon. Following this, Lynn revealed on Twitter the changes that are slated for Rengar intended to be released in Patch 12.6 on 30th March. Lynn described Rengar’s gameplay as “awkward” and detailed buffs to his passive, Q, E, and R abilities.
Rengar’s abilities changed
Rengar is a ferocious vastayan trophy hunter who lives for the thrill of tracking down and killing dangerous creatures. He scours the world for the most fearsome beasts he can find, especially seeking any trace of Kha'Zix, the void creature who scratched out his eye. Rengar stalks his prey neither for food nor glory, but for the sheer beauty of the pursuit."Riot Games
Rengar’s abilities are:
Passive - Unseen Predator
Q - Savagery
W - Battle Roar
E - Bola Strike
R - Thrill of the hunt
According to Lynn, now Rengar’s passive will generate a stack of ferocity when he does not have a stack while leaping. Additionally, the falloff time for the ferocity has been changed to 10 seconds from 8 seconds. Killing enemy champions awards trophies on Rengar’s Bonetooth Necklace, another part of his passive, which grants him bonus attack damage. For this, the forgiveness timer has been changed from 1.5 seconds to 3 seconds, giving players more time to use it.
Rengar’s jump range, both distance, and height, on his passive has been increased. The variability on his jump has been removed for “up to 0.25 seconds.”
Lynn also noted that Rengar’s stacks will use his secondary bar. It will show “which stacks came from his leap.”
The changes on Rengar’s Q - Savagery are not too extensive. They are directed to increasing his potential in the game. With these changes, his Q now counts as a critical hit every time. Building more critical strike chance items in-game will increase the damage output of Q. The scaling is “1% crit change to 1 damage” in the game. On top of this, his Q now works on towers also.
Lynn wrote on Twitter, “The Q crit changes are so that when playing low% Crit Rengar you're not just yolo hoping for a crit to be successful, and left out to dry if you don't get that 20/40%. This also means we can tune crit builds directly, if they're shit we bump up the number and vice versa.”
Coming to his E - Bola Strike, it now reveals targets for two seconds and has no cast time. This combined with his other changes grants him to be a top-class assassin in League of Legends.
Lastly, Riot has made some changes to Rengar R - Thrill of the Hunt, as well. Now, when revealing enemies with his ultimate, the ultimate also reveals a small area around the enemies.
Reactions on social media to Rengar’s changes
While the community overall seemed to be content with the changes listed by the Riot developer team, some of the players pointed out that his problems mostly revolved around the bugs that constantly plague him and his W - Battle Roar.
Phlox addressed these bugs. He said on Twitter, “There are still some bugs on PBE and some of the old ones haven't been fixed yet, I'll try to do a pass on them over the next few days. Do let me know if there are any other smaller-sized feel-good changes I can slip in. I hope we're leaving Rengar in a better spot!”
One Reddit user wrote, “So how will these changes help with his current problems lol? Still overly bush reliant with a gazillion RNG bugs and his W is still a useless "feelsbadbutneedferocity" filler ability. Like ???????????????????????????????? Riot went full riot with this. Change his W. Period. It doesn't belong on an assassin.”
In his Twitter thread, Lynn wrote, “This was a pretty difficult project since, in my opinion, Rengar has some pretty awkward mechanics right now especially with W and Passive. I think W not flowing into any assassination combo is a definite feels bad for a lot of his builds.”
With changes for Rengar deemed to be one of the most anticipated updates of Season 11, the developers were unable to roll out his mini-rework last year. So, all the buffs detailed by Riot are music to the ears of Rengar mains. Currently, all the changes that Lynn has mentioned are live and being tested out on the PBE and are subject to change accordingly before the actual patch releases for play.
