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Patch 4.21 Summary

Creator: Wayne3100 December 10, 2014 4:47pm
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Wayne3100
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Hi, my name is Wayne3100 and welcome to the MOBAFire Patch Summary - 4.21!

Following up on one of the biggest patches to date, Riot has another pretty significant set of changes in store for us, with lots of changes to champions, adjustments to the content which was added in 4.20, the return of a previously removed item and of course new skins for this year's Snowdown event!

In this post, we will take a quick peek at some of the biggest changes and the rationale behind them. Should this still leave you begging for more, make sure to check out the full patch notes and discuss all changes with each other below. Let's get started!


Champion Changes


Although Rek'Sai's release is unfortunately not a part of patch 4.21, Riot has made plenty of changes to other champions in the game after having had some time to properly assess their power level in the preseason.

The most notable nerfs as a result of this patch have - not surprisingly - been given to Warwick. After seeing his win rate rise to a whopping 60% in solo queue, Riot decided to not only reduce the damage on his ultimate and the duration of his attack speed boost from Hunters Call, but also give him some further indirect nerfs by changing the damage of Skirmisher's Sabre to be applied over 3 seconds (instead of on hit) and reduce the on hit magic damage of the Devourer enchantment from 40 to 25.

Incidentally, the combination of the two (displayed on the right) happened to be one of Warwick's favorite jungle item & enchantment combos, so it should go without saying that these changes will have a negative influence on his pick and win rate.

In contrast, most other champions to be touched this patch have actually been given some interesting buffs, though time will have to tell whether those will lead to significant changes in terms of popularity.

To name a few examples, Galio's ult is now no longer reducible by Tenacity, Jax has received a cooldown buff on his Counter Strike as well as increased tankiness from Master-At-Arms, Shyvana's Burnout now deals 20% bonus damage to monsters, Cassiopeia's Twin Fang now applies a debuff which amplifies further poison damage by 20% for 5 seconds (stacks 2 times) and Zac now creates extra health chunks for hitting additional champions with Elastic Slingshot, with the damage of the ability also being buffed.



Lots of Tweaks which are all in some way related to Dragon

Considering how many general game mechanics Riot decided to change entirely in the last patch, it should come as no surprise that not every single one worked out the way Riot had originally imagined it. Because of this, patch 4.21 holds a (rather large) number of follow-up tweaks.

First of all, Riot has slightly increased the gold value of towers and minions to compensate for the fact that the Dragon buff no longer grants gold to the team that kills it. With proper lane and objective control, this change should make it so players will once again be able to finish their core items at a reasonable time.

Furthermore, Riot also noticed that the increased importance of early Dragons led to more early game teamfights. The problem with this is that early game death timers were generally too low for the winning team to secure any objectives (like towers) after deciding the fight in their favor, so in this patch both the minimum and maximum death timers have been increased. At the same time, the increased number of early game teamfights also led Riot to reduce the experience gained when killing an enemy champion to prevent things from getting out of control too quickly.

Finally, while we're still on the subject of Dragon (I told you every change is connected to it somehow), Riot also decided to swap the second and fourth buffs granted by it, as well as nerfing the percentage of AD & AP granted by the first buff from 8 to 6. The complete set of buffs as they are now can be found in the spoiler below. The new Baron buff remains unchanged, however the duration of it has been reduced from 4 minutes to 3 to prevent teams from being steamrolled by their opponents too easily after losing out in the Smite battle.

Dragon Buffs



Item Changes


Targon's Brace

Face of the Mountain
IT'S BAAAAACK!





Not only were some of the in game mechanics and jungle camps changed, but Riot also tweaked some of the new jungle items, "old" support items and, most importantly, reintroduced Negatron Cloak! The item now builds from a Null-Magic Mantle, while granting more Magic Resistance than it used to (45 instead of 40) but also costing a little more (850 instead of 720). It has also once again been added to the build paths of Guardian Angel and Abyssal Mask in order to clean up both recipes by reducing the gap between the cost of the item components and the full item itself.

The changes to the execute base of Targon's Brace and Face of the Mountain should make it easier for supports to share their gold with ADCs properly, while the cooldown reduction of Smite was removed from Ranger's Trailblazer simply because it was considered too powerful.

In addition to these changes, Chalice of Harmony, Athene's Unholy Grail and Mikael's Blessing had their passive mana regeneration buffed, while Forbidden Idol base mana regeneration went down by 10% to bring it in line with other items.


Upcoming Content

As always, this patch introduces a bunch of new skins (which will be released at various times), this time mostly in celebration of the upcoming Snowdown event! In addition to that, a new Featured Game Mode called "Legend of the Poro King" will be released as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that (more details on the game mode will be released soon)! Note that all of the skins shown below have been added to the MOBAFire database, so should you like any of them especially, feel free to give the name a click and leave a vote or use the appropriate avatar on the forums!







Share Your Thoughts!

Considering the size of this patch, it should go without saying that we haven't discussed every single change in this post. Should you want to check it all out, please refer to the full patch notes (link in the introduction).

As always, we're interested to hear from you. What do you think, did Warwick deserve the treatment he received or did Riot go too far? What are your thoughts on the tweaks to game mechanics in this patch, do you agree or disagree? Finally, which of the upcoming skins are you most looking forward to and will you be giving the new Featured Game Mode a spin? Let us know in the comments below!

Thanks to MissMaw for the signature!
Vapora Dark
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Lanewick is pretty rip now. He was fun to play every now and again, now I don't think I'll ever do it again. ;-;
OTGBionicArm
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Warwick is pretty much getting Evelynn'd.
Vapora Dark
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I wouldn't go that far. His nerfs weren't as bad as the nerfs Evelynn's had, and Evelynn didn't have a 60% win rate to begin with. His win rate will still be good and he'll still be viable/above average as long as the jungle remains as strong as it is.
Out Of Pancakes
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I like all of the changes they made pretty much.
The tweaks to T1 jungle items should bring more diversity to the jungle than just Trailbrazer on everyone and Skirmisher on the few that could use it well.

I don't think the Lucian nerfs will hit him that hard.

And they fixed Dragon not dropping a soul for Thresh :D

And I agree with Vap about Warwick.
HiFromBuddha
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I'm very happy about the changes to how dragon works. NO MORE ARE THE DAYS WHERE YOU GET A PANTHEON EVERY GAME AND YOU HAVE TO GET DRAGON VISION INCREDIBLY EARLY ON.

Thank you to MissMaw for the signatures!
The_Nameless_Bard
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Soraka nerfs feel a little excessive, but we'll see.
NicknameMy
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Like, face of the mountain wasn't already strong enough.
He is gonna kill you!!!
Out Of Pancakes
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NicknameMy wrote:
Like, face of the mountain wasn't already strong enough.


Oh yeah, this is such a buff that now surely makes it waay too overpowered.
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Of course just as I start playing Soraka, she dies. Stahp riot
Lanewick is pretty rip now. He was fun to play every now and again, now I don't think I'll ever do it again. ;-;
Yeah, fun. That's why people were playing Warwick. For fun. He was fun to play.
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