Hi, I'm the designer on this rework, as well as the original designer on K'Sante (I established his identity and core themes/mechanics before leaving for R&D for a while). I appreciate this thoughtful post and wanted to give it a thoughtful, transparent response with more context on the design goals. I'll say up-front that a lot of this rework is focused on fairness—even though League champions should each have their unfair properties that players can deploy against each other, the end result has to have sufficient counterplay and weaknesses. I'm of the belief that K'Sante, when mastered and played by players who full leverage all his options, falls outside the bounds of fairness in both his current and launch versions. My goal is to provide a fair champion that is also fun and rewarding to play. With this in mind, I want to acknowledge that some changes made under this initial premise are pretty much guaranteed to be painful for players who love the champion and what he currently off...

AzuBK

Hi, I'm the designer on this rework, as well as the original designer on K'Sante (I established his identity and core themes/mechanics before leaving for R&D for a while). I appreciate this thoughtful post and wanted to give it a thoughtful, transparent response with more context on the design goals. I'll say up-front that a lot of this rework is focused on fairness—even though League champions should each have their unfair properties that players can deploy against each other, the end result has to have sufficient counterplay and weaknesses. I'm of the belief that K'Sante, when mastered and played by players who full leverage all his options, falls outside the bounds of fairness in both his current and launch versions. My goal is to provide a fair champion that is also fun and rewarding to play. With this in mind, I want to acknowledge that some changes made under this initial premise are pretty much guaranteed to be painful for players who love the champion and what he currently offers. We don't make these changes lightly, and I tried to mitigate this as best I could by carving out a clearer identity for K'Sante within which players can express their skill and excel even further.

K'Sante absolutely was and still is meant to be a high-skill tank. One of the goals behind Q and W changes is to make K'Sante's skill-tests involve his opponents more by making them missable or dependent on fight conditions. For high skill-cap champions, I believe it's important to have sufficient points of skill testing interaction with your opponents, versus the solitaire skill testing that emerges from making a champion who is fast with complex mechanics but little counterplay once those mechanics are mastered. Right now, Q becomes too fast and W is far too reliable to fulfill that condition. An immense amount of K'Sante's power is also in the reliability and flexibility of the W, in particular—e.g. pressing it in the front of a teamfight both threatens engage (or sometimes death, if followed with R) while also allowing him to opt out and dash away from the enemy team, making a huge amount of space with trivial levels of commitment or risk.

One of the other core conceits of K'Sante was that he should have high levels of flexibility by changing classes. The price he was meant to pay for this was that his two classes should be Skirmisher and Warden, which are very far apart when it comes to the situations in which they are useful. Skilled, shrewd use of his kit was how you could effectively transition between them (this is why he launches people over walls with his R to isolate them). The version of K'Sante that actually shipped and exists today is much closer to Vanguard/Diver than Skirmisher/Warden. His ability to threaten engages in tank form and to chase down & burst out the backline in teamfights are closely aligned with each other in terms of output, making him a very effective teamfighter with a pretty linear pattern (while also still having the flexibility to play as a Warden with E/W). This rework pushes K'Sante's tank and fighter forms further apart from each other. His base form engage is worse, while his peel and counter-engage remains excellent. His fighter form is much worse in teamfights, but more effective in 1v1 or small-scale fights, especially when it comes to killing high-health targets (he is a monster hunter, after all).

Regarding W direction-lock, since I think this is rightfully where a lot of the negative feeling comes from.... I think this is bound to be the most contentious part of the changes. I hear you about wanting both the offense and defense at the same time from this spell. I think it's correct that in cases where it's used well, when you predict enemy actions or otherwise outplay them, you should absolutely get good offensive value. I don't think that this strong offensive value is permitted to be as reliable as it is while also offering this level of defensive capability. Our options were to reduce reliability or reduce output—in the spirit of a skill-oriented champion, we chose to reduce reliability so that finding windows to get optimal use still brings rewards. At its core, this change represents the bulk of the identity shift mentioned in the previous paragraph. K'Sante is moving further towards defense in his tank form to distinguish it from his fighter form, so he's losing reliable offense & threat. We don't expect K'Sante players to be happy with this specific change. Having that level of flexibility and control of a fight is a lot of fun, and getting to move W during the cast is just an enjoyable toy to play with. I regret that this was the best way we found to deliver on the design goals, but do believe in the value of this change.

(Post 1/2)

(Post 2/2)

Shorter explanation around the design goals regarding some of the points of contention:

• You're on the money when it comes to the lane buffs, he should be able to fight but also be asked to fight. The previous range profile allowed him to opt out of lane interaction when played at a high level.
• RQ slow is back because the spell is now more missable and he had difficulty sticking to his targets in R due to the cast time changes. If he is hitting Qs, he should generally be able to stick.
• E changes are part of the class shift—a longer cooldown, longer-range dash means that medium-range champs are not able to hit him without being within his effective range. This profile makes him a deadly teamfighter with a lot of passive pressure. A shorter cooldown, shorter-range dash is more typically skirmisher-shaped, built for footsies and more extended chases.
• W missing a monster cap was a bug, this is fixed.
• Gold scalings aren't meant to be meaningfully different.
• Q3 -> W is a way t...

Nalardemon

Thanks for taking your time on the response. I understand some of your point but there are still some things i want to address:

• No mention of the jaksho bug? (sorry about pestering you about that bug specifically)

Given that this bug pretty much inflated all out drastically (across other bugs that do so), an update like this should be the moment where a fix could be worked on or am i wrong?

 I hear you about wanting both the offense and defense at the same time from this spell. (W)

I maybe didn't word it the same way i meant it to sound, but given that it's now a key dmg ability, there is more confusion about the ability. What most players want is that reliability it provides and not having to transform your whole gameplay pattern around hitting it or you dont achieve anything. We would even be happier if it wasn't that massive nuke and bring it closer to the defensive/repositioning tool it used to be.

The current R bakes all of his power into his passive attack. New R distributes this across his kit because all of his actions should carry weight and have reasonable reward when he is in this form—previously his basic attacks and Qs basically tickled enemies, especially the juggernauts and tanks that he was meant to be empowered to shred while in R. Hitting a Q should have good, immediate feedback, and basic attacks should also be valuable. High attack speed (once his basic attacks matter) is also one way to help differentiate the forms in terms of feel and make him stronger against the big, lumbering champs he's meant to be especially potent against.

I wouldn't say that current R doesn't fullfill the fantasy of his actions having more weight. Hitting Q rewarded you with a passive proc, which already feels very satisfying when you get to proc it. His basic attacks "tickling" isn't really different to the on-hit effect when you auto attack, its closer to just compensating it in a different way thats only beneficial against tanky targets.

As i mentioned in the post, the gameplay loop between hitting and rotating Q with passive procs and finding the moments W or E provide the most value is what the champion is build around and makes him so enteresting and enjoyable. I can see the reason that his Q also had to be slower since a Q + AA combo was pretty much happening in an instant (partially because the attack speed boosted the speed of it), but it just feels too slow and clunky that way.

If anything, i feel like this approach hurts the fantasy of the champion more then it would benefit it or is "one way to help differentiate the forms in terms of feel". Pressing All Out is the "pay-off" when playing K'Sante. Getting this feeling of "what if the tank stops being a tank" like it currently does is already a really good way to have all out feel more impactful overall, but that isn't the case for the current PBE version. It's just the same old but more damage.

Having his Tank form fit more into the warden concept you talked about is fine, it would also differenciate the feeling between base and all out form further, but it really doesn't do that.

R AD was much more effective against squishy champions because he didn't have good ways to turn that AD into target-agnostic threat of the sort that a skirmisher generally needs to really excel in the 1v1. This change is part of fitting his damage profile to his class—each of his actions should feel like they're a lot punchier in R form against all targets.

to add to the above, the "punchier" feeling against all targets in R is missing. At all stages of the game it feels like i just tickle squishy targets.

Gold scalings aren't meant to be meaningfully different.

this is kinda sad to hear imo, given that it was one of the new design goals. It doesnt feel rewarding to play well and get a lead or punishing if you play poorly and fall behind. No matter how i do, i feel like im at the mercy of what my kit is supposed to achieve at a specific point in the game. Little risk or reward on a champion thats about "improving on the wrong decisions you make". Those are factors that make high skill champions rewarding after all.

Overall (and hopefully you dont take it the wrong way, i dont mean it in an offensive way), but this response also feels more like a "PR response". It doesn't really give me the feeling that you really understand the concerns about the changes the K'Sante community has and take them as valuable feedback, but more so giving your reasoning in a "deal with it" way. The way it's also written confirms that this version is gonna be shipped in this unintuitive design which is quite sad.

I haven't been on the League team the past couple years, wasn't aware of the Jak'Sho bug. I had to dig around after reading your post to make sure this wasn't intentional behavior—I've now fixed it, thanks for the heads up.

If you feel like this is a PR response, that's fair. More than a meaningless "deal with it" statement, I've tried to share the full reasoning behind a bunch of the changes. I appreciate players' passion for their champions, and I try reflect that passion back by getting into the weeds about design in a Reddit comment first thing Monday morning. I think it's more the case that we disagree on some of the elements we're discussing. This feedback is useful for understanding which pieces of the character you all care most about and where we should consider pulling back if these changes land with room to spare on the overall design goals.

HostiiTostii

Hi! Thanks for the detailed explanation. Reading this, I don't like the changes but I trust in the team to make him fun as well as more fair. Could you give more explanation to why you reduced and removed his AA range/passive AA range? I don't understand that part, because K'sante is a slow ms tank he needs the extra bit of range after a successful ability hit to get the damage out, especially in all-out. If the increased attack speed in R was the compensation, I will think this is wrong. This will make him more auto-attack based, which removes a lot of skill.

Before, you HAD to hit an ability to do damage. With the rework, this remained but it was a little more forgiving to just auto attack. How I see the upcoming changes; it will make K'sante want to auto attack way more while less focussing on abilities. W will not be reliable and only a bait spell, and Q will deal more damage but is so slow it won't be worth it to keep using it off-cd on a fast moving target. E+IBG auto will be the way to go. I feel like this will frustrate a lot of the playerbase, because this will make K'sante all-out either very weak and only strong against tanks, or make him an annoying perma-slower that will auto attack you to death.

Yes, certainly. The AA range is mostly meaningful in lane, where he has enough of a range advantage to take low-variance, difficult-to-punish trades with Q + Grasp. The compensation for that is not attack speed, it's increased laning power through higher damage. This fits the overall rework's theme of asking K'Sante players to make committal decisions and reap the rewards or consequences—you'll should generally be better at fighting if you play well, and worse if you play poorly.

Overall, winning fights later in the game should require more skill on average—basic attacking will not get you to a win, even though it might get you closer than before. Currently, landing Q and W is pretty much a given due to their speed and reliability, respectively. After this set of changes, his Q and W are now much less guaranteed to hit with, and both are important to succeeding at his combat pattern since they contribute quite a lot of damage now. This means that if you play well and hit everything, ...

CalmTurnover7649

Hi, thank you for your taking your time and explain idea behing those changes. I must ask tho, I think the OP suggested a pretty fair change of W being in cone like zac E which gives him a bit more flexibility and actual ability to hit enemies. As a Ksante player and main myself you guessed right Im not happy with the change. But by having W in cone makes it still either only defensive tool or offensive just with slight option to choose direction in certain degree. What is your opinion about this suggestion ? And again thanks for your time to actually comment on this.

I think the cone is a clever suggestion that partially addresses the costs that this spell imposes on the rest of the kit. It's higher reliability than I would prefer on the champion, but does require some level of commitment to a general direction, and brings back the ability to "play" with the spell's input a bit. I probably shouldn't say this because it's often taken as a promise (which I unfortunately cannot make), but I'll be thinking about it as a possible angle if we feel we've succeeded with room to spare on the broader game health design goals but K'Sante's play-feel is under the bar.

LobsterNovel

Thanks for the response, but I feel like removing the extra range from E dash, making his Q as slow to as his tank form really just makes the two forms extremely similar, the only difference will be the damage/AS speed, W not stunning and a slight bit of E dash speed.

I feel like it would feel right if his RQ didn't slow and instead he gained ms, since getting slowed is always annoying for the player getting hit by it.

I also feel without E dash over walls and shorter distance he'll struggle even more to stick to people, but that is a fair thing to remove, just feels like RQ slow won't compensate enough.

Without E dash over walls I feel like I'd just want to ult people in the open without any walls, I feel like it'd punish me for using my R over a wall, without being able to chase. Maybe allowing us to dash over a wall using a ward? But that might not be the best idea.

I did consider passive R speed vs. RQ slow, but opted for RQ since that requires an active skill-check (hitting Q) and I tried to maintain or add as many of those as seemed reasonable given his status as a skill-oriented champion.

Nalardemon

I haven't been on the League team the past couple years, wasn't aware of the Jak'Sho bug. I had to dig around after reading your post to make sure this wasn't intentional behavior—I've now fixed it, thanks for the heads up.

Fair, didn't consider you were on the game modes team while writing the comment, even though i was aware of it.

But now that you were aware of it (and hopefully you are finally our saviour regarding that pesky bug), was that something that made All out feel off during testing or how it would've contributed to balancing around it?

If you feel like this is a PR response, that's fair. More than a meaningless "deal with it" statement, I've tried to share the full reasoning behind a bunch of the changes.

Still thankfull for the insight. Obviously people would've loved it if we got those informations before the post in the first place, but thats also nothing i can really blame you for.

I just believe that engaging with the communities to get a base idea of what they love about the champ just gives a better general overview for those large scale changes, rather then being left in the dark. Even if not everything people expect to happen will happen as a result. Usually we just have to wait for phreaks patch rundown on those things and its pretty much a hit or miss with why things happen or how its phrased/presented to us.

 I appreciate players' passion for their champions, and I try reflect that passion back by getting into the weeds about design in a Reddit comment first thing Monday morning. I think it's more the case that we disagree on some of the elements we're discussing. This feedback is useful for understanding which pieces of the character you all care most about and where we should consider pulling back if these changes land with room to spare on the overall design goals.

Now i really feel like the way i phrased it was too harsh 😔. I hope i didn't ruin your monday morning that way, i just felt like i had to write how i felt about it. This wasn't meant in a way where i seem like i hold a grudge against you from now on. Still looking towards what you do in the future (especially regarding K'Sante's gameplay feeling 😂)

No, it's totally fine. I didn't mean to make you feel bad about it, lol, and I know very well what it can feel like to be on the other side of dev communications. Even though we're devs, we're still players of other games—just with some experience on both sides of that curtain. A bit unrelated, but I often feel pretty keenly that communicating on Reddit about League in particular is something that makes devs feel that they're in-touch more than something that makes players feel like devs are in-touch, because so much of our audience plays in countries that don't use Reddit/speak English. Feels like there's an opportunity to improve something here, but it's very far from my area of expertise.

This is a tough space to navigate, especially in a PvP game, because we often just have different priorities and different takes from players on what is likely to work or what has to be done. I really wish it were possible to successfully balance or design a game by simply listening to all player...

ProfessionalQuit859

Thanks for taking time to reply. I do have some questions I hope can be answered:

-Why did K'Sante's base range get lowered if his passive procs won't have bonus range?

-Was a lockout of direction change slightly before min charge or after min charge considered?

Lastly... -Why the large quantity of damage focus on W, especially RW? (Sett's kit suffers from the same issue)

• Generally bringing him to a normal auto range, so he is neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by default against most other toplaners. A range advantage of 50 constitutes a meaningful advantage where you can often hit enemies without retaliation, and it didn't seem correct for him to have that advantage over 125 range champions, especially given the cooldown and range profile of his Q in lane.
• Yes, but it didn't play well in practice.
• W is the clearest point of counterplay on the kit, after changes to make it less reliable. It also makes him more skirmisher-shaped—it's important that using W as purely a movement tool is a very meaningful sacrifice.

Straight_Review_6492

Thank you for the response! It gives me more hope that the frustrating parts about this changes get some iteration before launch.   

 Mainly i think the attackspeed steroid on R is a really missplaced powerbudget on ksante, since he has(or had) attack resets on Q and E.   

 I personally would prefer to not have that attackspeed steroid at all and get the Q and E resets again, so i actually need to hit my spells and use them in meaningful ways(probably outplaying, since Q is more difficult to hit now) than just chasing my target with short CD all out E and punching him to oblivion with autos. 

 If giving his E an auto is too much(simce the cd on allout is really short), at least giving his Q back a reset wouldnt be unreasonable, since the cast time is so long. 

  I also really like some changes that OP said, like giving his W a zac treatment, where he can only dash to the front of where he aimed his W(would give more clear counterplay while also not taking away ksante ability to hit his W against people who have dashes) or just doing pantheon treatment, making his damage reduction only apply to the front of ksante(although i feel this change would not really adress the problems you spoke about in your response)  

 Maybe both changes could be combined so you achieve what you spoke about while also not making the changes feel clunky to the existing ksante players.

 Overall i think the changes are a step in the right direction, they just need some iteration, mainly on W and that attackspeed steroid/auto resets, maybe bringing back the 25 range on Passive hit would be cool too but i dont know. 

 Would really apreciate your thoughts on this.

Mentioned this elsewhere, but I think you (and many others) are right about the Q reset. I'm adding that one back. Answered most of these other ones elsewhere in this thread, but thank you for the thoughtful comment.

JayceAatrox

You never explained a few things.

Why nerf E speed? It’s already low. PBE All Out E is literally the same range and speed as E on live. You have to understand how bad that feels.

I get the idea behind swapping All Out E range for lower cooldown and maybe it’s just because it’s so slow now but I think it should have slightly higher range than tank form. Maybe not 400 range but 250 -> 300 and speed 1000 -> 1300 sounds more fair I think.

Why remove the auto attack resets on Q and E? Removing these just makes the champion more clunky for zero benefit.

I like the R changes in theory, my favorite part about K'sante is going ham in R with weaved autos and Q's, but it's actually better on live than now, because K'sante's Q cast time is so high + no resets. It went from .17 to .35, literally double the cast time. I feel like the slow doesn't need to be the same in All Out as it is in base form.

How about 40% slow for .5 seconds and .25 second cast time in All Out?

I think those 3 changes, faster E in All Out, Q and E auto attack resets, and lower RQ cast time compensated with a slow nerf would add back a lot of fluidity without significantly changing his balance state.

E speed is not nerfed. It had a strange paradigm previously where dashing to allies added his movement speed to the base speed, but the free-target dash did not. Now his movement speed is always added. PBE scraping probably didn't pick up that change. New E speed is slightly slower before boots 1, slightly faster on boots 1, and faster on upgraded boots.

Auto-resets are extremely elite-player-skewed in a way that's not very interactive, but as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think you are all correct about the Q changes and have returned that reset. I am truthfully on the fence about the E reset, as dash resets certainly feel very good but are also a lot of early-game power.

I think that the some amount of Q cast time increase is important for reducing K'Sante's reliability. The exact magnitude is up for debate, and I'll be keeping an eye on it as a possible avenue for buffs if we think we've achieved the goals once this ships.

IcyColdStare

That point about how all the other black characters in League are defined by their struggle is one that I've never considered. Yes, character problems drive growth and create interesting story opportunities, but that doesn't mean that's all they have to have (nor does it make the ones that do bad characters by any stretch of the imagination).

I'm an African-American kid who's grown up around stories where very rarely do people who look and talk like me get to be the protagonist or hero just because, especially in fantasy and fantasy adjacent settings. K'Sante is a well crafted and interesting character beyond the color of his skin of course, but when you add that in the first feeling I get is "See! People like you are welcome here! You've got every right to exist in this place." It may seem trite or unnecessary to some but I can't tell you how much I wish I had this type of character to identify with growing up.

Representation matters.

I’m very glad to hear this resonated with you. I know it won’t hit for everybody, but that’s why we need different takes on different types of characters, and I’ve been acutely feeling the lack of this one for a long time as well. I also wish I had more like this in the games I played growing up—kids deserve better.

Hi all, Ahri's upcoming changes are on the PBE now for testing. The goal of the changes is to lean into Ahri's unique mobility+pick niche and give her more agency to carry fights and games, at the cost of lane safety and a small amount of damage. The changes also include a modernization pass on her mana costs and W spell. Looking for bugs as well as feedback on the direction. Full changelist can be found here.

Helpful:

• Bugs (duh)
• Directional feedback, e.g. "I don't like that we're trading X for Y" or "I'm particularly looking forward to or enjoying Z"

Somewhat helpful:

• Comments on overall balance, though we'll also be quickly following up if she's over- or underpowered.

Thank you!

ADeadMansName

The Renekton buff is pretty large. The HP is meaningful and the W lockout time is great for him getting in, dealing dmg and getting out without the enemy having a good chance to strike back.

But I am not sure Riot knows math.

13% faster is either ~0.457 sec (83%) or ~0.465 (100% -> 113%).

from 0.525 to 0.375 is cutting nearly 29% away (71%) or speeding it up by 40% (100->140%)

Why cant they just say they are cutting 0.15 sec?

Renekton was locked out for longer than the animation indicated. The lockout and animation time are not the same thing, and now they should line up better.

Moonfish222

Can I ask what the reasoning was for making a change like this at all? Aren't animation cancels and other forms of mechanical skill expression intentionally put in? Way back I remember it was even a meme when riot would put "x change is to separate the great players from the good players" in the patch notes. Many champions have them from riven entire kit to proper orb walking on adc's or even flash kicks on Lee sin.

Sure. Skill expression is a high value in our game, but there are still good and bad versions of it (or better and worse, at least). This wasn't some clever expressive animation-cancel that enabled interesting gameplay, it was an effect that punished players for certain input sequences without good feedback on what was happening. Many players believed that Renekton empowered W stunned him for longer than the base effect, because that's what the animation indicates.

If we aren't critical of the types of skill expression in the game and optimize for maximum skill expression blindly, we eventually end up with lots of cases that are needlessly difficult, obtuse, and punishing, rather than designed skill expression that feels appropriately rewarding.

eyalhs

So original prowlers claw was literally teleports behind you nothing personal kid?

I literally pitched it as "nothin personnel: the item" when brainstorming assassin mythic active items. Its in-dev temp name was Coldsteel Sai.

6000j

The change wasn't to make this not happen, it was because you could animation cancel it anyways so they just made it so you always get that extra time.

This is a different issue that also needs to be solved, but the patch notes are pretty clear in what's up with the animation duration change.

Yep, this is correct. Before 11.18, if you used empowered W on Renekton and didn't input a movement command between the 0.525s and 0.75s period, he would remain locked out until 0.75s passed (including e.g. basic attacks). This is now 0.525s for both regular and empowered W. We recognize that this was something that could be bypassed consistently by skilled Renekton players (or accidentally by anyone), so we standardized it as always 0.525s. The "before" clip in this video shows a player bypassing the 0.75s lockout by inputting a movement command.

Also, as an aside, we recognize that we overswung on Renekton here. I'm looking into buffs for him right now, and I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused by Renekton being too weak in the meantime, and generally that Renekton is weaker in non-pro play as a result of pro balance this season. Hopefully we can take larger steps to resolve this more permanently in the future.

Serinus

The devs are disappointed it took us this long to find it.

I'm not disappointed, just mad.

cadaada

it is still binary, he lives and die with his Q hitting or not.

Yeah another charge for sure reduces that, but its not like something will magically change until a rework.

The notion behind this sort of work is to find solid improvements that players will appreciate, and to do it on a cadence that allows us to deliver them with greater frequency. Some champions definitely need reworks, and we aren't canceling reworks, but these mini-updates exist in the space between full VGU and shifting numbers around, with the hope of making real, honest attempts at solving the sorts of problems that can't be solved with just numbers and generally enhance champions that we feel could use it.

I don't expect Amumu to suddenly dominate Challenger play, but, if we can reduce his 5% winrate skew to 3% after it all shakes out, and help Amumu players feel like they can take their champion higher up the ladder and Diamond players to not feel like their teammate is griefing them by picking Amumu, that's a big win.

APlogic

If their intention was to make him a good champ diamond+ they might have to go to the drawing board. Amumu is absolutely god tier in iron-gold while still mediocre diamond+. I don't think he is terrible in high elo and I like the direction they are going with him but I have no clue how they are going to solve this massive winrate discrepancy between low and high elo.

https://u.gg/lol/champions/amumu/build?rank=silver

https://u.gg/lol/champions/amumu/build?rank=diamond

It's still early in the patch, but our data has him as 53.8% in average play (silver-ish) and 50.6% in skilled play (plat-diamond). If this holds—fingers crossed—it means the 4.5% winrate discrepancy last patch has been reduced to barely 3%. Getting it to 0% was never the plan, because I have no idea how we would manage that while still keeping Amumu Amumu. MMR skew can be quite hard to achieve while also respecting the existing playerbase by not making dramatic changes to the things they enjoy. I'm also hoping that, winrate aside, the increased early-game power is a sufficient qualitative improvement to his usefulness that players further up the ladder will be notably happier to see an Amumu on their team than previously.

This does mean he's toeing the line for a nerf based on his average winrate, which is fine. The change was uncertain enough that there was always high change that small followup tuning would be needed.

Scrub4LIfe734

Ekko is played more in the jungle than in mid lane, yet jungle Ekko is languishing in terms of power. We're juicing up his jungle clear speed to help him shatter more camps in less... time.

So, instead of making Ekko jungle better, why can't you just make Ekko mid stronger so more people play him mid? Maybe, give lichbane and Nashors their cdr back?

We believe Ekko mid is in a healthy spot and doesn't need buffs. We aren't trying to get more people to play him in the jungle, we just also don't want the role more people choose to play him in to be notably weaker because he's ceilinged by his mid power-level.