Riot wants to shift power on Lucian from mid to bot on patch 11.17

William Davis Published 11/08/2021

With League of Legends patch 11.17 coming up later this month, Riot will be looking to put some extra focus on Lucian to shift his power from the mid lane to bot. 

For quite a while, Lucian has been a prominent pick in the mid lane but has fallen out of priority in his primary role down bot. These times might be over as Riot will be bringing some pretty big changes to the gunslinger on patch 11.17. According to lead game designer Jeevun Sidhu, Lucian will get some empowerment when around allies and get some changes to The Culling (R). If things go right, this will nerf Lucian as a mid laner but buff him when paired up with a support down bot. 

Big changes for Lucian on LoL patch 11.17

One of the most significant changes that will be coming to Lucian is becoming empowered by having allies around him. This is a direct adjustment to make him more viable in the bot lane since a support will always be nearby in that lane. 

The first ability to be empowered by allies will be his passive Lightslinger, which will get a buff from allies. This buff will empower Lucian’s next two basic attacks and deal additional damage based on his total attack damage. This stacks up to four. Lucian’s Ardent Blaze (W) will also get a big change by lowering the mana cost and have allies proc Vigilance if they proc the mark that Ardent Blaze leaves. 

These two changes will primarily be the ones to shift Lucian’s power, but it won’t be all of the changes. Lucian’s ultimate will also get a little rework as Riot will be lowering the number of shots to 22 at all levels. To outweigh this nerf, each shot will now have a 25% critical strike chance and potentially deal way more damage than right now. Riot will be nerfing the damage per shot on The Culling to avoid it being completely overpowered. 

From the looks of it, there’s no doubt that these changes should force Lucian out of the mid lane. There’s still a chance that Lucian can be picked up in the mid lane in some situations, but he will ultimately lose out on some strong empowered abilities in the early game especially. 

These Lucian changes will be available for testing on the next Public Beta Environment (PBE) update before hitting the live servers with patch 11.17 on Wednesday, August 25. 

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