Why is Riot changing fighters and juggernauts?

With a large swath of itemization changes, Riot is changing fighters and juggernauts in League of Legends.

Riot Games has been known to update and tweak champion classes in the past, with updates for tanks, mages, assassins, and more. With big changes coming to live servers, why is Riot changing fighters and Juggernauts?

How is Riot changing fighters and juggernauts?

In a developer blog post, Riot Games talked about all the changes coming to the top lane’s two most prevalent classes. Fighters in League of Legends are skirmish specialists who thrive on mobility and high-skill moments of combat, these are champions like Fiora, Xin Zhao, and Irelia. Juggernauts are slow, immobile bruisers who wield raw stats as they bring death to anybody foolish enough to stay in melee range of them, these are champions like Darius and Yorick.

In the post, Riot says that fighters have begun to feel too tanky, while Juggernauts suffer due to how tanky their more mobile cousins can be with such efficient defensive itemization on offensive champions. The big change is that Sterak’s Gage will no longer be a default buy on lighter and more damage-heavy characters such as Viego or Master Yi.

Some items, like Death’s Dance, are being tweaked to have more defensive possibilities. Riot doesn’t want fighters to lose out on all good defensive itemization options, but they don’t want them taking all the best items from their less mobile juggernaut peers.

Riot compares these changes to the nerfs to Stridebreaker early on into the game, where giving juggernauts a low cooldown dash ended up being incredibly unhealthy for the game. Riot changing fighters and juggernauts looks to change that, with fighters getting most of the big changes in terms of itemization.

Riot says it will be keeping an eye on the changes to make sure they reach their intended goal.