Rengar will officially undergo a skill rework. Every skill, effect and detail will change
Rioter presents the changes of Rengar and describes their context.
Rengar’s changes were a big topic some time ago. The creators wanted to refresh the champion while using the new Chemtech map that was introduced to League of Legends with the new dragon at the beginning of the 12th season. However, the soul of the dragon turned out to be too strong, and therefore Riot was forced to get rid of this variant of the creature. For Rengar, this meant a postponement of much-anticipated fixes.
Rengar is doing really poorly at the moment – his average win rate is under 49.5% in the jungle, where he is played in over 70% of the games he appears in. After the rework promises, Riot is finally shipping League of Legends patch 12.6 with comprehensive changes to Rengar that focus on the tweaks Rioter believes should please his players.
Upcoming Rengar Changes
One designer, Riot Phlox, shared with players a list of buffs that affect virtually every hero’s abilities except W. His passive ability is now more forgiving, and the time to start Ferocity stack descent has been increased. This should make his ganks a bit more effective.
His Q will now always count as a critical hit with increased scaling based on the critical hit chance. This means that the champion no longer has to focus on achieving 100% Crit Chance, but items like Infinity Edge will still be really strong. Moreover, extra damage will be applied when attacking turrets, which will greatly increase the champion’s power in the top lane.
The changes to Q are designed to ensure that playing Rengar with a low critical chance doesn’t involve counting on luck and leaving it to fate when you fail to get the missing 20% or 40%. The changes will also allow us to directly change the strength of an crit-based build.
E – Bola Strike will no longer have cast time while jumping and will reveal enemies hit for two seconds. If you manage to hit a target in bushes or behind a wall with the ability, following them should be easier.
The ultimate – Thrill of the Hunt – has also been changed. The vision granted by the ability will now also cover a small area around the target, allowing Rengar players to better choose their target.
- Unseen Predator (P)
- When Rengar has no Ferocity stacks, his next jump will generate one stack.
- Stacks will now start to decay after 10 seconds (used to be 8).
- Maximum time for a kill to award a necklace stack increased from 1.5 seconds to 3 seconds.
- The counter that checks if an ability allows you to jump from the bush no longer refreshes every 0.25 seconds.
- To accommodate the new counter, the range has been increased by 25 units.
- Jump height slightly increased.
- The Ferocity stack counter now shows which stacks were given by jump.
- Savagery (Q)
- Always counts as a critical hit.
- Critical chance scales with damage (currently 1% chance = 1 point of damage).
- The ability now works on towers.
- Bola Strike (E)
- New: No casting time for jumping.
- New: Reveals target for two seconds.
- Thrill of the Hunt (R)
- Visibility changed from the target to a small area around the target.
Rengar now has quite strange mechanics – especially when it comes to his W or passive ability. I think that W, which doesn’t stack with any combo, is hard to use with most champion builds.
The same goes for Ferocity stack generation. This is very ruthless and makes the champion very dependent on bushes (which is partly a good thing). I think there are better versions for both of these mechanics, but they are not easy to implement and the cost can be high.
I’ve decided to do something to make Rengar play better instead of sitting around hoping to find time to create a magical version of a character that may or may not be cooler.
The Rengar changes will be rolled out on March 30th as part of Patch 12.6 along with the big Zeri nerfs (Riot is working on Zeri nerfs in LoL, but players will have to wait a long time for them) and improvements to the sustain mechanic.