League of Legends patch 12.11 will not be shipping with the Lethality item buffs as was initially intended

Despite League of Legends patch 12.11 going live tomorrow, Riot Games are still making some last-minute adjustments to the update before officially shipping it out.

It seems that the final patch will not arrive with the intended tweaks that were planned for the Lethality items, along with the updates planned for both Rocketbelt and Lethal Tempo.

Since the 12.10 and 12.10b durability updates, assassins have had quite a rough time adapting to the new meta. This is why the League of Legends developers had planned to provide the Lethality items, like Duskblade, Axiom Arc and Serpent's Fang, with some buffs.

However, according to a tweet by game balance designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, the lethality changes that made their way into the PBE 12.11 cycle will not appear in the final update.

The developers will be stepping back to evaluate the magnitude of these changes before considering shipping them to the live servers. They will likely tweak the changes further and introduce the Lethality updates during patch 12.12 or 12.13.

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The AD Assasin Lethality buffs will not be arriving with League of Legends patch 12.11

In the follow-up comments, Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison explained why the developers chose to leave out the lethality updates in the upcoming patch. The developers suggest:

“Assassins should kill you when ~even if they land their abilities. The number of abilities depends on kit counterplay & how ahead they are. Assassins need to have kill threat to fill a vital role in the game (sometimes even when they're behind). On 12.10 they sometimes build fighter items.”

He further stated that when lethality items have equal to or less damage than fighters, assassins break their “fantasy and strength/weakness profiles.” This means that assassins are building to be more like bruisers, with more durability as well as damage in their kit.

Therefore, “in elite,” 25% of the Mythic item purchases on assassins have been fighter items, with 20% of the Legendaries being bruiser items as well.

Hence, nerfing items like the Goredrinker, Black Cleaver and Stridebreaker affect bruisers more than it affects assassins.

Matt added:

“Winrates for assassins are tricky. Technically, champions are balanced between ~49-53% WR (with lots of nuance for skill bracket, frustration, pro, etc.). This is a massive range. If a champion at 49% is buffed 3%, it's a massive buff, but they're still "balanced" afterwards.”

League of Legends patch 12.11 is going to be a rather big one with a plethora of champion and item updates on the cards.

Riot Games will be looking to iron out some of the inconsistencies that were brought about by the durability updates and make it a more balanced meta.