Riot provides deeper look into upcoming Lucian changes in League of Legends’ patch 11.17

League of Legends’ lead game designer Jeevun Sidhu, in a recent tweet, mentioned that they are working on a few changes for Lucian.

Lucian is very popular amongst professional players in League of Legends. He primarily plays in mid and top lanes in pro matches. However, Riot Games wants to make Lucian more viable in the bot lane.

The issue with this is that if they buff bot lane Lucian, then the mid version of the champion is bound to get even more powerful. Lucian is not the best champion to play mid or top. However, he is extremely versatile and his ultimate can deal a lot of damage.

11.17 has Lucian changes (coming to PBE). The goal is to shift power from Mid Lucian to Bot.Base StatsBase AD :: 64 >>> 62Lightslinger (P)(New) - Ally buffs empower Lucian's next 2 (stacks to 4) basic attacks to deal an additional 14 (+10% tAD) magic damage(1/2)

— Jeevun Sidhu (@JeevunSidhu) August 10, 2021

Apart from that, in the solo queue, the champion has a higher win rate in the bot lane. So there is no way to buff bot lane Lucian in professional games without breaking him in solo queue.

Professional players know how to use him to the best of his ability. They prefer strong early game champions within League of Legends and Lucian fits their profile.

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Riot gives insight into changes that will make Lucian viable in bot lane

Riot games gathered data from both game analysts as well as professional players within League of Legends. The data basically states that Lucian, in professional games, looks viable due to the coordinated tactics of the players.

Therefore, Riot’s first thought process regarding this idea was that bottom lane Lucian has support and hence, they should work around that.

Here’s a QGT about our process on the upcoming Lucian changes for 11.17! Changes will be on PBE today so come try them out and let us know what you think! https://t.co/7HYzYeTniw

— Tim (@TheTruexy) August 13, 2021

League of Legends' game designer Truexy mentioned that,

“Rather than make Lucian feel bad without being near an ally, make him feel even better with an ally in ways that he won't miss dearly when playing more independently.”

He further added that,

“We landed on granting Lucian bonus damage whenever buffed by an ally. This version creates a new avenue for supports to help Lucian bully enemies early-game, and also doesn't warp Lucian’s spell-spamming, highly-mobile pattern. With some new power to snowball a lead in Bot Lane, Lucian can remain a more relevant threat before he begins falling off during the endgame”

Finally, he also mentioned changes to Lucian's ultimate where he states that,

“We shifted one of The Culling’s scalings (number of bullets) from experience-based to item-based, which is more consistent between lanes. This way, Bot Lucian doesn’t have to wait till levels 11 and 16 for his next spike in ultimate damage. Also, watching The Culling blast more bullets as you get more items is pretty freaking cool.”

Overall, they are basically planning to allow a partnership between Lucian and his support, and thereby incentify his bot lane presence. However, once he becomes a solo laner, this incentive is gone and yet, he remains the same strong laner as earlier within League of Legends.

However, his ultimate does seem to have some significant changes and this is probably to tone down the insane damage that it does in the early game. At the same time, making it item-based definitely rewards those players who can farm well in the bot lane.