League of Legends Patch 14.16 is right around the corner, and Riot Games shared an advanced preview of the update on Aug. 7. A dozen champions are getting substantial changes, including Qiyana, who could go back to her old role following the tweaks.
The changes in Patch 14.16 were shared on X by former League caster and analyst, David “Phreak” Turley, who’s now a game designer. He went into detail about a few specific tweaks, like those for Qiyana. The AP-based assassin is currently played mostly in the mid lane, but her upcoming changes could shift her back to the jungle.
Having said that, Qiyana’s upcoming adjustments aren’t just intended to improve her pick rate in the jungle again. They should also improve Quiyana’s early-game in the mid lane.
“Qiyana adjustments are to give her a bit more control over her early game and nudge up her jungle secondary role. We think her being a scaling assassin is unique and worth preserving, but we think we can make the early lane a bit more forgiving to play and smooth it out a little,” Phreak wrote.
The adjustments themselves are quite hefty. Qiyana’s base armor will increase by three points, to 31, while she’s also getting tweaks to three of her abilities. The damage of her Q will increase to 60-180 + 90 percent, which is substantially better than it is currently. On the other hand, the base damage of her W will decrease to 8-40 from 8-64, and her AD ratio on Supreme Display of Talent (R) will decrease to 1.25 from 1.75.
On paper, these changes seem to hit the nail on the head. Higher base armor and Q damage will improve Qiyana in the jungle. Her early game survivability and wave clear in the mid lane should also be better. To make sure she won’t be too strong, though, it’s important to weaken her other areas. The minor nerfs to her W and ultimate seem fine, though the latter could prove too much, since the AD converter will be now 28.57 percent lower.
Considering Qiyana’s usability at the moment, these feel like needed changes. She’s currently doing fine in the mid lane, where she has a 50.76 percent win rate in Emerald+ rankings, according to a League stat site U.GG. That’s still far from satisfactory, though, with the best champs in the role having win rates above 52 percent.
In the same ranking, she performs poorly in the jungle, with only a 47.87 percent win rate—but she’s hardly picked there, and was only played in 1,928 matches in Patch 14.15 so far. In the mid lane, she’s quite popular, with players choosing her in over 20,000 games at the time of writing.
Riot could still tweak these changes, since these aren’t the final patch notes. We’ll know for certain soon enough, since Patch 14.16 is scheduled to release next week, on Aug. 14.
