Jungle champion Lillia has fallen out of focus in League of Legends lately. Riot Games wants to get the nimble deer back on track with extensive changes
Lillia has been roaming the Jungle of the Divide for just under a year. Over time, however, she has fallen heavily off the pattern of what her developers intended for her to be. Riot Games designer Daniel “Maxw3ll” Emmons on Monday released an outline of the changes that are intended to bring her playstyle back into the intended pattern. Since the new features are already being applied in the PBE test, they could be expected on the live servers in the near future.
Hit once and run
Lillia’s kit was originally intended to be different from how it eventually turned out in the game. “These changes are to get her back to her actual playstyle, which is ‘attack and run’,” Maxw3ll explained on Twitter. Right now, he says, the champion is “too tied to her ultimate ability.”
Said Ultimate “Lilting Lullaby” will therefore be addressed in the changes. While the ability generally deals higher damage, its sleep duration and slowdown will be lowered. The strengths of Lillia’s central Engage tool are therefore shifted.
Lillia’s passive ability Dream-Laden Bough is designed to support the principle of her hit and run kit with a new healing effect. This gives her new HP in proportion to the damage done against monsters or champions. In addition, the passive now scales with Ability Power and thus gives the champion more damage. So it will be worthwhile for Lillia to poke a champion and then heal up in the Jungle.
Here's a full changelist for the Lillia changes that got pushed to PBE a little while ago. There were a few tooltip bugs, but to my knowledge this is what we're planning on shipping. As always, subject to change, and if these changes don't land well, we'll be looking for followup pic.twitter.com/Sl5JoOEf5H
— Riot Maxw3ll (@ExasperatedDan) June 28, 2021
Slow Early Game
The Q ability “Blooming Blows” gets increased mana costs on PBE servers as well as less movement speed increases. Its cooldown is also higher at the beginning of the game, but decreases per level. According to Maxw3ll, this in combination with a higher damage increase of the ability should mean a power spike in the later game, while Lillia is weaker than usual in the early game.
Also, the E ability “Swirlseed” as well as the W “Out! Eep!” will be trimmed more for damage in the PBE update. Both receive higher base values, while the W ability also scales more with AP. Instead of scaling, the E ability’s slowing gets a constant duration of 40 seconds and a cooldown increased to a full 18 seconds.
So far, the update is only in testing on PBE servers, so any changes could still be made. It is not yet known when or if Lillia’s revised kit will find its way onto live servers.
