Top 10 Most Frequently Nerfed Champions

Some champions seem to always be receiving the short end of the nerf bat, while others seem to skirt just outside of Riot's radar... Let's explore Riot's favorite targets and reminisce about old times past ^_^

Introduction

With RiotZileas' anti-fun patterns in mind, you have to wonder how some champions even make it past the drawing board. However, for some that do, they're hit with the inevitable nerf bat once they become the flavor of the month (FOTM) and start drawing heavy criticism from the league player base.

Let's check out some of Riot's favorite targets below counting down from the 10th spot!

#10: Elise

Starting the list off is Elise! This champion used to be the cream of the crop, constantly picked/banned, and C9 Meteos' personal favorite, She could easily be brought into the jungle, top, mid, and had enough free stats to even be considered for support! 

However, with nerfs on her damage, range, and particle collision sizes, she's now the second lowest win rate champion in the game and shares a place only in our memories with a ban rate 1/4th that of Urgot's. Talk about disrespect.

#9: Twisted Fate

TF's making his presence on this list mostly for nostalgia purposes. Back in the day, his teleporting ultimate was a regular spell, his gold card was an AOE stun, and his teleport range was massive and near instant. If you thought he was annoying now, imagine him back then...good thing release Xin Zhao was around to keep him at bay!

#8: Kha'Zix

Kha'Zix is simply one of those champions that won't sit down and die. Every time they nerf one of his skills, the league population picks up a different skill to max. We've had max Q Kha'Zixes, Max W Kha'Zixs, and for a brief stint, even max E (leap) Kha'Zixes. Somehow, they all seemed to work very well...almost too well. Nerfplz.

#7: Nidalee

Like Kha'Zix, Nidalee has been nerfed and played in pretty much any way you can think of, AP, AD, Tank, glass cannon, split pusher, team fighter, etc. With the latest patch, she's also been played in every single position, (yes, even AD carry). While she's fairly strong right now, she's definitely been up at the plate her fair share of times for the nerfbat.

I'm personally waiting on the roaming meta to come back. Roaming kitty OP.

#6: Lee Sin

Originally considered a "bad" champion, it wasn't before long when people discovered he could triple tempest strike and instantly clear camps...meanwhile, after professionals started picking him up and people finally started reading what his passive does, it's been nothing but nerfs patch after patch, mostly in the form of range reductions.

#5: Olaf

No nerf list would be complete without Olaf. Originally an unstoppable 1v1 duelist and even 1v5 duelist with his insane true damage power combined with items like Shurelia and lifesteal, he's a mere shade of his former self. With a minimum range applied on his axe throw, he can no longer pick up and throw it in place for insane resets.

#4: Alistar

Formerly the God of Gods and 100% ban rate in the jungle, Alistar is also a mere shade of his former self. A champion originally equipped with some of the hardest techniques in the game, Riot's since removed a lot of his power by nerfing his headbutt range and removing his ability to auto-attack immediately after headbutting.

Thank goodness he's not popular anymore since I never did get the hang of headbutt pulverize...much less headbutt-auto-pulverize-auto. When you pulverize in place EVERYONE knows what you were trying to do and how badly you just failed it.

#3: Shaco

Long time definition of "anti-fun", Shaco specializes in an array of skills whose primary purpose is to trick and frustrate enemy players. Direct Riot nerfs include:

• Deceive (Q)
• Could cast out of roots like Ryze (W)
• Reduced from 575 range to 400 
• Jack In The Box (W)
• Fear range reduced
• Originally magic immune
• Trigger radius reduced to 325 from 450
• Two-Shive Poison (E)
• Originally allowed Shaco to stay in stealth after activating
• Originally blinded targets with a % chance to miss (including neutral monsters)
• Hallucination (R)
• Damage reduced from 100% to 50% on turrets

Let's not forget that time where Shaco could finish both red and blue buff at 2:05 without a leash...I'll let you guys search around in the Nerfplz archives for that post, as it features some embarrassingly old formatting.

#2: Kassadin

Kassadin's one of those champions that no matter what the nerfs on him, he always comes back around to popularity...and gets nerfed again.

Meanwhile, I think the last two nerfs are enough to cement his spot on the top 10 nerfed champions, even without counting the insane number of times he's been nerfed:

• Riftwalk cooldown increased from 12 seconds to 20 seconds
• Riftwalker range decreased from 700 to 450

OUCH. R.I.P.

#1 Irelia

Last but not least, as you'd all expect, is the most nerfed champion - Irelia. Jungle Nidalee one-shotting laners? Better nerf Irelia!

In all honesty, she hasn't been nerfed that much compared to someone like Kassadin. However, she does get a lot of numbers tweaks simply as a result of how many different ways she can scale into late game. Her dueling potential is also very high in a 1v1 or 1v2 situation, which lends itself to more *WOW* factor.

She's also received a variety of indirect nerfs simply based on her item builds, most notably Trinity Force.

Conclusions

Notable omissions to this list do include Xin Zhao and Master Yi. That being said, as Riot's stance has historically been to nerf rather than buff champions, it's definitely been a nerf-fest these past few years.

That concludes the first Top 10 series of SSJSuntastic's Hyperaggressive Posting Schedule. I'm thinking I should definitely cut it down to Top Three Thursday, but that was definitely a fun write-up.

Thoughts? Comment below!