Patch 12.11’s nerf that wasn’t: hello, farming Senna!

Since the Champion durability update went live on Patch 12.10, Senna has emerged as an elite option in the bottom lane. Therefore, Riot Games have decided to nerf “support” Senna and make the ADC path viable instead. So, is it really a nerf to The Redeemer? We are not entirely sure.

On Patch 12.10, ‘fasting’ Senna dominated pro play as her safety and scaling fit the meta. Senna is returning to ADC on 12.11 as she is about four times as likely to obtain a Mist Wraith from the minions she kills.

Not even Riot knows Senna’s role

When Senna joined League of Legends’ champion roster late in Season 9, she was intended to be a support marksman with her long-range poke and healing abilities. Although Riot knew she was a marksman-like Champion, they did not anticipate how well she fit in team comps that bordered on wacky territory.

On release, Senna’s passive had a 5.5% chance to gain Mist Wraiths on minion kill, and 20% on nearby creeps that she does not kill. Then, players realized that Senna could earn a respectable amount of passive stacks on top of her gold income and XP as an ADC. So, she became an ADC mainstay.

Rewinding the clock to Fasting Senna’s rise

As Riot disliked Senna’s success at AD carry, they dropped the Mist Wraiths’ on-kill drop chance to 1.67% two patches later. They thought it would force Senna into being an “ordinary” support as intended, but the players’ creativity rose to the challenge.

In comes “Fasting Senna”: a marksman/support hybrid, usually laning with a melee Champion that would farm in the lane (e.g.: Tahm Kench, Sion, and Wukong). The combo worked exceptionally well, especially in pro play during the 2020 summer split.

The “supports” that Senna played with would be ahead in Gold and XP and be unusually tanky, while Senna would farm infinite stacks and eventually hyper-scale. In turn, Riot realized that there was no easy fix for the Senna quandary.

No easy fixes for this one, Riot

Since then, Riot has gone back and forth in benefitting either Fasting or ADC senna as they constantly changed the Mist Wraith’s drop rate. Whatever they tried, Senna eventually became oppressive one way or another: build paths from Lethality to Tank Senna emerged, all strong in their way. 

In recent years, Riot has built a habit of releasing over-tuned kits with over 9000 Passive and Active abilities that you need an hour to read (hi, Bel’Veth!), and sometimes reworking champions until their mains became insane (is that Ryze?). Predictably, it creates enormous long-term balance problems.