Patch Rundown came out yesterday, and it’s clear people are hungry for the patch. It goes live Wednesday, so look forward to that. I know I’m going to be cranking out some ranked games.

Reading all the feedback and responses so far, one of the things that seemed to confuse people the most was the Dragon’s Claw nerf. Many thought we were simply nerfing the item because it was strong in a Syndra/Karma meta. Wanted to clear up that that isn’t the case, and exactly why we made the change.

First, it was correctly pointed out to me that if you compare these two items, it’s probably not ok that they are so similar. They have the exact same healing, DClaw was 40 more MR, and Anima has more flat HP. (A Wukong3 for example will have 292 bonus HP from DClaw). So the trade off is some health for some MR and that’s it?

So our first instinct is “Well if Anima is close in power to a base craftable item, let’s buff it!” Unfortunately the item is and historically has been a well balanced good artifact, sitting near the top of the stack in power while also being extremely useful in almost any comp. Also we like the identity of Anima Visage being the “High HP Tank health regen” item, so there wasn’t much to do there.

Now that means we need to move DClaw away from Anima visage’s identity. DClaw is the premier MR item which is great, and that’s it’s identity. So MR isn’t going to change. That leaves the HP or the health regen. Well as we discussed, if Anima’s identity is HP regen, then that likely needs to be removed from DClaw. So the simplest change is likely to cut that, put a little more bonus HP on the item, and call it a day.

HOWEVER, this is why we need to remember historically why the HP regen was put there in the first place. In the past, DClaw was an item that if you had in the early game, where most AP damage is still ramping up and mostly doing physical damage, the item was bad. DClaw has always been great Stage 4+, and AWFUL on Stage 2, which led to cloaks often being the “worst component”. So just cutting it will just put it back to that.

Loc Lock had already passed, so for now, this nerf felt light enough that DClaw still retains its core identity (primary MR item for late game) without gutting its early game too hard. In the future, we will likely remove that passive for a different early game focused passive (could look similar to Bramble’s) that doesn’t stomp on Anima’s identity.

Now for part 2…

Part 2 – “Ok well if you nerf the healing in half, won’t the Dragon’s Spirit augment just be awful. It was already hard to play”

So, the wording on this augment is VERY unclear (we need to fix that) which often leads to this augment being misplayed. It’s very confusing, so let me help clarify how it works.

A better wording would be “Every time champions equipped with Dragon’s Claws heal for 7000 health, gain a component.” This healing counts ALL HEALING the wearer does, not just the healing from the Claw itself.

This means any champs who have built in healing such as Elise, Lillia, Nunu, Nasus, etc are amazing users of this augment and will stack up the healing count fairly quickly. If you take this and try to put it on champs that don’t like Poppy, Wukong, or Rakan, you will likely feel like it’s weak.

We believe this confusing is why the current stats look pretty bad, as when used properly, the augment is quite good (+6 components total for a Gold augment is very good!) So in the future, make sure your main tank can self heal before you take this augment. And I’ll work with the team to get this wording cleared up.

---

Ok I hope these explanations were helpful. I know a lot of folks these days will say “Too much text balance bad”, but for those who want to learn and actively engage, these posts are for you. I’m always happy to walk through and share the logic behind changes, and frankly selfishly this is the part of the job I love. Nerding out about the details of each part of the game. There’s so much in TFT to nerd out about!

Have a great week everyone. It’s great to be back into full swing, and I’m sure I’ll have more to share with you! Until then, take it easy 🙂

Link to Mortdog’s original post