Aurora is one of League of Legends most recent champions, but her lack of appearances at Worlds 2024 has concerned the dev team, with nerfs on the way in the near future.
From the play-in stage onwards, Aurora was banned 77 times, considerably more than the 63 bans Yone received in second place. As such, she only appeared 19 times throughout Worlds, with Xiaohu, Creme, and Kiin managing to pick up the champion three times each.
At Worlds Finals 2024, Dexerto spoke to Lead Gameplay Director Matthew Leung-Harrison to get his thoughts on the champion’s position in the pro scene, and what fans across all Elos can expect from her moving forward.
“We probably could have nerfed her a little harder going into the tournament. We did a very significant nerf to her by nerfing her wall jump range and the ultimate duration and how far she jumps in just the Naked R cast. But it didn’t ultimately end up being enough,” he said.
“I don’t think she’s blatantly overpowered on the current patch. She dropped through the entire NA series, for example. She didn’t get picked or banned once. But we should have probably accounted a little harder for the effect that players hadn’t necessarily practiced with and against Aurora very much.”
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When asked about what this means for Aurora in upcoming patch cycles, Leung-Harrison confirmed that additional tuning is on the way, with much of it designed with the broader player base in mind.
“We have some plans for some changes that we’ve been cooking up for a little bit, in an effort to reduce some of her pro-skewed tendencies and make her a little more reasonable to play against, with how easy it is to catch people and how easy it is to use the ultimate,” he said.
“It’s something we did want because, in development, we were kind of scared that she was going to be too hard to play. She launched, and she’s a little elite and pro-skewed currently compared to where we want her to be, so we’re making those changes to make her a little more approachable and a little less frustrating to play.”
When precisely these changes will go live is unclear, but much of the balancing is likely to happen before the next season starts in January 2025. With the release of new champion Ambessa and the Fearless draft system on the international circuit, the development team has a lot to do over the coming months.
