Nocturne is currently the highest win rate champion in League of Legends on three different roles as Riot appears to have accidentally made him unstoppable.
With patch 11.13 Riot massively nerfed mobility in LoL, removing a ton of speed and movement from various items. With that came the removal of Stridebreakers dash that gave anybody who built it access to a forward dash.
In an attempt to balance out the item’s power, Riot gave the item an extra 200 HP, as well as a huge boost in damage to the item’s active ability, which now slows the opponent. What was originally seen as a nerf has now become a massive buff to the item’s power level.
Nocturne has benefitted most from these changes and is currently sitting in three of the top five slots in win rate for solo queue in the Platinum+ tier, according to stats website u.gg. The roles he is dominating are top lane, mid lane, and jungle.
Nocturne’s best role is currently top lane, where he sports a 55.14% win rate as of July 4. In fact, there isn’t a single matchup in the top lane that Nocturne goes 50/50 in, as he is favored in all of them.
In a post to the League of Legends subreddit, it’s pointed out that the last champion to sport an equal win rate was Amumu in patch 10.24, whose abilities and items were nerfed massively.
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“I think his kit combined with stridebreaker slow is mainly the reason why he is broken now,” the post explains.
Patch 11.14 nerfs are coming
There is a nerf coming to Nocturne next patch, but it’s not drastic. Riot is slightly lowering the healing off of minions he gets by his passive, Umbra Blades, by 50%. This will lower his lane sustain, but Stridebreaker will go untouched.
The type of nerf Riot is giving Nocturne reveals that they are pushing him to be a jungler, as nerfing his passive means they are lowering his strength in lane. Riot recently handed out a similar nerf to Viego in an attempt to make him more of a jungler as well.
When Nocturne does eventually receive his big nerf, expect it to hit both his abilities as well as Stridebreaker.
