Janna on the way to change in League of Legends

A ton of changes are coming to Janna, according to the latest PBE update.

Janna’s changes are more of a small rework, Janna’s changes are the most significant, because they introduce new features and alter her kit in a way that will change how she’s played. They’ll actually turn her into a sort of auto-attack centered mage support—the first of its kind. When we say “auto-attack centered,” we’re not referring to her boosting her ADC’s auto attacks, we mean she’ll actually need to auto attack enemies to take full advantage of her newfound damage.

For starters, her passive, Tailwind, will now cause her basic attacks to deal 35 percent of her bonus movement speed. That alone is probably the most significant change, as it stacks with the movement speed provided by items like Ardent Censer, Talisman of Ascension, and Boots of Mobility—all items she builds often. With this damage, she’ll be able to trade damage in lane simply by hitting enemies with basic attacks.

Her Q, Howling Gale, is getting nerfed somewhat in terms of range and cooldown. Now, no matter how far the tornado travels from charging up, it will always reach its destination in 1.5 seconds. That means that you’ll see some super speed tornadoes when they’re fully charged.

The next big change is on her shield, Eye of the Storm. It’s not a mechanical change, it’s just a nerf—but it’s a big one. Rather than having a cooldown of 10 seconds at all ranks, it will now start at 18 seconds, nearly double that, and scale down to 10 as the game goes on. This will hurt her laning performance significantly, but could be outweighed by her new damage.

Either way, Janna’s playstyle is shifting. Instead of sitting in the back, launching tornadoes and shielding allies, she’s going to have to get close to trade damage, since her shield won’t be as reliable.

There’s also a large chunk of stat changes coming for her as well, including higher base health, lower base AD, faster basic attacks, and more.

These changes hit the PBE, which means they should likely arrive with Patch 7.19 in two weeks.