On August 5th, Riot Games designer Blake Smith posted to Twitter a series of proposed changes to Ivern, which would both fundamentally change how a few of his abilities function, as well as fix the currently buggy state of his ultimate. However, some players fear the adjustment to his ultimate ability would significantly lower his skill ceiling.
The first few interrelated changes revolve around Ivern’s W, which creates a brush that, in its current state, increases Ivern’s attack range while he remains within it and lingers shortly after he exits. In the proposed update, Ivern’s brush would grant bonus damage to allies in addition to himself, while his attacks would be ranged by default, meaning that the brush would no longer have an effect on his own or allies’ attack range.
Fan reception has been overwhelmingly positive to the fixed ranged attack change, while the additional buff granted by his brush has been generally well-received, with one caveat. Though the increase in utility will improve Ivern’s versatility, a highly-upvoted Reddit post points out that in certain scenarios, the additional damage, at its current rate, could be game-altering, though simply changing the damage buff variable would likely balance the ability were this to be the case.
Additionally, Ivern’s ultimate, which summons a sentinel named Daisy, could undergo a significant overhaul. Currently, Daisy is fully controllable by the player, meaning that knowing how to properly manage Ivern and Daisy simultaneously is essentially the difference-maker between new and skilled Ivern players. The proposed change would remove player control of Daisy, relegating her movement and targeting to fixed AI.
On the plus side, bugs will sometimes cause Daisy to ignore attack or movement commands, and this intended change should fix that. Additionally, the dev team plans on utilizing this change as a jumping-off point from which to buff Daisy and/or Ivern. However, players who have learned to control both characters at once will be deprived of the skillset they have likely meticulously developed, and the overall barrier of entry to mastering Ivern will be significantly lower, which would help players new to the character at the cost of altering his competitive viability.
Of course, this is all purely hypothetical at this point—both the changes and the effect they’re projected to have on the game. Smith has asked for input from Ivern players, so if these sentiments are widely expressed, the changes very well may not go through in their current state. Keep an eye on Ivern in the coming weeks to see whether or not he becomes a whole new tree-man.
