Neeko Midscope Update Is Finally Out on the LoL PBE Server

League’s favorite shapeshifter is getting more tricks to fool her opponents.

There are a lot of trickster types of champions in League of Legends (LeBlanc, Fizz, etc.), but among these only Neeko has the power to turn herself into a completely different character which gives her some creative outplay potential.

For some reason or another, Neeko never found too much success. Both in her win rate and also in the champion fantasy department. Seeing the wasted potential, Riot announced she would be getting a midscope update during the Preseason Dev Blog video. And after a very long wait, the midscope is finally out and playable on the Public Beta Environment server.

Shapeshifting is now more than a gimmick for Neeko

Despite turning into one of her teammates being a core part of her kit, Neeko never managed to fully take advantage of this. It was hard to fool anyone on the enemy team you were someone else when you just turned back into your original form because of a random AoE damage hit you. In the current live servers, Neeko only benefits from her passive when she turns into a teammate with a faster move speed or when she wants to hide her ultimate cast. So Riot’s big promise was centered around improving the passive itself.

And seeing from the limited play on the PBE, they really managed to deliver. The new Neeko can now shapeshift a lot more than four teammates, including but not limited to minions, wards, jungle camps and blast plants. And she doesn’t break her disguise until the unit she transformed into takes lethal damage, she cast abilities or she gets crowd controlled.

While the passive changes are pretty big and exciting, the rest of her kit doesn’t have too many changes. The mechanics are mostly the same except she doesn’t gain a shield during her ultimate, but instead knocks up enemies in addition to her stun. It’s an overall benefit for Neeko as she didn’t need the shield in most cases and the added knock-up almost guarantees her to hit the second part of her ulti.

Both Blooming Burst (Q) and Tangle-Barbs (E) lost some base damage numbers, but there were compensation buffs to the Ability Power ratios. When looking as a whole, these changes might make Neeko less of a lane bully but they should help with her late game fights, especially if she is without her ultimate.

Last but not least, there is one more small but thrilling change. Riot added bonus monster damage to Neeko’s Q and W with the midscope, which opens up the possibility of Neeko jungle. The numbers don’t look good enough to make her meta right out of the gate, but considering how much CC she has in her kit it might be fun to play around with.

Neeko midscope update full changes 

• [P] Inherent Glamour
  • [NEW] When Neeko is near a non-epic monster, minion, trap, ward, or plant for two seconds she stores their Sho'ma. Neeko can click on her bar to become that unit. Click on Neeko's face to return to Neeko. Click on the little X to clear out that Sho'ma. Only one unit can be stored at a time.
  • [NEW] Disguise no longer breaks when taking damage, but only when the disguised self would have died or when you are crowd controlled.
  • [Adjusted] Neeko no longer inherits base AS/MS from disguise target if that stat is higher than hers
  • Cooldown: 6 seconds at all points
• [Q] Blooming Burst
  • Secondary/Tertiary Pop Damage: 40/65/90/115/140 + 20% AP >>> 35/60/85/110/135 + 25% AP
  • [NEW] Explosions deal 30/40/50/60/70 bonus damage to monsters
• [W] Shapesplitter
  • After casting Neeko can reactivate to send the clone to a new location.
  • Clone now plays animations and sounds of Q/E/Dance/Joke/Taunt/Recall/Laugh and survives for their duration
  • [NEW] Empowered Attacks deal 50 bonus damage to monsters
• [E] Tangle-Barbs
  • Damage: 80/115/150/185/220+ 60% AP >>> 70/105/140/175/210+ 65% AP
• [R] Pop Blossom
  • After channel Neeko jumps into the air, suspending all nearby enemies
  • After 0.6s Neeko crashes to the ground with all suspended enemies and deals damage to all nearby enemies, the stun lingers for 1.25s total
  • No longer shields Neeko
  • Damage: 200/425/650 (+130% AP) >>> 150/350/550 (+100% AP)
  • Cooldown: 90s >>> 120/105/90s

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