After getting to see the impact of last patch’s ultimate nerfs, they’ve been very effective at increasing counterplay at high skill levels. However, we still see an opportunity to shift some power from jungle into top while promoting a bruiser playstyle. As a result, we’re giving her some better early power, while keeping her jungle clear and general lategame potential the same.

Ambessa has carried the Medarda legacy a bit too well. Her brutality and fantasy has resonated with her mains, but we believe her ult has felt slightly fast to the point that players hit by it often don't have clarity on what happened. We're extending her cast time to open up clearer counterplay, and will be keeping a watchful eye on opportunities for follow-up work.

We had always anticipated that Ambessa would have a jungle audience and we're happy to see that she's taken root there, but she also needs to be equally balanced across her two primary roles, so we're lightly nerfing her monster damage.

Ambessa's jungle play rate never really took off but it's always been right behind top lane in terms of actual power. We're giving it a light nudge that should make her balanced in this alternate role and especially help unoptimized players who can't always get sweet spots to land on large jungle monsters.

Ambessa is a bit too good at assassinating squishy targets quickly, so taking down some base damage to make sure she needs to hit the right number of spells to kill her targets.

Ambessa is still looking a bit strong after her adjustments last patch, specifically in the hands of players in higher skill brackets. One of the issues she's facing in particular is that she doesn't have enough losing lane match ups, so we're looking to introduce more this patch, specifically ones that are DPS-focused stat checkers, as they should have the edge on Ambessa.

We're keeping Ambessa's tuning state the same for this patch but there are some small bugs to fix and minor QoL to provide. We're matching Q2's hold duration to her passive and fixing some bugs.