As the dust has settled around Rengar's bug fixes and affinity for new items (hi Umbral Glaive!), we're now certain that Rengar is simply too strong when piloted by players who know what they're doing. Overall he gained a lot more damage in the new season, so we're going to bring some of that damage down now.

Rengar is getting a heavy re-script. This is mostly intended to maintain current functionality and feel, while addressing bugs and tech debt. The list of bug fixes is too long to add here so it'll be added to the bugs section. Alongside the crit changes, we're looking to make Rengar's Q work more intuitively by letting the underlying attack itself roll for critical strikes, and if so, deal bonus damage based on his total AD. This removes an optimization around rushing Infinity Edge to enhance the old forced-crit mechanic and also makes him not immediately lose 30% of his damage if his opponents build Randuin's Omen. We'll keep an eye on lethality-vs-crit Rengar and how it performs next season as we suspect Essence Reaver will be a big deal on him.

Rengar is like a dog chasing cars, except he's a cat chasing ADCs. Problem is, he can't chase as often as he'd like. Despite a low pickrate, he's historically been one of the best Axiom Arc users in the game, indicating his clear desire for hunting more. Giving Rengar a jungle skewed ult CD buff to strengthen his ability to snowball from the jungle.

We’ve done a pass on Rengar’s recommended items for top and jungle, prioritizing items that perform better. Like most item changes, we expect this to result in a small, indirect buff for our favorite jungle cat.

Rengar typically sits at lower win rates due to how difficult he is to learn, but even when accounting for his learning curve, he's a bit weak currently. To help him, we're giving him some extra armor shred and damage on his ultimate, as that's his skill with the most counter-play for his opponents since skilled tanks and fighters can absorb the blow for their squishier teammates.

Rengar’s damage is too high when snowballing, so he’s been happier than a kitten in a store full of catnip. Except in this situation the kitten is Rengar and the catnip is some of the new lethality items. Having found synergies with items like Hubris, Profane Hydra, and Opportunity that help Rengar’s damage scale well, he finds himself needing less power in his base kit. We also have a base health nerf which should help address his power in the top lane.

Rengar just loves to cuddle with squishy champions and then collect their teeth for his necklace. We're glad he's building damage items, has a unique love for critical strike chance, and plays as an assassin. However, he's succeeding too well in elite game lobbies. The speed at which he one-shots his foes leaves little room for counterplay, hence the Q nerf. Also, he’s been more successful in top lane than jungle recently, which is where the base health regen nerf comes in.

Rengar has been finding a lot of success with his lethality and fighter builds recently, especially in Elite tiers of play. We’re giving him some more generalized nerfs for now while we keep an eye on how his builds and itemization choices land this patch.

Rengar’s changes in 12.7 helped this kitty adapt a little too well to the outdoors to the point where he’s now the top cat in the jungle. We're reverting a buff to his clear (and that buff only) to otherwise leave him as is.

Rengar's become a serious destroyer of furniture structures after his most recent changes. This is a new and flexible strength in his kit that we want to preserve, but he's taking down those (scratching) towers a bit too fast, so we're tapping down the damage on that part of his Q. We're also bumping up his damage against monsters to compensate for some of the clear speed he lost because of the changes to Q against plants last patch.

Our big kitty finally has some big changes coming to his kit! Our goals were to smooth out Rengar's gameplay, keep his current playstyle, and clarify his builds. We're going to keep a close eye on the Q crit damage ratio so he doesn't get too out of line. We also know that Q no longer applying on plants can be painful for seasoned players who used this mechanic to optimize Ferocity stacks, but we strongly believe it wasn't healthy to support long term and have instead moved that power to more accessible parts of his kit.

As a primary jungler, this battle kitty has been suffering a lot on the Chemtech Rift. While he's not the only champion affected, Rengar has certainly gotten the worst of it as so much of his power budget is dedicated to his passive's interaction with brush. Removing 12 spots of it is incredibly disruptive—not just to his core farming pattern, but his entire gameplay, really—so we're giving him a new way to pounce and prowl. No catnip needed. (Note that this passive is on his R and only takes effect once he ranks up his ultimate.)