In League of Legends, the new champion Bel’Veth was released about a week ago. However, the jungler is particularly a tough opponent for players in Elo up to Gold. Statistics show how dominant she currently is. Riot Games is responding and plans significant nerfs for the next patch. Yet, she can still cause chaos for one more week.
How strong is Bel’Veth? Statistics paint a very dominant picture of the new champion Bel’Veth in the ranks Iron up to and including Silver:
- With a 55% win rate, she currently has the highest win rate in the game.
- No champion is currently picked as often as Bel’Veth. She appears in nearly 24% of all matches.
- In another 56% of games, she is banned. The second highest ban rate is Zed with nearly 35% (via LeagueOfGraphs).
This dominance is also perceived by the developers themselves. August, the lead champion designer of Riot Games, shared in a tweet that Bel’Veth is “very strong in low MMR.” Accordingly, patch notes for the upcoming nerf have also been shared (via Twitter).
So, anyone currently playing in low Elo as a jungler should take a look at Bel’Veth. However, she is not as present in high Elo, where the ban rate even rises to 61.4% in matches in Platinum or higher.
Bel’Veth Dominates in Low Elo
What makes her so strong? Bel’Veth has a strong mechanic to gank lanes.
She can jump in four different directions with her “Q,” with each direction having its own cooldown. If she hits an enemy with her “W,” the cooldown for that direction resets, allowing her to jump after the enemy. Her “W” also knocks the enemy up and slows them.
With her “E,” she can quickly take down objectives like the blue and red buffs, dragons, herald, and Baron. This is particularly important in low Elo, as teams are not yet coordinated enough and she can sometimes stay alone at such objectives for a longer time.
Moreover, her passive ability scales infinitely, providing her with constantly increasing attack speed. Combined with her ultimate, this makes her a strong champion.
What are her problems? Bel’Veth is weaker in the jungle than other champions. This allows good players to counter-jungle or even secure kills in a one-on-one scenario. This makes her weaker in high Elo, where opponents track the paths taken by enemy junglers more effectively and work better as a team.
Additionally, she heavily relies on her items. If she is not equipped quickly enough with good items, she falls behind in the mid and late game.
The renowned LoL coach LS referred to her as a “beast in solo queue,” but weak when it comes to team play and coordinated matches. This is consistent with the statistics, as from Diamond onward, Bel’Veth currently has a win rate of 48.6% – placing her 117th out of 160.
Nerfs are intended to make her more bearable in low Elo
What changes are being made to Bel’Veth? With the upcoming patch 12.12, Riot plans several nerfs to the new champion:
- She will receive only 7 +0.7/lvl health regeneration (currently 8.5 + 0.85/lvl) in her attributes.
- The value of attack damage per stack will be reduced.
- A bug with her “Q” will be fixed.
- The damage per hit from her “E” will be reduced from 8-20 to 8-16.
- In her ultimate, the damage scaling with missing health, bonus attack range, and health points will be reduced.
In return, she will gain a slightly increased range with auto-attacks and can also gain stacks from large minions with her passive.
When will the nerf be released? The new patch 12.12 is set to be released on Thursday, June 23.
Are people happy with the nerf? No. The LoL streamer Christian “IWDominate” Rivera criticized that the changes are too focused on low Elo (via Twitter). For him, Bel’Veth is currently the worst jungler in the game.
With these changes, it could now happen that she will not play a role in high Elo or in tournaments.
What do you think of Bel’Veth so far? What are your experiences with the new champion? Is she really too strong or rather too weak? Let us know in the comments.
Junglers are currently having a tough time in LoL anyway. This is also echoed by the pro Broxah, who explains why even good junglers often receive hate:
LoL pro explains why one position receives the most hate and how to deal with it
