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Since the beginning of the Summer Split, Galio has been a much better mid laner than a top laner, particularly in pro play. His incredible base damage on his Q — Winds of War — allowed him to clear entire minion waves with one ability only 15 minutes into the game, and his ultimate allowed an instantaneous roam anywhere on the map in the blink of an eye.
However, with the nerfs that came with Patch 7.13 all that’s about to change for League’s favorite gargoyle.
BASE ARMOR :: 27 >>> 24
Q - Winds of War
TORNADO ZONE DAMAGE :: 45/60/75/90/105 (+0.45 ability power) over 1.5 seconds >>> 30/40/50/60/70 (+0.6 ability power) over 1.5 seconds
R - Hero's Entrance
CHANNEL TIME :: Galio channels for 1 second >>> 1.25 seconds before jumping into the air (hover time before dashing reduced by 0.25 seconds; total time to reach target unchanged)
Upon first glance that may seem like a laundry list of nerfs, but it may not be that bad for Galio in the long run. Most of these nerfs hit Galio mid the hardest. The lower armor makes his presence in an auto attack trading lane much more difficult, while the nerf to his Winds of War damage means that, in order for him to hurt anything at all, Galio will be forced into building AP items instead of all tank like he was doing previously.
So, does this nerf Galio tops’ performance at all? It does, but that also might not be too bad. Over the Summer Split so far, Galio is sitting on a 95% participation rate in games across all regions, with almost double the number of bans than he has picks.
A slightly nerfed Galio, particularly one that is less of a threat in the midlane, might also be a Galio that teams are less likely to ban. And if he isn’t banned, Galio automatically becomes a more attractive pick. Add into this the slow shift of the meta back to 4-1 and 1-3-1 split push compositions and Galio could find himself as a sort of AP Shen. An effective — though not dominant — split push threat, that give a team a survivability boost on his way into a teamfight.