Courage of the Colossus’s latest nerfs take away laning power

About three weeks ago, I made the argument that before Riot buffed League of Legends marksmen, it needed to take a serious look at the Courage of the Colossus keystone mastery. Even after tinkering with the numbers, it led to unhealthy play patterns from top laners and junglers, allowing massive sustainability for champions even in 1 vs. 1 situations.

In particular, I made the following suggestion. I’m not going to pretend I was the first to suggest this, but hey, I did suggest it:

An easy fix that will go a long way, in my opinion -- scale the shield with how many enemies you crowd control. Meaning if you only CC one enemy champion (like in lane), you get a smaller shield than a 3-man Sion knockup. That still encourages big engages in fights while removing a lot of the extraneous power in other situations.

Here we are 20 days later, and, voilá! Via Riot’s 7.2 patch notes:

Courage of the Colossus

Duration down. Base shield now scales with number of nearby opponents.

Courage of the Colossus should be the go-to pick for tanky champions who want to dive into the enemy team and not die immediately. But it’s also encroaching on Grasp of the Undying’s role, giving far too much consistent power in 1-on-1 situations. We want to focus Courage of the Colossus on teamfights, leaving room for Grasp of the Undying to excel in extended trades.

SHIELD DURATION :: 4 seconds >>> 3 seconds

BASE SHIELD :: 10-180 (at levels 1-18) >>> 3 - 54 (at levels 1-18) per enemy champion (maximum 15 - 270)

So there you go. The shield lasts for a second less, but most significantly, it now scales based on how many enemies are nearby. The value of the shield with one champion around is much lower than it was previously, significantly lessening the power of this keystone in laning situations (and meaning champions like Darius and Renekton might not want to use it anymore).