After months of waiting, Riot reworks Archangel’s Staff and Seraph’s Embrace in the upcoming patch 13.1.
In every preseason, Riot Games adds new items while also reworking some. And preseason 2023 was no exception. In this preseason, Riot readded some old items like Spear of Shojin, Rod of Ages, etc., and reworked many existing items like Ravenous Hydra, Turbo Chemtank, etc.
While all these changes made their way to the preseason update, some intended changes never passed the PBE cycle. And those item changes include Archangel’s Staff and Seraph’s Embrace.
Archangel’s Staff and its upgraded form Seraph’s Embrace is an AP item designed around mages. It grants health and mana regeneration. Furthermore, its passive, Awe, grants ability haste equal to bonus mana.
While these items might not be unviable, they are certainly not popular choices for the meta-mages. Because of that, Riot announced that they would rework it for the preseason. These changes included the removal of Health from the item, increasing the AP from 60 to 100, granting 10 AP from the beginning, price increase, and most importantly, reworking the Awe passive. The Awe passive, instead of granting ability haste equal to bonus mana, grants AP equal to bonus mana, giving mages some much-needed damage.
But unfortunately, Riot reverted the reworks in the preseason PBE cycle as they were not being used as intended. Many players exclaimed that the item gave high damage reduction while not granting much AP. So Riot did not release them in the live servers at the time, instead went back to the drawing board to fix the items.
While most players lost hope for new reworks for these items, Spideraxe30 showed that the Archangels’ Staff and Seraph’s Embrace are getting reworks in the current PBE cycle.
Read more: League of Legends Patch 13.1 Notes.
Archangel’s Staff & Seraph’s Embrace Reworks Patch 13.1
Archangel’s Staff Changes
- 60 AP >>> 80 AP
- 500 Mana (Unchanged)
- 200 Health (Unchanged)
- 10 Ability Haste (New)
- Awe: Gain Ability Power equal to 1% bonus Mana. (Reworked)
- Mana Charge: Strike a target with an Ability to consume a charge and gain three bonus Mana, doubled if the target is a champion. Grants a maximum of 360 Mana, at which point this item transforms into Seraph’s Embrace. (Unchanged)
- Price: 2600 >>> 3000
- Build Path: Tear + Kindlegem + Blasting Want + Needlessly Large Rod.
Seraph’s Embrace Changes
- 80 AP (Unchanged)
- 860 Mana (Unchanged)
- 250 Health (Unchanged)
- 10 Ability Haste (New)
- Awe: Gain Ability Power equal to 2.5% bonus Mana. (Reworked)
- Empyrean Passive (Removed)
- Lifeline: Upon taking damage that would reduce your Health below 30%, gain a 250 + 20% current Mana Shield for 3s (90s cooldown) (New)
While Riot, this time, kept them relatively the same as their current iteration, they are more influential compared to the reverted rework. First of all, the health increase is back. Moreover, while the AP increase isn’t as massive as the reverted rework (100 AP), the new Archangel’s Staff still grants a reasonable 80AP to its user.
While the Awe passive rework remains intact from the reverted changes, Riot scrapped the Empyrean passive from Seraph’s Embrace. Instead, they added a new passive, Lifeline. Overall this passive is way stronger than Empyrean, as it fixes a core issue of mages, survivability. Lifeline grants its user a shield when their Health drops below 30%. Furthermore, it scales from the current mana, incentivizing players to build items that increase the player’s total mana pool.
Upcoming Patch 13.1 Item Reworks Release Date
We can expect these changes to hit live servers in patch 13.1, scheduled to release on Tuesday, Jan 10, 2023.
