Less than a month after the Guardians of the Ancient expansion went live in Legends of Runeterra, the game's development team is shipping balance changes to four cards in hopes of creating a healthier meta game.

In a post shared by the development team, Taliyah and Malphite are set to receive some love in patch 2.9 while Blossoming Blade and Inspiring Marshal are to be knocked down a peg (or two). According to data aggregation site, Mobalytics, numerous decks featuring Azir and Irelia together have win rates hovering in the mid to high 50s and lower 60s.

And while strong decks are not inherently a thing the development team wants to avoid, they want to change things up, according to comments within the shared post:

"We love the play pattern of Irelia / Azir, as well as Blade Dance. We’ve learned that a ton of players love it too, and we want to keep the feel of the deck intact. However, our most recent information indicates the deck is just too powerful, so we’re making two very targeted changes.  We hope to maintain the fun while opening up opportunities for other strategies and to reduce the frustration of playing against it. We’ll continue to monitor the metagame as it evolves and will consider more changes going forward if necessary."

In hopes of changing that, the team not only decided to nerf key cards within the archetype but buff two recently released champions to give them some time to shine in the meta.

The balance changes set to go live in patch 2.9 are as follows:

Buffs

Taliyah

Base stats:
- Level 1: 2/4 to 3/5
- Level 2: 3/5 to 4/6

Malphite
Level up requirement:
- "You've summoned 12+ mana of landmarks" to "You've summoned 10+ mana of landmarks"

Comments: Both Taliyah and Malphite have struggled to find a home in the meta. We like how the deck plays and these buffs add more power into the champions in a way that shouldn't drastically change their archetypes. Taliyah should feel a little more sturdy and Malphite should level up more consistently.

Nerfs

Blossoming Blade
Cost:
- 4 to 5
Base stats:
- 3/3 to 4/3

Inspiring Marshal

Cost:
- 5 to 6
Base stats:
- 4/5 to 4/6

Comments: It’s become clear that the Irelia and Azir deck is too powerful. Ultimately, we decided to focus our changes on Inspiring Marshal and Blossoming Blade to ensure that our changes focus on this deck. We want to reduce the amount of collateral damage to other decks, such as Azir Burn and Azir/Lucian, both of which we think are healthy for the game. This specific deck will remain on our watch list and we will continue to monitor its performance over time.