Hello everyone,
As hinted earlier in patch 4.11, Riot is working on a Lucian nerf. He simply brings too much to the table with his ridiculously high trading and bursting potential even at early levels. At higher level elo and competitive games he nearly has 100% ban or pick rate, which is actually quite reasonable. In addition to his godlike kit, he is not penalized by having to face risks such as vayne does throughout the game.
These changes were introduced to the PBE recently, however keep in mind that they may not be the final ones.
Lucian
Base Attack range lowered to 500 from 550
Piercing Light ( Q ) mana cost now 50/55/60/65/70 from 60/65/70/75/80
Piercing Light ( Q ) cast range reduced to 500 from 550
Relentless Pursuit ( E ) now reads: "Whenever Lightslinger [ his passive ] hits an enemy, Relentless Pursuit's Cooldown is reduced by 1 second ( doubles to 2 seconds against champions " instead of "If Lucian kills an enemy while The Culling is active, the cooldown of Relentless Pursuit is reset."
Relentless Pursuit ( E ) mana cost reduced to 40/30/20/10/0 from 60/45/30/15/0
Relentless Pursuit ( E ) cooldown changed to 16/15/14/13/12 from 18/16/14/12/10
Honestly so far it looks like he is going to be buffed on the cost of reducing his range on both autoattacks and his q to 500. Just to compare, Vayne has a range of 550 and Thresh has a range of 450. The range nerf is pretty harsh for an ad carry, however the massively lowered mana costs and cooldowns mean that he can spam his abilities during the laning phase, which made him run out of mana quite early back in the previous patches. Personally I believe that this is not too much of a nerf for his capabilities, but a nerf to his laning phase as he will for sure face a lot more poke before the trade is actually happening. However I believe that his kit still remains op and with the lowered cooldowns and mana use. The moment you'll try to poke, he'll just jump to your face, trade you to the ground, walk away, pop a potion, wait 5 seconds, then do it again. This change sort of makes him more mobile and efficient at the cost of safety, which seems to be a good balance. Since he pretty much has an all-in style anyway, I believe that these changes will still keep him really good at what he's doing and will keep him among the top-tier picks.
What do you guys think?