I saw a couple of datamined PBE notes about Black Cleaver and Imperial Mandate, but the wording is a little hard to read in plain English. What do those changes actually mean in practice, and who gets affected by them?
What changed with Black Cleaver and Imperial Mandate on PBE?
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HarborMoth
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The Black Cleaver part looks like a pretty big bugfix plus a small buff to consistency. Lowering the per target cooldown from 0.2 seconds to 0.01 seconds means it can refresh almost instantly between hits instead of feeling laggy or missing weird edge cases. The other part, where it applies to all physical damage again, matters because that should let things like physical item damage or runes help stack it the way people expect.
Imperial Mandate sounds simpler. Instead of stacking multiple copies of the effect, it now refreshes the duration properly. So if the item is meant to mark a target and extend the mark with repeated application, it should behave more like a normal duration effect and less like something that gets awkward with overlapping procs.
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For Black Cleaver, the important bit is that it goes back to working with non basic attack physical sources. That usually means champion kits, item procs, and similar stuff can contribute again instead of only basic attacks feeling good with it. The target cooldown change is probably there so the shred application lines up better with multi hit abilities and fast damage ticks.
Mandate is a cleaner fix, not really a redesign. If the duration is extended instead of stacked, that usually means repeated procs won’t create a separate pile of buffs or weird interaction behavior. It should just keep the mark active for longer when you keep triggering it.
StoneMallow:
So in practice, Mandate gets more predictable for champs that can proc it over and over, while Cleaver becomes less picky about where the physical damage is coming from.
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If you play champs that mix spell damage and physical item damage, Black Cleaver is the one to watch. The note basically says its armor shred is being reopened to all physical damage sources again, which is a pretty big deal for builds that rely on on-hit or proc damage. The tiny per target cooldown also suggests they want it to respond smoothly instead of feeling like it drops stacks for no obvious reason.
Imperial Mandate is much more of a rules cleanup. Before, repeated applications could stack in a way that probably caused odd interactions with proc timing. Now the game just extends the effect duration, which is usually the cleaner and easier-to-balance version.
So if you wanted the shortest summary, Cleaver gets more reliable across more physical sources, Mandate gets less janky and easier to understand.
PaperGlade:
That is basically the read I was looking for. The Cleaver change sounded huge but the note was too compressed to tell if it was a real buff or just a bug fix.
RookFiber:
Yeah, the Mandate one especially sounds like it is fixing hidden weirdness rather than changing the item’s power much.
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QuillNettle:
That makes sense. So Black Cleaver is less about raw damage and more about making the armor shred show up reliably on weird sources of physical damage.