Update, November 3: League of Legends’ next champion will be Zoe, the aspect of Twilight.
Riot have announced the latest champion coming to League of Legends. Zoe, the Aspect of Twilight, is on her way to the game with patch 7.23.
Here’s what’s happening in the latest League of Legends patch, 7.21.
In a video published earlier today (which you can watch above), Riot showed off the bubbly new burst mage, teasing her excitable personality as well as her skills.
Most notable of them is her bubble, which some Summoner’s Rift players might have seen in their games over the past few weeks. The long range skill shot lands on the ground, and makes players who come into contact with it become drowsy before falling asleep for a few seconds. She also seems to wield some sort of cosmic yo-yo, firing skillshots behind her before they zip forwards towards her opponent.
Zoe can also move between wormholes, popping in and out of reality to dodge skillshots and close gaps. Once she arrives, she can also take her wormhole back to her original position. Most interestingly, Zoe appears to be able to use Summoner Spells multiple times – the video shows her using Flash twice in quick succession on two different occasions. It looks like she can drop bubbles containing spells around the map, picking them up to increase their cooldown.
Update, October 23:The next League of Legends champion will have a brand new form of CC, according to today’s PBE changes.
Riot are teasing League of Legends’ next new champion. A recent change to the PBE means there’s a chance that a bubble will arrive on the fountain at the start of the game, which hits champions with two previously-unseen forms of crowd control.
The bubble that arrives on the fountain is obviously tied to the “playful and bubbly” burst mage that was mentioned in last week’s champion roadmap. It flies onto screen as players spawn, before bursting at the centre of the spawn point.
Champions that walk onto it become ‘Drowsy’ for a short time, before falling asleep for a couple of seconds. I imagine that this will be some sort of delayed stun; becoming drowsy will give you a few seconds to get out of harm’s way before you fall asleep, which will likely act like stuns, preventing champions from moving or casting spells.
You can see the new CC working in the video below:
Original story, October 18:Riot have released a newchampion roadmap, detailing some of the changes they’re planning to bring to League of Legends in the coming months. This time around, they’re suggesting changes to Aatrox, Irelia, and Swain, as well as a brand-new mage.
The roadmap, released by League’s lead producer of champions Rioter Ryan “Reav3” Mireles, seems to be in pretty much chronological order. If that’s the case, then we’ll start with a new champion before getting the Swain rework. I’d imagine the Aatrox and Irelia changes will come later, as the details on them are pretty minimal at the moment.
It’s been more than a year since League of Legends got its last mages, as Taliyah and Aurelion Sol were both released in Spring 2016. The last ‘burst mage’ – a sub-category of mid laners whose focus is on putting out lots of damage in a short space of time – was Lissandra, who was released way back in 2013. The new champion looks to reverse that trend. Reav3 says the new mage will be “more playful and bubbly,” and it looks like it could share some similarities with a champion like Lulu.
Swain’s rework seems to be well underway. Riot seem to be doing away with his previous identity – that of ‘master-tactician’, in favour of a more up-close-and-personal approach. They’re still being quite cryptic about exactly what that means, but I’d imagine we’ll know more reasonably soon.
After Swain, we’ll have Irelia, who’s getting a full update to try and reduce her snowball potential and make her skills more interesting to use. Her ultimate will stay moore or less the same, but everything else “should be going through a pretty major overhaul.” After that, attention will move to Aatrox. While Riot are in the very early stages of his update, it’ll be “our largest pure gameplay update to date”