We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Champion Spotlight on Diana, League of Legend’s newest addition

LoL_Diana_Spotlight

Diana is looking to be a really interesting champion, for reasons that shouldn’t make her interesting. She has no big flashy ability, no one massive showstopper; just a suite of skills that are extremely useful, work together very well and give her a lot of power in the right circumstance. She’s understated. She’s subtle. She’s a spot of sophistication among the release of champions that favoured bombast over true power. Which is what makes her all the more exciting as a proposition.

Riot have released a Champion Spotlight for her, detailing her abilities and showing off quite how versatile she is as a jungler and a ganker. The best part of it all is that she’s so very heavily reliant on good decision making frequently, quickly and concisely. And that’s all tied to how her ultimate works.
Lunar Rush teleports you to a target opponent, dealing a bit of magic damage. It’s easy to think that this is a little underwhelming for an ultimate, that there’s no big and flashy effects, that it’s just a bit of a dash and what’s so special about that, really? The special comes from Crescent Strike, a curved energy blast that damages everything in its path and debuffs them with Moonlight, which gives a bit of sight on the target while it’s up.
It also, when you use Lunar Rush on that target, means Lunar Rush doesn’t go onto cooldown. It can be used again, instantly. Which, when you think about it, is rather a lot of mobility, especially for a ganker, especially when people are going to be doing rather a lot of running away from her due to the fact that she’s ganking.
Her pull and her slow, the other two abilities, just make this more apparent, keeping people near you, and keeping you up and kicking while they try to desperately fend you off. With all this in mind, Riot are recommending a pretty heavy AP build to wrack up the damage of Crescent Strike and Lunar Rush, which seems pretty sensible. Everyone loves Rabadon’s Deathcap, after all.
The decision making, though, is what has me a little bit excited about Diana. Because of how Lunar Rush works with Moonlight, you’ve essentially got two rushes at your disposal at any one time, if you’re smart. But once you’ve done the first one, closed the gap and they’re running away, the temptation might be to use the second, throwing Lunar Rush into cooldown and blowing your load.
However, if you wait for Crescent Strike to come off cooldown first, you can do a third Rush, getting an extra burst of damage on your target. It’s about figuring out exactly how much you can risk for how much of a reward, and that’s where the best moments in a game like League of Legends come from. To know that you made the right call, and you got that kill when you wouldn’t have if you’d not made that choice.
So roll on Diana. Hopefully she’ll be dropping with the patch this week.