Champion Roadmap: October 2019

"Hey all, with League’s 10-year anniversary underway, it seems like the perfect time to talk about the new champions and VGUs we’re working on. Let’s jump right in, starting with the champion we just previewed: Senna. 

The Redeemer 

As many of you recently saw, the next new champion will be Senna, a very non-traditional marksman coming to League soon. When we were creating Senna, we knew she should be a marksman, but we also thought she should be able to lane with Lucian. We felt there was a great opportunity for them to work together, with Lucian up close and personal and Senna backing him from a distance with a massive Relic Cannon. With this in mind, we went about building a supportive marksman with a blend of damage and utility. 

To go along with Senna, we’ll be adding new voice lines for Lucian as we progress his character and story with Senna’s return. Make sure to tune in during the second day of Worlds Quarterfinals for the first look at Senna’s gameplay, and check out her Champion Insights the following day for a behind-the-scenes look at her development! 

And the Faithful Shall Be Rewarded 

What will you sacrifice for your faith? Only the devout will master the next champion we have prepared for you. A new marksman, raised since birth with only one purpose: to protect the faith from those who stand in the sun. Constantly training, mastering diverse weapons of faith, swapping through them like cycles of the moon with nothing but that one lone voice, pushing, comforting… loving? If you are up to the challenge, you too must train hard and achieve zen-like focus in order to reap the rewards. 

So I ask again: What will you sacrifice for your faith? 

Welcome to the Underground 

Out of the Ionian underground comes a smokin’ hot new juggernaut. It’s been a while since we made a more straightforward, accessible juggernaut, with Darius being the last, so we felt it was time to add something new to that space. This new champion will thrive in the center of a brawl, laughing as they take hit after hit then furiously punching back, releasing all that stored aggression on their enemies’ faces. If you like letting your fists do the talking, getting into the heat of a pit fight, and smashing your opponents’ heads together, this may be just the champion for you.

An Ancient Evil Begins to Take Form 

We’ve made a lot of progress on Fiddlesticks since the last dev blog, using your feedback to iterate on and polish its new visual design. A lot of you were excited about Fiddle being this terrifying thing with a bunch of different voices, so this is something we want to try and make work one way or another for its VO. 

Fiddlesticks’ new kit will be centered around the concept of fear, but it’ll include much more than a point-click status effect (which is staying on the kit). Experienced Fiddlesticks players will wreak mental havoc on their victims as they question what is real and what is merely a terrifying effigy. Horror will fill the Rift whenever Fiddle is in the game, and if it finds you before you find it, only death will follow. 

A Storm is Brewing 

In the last dev blog, I mentioned that we were still exploring directions for Volibear’s gameplay design and hadn’t settled on anything yet. Today I’m happy to say we’ve found an exciting direction for Voli’s update, one that preserves Volibear’s current gameplay identity while also giving him some unique new tools. We moved away from the permanent unstoppability idea and have instead been testing a new direction, making Volibear feel more like a god of storms, bringing thunder down on his enemies and the structures they hide behind. 

One common thing we heard—especially from Volibear mains—was that the more grotesque-horror visual designs felt like they strayed too far from live Volibear, so we’ve refocused our explorations on versions that feel more true to current Voli. The horrific version of Volibear from recent lore was seen through Udyr’s perspective, where Volibear was called forth by the most extreme Ursine. For his VGU, we want to show Volibear as he is to himself, in his most prime, original, godlike form. 

A Jungler and a Solo Laner 

That’s about all we have to share for today. There are a few other champions in very early stages of production, including a whimsical new jungler as well as an edgy solo-lane melee carry. More on them in the next Roadmap though, which will come sometime next year. 

In the nearer future (like a couple months), look out for another dev blog on Fiddlesticks and Volibear, where we’ll share more work-in-progress visuals like the proxy model and idle animation below. And with that, happy 10 years of League!"