There are a lot of things which make League of Legends actually fun, as a game. Many of these are going to be covered in later sections, as well as this one, but I'm going to focus on a bit of the design philosophy behind the game here.

First off, LoL focuses pretty heavily on team play. DotA, HoN, and several other variations on the MOBA theme, while being "team" games, also stress the capacity for one player to completely wipe out another.

Itemization, excessively long CC, and various other things, are often used in games like DotA, to make a single unit ridiculously powerful. the basic design philosophy of these other titles, is that "If we make EVERYTHING unbalanced, then, by comparison, they're all balanced in relation to each other!".

League of Legends works a little differently, under Tom Cadwell's, and several others, guidance. As such, LoL focuses on the players having the capacity to actually interact with each other on a team scale. If one player can wipe out the entire enemy team by themselves, then is it truly a team game any longer?

While such occurrences do happen in LoL, on rare occasion, it's just that. A rare occasion. Generally, 2-3 people working together can bring down any one player with relative ease, or at the very least, force them to run back to base to recover.

Things that prevent players from actively playing a role in the game, such as excessively long crowd control (CC), tend to be used sparingly, or in small amounts, so as to not get carried away.

One thing that really has to be considered, above all else, though, is whether a game is fun. This includes the champions, the itemization, the layout of the levels, and so on and so forth.

This sounds like a strange concept, but far too often, developers get carried away with an idea they're enamoured with. It happens especially often on the forum, here, where people have this wonderful, awesome design in their heads, and then... then it turns out to be a terrible, horrible idea, yet they refuse to back down from such.

One of the first things you'll have to learn, is that you're going to have to know when to just let a bad idea die. We all have them, even the best of us.

Consider Blizzard Entertainment. Currently, they make an annual profit that many smaller countries don't. Back in the days of Warcraft 2's pre-alpha, they had a vision for the game. A dream. Something grand, that no one had ever done before.

The game was going to be situated around creating these ridiculously expensive and powerful catapults, where the teams from either side would capture and control them, using them to break through walls and demolish each other's bases. The idea, was that having this play as sort of an active form of "king of the hill" was going to be AWESOME.

In practice... it was anything but.

Time, and time again, they tried to fix it. They tweaked numbers, replaced units, adjusted concepts, over and over, for months on end. Try as they might, they eventually came to the invariable conclusion. This idea flat out sucked.

As much as they loved the idea, and as much as they wanted to put it into the game, they had to admit that, in the end, it wasn't fun. And what good, really, is a game that isn't fun?

The idea was ditched, the game play completely changed, and it went on to become the game of the year. If they had have insisted on clinging desperately to the bad idea of the horrid catapult centered game play, it would have simply flopped, and Blizzard would have been known only as a one-hit wonder, and Starcraft, Warcraft 3, and subsequently, League of Legends, would never have been made.

In a large company, it's hard to throw out a bad idea, especially after spending so many resources on it. Blizzard and Valve are two of the few willing to completely ditch an idea that just isn't up to par with their standards.

Riot... is one of the few others. How many champion designs have been tossed out before we even hear of them? We'll never know, but it's guaranteed that there have been at least a few that were dead outright, that were nearing the end of their development cycle.

We know for a fact that there's been a handful that were actually announced, and later on were ditched entirely. What we don't know, is how many more are hidden that we weren't even told about.

As we're not getting paid for this, we're not under time constraints, nor pressure, to complete a design. We can go back, ditch bad ideas, and start over, as many times as we like.

Fun is everything, in a game, and if you're not having fun, it's not worth playing, no matter how pretty the graphics are.

That isn't to say that it has to look bad, of course ^.~I'll go into specific details in the main article, but for now, simply be aware that, if a player isn't actively able to control their champion, or have it do what they want, when they want it to, then they're probably not having fun. If they don't feel like they had an impact on the outcome of a situation, they're going to get frustrated.

It's not nearly as bad to fail, with the knowledge that it was a close fight, and one or two small errors difference is all that stood between you and victory, as it is to lose outright, with no hope of even trying to contend.

One thing that Riot has learned, is that the most fun you can have, is when it's a tough, close match, and you feel like you still have a chance. Even in the worst case scenarios, all it takes is for one player to do something horrifically wrong, like a carry that gets overconfident and gets themselves killed, only to steamroll the next team fight, and push into the nexus itself. This kind of capacity to come back from near certain death is part of what gives players a sense of satisfaction.

The other part, is to be rewarded for doing a good job. More experience, more gold, more summoner levels, more runes, masteries, and champions to use. These attach players to the game just as tightly as anything else.

Note that the original Diablo game followed a simple formula: Kill -> Reward. You killed stuff, and you were rewarded for killing them. This is the most basic of concepts on the hierarchy of needs, and any other psychological breakdown of the human subconscious mind. If you do a good job, you get a reward for it.

Push button, receive food pellet. Kill player, receive gold and experience. Kill really strong player, get really big gold and experience boost. Kill someone who's been AFK all game, get only a tiny reward. Win game, get permanent reward that helps out the next game.

No matter what you do, no matter who you are, and no matter what your champion design may be, do *NOT* break that one, single tenant. EVER. If you punish a player for doing a good job, they will feel frustrated, dissatisfied, and will not enjoy the game, and in time, will quit it outright.

Always give the player the option to counteract such. Which, interestingly enough, leads us into our next section...

League of Legends is a game. This sounds kind of silly, but many people don't seem to realize that in the games industry, that a "game" involves... well... playing it. More than any other aspect of game design, the actual game play is the king of the hill.

I'm trained in professional writing and 3D artwork. Yes, plot, story, writing, flashy graphics, and so on, can be selling points. But if the game's not FUN, it doesn't matter. Story and graphics amplify an experience, but if the experience sucks, there's nothing to amplify.

The key difference between a GAME and just watching TV, is that you interact with a game, and can alter the outcome. Choices are key to game play.

If you don't have any real choice, utilize false choices, or just don't even get the option to make a choice, then you're not playing a game anymore.

Watch out for characters with excessive CC, or other lock down abilities that go to excess. If you, or the enemy, don't get to actually have an impact on the final outcome of the game, your design has failed. Flat out. No questions asked, and no redemption possible.

What do you mean? I'm not implying anything!Choices can come in many flavours; from picking which items to buy, which order to learn skills in, how to position yourself in a fight, or when to use your abilities or interact with other champions.

These can all be affected by the champion design to some degree, so make sure you're consciously aware of such when making a champion.

A good example of a "choice", is an ability which can be used to either get you a kill, or help you escape from being killed, IE. FLASH. Yes, most people hate flash (even me), but it does provide a choice to the player. Blowing a flash to tower dive could get you first blood. Or it could get you killed when it's on cool down, because you wasted it.

Regardless, try to ensure that players have some choices to make. The more, generally, the better. Just make sure they're streamlined and able to be made in an instant, without a clunky interface. We don't want another Invoker type champion, because most of his choices were false choices, and the interface to use his spells sucked.

If you don't have a method of making the choices quickly, and spend too much time figuring out what they are, or how to actually make the choice, then it's not going to work.

LoL is a high reaction speed game, and as such, you need to be able to evaluate your surroundings at a moment's notice, and then act upon that information. If you have to fight through multiple layers of clutter to do so, something is very, very wrong.

Give a choice, but make it possible to actually make that choice quickly, and easily.

No matter how awesome you think you are, you need help.
I need help.
You need help.
Morello needs help.
Zileas needs help.

The point is, no one individual can see all ends. It doesn't matter how good they are. There's always something they didn't think of, or something they missed. It's not physically possible to see EVERYTHING.

As such, this is why we need peer review. In the games industry, this comes in the form of a supervisor and quality assurance team of some sort, generally. These individuals are typically given extra training and information on how to pick out the best qualities and root out the bad ideas.

We don't really have anything that counts as a supervisor on this forum, sadly. We have a few with good knowledge, such as Echoing, myself, or a few others, but no real supervisor. As such, we need to look out for each other and work with tens of reviews at a time, instead of one person with the final say.

You can, and will, make mistakes. Something that seems awesome to you, may be absolute ****. Something you felt was kinda the weakest part of your champion, may in fact hold the most potential promise to becoming epic win material.

Review each other! Not just one line lame responses like "I liked it. Please review my champion as well."

That's not a review, a review has the key purpose in mind of providing valuable information that can be used to make things better.

Unfortunately, the key thing about making things better, is that it means that it's not perfect to begin with. This means that criticism, if done right, will invariably have to point out "this is not good enough". Deal with it. Don't cry or let your poor ego die because of it. Even my ego (and it's a tiny one at that, even if I put on a good show pretending otherwise) can live with that, because it's needed to become better.

Still not implying anything! Honest!That doesn't mean that your reviews should always be scathing "everything sucks RAAAWR!". It means that you need to provide both a listing of what you liked, and what you didn't like. Explain why something worked well, you think, and go into depth as to why you believe something else is a problem.

It can't be fixed if you don't know what's wrong.

Accept that you will need to fix stuff, and it'll be easier.

At the same time, accept that not all advice is good advice. Take any review with a grain of salt. Maybe they misunderstood something (go into better detail in the ability to explain why it doesn't work that way then! This is a review which states that it's not clearly explained!), maybe they don't hold much value in something you find important. Maybe they just flat out are WRONG.

It's up to you to decide.

It's also up to you to pick and choose which advice to follow; just because they say "this is broken, but here's a solution", doesn't mean you have to use *THAT* solution, even if it *IS* broken.

Take ownership of your own stuff!

It's *YOUR* design, so make sure it stays that way! Others can help, but never let them compromise your own integrity. Keep your original vision, and don't let people ruin that. At the same time, be willing to accept bending your design so that it actually works too. If you refuse to change, you refuse to get better, and if that's the case, why are you even here looking for reviews in the first place?

Padding your ego with an "I liked it" review is nice, but it's not that helpful. The best reviews are ones that help you further the design and make it better than it already is. They may be kind, but they will sting, now and again.

Information is the best resource you have. Grab all of it you can get your hands on, and never let go.

This is essentially a section covering how to make yeur work readable. A big, thick, block of text, lacking punctuation and paragraphs, will be near impossible to read, regardless of how good of an idea it may be.

There are a great many ways to cover various aspects of this, and I'll go into each in detail in the larger article, such as templates, using quotes, colour and font adjustments, and so on and so forth.

Spelling and grammar do play a part, to some degree (I know, my spelling sucks, but it does make it easier to read), as do many other tiny factors as well.

Remember, if you can't read what an ability does, how are you going to tell if it's fun to use?

For a quick listing though, a good idea would be to list all the aspects of a spell and break them up by information type. Things which are constants and don't change with spell rank are generally easier to leave separated from the stuff that changes with each new rank.

You probably will also want to give a "quick explanation", and a "detailed explanation" separately. If you're confused, check the tool tips on the actual abilities in the game for a good example of how to provide the most information in the best way, or check how LoLWiki presents their information, which is probably even more effective than that in the actual game.

I know it can be hard sometimes, but strive to make your own work clearer than this!Make sure to also add key information and details that are needed to understand how the champion works! Things like being melee or ranged attack can make a *HUGE* difference on how a champion plays, and most people tend to skip that one.

Be clear and descriptive on things such as targeting, as well. How you aim a spell can be as important as the effects of the spell itself. Appearance and lore, while nice, aren't as big a deal, in abilities. I don't much care if it looks like a fruitcake that flies around with wings and a happy face and shoots eye lasers. Sure it makes the spell a bit more interesting, but it's not as important as knowing how long the fruitcake turret lasts, or the cool down, or if it sits where you target or instead hovers around behind you like the baby metroid did to Samus.

More information is generally better. If you're on this forum, and utter the phrase "TL: DR" and mean it, then you've just missed the whole point of champion design in the first place.

Make sure you go into as much detail as possible about how stuff works, so that it can be clear as to what it is you've actually made. Knowing the difference between how shun-po and flash targets work, can be the difference between a good ability and a bad one.

Anyway, try to be clear, and err on the side of "too much" information, as opposed to "too little"!

The easiest place to start, for most people, is character concept. I have word that Riot has changed from this approach, which they clearly originally once held, and now start with role rather than a character.

To be perfectly blunt, this explains, in large part, why the champion designs have been so ridiculously bland and boring as of late, other than Ahri, who would have been pretty clearly done using a character design before a role.

See, there's two main ways to design a champion... one states that you begin with a role and purpose to fulfill, such as a tank, or DPS, then tack on a face and story at the end. The other, suggests you start with a character design, make them interesting to begin with, and then have them naturally evolve into something that plays well by determining a role they fit well into.

It's possible to move back and forth between the two repeatedly, but starting on one end of the spectrum, or the other, will have lasting ramifications throughout the remainder of the design process.

A champion that's designed with role first in mind, will probably play a little better in the actual game. This is fine for something that's attempting to become an E-sport, if it can sustain itself solely off of the publicity of such.

Role... or role playing? ^.~One which is built from the ground up as a character, first and foremost, will simply be more interesting, be more worthy of skins, and be more attractive to play for people who aren't playing only "the top tier" champions. This is where most of your money comes from, so it's generally a good idea to cater to this group at least partially.

Ideally, you want to use both, but honestly, it's not really possible, except in rare circumstances, to truly manage to get to use both equally. The initial design will tend to bully the other out of the way, to some degree, due to the design philosophy of the primary designer for that champion.

Regardless, I come from the school of thought which states that a character design has to occur before a role can be fleshed out. This is how I've been taught, and how, as a writer, I think. The other way has advantages of its own, but I find character before role to be the most effective method, overall.

Anyway, I digress!

Before you start anything, put down the champion, and figure out their personality, their motivations, their eccentricities, and so on. If you really need help, try grabbing a Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, Anima, or some other tabletop RPG system to build your character as a character concept, before turning them into a champion.

Trust me, it'll make things a dozen times easier, and in the next sections, I'll explain why.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? To get an idea in your head and run with it? Of course, if you're reading this guide, you've probably realized, by now, that it really isn't that easy.

Before you can truly get your ideas on paper, or a text document, you need to first get those ideas. So where does one go to get these magical, elusive ideas?

EVERYWHERE!

Bad answer? Not really. Seriously, go everywhere. You're looking for TV shows, books, reality, games, movies, role playing events, and so on and so forth. Anything that has something, has the potential for there to be something interesting to work with.

Two great places to go nuts on, are Wikipedia, and TV Tropes. Sure, you'll get lost in these places for a few hours, addicted to the endless links, but they give you ideas, and these can be turned into something fun!

Consider that the iconic Xenomorph, from the ALIENS series, was inspired. This is a creature which has lasted 30 years, now, as being flat out pure awesomesauce (do not question my phrases! I'm still cool! Honest!). What was it based off of? Well, there's a wasp that lays its' eggs inside of a spider, which eats the spider from the inside out, then hatches as a wasp, killing its' host.

Creepy stuff... yet, it was the beginning of the ALIENS series, and the primary inspiration for the creation of the Xenomorph. It's built to look like an insect, and to hatch from within a living host, making it seriously unnerving stuff.

The first movie, ALIEN, was written as a horror/suspense, and most people weren't that big on biology, so didn't know about this creepy thing in nature.


It's not actually true, I just found it amusing. despair.com 4TW!So... yes, anything goes.

Ahri's based off nine-tailed fox lore, from china, japan, and korea, mostly. Her abilities and lore are all attached to such, and this is a large part of why she's so interesting, and subsequently, so much fun to play.

Annie's built more off of the idea of little kids in horror movies. Innocence turned evil is unnerving, and as a culture, we have a morbid fascination with such.

I could go on and on, but you get the point.

In short, pick a number of ideas that you think are interesting, and try to fit them together into something fun.

It's been said that there are only 20 possible plot lines for any story, and that everything else is a variation upon those themes.

Strangely enough, this is actually true.

There really isn't anything that's truly unique. As inspiration has to come from somewhere, anything you see today, came from inspiration elsewhere. Your television, your computer, the very concept of a house, or a chair. Each and every one of these were inspired by the creators surroundings.

As such, there is no such thing as a truly unique idea. However, it doesn't mean you can't have an inspired idea.

See, the difference that you need to learn, is that unique means it has no attachments to anything else, and is completely stand alone. To be blunt, nothing you make will be truly unique, to the point that no one's considered it before. Perhaps, it won't be considered in that particular set of ideas, with that specific twist on things, but it's not going to be truly unique.

The harder you strive to be "unique", the less interesting you really become.

Grab ideas, and mix and match them. It's through taking completely different ideas, and forcing them together at gunpoint, that you get neat new ideas that wouldn't have existed otherwise. They're not truly unique... a drunken monkey pirate that throws molotov cocktail poo at people is not really unique in any one aspect of its' design, but you have to admit, it stands out pretty plainly as being certainly different.

This does *NOT* mean to steal ideas plainly, one for one! Don't just transfer abilities from one character to another, with no variation or change. Take various ideas, and merge them together, into something more fun.

Also, if something seems "unique", there may be... a reason for why no one else has done it yet...For example, an ability I was describing to someone yesterday, was the idea that Blitzcrank has a rocket fist, it reaches out and grabs someone, then brings them back. Another idea is a "leash" spell, which latches two people together. Why not make an ability where you latch onto someone, and they aren't able to walk past the leash range from your character? It gives them limited mobility, similar to Jarvan's ultimate, but would prevent things like flash or any of the thousand things that let you escape his so called "impassable terrain". Cast again to reel the enemy in to melee range? Don't cast to limit their movement, cast to move them where you want to? It's interesting, and fun, but it's not unique.

Ditch the idea of being unique, but don't blatantly steal abilities. Don't 1 for 1 transfer anything directly from DotA or HoN, Demigod, or Super Monday Night Combat. They may be in the same genre, but stuff used there simply doesn't work here, since the scaling is different, and the game play has significant differences.

Take old ideas, and turn them into something new, but don't try to avoid inspiration because it's somehow "not unique enough". No such thing; embrace your inspiration, and USE it to make something awesome and new!

As with the rest of the character design, lore is important. Not because it really "does" anything... you can completely make a character without lore, personality, motives, or whatever, and simply dump a pile of abilities together that make sense mechanically.

The thing is, if you do that, you wouldn't get things like Gangplank, or Galio, where their abilities flat out only make sense to be put together because of their lore.

Lore gives you ideas. It gives you additional points to your character design, and it gives you inspiration on new ideas that you would not have had otherwise.

Consider Gangplank's oranges. Does it make any sense for a champion to have a built in cleanse that heals, who is otherwise a DPS? Not really, no. Sure, they should have a way to sustain, and a way to defend themselves somehow, but that seems really awkward of an idea.

But... scurvy is a nasty thing, it's painful, it's crippling, and hope you never wind up in a situation where you actually get it, because it SUCKS.

Thing is, though, a lime, or orange, and poof, you're good as new. Now, admittedly, these were originally added to their drinks... you'd get some lime juice mixed in with your rum, since it fed more people that way, and was easier to get them to eat it. The point is, however, that they took an idea from his character, as in, he's a pirate, and used that to create abilities for the champion itself.

No matter how great the content, beware of walls of text!
(Because... you know, this guide is completely wall free...)If you want to have useful lore, that gives you ideas, make sure you answer these four following questions. Admittedly, I stole them straight up from Babylon 5, but they're good questions for character design.

Who are you?
What do you want?
Why are you here?
Where are you going?

I'll go into detail as to why each is important in the larger article. For now though, just try to answer the questions within your lore, and you'll find that the lore will tend to give you far more interesting ideas to work with later on.

A champion I reviewed yesterday, as of this writing, happened to have... none of these answered. There was no personality, no idea what they wanted, they didn't have a clue as to why they did the things they do, nor did they have a direction or goal. As such, there was nil to work with, and their lore was worthless to use for ideas to spice up their bland, boring champion.

Answer those four in their lore, and the lore will help you a great deal.

So, what's in a name? A rose by any other name, may smell as sweet, but to call it "a grotesque pile of stinking garbage that makes you puke your lungs out at the slightest whiff of it" kind of makes it so people wouldn't actually want to try to smell it in the first place.

So, too, is there symmetry, in this concept, for naming your champions, both in the name itself, and their title.

See, a name gives a few things. First off, it can give you some ideas, and perhaps a bit of inspiration. More than that, though, it can tell people that you're capable of providing something interesting, and may warrant a closer look.

Naming your bear champion "bear" is pretty bloody boring. *Coughvolibearcough*. Ever notice that shows for like 5 year olds have all the species named after themselves? The frog is named "Frog", the cat is named "Mrs. Cat", the dog's named "Mr. Dog". Unless you expect your target audience to be ******ed, don't do this.

Now, that's not to say you shouldn't have some similarity in name, for you do want to be descriptive, but you don't want to be blatantly obvious, either.

A title can be a bit more blatant, because it's a direct description of the character's actions. Sivir is the Battle Mistress, because she has flat out earned that title in her lore. She's known for being pretty much the best there is at that role, and as such, it's an honourary title to denote such.

The name, however, you don't want to be quite so blatant. Calling yourself "Blaze, the fire elemental!" is just... yeah. It's pretty fail. Yes, I'm glaring harshly at Brand, right now. You can't see it, but I am.

Alright well... maybe you can.Ideally, you want something that indirectly hints to a player what that champion does, or something of their back story. If you're making an Egyptian-themed character, an Egyptian-themed name can work quite well, so long as you stay away from the really blatantly obvious ones like the names of the most obvious gods (Ra, Hathor, Bast), and don't rely on a grade 2 education for famous figures. If you call your Egyptian character "Cleopatra", I will personally hunt you down, drive to your house, and slap your face.

Something more along the lines of Ament, or Ashai, for example, works great.

A tank may be named Caerwyn, to denote that she's of Gaelic descent for the theme, and to show she's as unmoving as a castle wall. An Egyptian character may be named Ament, to give away that portion of her lineage (I've already got dibs on Ament, go away. My name. MINE. Grrr!).

The point, is that you want to give something that fits, without being blatantly obvious about it. You don't want a mole-man named "Digger". Interesting names stand out and can be fun. Celebrity baby names where they sound like porn stars in the making, probably aren't quite so hot an idea.

Remember, if someone sees "Bob the Necromancer", they probably aren't going to expect too much higher quality on the rest of your design. And to be perfectly blunt, they're probably going to be correct in that assessment. I'm not about to go digging through the champion named "Snowflake the Ice Elemental", which means no views, no replies, no reviews, no bumps. It dies as an idea with no hope of ever being improved.

Your name really should be as interesting as your champion is. If there's a discrepancy, you've probably done something terribly wrong.

Resource systems exist for a reason. Primarily, they exist as a way to restrict players from casting their abilities non-stop. Sometimes this is done through mana, sometimes through energy, sometimes through simple ability cool downs.

The details change, but the purpose is always the same: to prevent spamming their abilities non-stop.


It's true! Oh gawd it's so true!Choosing which resource system works best for your champion, is far more important than you may think, and designing a new one is incredibly difficult to do in such a way that it's actually useful.

Even my own designs on "new resource systems" have been problematic in the past, but they can be done.

In short, though, think carefully as to what you want your champion to do, and why you're adding a resource system at all. If you aren't sure why you're adding one, other than "tradition", then you're going to need to step back and re-evaluate why you're adding one in the first place.

Also, the answer for "I'm adding a new resource system because it's fun", is never the right answer. You add a new one because the current ones simply don't perform the role you need them to for your design to work and be fun.

Mana is a special case. It's the only resource which increases from items, and it's the only one which can directly impact the effectiveness of how your champion works. Vlad can't stack Archangel's staves, and Shen wastes some of his gold to buy a Rod of Ages, whereas Singed just adores that same Rod of Ages that Shen turned down.

You think she looks cute now, but just you wait. Do you have any idea how many calories are in mana potions!?The purpose of mana, however, is long term restriction. The only thing keeping you from spamming your abilities, is your cool downs. Mana, however, is used to keep you from simply spamming every time the cool down is up, allowing for shorter cool downs, as other things are used to keep a player in check.

Energy is pretty much the exact opposite of mana, in that it doesn't scale (although you can get runes and masteries to adjust it), it doesn't increase your stats otherwise, it doesn't benefit itemization, it doesn't restrict long term casting, and it does, in fact, restrict short term casting.

See, the purpose behind energy, is to allow a player to have short cool down abilities, with a high cost, that recovers quickly. Kennen, Akali, and so on, can burst really, really hard... but once their energy is gone, they're not much of a threat anymore. This doesn't affect their long term spammability if they stay in lane, so they aren't going to be forced to run back to heal at the fountain or buy mana potions.

It does, however, mean that they can't just unload every ability they have every time the cool down is up.

Or else you'll end up like Shen.You'll also note, that every single champion that has energy, also has a way to reduce the rate at which they lose it by regaining some back under certain circumstances.

Shen gets energy back from hitting people with his taunt. Akali gets hers from actually triggering her ranged attack in melee. Kennen has to actually land three skills in a row before the timer's up. The others all work in various other ways, but the concept's the same.

Energy is designed to reward the player for doing their job well and playing their character properly. Miss a skill shot on Kennen, and you're penalized. Forced to back off as Akali, rather than unload in melee range, and you're penalized. This goes for all of the energy users.

You'll also notice, however, that the ultimates of champions who use alternate systems to mana pretty much never use their special resource system on their ultimate, with rare exceptions that are generally very cheap, such as Kennen.

The reasoning behind this, is that an ultimate is a big deal. It's something you want to save for the perfect moment... you don't want to blow all your regular abilities to set someone up for the perfect ultimate... and... not have any energy, rage, or whatever else left to punch it at the perfect moment.

Ultimates are special case scenarios, and are not to be screwed with in resource systems. Usually, anyway.

Fury is gaining in popularity a bit, though admittedly, pretty much every champion that uses fury seems to do so in a different manner. This does, admittedly, make it difficult to explain as to what it does, but fortunately, they all have one trait in common.

Fury has the property that it's always weaker out of combat, even on Shyvana. The longer you're in combat, the stronger your character becomes.

This means that fury tends to only show up on champions that like to be in combat for long periods of time, namely, bruisers. They don't really burst, so much as gradually steamroll everything in their way by simply not dying.

As such, Renekton, Tryndamere, or Shyvana, are pretty good champions to have fury on, as they want to be in combat for as long as possible.

Honestly, Olaf should also be on that list, and I've seen at least one really good conversion to fury for him in the past suggested. Mana just doesn't really make sense on him as a character, whereas fury does.

Fury can greatly enhance your abilities!Anyway, I digress. The purpose of fury is to grow in power over time, more so than to restrict ability usage. You can generally use a fury-users abilities without fury, they just won't be at their full potential, is all.

Shyvana's ultimate is a bit of an exception to the rule stated before, of ultimates don't rely on alternate resource systems, but honestly, she's a special case, because she technically doesn't actually use a resource system. Her abilities are pretty much all free, and fury, on her, works more like energy, in that it goes up over time, and still gets more useful out of combat. The idea, on her, is that fury is the limitation on her ultimate, but can be regained faster in combat, hence, it still performs the same purpose as fury, though not quite acting the same way.

More than anything though... DO NOT GIVE A TANK FURY. Seriously, just don't, unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing.

See, a tank is designed to unload their power at the start of a fight, because the first 2-5 seconds are generally what determines if you win or lose a big messy 5v5 team fight. Since a fury user often needs more than 5 seconds to reach their full potential, it's not really all that good an idea to make a tank who can't perform their tanking duties at the time it's most needed.

There are, however, exceptions, to all rules, so long as you understand the reasoning behind why a rule exists. Shyvana's ultimate and her personal fury system could be adapted to work quite well for a tank, but you'd really need to work hard around it. It can be done, however.

Making a new resource system should only ever be done in the situation that you need to do something that the current systems are not currently capable of doing, and can't be modified to the role desired without changing them to the point that they may as well not be that system anymore.

Also, don't let your passive just be "new resource system". You still need a passive in there as well. Many champion designers make the mistake of having a new resource system, which is explained in their passive, but their passive literally does nothing.

Mordekaiser's passive (though his is arguable as to whether it's a resource system or not), Renekton's, Rumble's, etc. They all still *DO* stuff.

Take notes. If making a new resource system, you may need this.Anyway, this is something that can't be easily discussed briefly, and requires a full post to explain in detail.

Short version is this: don't make a new resource system for the sake of having a new one. You flat out need to understand what the current ones do first, and verify that they are incapable of performing the role you require of them, before even considering a new system.

Note that resource systems do change, over time, however. Energy now has runes/masteries, and rage can actually regenerate instead of degenerate, thanks to Shyvanna. As such, this means that my previous design of Nemhain, has been recently converted over to rage, from her previous Bloodlust mechanic, as Rage has changed over the past year, or so, to fitting what she needs it to do, and it's no longer quite such a large, bizarre jump in functionality that it would confuse people any longer.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, so feel free to go back and change your champion designs, even their resource systems, as needed.

This is something that needs to be considered carefully. In short, what do you want your champion to do? What is their overall purpose in the game?

Without this, you won't know what they need, so won't be able to give them abilities.

It's easy to slap a few abilities together, but it doesn't mean that it'll actually be playable, nor fun.

In each design, however, and every role, a champion will need to fulfill a few requirements. Ideally, you actually don't want to fill all of these with their kit, and want, instead, to leave some intentional gaps, that they have to fill with items, masteries, runes, and so on.

This concept forces players to make a choice, as to whether to cover their weak points, or emphasize their strong points.

Keep in mind that some of these requirements can't be met, in the current game, without using the champion's kit. For example, flash simply doesn't cover for a real dash on a 10 second cool down, and you'll notice that dashes/teleports have become incredibly common lately, because of such.

We each have our own role to play!
Some... might be better at theirs than others though...You simply can't replace a gap closer with an item, and summoner spells are too long of a cool down to truly plug the gap.

Anyway, list out what you need, and what you have. If you have a few holes, good! Don't give the player everything they want. They have to work for some of it, and they have to make sacrifices. If you give them everything they want, then there's no real reason in them building anything, now is there?

About the only exception to that, would be that this is limited, to a degree, on support champions, right now, due to the 0CS metagame in North America. This metagame does not exist, however, in Europe, nor in the Asian servers, so it doesn't necessitate that you flat out "need" to have such.

In general, however, bruisers and supports tend to have low scaling and high base stats, to make up for ****py itemization choices, so you'll need to keep in mind what kind of role you're looking to accomplish, before going out and designing the rest of the champion.

A tank needs to perform a few things to be really considered a tank. As such, most of the so-called "tanks" in the game, are really just off-tanks, who are somewhere between a bruiser and a "real" tank.

First, a tank must be capable of drawing attention away from their allies. A tank that doesn't get hit, is not a tank at all. If you simply ignore the tank, then they seriously aren't tanking.

This can be covered in a number of ways, with Taunts being the most lame and pathetic excuse of a way around it. Try not to rely on taunts. It's a bad, lazy design choice. See, a taunt forces the enemy to attack you, whether they want to, or not. A properly made tank doesn't need this crutch, and simply has people attack them because they're considered to be worth attacking.

Examples include CC spam (Cho'gath silences, stuns, and slows), stacks (sadly the tank stacking item sucks, so really, only Cho'gath's ultimate makes people want to kill him for the sake of killing his stacks off), or simply being completely present and in your face constantly (such as Garen when played as a tank; he's more of an off tank, but he really does piss off ranged carries and supports, distracting them from a battle).

Second, a tank needs to survive the incoming damage. Once they have the enemy's attention, they need to survive it, otherwise, they may as well just have been a DPS, instead.

Various survival methods include shields (Shen, Jarvan, etc), armour/MR boosts (Rammus, Leona, etc), or excessively high stat boosts to survival (Cho'gath, Singed, etc).

Contrary to popular belief, the best defense is not a good offense.
...Usually...Third, a tank needs to be at full power at the start of a fight. Most team fights are things that last like 3-10 seconds before it's determined who has won them. If a tank uses rage, for example, then they probably aren't going to be able to perform their tanking role, until it's already too late.

Fourth, initiation. Not every tank *NEEDS* to initiate, but it's generally a good idea to throw the person who has the best chance of survival into the meat grinder first.

For example, Malphite or Rammus are great for opening a fight by running right into the middle of an enemy team and grabbing their attention immediately away from anything else. While Ashe's ultimate can be used to initiate, you're not always going to have Ashe on your team, so will generally want a tank who can do it all.

Since initiation is not something that can be runed, nor itemized for, you generally want to include this into the tank's kit from the start. Note that really awesome initiations, such as Malphite's ultimate, tend to have a long cool down. Less potent ones can still be useful, however.

To be honest, that's really all a tank truly needs. To get in there, draw attention away from others, survive having that attention focused on them, and be useful when they're needed most. Other than that, you have a lot of leeway when making a tank.

The support casters have been gradually been being nerfed repeatedly over the course of the game's life. Repeatedly, heals have been nerfed into the ground, CC reduced, and generally, the last few supports haven't even really been supports (Lulu, Orianna, Karma), so much as just damage mages with some minor support capacity tacked on.

So what makes a true support, then? Well, supports are comprised of a few things.

First, a support benefits their allies, typically more than they benefit themselves. This can be done through a few methods, such as heals (being discouraged), or aura effects, or buffs, debuffs, and so on.

Regardless of how they do it, a support caster generally just isn't that effective on their own, but they're great at making someone else... better.

The second major aspect of a true support, is that they have some major way to change the outcome of a fight in an indirect manner. These typically are very powerful AoE effects, typically CC, such as Janna's knockback, Soraka's global heal, or Sona's AoE stun/dance.

These AoE ultimates are typically used to change a losing fight to a winning one under the right conditions. A spell which would temporarily remove all enemy champions in range for 3 seconds, so they can't be hurt, nor hurt others, would also apply, for a divide and conquer style of game play, though no such ability exists within the game yet.

I don't know about you, but it offers me support in lane ^.~The last aspect of a support, is lots of CC. Most supports have at least 2, or more, methods of shutting down enemies. They typically have little offensive capacity on their own, so instead, they prevent people from attacking them, and set kills up for allies.

Consider Janna, who was considered the "best" support for a very long time. She has a slow, a global haste, an AoE knockup, and an AoE knockback, making her excellent for chasing purposes. Lately, there have been so many champions added to the game with dashes and teleports, however, that she's simply not that effective in her role anymore. Where once it was near impossible to kill her, now she can just be endlessly dashed at by people like Akali or Ahri.

In short, however, supports typically benefit their allies, more than they directly perform on their own. The last few "supports" to be added, haven't really done this all that well, due to the design philosophy changing over time.

If you want a true support, keep that in mind, that true supports do not seem to be really all that desired by Riot any longer. This doesn't mean you can't have fun making one, but accept that if we had a virtually zero chance of having our stuff used before, that pretty much shoots it in the other foot, as well.

So, supports need a way to benefit their allies, harm their enemies, lock down enemies from being effective, and to severely change the outcome of a battle through indirect methods, other than just damage.

DPS is a little different than some people seem to think, as became very blatantly obvious during one of the MCCC(P!) contests when half the contestants provided champion designs that couldn't do DPS.

See, a DPS is short for Damage Per Second, meaning consistent, sustained damage output over time.

A bruiser does low damage output, but survives forever, so can just keep dishing out pain and eventually pass the damage output of someone squishier who dies faster.

A burst mage unloads hard in 5 seconds or less, but runs dry afterwards.

A DPS, be it melee or ranged, pours out damage in ridiculous amounts, and if you don't focus on shutting them down hard, with your entire team, they can, and will, kill your entire team.

The requirements for a melee and ranged DPS are a bit different, but there are a few things they have in common. Primarily, they need some sort of "steroid" buff, to allow them to pour on the damage with good items. Tristana, for example, has range and attack speed, while Caitlyn has nothing so is really just an AD mage. If you consider Caitlyn to be a ranged DPS, this probably explains why you're not a higher rank, because she really isn't.

Other than that steroid buff, the only real thing they share, past that, is scaling. DPS champions tend to start off a bit weak at the start of the game, and need to be helped along. They scale, however, very nicely, and become very dangerous the more items they get. They also tend to be rather squishy, and die to focused fire pretty fast.

For melee DPS, they require 4 main things to perform their job.

1: A way to get into melee range. Without this, it doesn't matter how much damage they do, if they never actually get to attack. This usually shows up in the form of a dash, of sorts.

2: A way to stay in melee range. Just because you get there for half a second, doesn't mean you have time to unload your damage output. A burst mage, like LeBlanc, only needs to be in melee range for 2-3 seconds and she's done, same with Poppy. Master Yi has to stay there until the job's done, which means resistance to CC and able to keep others from running away.

3: A way to deal damage while in melee range. This is the steroids, which boost the effectiveness of their itemization. Example: master yi gets raw flat +X damage per hit, a chance for a second hit, and faster attack speed. These each make his melee power stronger, so if you leave him alone, he will eat you alive. Period. Fiona, however, is only good for 3 seconds, and then she's more or less out of juice, and it's possible to lock her down for those 3 seconds, meaning she's only a burst mage, not a true AD DPS.

4: A way to survive being in melee range. If you're in melee, you're getting shot by EVERYONE. At this point, you need to have some way to either avoid the damage, such as Jax's old dodge spam, or Master Yi's alpha strike, otherwise you need a way to soak the damage up somehow, even if only for a short bit, or prevent others from shooting back. Graves has a dash to avoid AoE and can blind enemies so they can't shoot back temporarily.

DPS players are not particularly well known for their decision making prowess, however.For ranged DPS, it's pretty similar, but a bit different, because they're not stuck in melee range.

1: A way to stay OUT of melee range. This usually is a teleport, or knock back, or some other way to keep a melee champion from eating their face off. Melee tend to be stronger, both on offense, and defense, due to having to chase targets down and getting hit by everyone. A ranged AD DPS can stay partially safely out of combat, firing at people from the sidelines.

2: A way to deal damage from range. Without some method of dealing damage consistently, they really aren't an AD DPS. This is why Ashe has never quite fully fit into this role, as she has no true steroids, other than a guaranteed critical hit at the start, and her arrow spam. She's still good, and can perform the role, kind of, but she's not really as effective as a real DPS carry like Tristana, in terms of actual damage output over time.

Honestly, that's pretty much it. A ranged DPS, tends to be pretty much braindead simple to create, and only really needs two abilities to do their job. Three, technically, with the third being a ranged attack.

So long as they can shoot at range without getting shot back at, can at least stand half a chance of escaping after the melee bruiser decides to charge their face, and can do damage while they're fighting, they are doing their job.

Ranged DPS are a bit weaker, also, because they're better at poking towers, for when both teams are crowded around a tower and scared to go near each other. This is a pretty major advantage, so it did need to be covered.

In short though, it's easy to make a ranged DPS. Give them an attack speed steroid, a ranged attack, and a dash, and you're done. Anything else past that is honestly just bonus to make them more interesting to play as. A little burst, maybe some soft CC, and perhaps some utility, and that's it.

To make a magic DPS, it's not really all that different from the melee or ranged ones, except, instead of having a steroid of some sort to boost their auto attacks, they get their auto attacks replaced with a very spammable, low cool down spell, such as how Cassiopeia can simply dish out damage at a remarkable rate, but can't really do a high burst effect.

And that... really is that. DPS are some of the easiest champions designs to make, especially since there are so many of them to use for comparison. As long as they do damage, they work. It's the champions that do really weird things, like supports, that are a pain to design, because it's hard to tell exactly how effective they really are.

Assassins are very similar to burst mages, in that they unload HARD. Their entire purpose is to run in, kill a target, and leave immediately after. Poppy and LeBlanc are excellent examples of this. They will simply melt the enemy ranged AD DPS, with out a care in the world, butchering them in 2-3 seconds, in most cases.

After that, their goal is to exit the area as quickly as possible.

Their primary purpose is to remove the enemy DPS, while not sacrificing a position on their own team for their own DPS.

The downside of the assassin, is that they're squishy, and they don't last very long after about the midway point of the game. Once the DPS carry can stand toe to toe with them, they don't do so hot anymore.

Then again, the other advantage of an assassin, is they excell at showing up at the worst possible moment, and fighting dirty. If you can't win a fair fight, don't fight fair.

Consider Twitch, or the old Evelynn, before she was nerfed into the ground and buried. Their power was their capacity to go unseen, and show up after a fight had already started, and simply remove one or two people in the first few seconds of confusion, then run away.

Other advantages are such that they are great for hunting down people who are nearly dead, and finishing them off.

It's because you were too busy fawning over how cute she looked that you're already dead.An assassin needs the following:

1: A way to get into their range, generally melee. This is typically stealth, a teleport, or some other really fast moving method. Assassins don't have time to screw around with wading through enemies.

2: A way to unload ridiculous amounts of damage in a remarkably short period of time. Without the ability to burst a target down from full to zero, they can't perform their job.

3: A way to escape once they've removed their target. This can be as simple as Poppy's immunity to damage, or LeBlanc's teleport, or Evelynn's speed boost. Either way, once their target is dead, they want to be anywhere but at ground zero.

After that... there's really not much else left!

Burst mages are very similar to assassins, in that they unload their damage output HARD, within a few seconds. After 5 seconds though, they're pretty much dry, and can't do much else.

A burst mage is a mixture of a ranged assassin, a support caster, and a bit of specialness on their own. They are rather distinctive, but tend to lack long term power output.

The burst mage needs the following, to be able to perform their role:

1: A way to deal high damage in a short period of time. This usually is due to high AP scaling on their abilities, of which 3-4 of their spells tend to do direct damage.

2: A way to deal damage over an area. While an assassin kills a single target, burst mages, such as Veigar, or Anivia, or Annie, tend to do a ton to a single target, but also love to clear out large groups, especially group fights where enemies are all bunched up together, as the burst mage is the primary method of forcing a group fight to be spread out and organized.

3: A way to CC. Be it for escape purposes, or to lock enemies in close together for their AoE damage, a burst mage typically always has some form of CC laying around, from Aniva's wall, to Veigar's event horizon, through to Annie's passive stun.

4: Some form of personal defense, which may or may not be included in their CC, depending on how potent their CC is. Veigar's got an AoE stun, that's all he needs. Annie's stun is a bit less reliable, so she also has a defensive buff. Anivia can die and get back up afterwards. Sorry for using these three so much, but they're such perfect examples =3

Lina Inverse was DotA's primary Burst Mage, back before we had to worry about silly things like copyright infringement.And that's pretty much it. Burst casters focus on unloading their damage in an area across multiple targets pretty hard, and after that, they don't much care. Their ultimate typically is the bulk of their damage output, and also sucks up a ton of mana, leaving them a bit weak afterwards.

Once their ultimate is down, a burst caster pretty much tends to just plink away with a low cool down spell that's relatively ineffective, though it may kind of still sting, to some degree.

Due to the fact that there's really only one true AP DPS in the game right now, being Cassiopeia (Rumble's more of a bruiser, oddly), there's not much reason for MR and such to be available in large amounts. If you can survive the initial burst of a burst mage, they're pretty much dead, meaning tanks and bruisers tend to eat them alive. Oh noes, 2,000 damage upfront! And, that put me at half health. And you have nothing left you can do now. Nom nom time!

Get two or three burst mages together though, and the targets they unleash on will definitely feel it, without significant magic resistance, which is honestly, about the only reason MR exists in the game at all, and a large part of why it actually didn't exist in DotA. This does, however, mean that getting too many mages makes them easy to counter, as well, as if they fail to burst the enemies into the ground at the start, they've pretty much lost the fight.

In short, a burst mage is the reason why you don't just pick 5 AD melee carries. Because they will two shot your entire team if you try.

Finally, we're at the main part of champion design. The actual abilities themselves! There's 3 main types, but they're pretty simple in theory. I'll cover a lot more stuff about ability design in general in the full article, but for now, all you really need to know is that each champion, with only rare exceptions, have the following:

1 passive, available at champion selection. Does not need to put points into this.

3 Active abilities, which have 5 ranks each, and are typically the main build of the character.

1 ultimate, which is typically on a long cool down, with 3 ranks, and generally defines the character as a whole. Generally.

Shame it doesn't work this way, huh?
Ah well, that's what we have abilities for!

Just because something's a passive, doesn't mean it has to be passive in game play! Consider Sona's passive, which is an excellent design, and allows the player to adjust the effect depending on who they're fighting and the situation they're in.

While a passive can perform many roles, from enhancing a champions' abilities, to providing them a way of managing their resource system, through to giving them some perk that occurs in certain situations, the passive is never anything which has points put into it, nor something which has to be directly "activated".

Just because it's a passive ability, doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to use it aggressively.To be honest, though, a truly good passive still involves the player choosing to use it, such as the Sona example, or Karthus's passive. These allow the player to make a conscious decision on how to play their character, because of their passive.

A bad passive, is generally just a bland, boring, boost that does little else. Janna's +3% move speed, or Soraka's +16 magic resist, are pretty much boring as hell. Yes, they help, but they're not fun, they're not interesting, and they don't really change how the champion plays. You don't even notice they have them, for the most part.

As stated, just because it's a passive, doesn't mean it has to be passive in game play. This message brought to you by the department of redundancy department.

A bit misleading, as often passives are included in here as well. Sometimes dual abilities exist, which have both an active, and a passive component (I rather love these myself), and some abilities actually have multiple activated functions, such as toggling between two effects, or changing effect depending on the target affected.

For the most part, though, active abilities are generally low cool down, and make up the majority of what makes a champion... well, play the way they do. Ultimates add spice, but Veigar is still Veigar without his ultimate, though perhaps a fair bit less bursty. He still plays the same, however.

Some champions this is not quite the case for, such as Akali, but for the most part, the standard 3 activated abilities are where you're really going to iron out your champion and will comprise the majority of their game play.

Try to keep from having abilities do "too much stuff". It's easy to get tempted into loading up tons and tons of abilities onto a single aspect (I'm known to do this myself... oops! ), but you really need to try to keep things simple on these. They are your bread and butter, and if it's more complex than sliced bread, you may need to rethink things.

Some actives can help allies, while others can harm enemies. Some just make you go "WTF!?".Watch out for adding in passives into this section, as it can severely decrease game play. Toggle abilities, pure passives, steroids, and so on, tend to be useful, but they're also boring. You turn them on when you need them, or they're simply always on. These aren't exactly enjoyable to play with, with certain exceptions.

One exception, would be Silver Bolts, on Vayne. While the ability is poorly designed in most ways, the fact that it is a passive which changes how you play her significantly, is a big deal. She actively will go out of her way to get that third hit in, just to proc her Silver Bolts passive. As such, it may as well be an active ability, as she has direct control over when it gets used, and it does change her play style.

Others, like flat steroid buffs, are kind of boring, however. Why would you ever *NOT* turn on something that gives you +X damage or +X% attack speed when in combat? Unless there's a secondary effect to it, such as Graves' dash+steroid, you normally wouldn't. You just press the button when needed. This is a boring way to do things, so try to avoid it.

As much as I dislike Graves as a champion, the fact that his steroid makes you choose when to use it, and whether to save it for an escape, or to dash in for damage, is a good design decision.

If you're going to put a "passive" into the active spell slots, make sure the player has direct control over it, and that it's interesting. If all you have are 4 toggle abilities, or 4 passives, you need to start over. Period.

Ultimates are big, bad, and nasty. They don't so much define a champion, however, as they do emphasize them. The ultimate gives you the capacity to really punctuate what makes that champion what it is, or to give them something unique and interesting to their game play.

For someone like Sona, her passive pretty much emphasizes her ability to be a strong support in team fights, since her healing and auras are rather weak in comparison. Normally she does relatively low powered effects on a consistent, steady pace. Crescendo gives her the option to unleash a single, big effect, all at once when it's needed most.

For a reverse case, Graves' ultimate is fail. It doesn't add to his character, his game play, it doesn't give him choices, it doesn't make him more fun. All it is, is a second generic nuke, which is almost identical to one of his active abilities already. It fails to make him more interesting, or to make his role work better.

I don't know about you, but if someone summoned this as their ultimate, I know I'd be scared.Others are some wheres in between. Cassoipeia's ultimate seems a bit strange, but this is because she's a strange champion. She's the only current AP DPS in the game, as her damage output is remarkably high and consistent long term... as long as the enemies stand still. While it's possible to play Cass on her own, with the help of another to lock the baddies down, her ultimate gives her the option to unload on her own without help. This emphasizes her play style, and can change the tide of battle, by letting her do her job better.

In some cases, ultimates are actually quite low on cool down, and really can define a champion. Kassadin, for example, is defined, quite nicely, by his riftwalk, and Cho'gath's feast does an excellent job of making him both more tanky, and a quite effective mage, able to play up to the strengths of either of his primary roles. Technically one can even go DPS Cho'gath, with a really strange troll build, but even then, it does still help.

In any case, the ultimate of a champion can do a number of things, from making them more fun, more effective at their role, or just plain more interesting.

When you hit 6, you should be overjoyed to get it. It should really let you feel that you are now a "complete" champion, that you have all your tools at your disposal. It should never feel like Maokai's ultimate, where it's like "Meh, I guess maybe I'll get it later.". Put time and effort into making your ultimate truly enjoyable. It's the difference between an awesome champion, and a fail one, in many cases.

It may sound strange, but you actually want to have gaps in your character designs, and especially in a game that needs to be balanced for actual game play.

Give the player a way to make a choice between their strengths and weaknesses. If all they have are strengths, or weaknesses, then they either have nothing to build, or too much to build, to counteract these issues.

Game play is about choices and decisions. Without access to such, the game becomes stale and boring.

Ensuring that your champion design has at least a few missing bits that they have to fill in, will let them choose whether to use their masteries, runes, items, or summoner spells to counteract such.

Keep in mind, however, to ensure that there actually is a valid choice to replace it, however. A melee champion without a gap closer is simply SOL. If they can't get into range, they're doomed to be kited forever more.

Oddly enough, sometimes a gap isn't 100% necessarily a bad thing.Not all aspects of game play can be covered by items, runes, masteries, and summoner spells, such as the gap closer issue listed in the paragraph above. Verify that the player actually has the option to fill that hole.

After you've verified the character can fill the hole, then decide whether they have any choice whether not to. If you give a melee champion no slows, no hastes, and no real way to stay in melee range, once they're there, their only real recourse is to build a Frozen Mallet. Nice item, but it pretty much was a false choice, and a decent excuse to use they're, there, and their, all in a single sentence, properly. Mwa.

Sorry, the writer in me was amused. ^.~

Anyway, build some flaws into your design, and make sure those flaws have a valid set of options to be overcome. Lacking for sustain is a great way. Lacking for survival is another, as there are tons of ways to sustain oneself, or to survive combat. Either way, you're opening the player up to choices, and that is nearly always something that brings fun to the game!

This is going to be a big, complex section, so the main article on page 4, post 2, will have the majority of what you need here. For now, I can give some minor pointers, but it'll only be so much in this short space, as it needs further, in depth analysis.

First off, don't repeat abilities that already exist in DotA or LoL point for point. If it's just the same ability, it's already hurting for the value of interest.

Second, ensure that the player interacts with the ability some how. A skill shot has to be aimed, a spell with a delay, such as Karthus's poke, is great for playing an aiming mini-game.

Third, you'll also want the enemies who are facing the ability to have a way to interact with such. If the baddies just flop over dead, with no recourse? Probably boring. If they get to dodge skill shots, or interact with the ability once it's used? Their frustration on losing to such won't be so bad, so long as they feel they had a way to change the outcome to some degree.

Fourth, aim for giving the player a direct choice on how they are to use an ability. Flash, although annoying, does let the player decide whether to use it offensively, or defensively. Soraka's silence/mana spam does the same thing, forcing the player to decide which is most needed at any one moment.


I was going to say there's no such thing as having too much fun.
Apparently, I was mistaken.There's no one right way to make a "fun" ability, and even the four suggestions above probably won't all realistically fit into a single ability. You don't need to be insanely unique, as doing something old in a new and inventive way can be good.

More than anything, though, when making new abilities, try to imagine how they'll actually be used in a real game. If the ability is "click the button and globally all enemies are stunned for 5 seconds... that's not fun. No one had any way to prevent it. Even Karthus's ultimate has a delay, letting people toss out heals, pop their hourglass, or otherwise avoid the damage. There's even the hexdrinker, which can even be upgraded further, now, which can be built to counteract him.

Make certain that it adds to game play, no matter what you do. If you don't interact with the ability, at all, then it probably needs to be reworked. Note that not all passives fail at being interactive, such as Vayne's Silver Bolts, which still directly influences both the player and the enemy targeted. Hers simply fails because of the third point, in that there's literally no counter to such, short of stunning her, and champions that don't have stuns have literally zero defense.

Many people feel synergy is difficult. Many more misuse the term, or aren't sure what it means. To the former, it's not difficult at all, and can actually be harder to avoid becoming too overly synergetic, than it is to create synergy at all. To the latter, well... let's cover that directly.

Synergy is any two things, which, when used together, are more effective than they are used separately.

Simple, yes? Consider a strong melee champion, they get a melee steroid, making them hit really hard... and a gap closer. If they just had the gap closer, they'd get into range, and then just die, as they have nothing to do once they're in range. If they only had the melee steroid, they'd never be in range in the first place, and therefore wouldn't be all that big a threat.

To make synergy, is honestly not that hard. You already have the tools to do so, from previous sections of this guide, if you've read through this far, already.

I have no idea what you're talking about. >.>;;First, isolate what you want your champion to accomplish. Second, determine what they need to be capable of doing, in order to fulfill the roles you desire. Third, well, at this point you've just magically made synergy already.

That's right, at that point, so long as you have things that a champion needs, their abilities will flat out work together better than they will alone.

The trick, then, is to start cutting holes in their champion design, and making sure they're not too overly synergetic. If they can do it all, without fail, then they can't be beat, and they're boring to play as.

Synergy should come naturally, as a result of this line of reasoning. You should never need to actively force synergy, in the sense of "all my abilities play off each other!". It can be really fun and awesome when they turn out working that way (it just so happened my Nemhain character ended up this way, only partially intentionally), and if you're actively trying to do so, it can make for some really interesting design concepts, but it should never be needed to be done that way.

Don't worry about forcing synergy. It simply will happen without trying, so long as you know what you need your champion to do. Once you've got that down, then you can worry about specializing abilities to work together even better =3

Complex can be fun. I like complex, often. On the other hand, being complex for the sake of being complex, is not fun.

Just because something's intricate, doesn't mean it needs to be, and the easiest way to make this point, is by example.

Let's make an ability. First, it targets an enemy and slows their attack speed, while removing any armour penetration effects they have for a short time. Next off, it gradually reduces their Attack Damage over time, and lowers their critical damage by 50%. Furthermore, it increases the armour and dodge % of the caster.

While some of you may immediately think this is a neat idea, and a great way to really harm an autoattacker, there's a major problem here.

It was made by the department of redundancy department.

See, the problem here is that it has 6 separate methods of reducing physical attack damage from an enemy. This is pure and blatant overkill for absolutely no reason. Why do this? Why hit them in so many different ways at once?

It doesn't actually serve a purpose, as every last effect does the same thing, except for two.

Sure it LOOKS neat... but is it really needed?There are two separate abilities here, namely that one prevents the AD carry from attacking anyone on your team, by nerfing their damage output. The other, is it especially prevents them from harming the caster, specifically, by granting the caster a buff.

If the armour and dodge boosts were provided to their whole team, then even that distinction would be lost.

The ability might "do more stuff" and "look more complex", but when you break it down, all it does is lower the physical damage of an enemy. You don't need 6 separate effects going off at once to do that, and it just makes things cluttered, and difficult to balance, with some champions getting heavily penalized, while others are only mildly affected.

In short, however, it's not that impressive of an ability.

Being needlessly complex, for the sake of being complex, is not fun. If you want to make an ability interesting to use, and complex in how it works, take a look at Nidalee's spear. The farther away you are, the more damage it does, but the easier it is for an enemy to dodge it.

That one, simple trait, makes the ability complex to use, through changing how the player tends to interact with the ability. Players back off after casting it, and are more likely to hide in bushes, in the fog of war, or other ways to try to get more out of their spears.

The ability itself? It does damage, and more damage the farther it goes.

It's complex, but not through just tacking on more and more pointless effects, but rather, through being elegant and simple in design, but complex in usage.

You can make things more complex, easily enough, but you really need to ensure they have a reason to do so.

As we just covered, needlessly complex is kind of pointless. So how do you check to make sure that you didn't go overboard?

Well, our previous example is a great one, so let's go with that!

First, it targets an enemy and slows their attack speed, while removing any armour penetration effects they have for a short time. Next off, it gradually reduces their Attack Damage over time, and lowers their critical damage by 50%. Furthermore, it increases the armour and dodge % of the caster.

We have an attack speed slow (reduces target's damage), removes armour penetration (reduces target's damage), reduces attack damage specifically over time (reduces target's damage, with the addition of more needless complexity in how it works), and lowers critical damage (reduces target's damage).

Furthermore, it has bonus armour (increases caster's damage resistance), and dodge % (increases caster's damage resistance).

For 6 abilities, there's only actually 2 effects taking place, and the attack damage over time reduction is pointless, as most AD carries will kill you long before the damage reduction really becomes noticeable.

We could also blind them, reduce their damage by a %, reduce their damage by a flat value, penalize their AD ratios, if they have any, and several other things to go with it.

The point is, however, that all this is needless fluff.

Then again, as it's possible to get carried away in making something complex, so too, is it possible to get carried away simplifying things...Target enemy suffers -X% Attack Damage, and has their Attack Damage reduced by a further -Y% when dealing damage to the caster.

This just covered everything that the spell was capable of doing, in a short, concise manner.

Isolate what it does, determine what you want it to do as an end effect, and remove anything that has the same effect overall.

Also, check your other abilities; they don't exist in a vacuum. There's a champion on the forum here, called Kroak. Search for it, if you want, but it has 7 slow effects on a single champion. It also has an ability with several repeated effects, such as what was listed above.

Don't get carried away with making every single ability do the same thing. It's redundant, and doesn't add much to the champion as a whole.

The above example isn't a good ability. Positioning yourself for Nunu's ultimate to not be useless, however, is remarkably complex to pull off, rather than just pressing button = target nerfed 17 ways.

I will confess that I absolutely love abilities with multiple functions and uses. They can present choices to the player, and can be a big deal in adding additional game play to the champion design.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the ability has to do multiple things, however. Something like Aniva's wall has a long enough cool down that she's forced to either use it to prevent a baddie from escaping, to wall one or two off from the rest of a group, or to escape with. That's three powerful uses in one ability, that only does one effect.

However, some abilities involve doing completely different things, and may have multiple stages involved. The first of these developed, was Tristana's explosive shot. She could use it as a passive, making minions explode on death, or she could fire it as a DoT + ignite effect vs healers.

The idea, originally, was that if she cast the ability, while it was off cooldown, she couldn't use the passive effect, making it actually two seperate abilities in one. That's since been changed, to keep her a little bit more useful compared to the gradual power creep of other champions, but the concept is there.

One button, two abilities.

For example, two heads are better... than... awe heeeeell no!These are complex to design, as they require careful thought. First off, does your champion really need a multi-form ability, with more than one effect? Do you absolutely require that their kit have that many abilities crammed into that small a space? Is this a conscious decision to add game play, or are you just not willing to give up two nice ideas?

The reasoning behind a multi-form ability, should really be that you are trying to provide a choice to the player. That means that it's either going to have two effects with one cool down, such as an ability that affects allies and enemies differently, a la Soraka's silence/mana gift, or you're going to need two (or more) simultaneous effects which may be counter intuitive to one another, such as how Graves has a dash that also increases attack speed, making it useful for defense, but also good for offense, or the final major option, is an ability that can be cast repeatedly for additional effects, such as any of Lee Sin's non-ultimate actives.

There are other ways to do so, but these are the most predominant ones, so I'll focus on those primarily in the main article.

For now, all you really need to know, is that if you just want the champion to do "more", then a multi-form ability is probably a bad choice. Focus, instead, on making the abilities they have be fitting for their role. You have 5 abilities to work with, including the passive and ultimate. The passive can be very potent if thought about carefully, and the ultimate doesn't necessarily have to have an insanely long cool down, as Kassadin has shown a few other champions.

Aim for these multi-form abilities only when they're needed to improve game play. If you aren't making the player choose something, then it's not really needed, likely. A lot of recent champions added to the league have these sorts of abilities inherently built into them, and some of the designers may have forgotten this rule. This is where that power creep is coming from; champions are now getting 6-7 abilities on average per champion, instead of the previous 5, due to multi-form abilities running rampant. The designers may be consciously thinking of the ramifications of having more than the normal amount, but it's hard to tell if this is the case or not, without sitting in on their meetings.

There are a lot of aspects to balance, but first and foremost, the basics.

Abilities that simply are another champion's ability, but better, or worse, are not really a good idea in general. Note that, in the section below called "The Whole Package", I'll be going into detail as to how the entire champion has to be considered when making a design. This specifically makes copy/pasting more difficult, and less of a fit, generally, than just making a new ability from scratch.

Avoid having a champion that does "everything", with no reason to build anything in particular, and equally avoid having a champion that has large gaps in their design that prevent them from performing their role due to the lack of itemization. A melee DPS with no method of gap closer is, put bluntly, a bad design. This is why Olaf will never be considered as good as Sion. It doesn't matter how much more damage Olaf does, if he never gets the chance to attack. Olaf's ultimate gives him the capacity to stay in range, once he's there, quite nicely, but he has no way to get there in the first place, and there are no items in the game which can correct that issue.

It's easier than it looks! Admittedly, not by much...Primarily, focus on ensuring that, with items, masteries, runes, and summoner spells, that your champion will be able to perform their role adequately. Don't rely on summoner spells like flash to cover major flaws though. They have excessively long cooldowns, and are not capable of truly replacing a lower cool down built directly into the champion itself.

Avoid abilities that provide both defense and offense at the same time. Ones which make you choose between them are great, such as putting a shield on an ally, or damaging an enemy, depending on the target afflicted. Ones which give you everything at the same time, with no drawback, such as Vlad's passive, are a pain to balance, and mess the champion up royally for itemization, since it means the player no longer requires thinking about which choices are to be made.

If you get to the end of your design, and look at it, and ask yourself "Should I build items so they're a glass cannon, or a tank?", and the answer is "Yes.", then you have more work to do still.

This is going to take up a ton of space to fully explain, so you're probably going to need the full article if you're really interested.
For the moment, here's the basic concept:

A number, in and of itself, is neither balanced, nor unbalanced, or even something that means anything. 5 is not "balanced", as 5 can mean lots of things. 5 health? 5 damage? 5 seconds of stun? It can range pretty far and mean much, so numbers aren't even the issue, honestly.

What is the issue, is what the numbers represent. A 5 health doesn't mean much, other than that it's a "small" amount of health. The mere statement that it's a small, or low value, means more than the fact that you gave it an actual number.

As such, numbers aren't so much specific things, as they are stand ins for concepts.

And some of those concepts are a little bit...Wanting "high damage per second", is different from wanting "high burst damage". An ability with low cool down, and moderate damage, can have higher overall damage over time, than one which has high damage, but a long cool down. These are the kinds of concepts that numbers represent, and by thinking about the idea behind what you want a number to do, rather than just trying to tack on the number itself, you'll find it gets significantly easier to work with.

Since this is going to take a huge amount of space to explain in any more detail at all, I'll leave off here, for now.

Scaling is an important part of champion design, as it relates to how they become more useful over time than they were at the start of the game. Sometimes this comes through levels, through items, and other times through various other statistical changes in their properties.

How a champion scales, is probably more important than their basic statistics, oddly enough, as it directly influences their itemization.

Consider how Malzahar has really quite high scaling. His ultimate's a 1.5, two of his abilities are 0.8, and he has another which does % damage of a quite remarkable increase.

Because of this high scaling, if he focuses heavily on an Ability Power build, he'll be doing 2-3 times the damage per cast as normal, making him far more efficient mana-wise, and also more useful at unloading everything he has on a target up front.

For someone like Ahri, her scaling is quite low, AP wise, in that she hits multiple targets at a time, so her damage tends to be spread out, over multiple hits, and over a few people at once. She still loves AP, but she also loves things like cool down reduction and magic penetration more, as, point for point, they will have a proportionately higher effect on her than on Malzahar, when compared to just boosting raw AP and nothing else.

For a champion that has low scaling, typically their basic statistics are high, so, in the case of most tanks and bruisers, such as Malphite, or Leona, they tend to do pretty potent up front damage with just their basic abilities alone, without need of scaling.

Having multiple scaling points, can be similar to the low scaling, in that, if a champion scales well individually per ability, but that scaling is all over the place... well, consider one ability that scales off AP, one off mana, one off AD, and one off health. No matter what you build, you're only going to get two of those to any decent degree, making it so that their other abilities are weaker overall.

This means that you don't have to worry to the same level that a champion that has 4 abilities that all scale off of AP does, in a way. It's not physically possible, with only 6 item slots, to maximize all of these wide spread scaling abilities, meaning they're weaker than they really seem.

I have no idea what you're talking about. My scaling is perfectly fine with a 10.0 AP ratio! It just starts out weaker to compensate!Consider a champion that has four abilities that all scale off AP. You have to now total up each of those abilities together, and combine the total AP scaling, to make something fair.

Anyway, I digress. The point I'm trying to make here, is that a high base stat, and low scaling, tends to mean players will generally not build "glass cannon", as there's little incentive to do so. This implies, instead, that they'll generally build quite tanky, relying on their base damage over time, rather than bursting an enemy down.

The opposite, however, is also true. High scaling often encourages a "glass cannon" approach, such as one where the player is encouraged to make the most out of their scaling. This is where "carries" tend to lie, because they can pour high amounts of gold into themselves, to take a low base damage build, and convert it to a very potent one end game.

Keep in mind, as well, that some stats are linked, in the itemization of the game. AP can benefit off mana, due to the arch-angel's staff being a mainstay. Mana also occurs on virtually every tank item, so a tank without mana has to be balanced around the knowledge that they will be paying extra money for stats they can't use. You can do so, but you must consider this fact carefully.

To design the scaling of your champion, first off determine what you want them to do, and at which point in the game you want them to be at their strongest. Early, mid, or late game. Mages tend to be at their strongest mid game, anti-carries and supports, such as Caitlyn or Soraka, early game, and carries are at their best late game.

Once you've decided when they need to be at their peak, then consider which kind of scaling suits them best, in terms of whether it should be "high" or "low", as well as their base stats and abilities without itemization.

After that, you can start messing around with which stats they specifically scale off of. You can't really just go "I want them to scale well late game!" and then make them scale off health, since it's so easy to get health early on in the game, and after you're sitting on about 3000 health mid-game, you rarely get more past that point.

Overall, scaling is highly important, and very tricky, especially since it's affected by factors outside of the stat that is listed. Giving Vlad AP scaling, but no mana, is a notable issue, as well as giving Volibear a mix of stats that scale poorly off each other. Items like the Hextech Gunblade have to be considered when making a hybrid such as Akali, or Ezreal, and you also need to weigh in how effective the masteries are. Note that masteries can boost AP by a %, but AD by only a flat value, and this is a considerable difference.

Scaling's a huge part of what makes a player build certain items over others, and it's a huge part of what makes that champion useful at different stages in the game. Put extra thought into this, rather than just slapping down whatever seems "good enough". It affects far more than most people realize.

Champions and abilities don't exist in a vacuum. This is a point which many players and champion designers have significant issues with. Some abilities are, quite simply put, flat out better than others.

Why is this the case? Why would one ability be so much better than another?

Let's consider someone like Leona. She's got a stun, an immobilize, and another stun/severe slow. This gives her plenty of ways to continually prevent someone from simply walking away, so making each of these a bit weaker is important.

If we made each and every one of those disables at the strength of someone else? Let's say... 1.5 seconds is a normal stun, 3 seconds for an immobilize, and 2.5 for an ultimate stun? Well, you just rooted someone in place for 7 seconds straight. With cool down reduction, she'd probably be able to cast two of those again by the time the chain was done, for another 4.5, so you're looking at about 11.5 seconds of being stuck standing still, in place.

Obviously, you have to keep track of the other abilities she has. A continuous stun lock from alternating abilities with low cool downs is far too potent for LoL's game play. Sure, in DotA, you could do this, but that's more so because DotA doesn't have cool down reduction (other than the refresher orb), and is heavily biased towards individual heroes being significantly overpowered, with the idea that if everyone is overpowered, then everyone must be equally balanced in comparison to each other, as well.

Consider having a champion with a 33/33/33 mixture of physical/true/magical damage, similar to pre-revision Irelia. No matter what you build in defense, you're still going to eat 2/3rds of the damage, unless you dedicate your entire build to tanking, and give up every shred of damage output you could have had otherwise.

That's obviously not practical for any sort of damage dealer to do, so you're stuck with someone who now hard counters half the champions in the game, with no real recourse by them.

I'm pretty sure there's a saying that goes with this, but sadly I can't seem to see the forest through the trees...If you give a champion a mixture of things, such as a mixture of scaling, sure, the individual scaling might be fine, an ability that does 300 damage and +0.9 AP ratio is great, at least in theory. Except for the fact that all four of their abilities do the same thing... meaning they can unload thousands of burst damage into a target almost instantly.

When building anything, you have to consider everything that affects it. Internally, this means comparing your abilities against each other, and considering how they'll work when used together. Externally, this means also considering things like items, or other champions helping out in a team fight, or ganking situation.

Many people don't take in the big picture when considering how their champion works, and may make horrible mistakes due to such.

At the same time, don't get lost being "unable to see the trees through the forest", either. It's just as easy to get lost in the big picture, that you lose sight of the smaller parts that combine to make the whole.

"No single rain drop thinks it is to blame for the flood."

This is an interesting quote, which holds very true. It's very rare that anyone thinks their one ability is OP. In fact, it probably isn't, in and of itself. When you compare the other abilities that go with it, however, it probably is. This requires minor tweaks on a small scale to correct, and they aren't often the obvious tweaks you may first expect.

Remind me to tell you guys the tale of the Death Knights and the Night Elf Archers in the full article ^.~

Anyway, though I know it's difficult to do, try to consider the items which can change how a champion works (a melee champion with no way to stay in melee is almost guaranteed to get a frozen mallet), or how their own abilities play off each other. If you can do this, then the chances are that your designs, in general, will take a leap and bound forwards in quality. ^.^

Let's start with an example. A little odd, but bare with me here.

You want to reduce the enemy's physical damage output, so how do you do it? Do you give yourself an armour buff, an armour aura, or reduce their attack damage?

These three things, are only three of a multitude of ways to reduce an enemy's physical damage, but they have a very distinctive point in value between each other. The armour buff reduces the damage that any enemy does to you, and yourself only. The aura reduces the damage that anyone deals to any of your allies, physically. The reduction in attack damage reduces the damage that the individual enemy deals to anyone, regardless of who.

Understanding this kind of a distinction is important, as that kind of a slight nuance, is often what differentiates a well balanced design, from a messy one.

Consider a few similar examples.

A spell with high damage, and long cooldown, one with small damage and small cooldown, and one which deals damage over time.

The first one is good burst, able to unload and kill someone instantly, before they get the chance to fight back, a la Annie, or LeBlanc. Generally, the sustained damage here is pretty fail, and anything which survives the first round of burst, is probably going to kill them.

The second is strong sustained damage, able to continually pour out damage over time, if an enemy sticks around to get hit. This discourages them from long term fights, and doesn't work so well against a burst fighter, like the one above, but can be more useful over the course of an extended fight. Cassiopeia and most AD carries tend to fall under this category. Typically, the damage here is considerably higher, over time, to make up for the fact that they may die before they get the chance to deal their damage.

The final one, is Malzahar, able to unload fast on a target, then leave, before they fight back. This has the advantage of the middle one, able to output higher than average damage over time, but also the advantage of the first, of being able to unload quickly. The downside, is that, unlike the first, which can instagib someone before they can shoot back, the DoT effect means that enemies are still attacking during that time, and can kill you in return. It also means they can be healed during that time, potentially negating the benefits entirely.

Regardless of the details, these three methods still do "damage", but they do so in a variety of ways. Mana's good for long term restriction, but leaves only cool downs to prevent short term spam. Energy's unlimited for long term sustained effects, but limits short term burst capacity.

To truly make a great champion design, you're going to need to understand these concepts inside out. Consider what it is you want to do, and the methodology in which you're actually going about accomplishing such. Often, the method of applying something, is as important as that which you apply in the first place.

In the first example, based on defenses, most champions need some sort of way to survive getting attacked, and virtually every champion in the game has some method of survival. Some of these do so by simply moving out of range so they can't get attacked, such as Tristana. Others do so by taking the blows. Further, still, some disable enemies from shooting back, like any champion with a silence can do.

By now, I must have drilled into your head to "figure out what you want to do before attempting to do it". Beyond that point, however, now I want you to think about "how do I want to accomplish this goal?". The details in how you do something, are often just as important as what it is that was done in the first place.


You can have the same generalized task, but perform it in a multitude of methods."Lots of damage!" is one thing, but it doesn't really specify how you want to apply that damage. Why are you even using physical damage, in the first place? Note that most champions have significantly more armour than they do magic resistance, and that it's far easier to counter. Why not make an AP carry? Why not a physical mage? There's a lot of things which can affect how stuff works.

As stated before, nothing is "unique". There are no truly unique abilites in the game, only variations on how to apply an end result.

How about you make a physical mage, that deals physical damage, and instead of relying on cool down reduction, they reduce the cooldown of their abilities based on their attack speed?

I can think of a few reasons why not, as it means they'd be both capable of autoattacks as well as spells, unlike designs such as Garen, Caitlynn, or Urgot. It'd also make them far more potent against towers, of which physical mages are typically very weak against.

The itemization would change entirely, and the design would really require intensive thought on how to get it to work, and would bring with it a whole slew of problems that need to be worked on, which otherwise wouldn't even be a problem in the first place.

Originality, comes at the cost of needing to consider things that others have not had to before. In the case of a ranged tank, you'll find that it comes loaded with so many additional issues and problems by default, that you'll spend all your time negating these problems, rather than working on the design, and by the time you're finished fixing them, you'll end up with something which may as well have been a melee tank in the first place, as you'll have gained nothing from it.

The primary source of being original, however, is to simply do something that has been done before, but in a new and interesting way which it has not been done. Even if you do make a ranged tank, it's still, quite literally, a tank. The only thing that makes it any more interesting than any other tank out there, is the fact that it's ranged, which is merely the method of applying being a tank being different, not the tankyness itself.

In the end, this can be the defining point, of what makes your champion so much more fun than any other. Focus on how your champion does something, more so than what they do, at this point, and you'll find that you can spice up the life of your dry, boring abilities, by simply making minor changes, much of the time!

There are a thousand ways to do things right, and an infinite number of ways to do things wrong. This seems like there's lots of good ideas out there, and there are, but they really are still drowned out by the bad ideas.

This is going to be in point form, for the moment, as there's a lot of stuff to avoid. I'll go into far more detail later on, in the main article.

- Not having a role, or not knowing what your champion is supposed to do

- Being highly repetitive, with abilities being very similar to one another, in theme, purpose, or function, such as 5 water spells, with no real variation

- Getting offended or upset, personally, when someone says something you did was a bad idea; sometimes it really is, and we can't objectively evaluate our own thoughts

- Failing to compare your abilities, stats, or champion as a whole, against closely related champions already in the game (I highly recommend using LoLWiki for this; it's far more detailed and accurate than the official site, go figure)

- Trying to change basic elements of the game without thinking about why they are that particular way. Seriously, break rules after you understand why they're there. If you're not sure, don't touch it.

- Getting carried away with synergy, or abilities that do "too much stuff". Once you start to understand how to build a champion through setting roles and required aspects, it's easy to fall into the trap of giving them way too much stuff. Be extra careful if you have more than 5 abilities total.

I have no idea what you were going for with your champion, but this isn't it.- Spamming out champion designs. This should be a labour of love, of dedication, and of quality. Nurture and fawn over your creations, revise and edit them, build them up to be truly grand and epic. Be willing to go back every month or three and check up on them, sometimes they haven't aged so well, and new stuff you've learned in that time needs to be updated into the design.

- ESPECIALLY avoid anything that removes game play! Long duration, spammable stuns, or other abilities which remove the capacity for the opposing team to counter them are BAD. Double check to make sure that your abilities all have a realistic counter.

- Trying to "balance" a champion by giving it drawbacks. If the only reason your champion gives you a penalty, is because it's overpowered, then the penalty isn't going to fix that. You can design a champion centered around a penalty, such as abnormally low movement speed, but you truly need to take this into very careful consideration when making them.

- Luck. Just in general. In a game like this, winning a fight should be due, as much as possible, to the skill of the players involved, and not just a toss of the coin. If your champion relies heavily on luck, you're almost guaranteed going to need to do a massive overhaul.

- Poor user interface. FFXI had this issue, where you fought the interface more than the actual enemies themselves. Don't make an invoker style champion which is a pain to control and use. If it takes more than 2 buttons or clicks to use a spell, you've done something terribly, terribly wrong.

- Putting limitations on an ultimate for when it can be used. I don't mean a cooldown, but things like "can only be used at under 50% health" and such. An ultimate is designed to be a powerful tool, used at just the right moment. If you are forbidden from casting during that moment, you've completely missed the point of having an ultimate in the first place.

- Scaling damage off defensive stats, or vice versa. This makes it hard to control the power level of the champion, and will invariably lead to them being nerfed into the ground, such as Evelynn, pre-remake Jax, and Vlad.

- Purely passive abilities. Even Vayne and Cho'gath interact with how their "passive" abilities work, and can use them in an actual fight intentionally.

- Following everything someone else said without question. Critics are just that, and nothing more. We review each other's stuff by presenting our own ideas and opinions on such. We can be wrong. We can misunderstand. We can simply not see what the original designer had in mind. More than anything else, take control of your design, and change it how you see fit. Suggestions are only that; if you agree, then go ahead, but if you don't, and find the explanation doesn't satisfy you... try asking them directly about it. Never just follow every single thing someone tells you without thinking.

Tom Cadwell, more commonly known around here as Zileas, made a list awhile ago of what he called "anti-patterns". Essentially, this is a list of things that don't really make sense, in terms of game play, and tend to lead to the game being less fun with their inclusion.

For the index version, I'm just going to copy/paste what he had to say. In the in depth, full article, I'll be responding to each in turn, as well as adding my own.

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Power Without Gameplay
This is when we give a big benefit in a way that players don't find satisfying or don't notice. The classic example of this is team benefit Auras. In general, other players don't value the aura you give them very much, and you don't value it much either -- even though auras can win games. As a REALLY general example, I would say that players value a +50 armor aura only about twice as much as a +10 armor aura... Even though +50 is 5x better. Another example would be comparing a +10 damage aura to a skill that every 10 seconds gives flaming weapons that make +30 damage to all teammates next attack (with fire and explosions!). I am pretty sure that most players are WAY more excited about the fiery weapons buff, even though the strength is lower overall.

The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it. As a result, we tend to keep Auras weak, and/or avoid them altogether, and/or pair them on an active/passive where the active is very strong and satisfying, so that the passive is more strategic around character choice. For example, Sona's auras are all quite weak -- because at weak values they ARE appreciated properly.

Burden of Knowledge
This is a VERY common pattern amongst hardcore novice game designers. This pattern is when you do a complex mechanic that creates gameplay -- ONLY IF the victim understands what is going on. Rupture is a great example -- with Rupture in DOTA, you receive a DOT that triggers if you, the victim, choose to move. However, you have no way of knowing this is happening unless someone tells you or unless you read up on it online... So the initial response is extreme frustration. We believe that giving the victim counter gameplay is VERY fun -- but that we should not place a 'burden of knowledge' on them figuring out what that gameplay might be. That's why we like Dark Binding and Black Shield (both of which have bait and/or 'dodge' counter gameplay that is VERY obvious), but not Rupture, which is not obvious.

In a sense, ALL abilities have some burden of knowledge, but some have _a lot more_ -- the ones that force the opponent to know about a specific interaction to 'enjoy' the gameplay have it worst.

Good particle work and sound -- good 'salesmanship' -- will reduce burden of knowledge (but not eliminate it). We still would not do Rupture as is in LoL ever, but I would say that the HON version of Rupture, with it's really distinct sound effect when you move, greatly reduces the burden of knowledge on it.

In summary, all mechanics have some burden of knowledge, and as game designers, we seek to design skills in a way that gives us a lot of gameplay, for not too much burden of knowledge. If we get a lot more gameplay from something, we are willing to take on more burden of knowledge -- but for a given mechanic, we want to have as little burden of knowledge as possible.

Unclear Optimization
This is a more subtle one. when players KNOW they've used a spell optimally, they feel really good. An example is disintegrate on Annie. When you kill a target and get the mana back, you know that you used it optimally, and this makes the game more fun. On the other hand, some mechanics are so convoluted, or have so many contrary effects, that it is not possible to 'off the cuff' analyze if you played optimally, so you tend not to be satisfied. A good example of this is Proudmoore's ult in DOTA where he drops a ship. The ship hits the target a bit in the future, dealing a bunch of damage and some stun to enemies. Allies on the other hand get damage resistance and bonus move speed, but damage mitigated comes up later. Very complicated! And almost impossible to know if you have used it optimally -- do you really want your squishies getting into the AOE? Maybe! Maybe not... It's really hard to know that you've used this skill optimally and feel that you made a 'clutch' play, because it's so hard to tell, and there are so many considerations you have to make. On the other hand, with Ashe's skill shot, if you hit the guy who was weak and running, you know you did it right... You also know you did it right if you slowed their entire team... Ditto on Ezreal's skill shot.

Use Pattern Mis-matches Surrounding Gameplay
I won't go into too much detail on this, but the simple example is giving a melee DPS ability to a ranged DPS character -- the use pattern on that is to force move to melee, then use. This does not feel good, and should be avoided. I'm sure you are all thinking -- but WoW mages are ranged, and they have all these melee abilities! Well... Frost Nova is an escape, and the various AEs are fit around a _comprehensive_ different mage playstyle that no longer is truly 'ranged' and is mechanically supported across the board by Blizzard -- so the rules don't apply there ;p

Fun Fails to Exceed Anti-Fun
Anti-fun is the negative experience your opponents feel when you do something that prevents them from 'playing their game' or doing activities they consider fun. While everything useful you can do as a player is likely to cause SOME anti-fun in your opponents, it only becomes a design issue when the 'anti-fun' created on your use of a mechanic is greater than your fun in using the mechanic. Dark Binding is VERY favorable on this measurement, because opponents get clutch dodges just like you get clutch hits, so it might actually create fun on both sides, instead of fun on one and weak anti-fun on another. On the other hand, a strong mana burn is NOT desirable -- if you drain someone to 0 you feel kinda good, and they feel TERRIBLE -- so the anti-fun is exceeded by the fun. This is important because the goal of the game is for players to have fun, so designers should seek abilities that result in a net increase of fun in the game. Basic design theory, yes?

Conflicted Purpose
This one is not a super strong anti-pattern, but sometimes it's there. A good example of this would be a 500 damage nuke that slows enemy attack speed by 50% for 10 seconds (as opposed to say, 20%), on a 20 second cooldown. At 50%, this is a strong combat initiation disable... but at 500 damage it's a great finisher on someone who is running... but you also want to use it early to get the disable -- even though you won't have it avail by the end of combat usually to finish. This makes players queasy about using the ability much like in the optimization case, but it's a slightly different problem. If the ability exists for too many different purposes on an explicit basis, it becomes confusing. this is different from something like blink which can be used for many purposes, but has a clear basic purpose -- in that place, players tend to just feel creative instead.

Anti-Combo
This one is bad. This is essentially when one ability you have diminishes the effectiveness of another in a frustrating manner. Some examples:
- Giving a character a 'break-on-damage' CC with a DOT (yes, warlocks have this, but they tuned it to make it not anti-combo much at all)
- With Warriors in WoW -- they need to get rage by taking damage so that they can use abilities and gain threat -- but parry and dodge, which are key to staying alive, make them lose out on critical early fight rage. So, by gearing as a better tank, you become a worse tank in another dimension -- anti combo!
- With old warrior talent trees in WoW, revenge would give you a stun -- but stunned enemies cannot hit you and cause rage gain... So this talent actually reduced your tanking capability a lot in some sense! Anti-combo!

False Choice -- Deceptive Wrong Choice
This is when you present the player with one or more choices that appear to be valid, but one of the choices is just flat wrong. An example of this is an ability we had in early stages recently. It was a wall like Karthus' wall, but if you ran into it, it did damage to you, and then knocked you towards the caster. In almost every case, this is a false choice -- because you just shoudln't go there ever. If it was possible for the character to do a knockback to send you into the wall, it wouldn't be as bad. Anyhow, there's no reason to give players a choice that is just plain bad -- the Tomb of Horrors (original module) is defined by false choices -- like the room with three treasure chests, all of which have no treasure and lethal traps.

False Choice -- Ineffective Choice
Similar to above, except when you give what appears to be an interesting choice that is then completely unrewarding, or ineffective at the promised action. An older version of Swain's lazer bird had this failing... Because the slow was so large, you could never run away in time to de-leash and break the spell and reduce damage, and in cases you did, you'd just dodge 20% of the damage at a big cost of movement and DPS -- so running was just an ineffective choice.


You have an interesting definition of "choice", there...Or We Could **** the Player!!1111oneoneone
This is where you straight up screw over the player, usually with dramatic flair, or maybe just try to make the player feel ****py in a way that isn't contributing to the fun of the game. These range in severity, but examples usually are spawned because the designer is a pretentious wanker who likes to show what a smart dude he is and how stupid the player is. I do not respect designers who engage in this pattern intentionally, and encourage any design lead out there to immediately fire any of your staff that does. I do understand that it can happen inadvertently, and that you might cause some of this stress on purpose in an RPG for character development.. And of course, I love you WoW team despite the 'playing vs' experience of Rogue and Warlock, as you DO have the best classes of any MMO, and they look even better in Cataclysm.... But, on Bayonetta, did the developers really think the stone award was a good idea? But I digress...

Very Severe: The original tomb of horrors D&D module is the worst in existence. Good examples are the orb of annihilation that doesnt look like one and instakills you and all your gear if you touch it, and the three treasure chests where each has no loot and deadly traps and no clues that this is the case.

Severe: There's a popular wc3 map in China where you enter a bonus round, and have a 2% chance of just straight up dying rather than getting cool loot.

Situationally Moderate:Horrify + fear kiting from a competent warlock who outgears you in WoW. Guess what? You die before getting to react, while watching it in slow motion!

Mild: Stone award in Bayonetta. So... you barely get through the level for the first time, then get laughed at by the game with a lame statue of the comic relief character, and a mocking laugh. Please -- maybe a bronze award and a 500 pt bonus might be more appropriate? The player might have worked VERY hard to get through the level, espec on normal and higher difficulties.

Non-Reliability
Skills are tools. Players count on them to do a job. When a skill is highly unreliable, we have to overpower it to make it 'satisfying enough'. Let me give you an example: Let's say Kayle's targeted invulnerability ult had a 95% chance of working, and a 5% chance of doing nothing when cast. We'd have to make it a LOT stronger to make it 'good enough' because you could not rely upon it... and it would be a lot less fun. Random abilities have this problem on reliability -- they tend to be a lot less satisfying, so you have to overpower them a lot more. Small amounts of randomness can add excitement and drama, but it has a lot of downsides. There are other examples of non-reliability, but randomness is the most obvious one. Abilities that require peculiar situations to do their jobs tend to run into the same problems, such as Tryndamere's shout that only slows when targets are facing away from him.

Rules are made to be broken! At least, that's how the saying goes. In reality, it's not really true. Rules are designed to be followed, which is why they're rules in the first place.

There are, however, exceptions to any rule. You can't just go in and wildly ignore rules just because you're trying to be "different", but rather, first you must understand why a rule exists. Once you comprehend the reasoning behind why it's there, then, and only then, do you stand a chance of being able to bend or break that rule.

As an example, I'll use a convenient one from reality, rather than the game. This is technically unlawful, but it proves a point very well.

There is a rule, specifically, a law, which states that one must cross a street at the crosswalk. This rule exists for the purpose of the safety of all parties involved, and to greatly minimize the risk of people being injured.

The problem with this, is that the crosswalks are all at really unsafe locations, typically at the corner of an intersection. These areas have 4, and in this weirdly designed town, sometimes more (I've seen 6-way and 7-way stops around here O.o; ), or more directions traffic can come from. By crossing at the crosswalk, you subject yourself to a wide number of possible ways to get hit or injured. The reason for the crosswalk being here, is convenience, rather than safety.

Sometimes it's worth breaking the rules, if you know exactly what you're doing. Most of the time... it isn't.If one is to move a little further down one of the roads, then this weird 7 directions ot get hit from, is narrowed to just... 2. It's easier, and safer to keep track of this, and the amount of traffic is now considerably less than it had been.

This is not advised to be done on busy side streets, nor near areas with blind turns, or sketchy traffic.

Only through comprehending why the rule was put in place, and by evaluating the specific situation at that time, can you determine if it's a good idea to break that rule or not.

For the most part, 90% or more of situations, follow the rules. They exist for a reason. Don't be afraid to bend a rule that is counteracting itself, however. Follow the spirit of the rule, not the letter of the rule. If the letter of the rule directly contradicts the spirit of it, then feel free to adjust such until they are in line properly again.

This is one of the hardest things to do, for most people, but it's a major, finalizing point of any champion design.

Take your champion, and imagine your favourite character fighting them. Who wins? How do they work with or against each other? Is it possible to defend against their attacks, or do anything to harm them?

Surprisingly often, people don't even think to ask this question. One champion design I saw awhile back, literally had the capacity to stun lock an entire team for 9.5 seconds, and had a shield, similar to Sivir's, except that it could eat 5 spells up at once, and could be maintained indefinitely. There's no champion in the game that could break through that shield, making it impossible to win that fight, even with 2-3 people.

The point here, is to consider a variety of situations in which your champion is likely to be put into during the course of a regular game, and determine the likely hood of defeating them, or being able to survive with them, realistically.

Admittedly, sometimes it's a bit easier said than done O.o;
Below, are two lists, to help you out here.

Playing as your champion:
- Jungling
- Being counter-jungled
- Laning (additionally, which lane do you fit best in?)
- Farming a large minion wave of about 20 minions
- 1v1 fight vs a bruiser (high defenses, low offense, but can sustain themselves over time)
- 1v1 fight vs a mage (high burst, weak after their burst runs out, tend to have at least 1 hard CC)
- 1v1 fight vs a DPS (high sustained damage, low health)
- Being ganked by 2-3 people
- Team fights
- Sieging an enemy base

Playing against your champion:
- Laning
- 1v1 fight as a ranged squishy, be they a mage, dps, or support
- 1v1 fight as a bruiser or tank, trying to get into range of them
- Team fights
- Escaping if they're chasing you
- How do you gank them?
- How do you deny them from feeding massive amounts of exp and gold?

There's a lot of guides, and a lot of help out there. Not just resources that I've made, but everyone on the forum who has helped out!

Merylindra's list of guides is currently the most complete list of allt he resources you have available at your fingertips, and can be found here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1833829

For all the people who are willing to review each others stuff, are willing to help each other improve, give encouragement, and better ourselves as a group, you have my thanks!

The full article will provide specific thanks to individuals, such as Stexe, Echoing, Thayen, Merylindra, and many more. Through your actions and efforts, we're making this a better, and more fun place, and you have my thanks, especially when dealing with people who consider any freely offered help to just be "arrogance".

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this game, especially the staff at Riot Games for making League of Legends itself, Blizzard Entertainment for making Warcraft III, of which DotA was built upon, and all the mods and so on, such as DotA, Aeon of Strife, and other projects which led up to the creation of League of Legends in the first place!

I was going to put up a picture of Tom Cadwell's face with hearts and stuff all over it, but then I realized that it went beyond even my standards of creepy.
I also discovered I have standards. Learn something new every day, huh?Additionally, for this Mobafire version, additional thanks go out to jhoijhoi for her guide on how to set up formatting here, which gave me the idea to convert my guide over to Mobafire in the first place. The boarders she used also just happened to be used as the size for my own boarders I made for this guide (those cute 'lil runic ones ^.^ ), so that was also helpful!

Class is in session. Sit at your desks, prepare to take notes, and don't forget to leave the instructor an apple. I also accept apples in the forms of pies, strudels, and $20 bills.

Now then, let's start off here!

Today, we'll be covering... lessee... according to this, we'll be covering Design Philosophy.

There's a few major parts to design philosophy, so we'll be covering the following.

First off, we'll discuss the genre of MOBA games, and why they present entertainment value in the first place.

Second, we'll then delve into the idea of the exertion of vital powers upon others. IE: why people like to win.

Third, we'll briefly touch on what happens when a player feels like they aren't included in the game, for one reason, or another, and why this is bad. Included, also, in this section, will be the idea of anti-fun.

Finally, we'll cover the concept of changing the design based on new information. This sounds pretty obvious, but it really doesn't happen nearly as often as it should, for a variety of reasons, which will also be covered.Part 1: Moba moba, bo boba fett, banana-nana fo phobia, me mi mobius, mobas!That's right, I just ruined your childhood. It's alright though, because we're going to be making a better one for generations to come!

The MOBA genre, originated, as far as can be told, back in the days of StarCraft, in the Aeon of Strife map. The idea hasn't really changed much, since then, other than getting a face lift, or a little bit of Botox now and then to fix up the wrinkles.

Interesting Fun Fact: Botox stands for Botulinum toxin. This is a naturally occurring substance, and is the most toxic substance known on the planet. Roughly 4kg, or about 8.8lbs, would be enough to kill every single person on the planet. Think about that the next time you want to get your wrinkles smoothed out, or when someone says "all natural is good for you" ^.~

Now then, the basic idea of the genre is actually an evolution of tower defense maps, wherein waves of NPC (non-player character) monsters throw themselves against your base, and you build towers to defend against them.

In the MOBA variation, thereof, there are two equal sides which are continually throwing equally strong forces against each other, locked in a perpetual stale-mate. At least, that's the theory. slight variations in terrain and travel times, however, leads to the Purple team, if left alone long enough, to win in LoL every game, hence the term "nerf purple caster minions".

These two sides clash endlessly, with no real end in sight, however, is the point. DotA uses this concept, as does every other one in the genre. Sometimes there are more than two teams, but the end result is always the same: a stalemate.

This is where champions and heroes come in. That's you, the player character.

The two teams get a number of players to help out in the fight to destroy the world tree, or the nexus, or the glazed MacGuffin. Whatever. These champions start off relatively weak, and over the course of the game, grow in strength, until they're able to butcher the generic, low level minions, with ease, and kill the enemy base.

Note that I state, specifically, to kill the enemy base.

Many people still haven't grasped this fact, but the whole point of a MOBA is building demolition. It doesn't matter, honestly, how many kills you get, if your nexus is dead.

To that end, everything is balanced around that assumption. Killing Baron Nashor, in LoL, for example, is a benefit in that it gives your team gold for items, health/mana regen for sustained assaults on a base, and generally just makes it easier to kill the enemy base.

Killing a player isn't really worth much, other than the fact that it does three main things:

1: It grants the killing player(s) additional resources (experience and gold) to better kill the enemy players and base with.

2: It significantly slows down the enemy team. In DotA, you lose gold when you die. In LoL, you just stay dead for a long time, is all.

3: It buys you time to further your end goal of destroying their base.

Note that number three, on this list, is in bold for a reason. If you're losing the game, but manage to ace their entire team, it means there's no one left to defend against you. I've had a number of games where one side was losing, then one person does something which is a bad idea, such as being overconfident, and having the carry try to attack the entire enemy team solo, gets CC'd into the ground, and dies. At this point, it's a 4v5 fight, without a carry on one side, and it turns into a 0v4 when the base fight occurs. The team with people still standing push hard, and kill the enemy base with no one to hold them back.

If you don't make use of the time granted to you by an ace, you're wasting it. Running back to base to heal is pointless when you know full well that there won't be anyone alive to shoot you for the next 60+ seconds, which means you have no reason to return to heal or shop. That's the time you bought to push and kill their base with, where they won't be defending it, and it doesn't matter how weak you are.

Everything comes down to killing the enemy base, before they kill yours. Killing a player only benefits your end goal of killing their base, and nothing more, really.

Many players don't realize that point, but as a champion designer, you have to be acutely aware of this concept. Even if you're building a champion with the express intent of killing other players, the point, in the end, is that you're killing those players to open up their base to attack. If you design a champion who can kill a player's champion, then either that champion you made has to be able to kill their base, on their own, such as Master Yi, or they'll have to kill the enemy team so thoroughly that the enemy won't be able to contend with your team in a fight, so that, even though your champion sucks at killing a base, the person on your team who doesn't suck at it, will still be alive, due to your tank, your support keeping them alive, or your assassin having killed the enemy carry so they couldn't kill yours in turn.

The fun in this kind of match up, comes from a few things.

First off, there's a lot of strategic decisions in play. In ranked games, you get to ban champions, and pick them in groupings of 1-2-2-2-2-1, where first pick gets one champion of choice, and second pick gets two to make up for only having one. The idea is that this is a strategic choice on which champions counter the ones the enemy team played. Vayne counters high health targets and squishies, anyone with sustained healing counters Vayne, ignite counters healers. On and on it goes. Anything that can lead to a long term strategy, such as itemization or countering an enemy, are considered to be strategic.

Adjustments to how many bans there are, in relation to how many champions there are, are a big deal, especially if certain champion types have few new choices. There have been dozens of new damage champions added to the game, but only a handful of tanks and supports, and these have been, for the most part, lackluster compared to the originals. Tweaking the number of bans directly affects the choices in this matter, as it's possible to completely ban all supports from a game, if both teams are insistent upon the concept. As such, strategic elements must be very carefully monitored, as a tiny adjustment can make a huge change in game play.

The tactical game play is another important part of why it's so much fun. Being able to plot ambushes, ganks, counter jungling, back doors, and so on, are all important tactical maneuvers that are part of the game. Note that when Riot removed the Fortify summoner spell, they were directly adjusting the value of back dooring, and this had to be taken into account when making that decision.

Tactics are generally short term, spur of the moment decisions, which grant one a particular advantage at that moment in time. Doing one gank is a tactical operation. Building your entire team composition around ganking, with the express intent of crushing the enemy team very early on, and pushing for an early win before their carries can feed up, is a strategy.

Anyway, these two things are very important to how fun the game is. Other factors, such as progressing in leveling, and team work, are other major components of why the game's fun. There's a thousand things, but some stand out more than others, as can be seen below.Part 2: You fight, fight without ever winning, but never, ever, win, win without a fight. - Rush, ResistSo, what makes a game like LoL so fun, and so frustrating, at the same time?

The same thing that exists in any competitively natured game. Winning.

More than that, is winning on even terms. This sounds a little silly to many people out there, who simply want to "win", but honestly, this is mostly due to these individuals not having thought it through all that clearly, yet.

Consider the "game" Progress Quest. You press a few buttons at the start of the "game", to create a completely 100% arbitrary and meaningless character, and then it goes off and plays the game by itself, with no further interaction from the "player" at all. Literally, there is no game play to the so called "game". You watch the numbers go up, and have no interaction with them at all.

So where's the fun in that?

Admittedly, it's kind of amusing, but only on an idle scale, and not something to really "do". Even if you were to "win" at a game like this, there's no real challenge. No effort, no purpose, you'll never truly get a sense of satisfaction at having defeated a difficult task or problem.

In a non-competitive game, such as Co-op vs AI, there's a set difficulty. That difficulty doesn't really change, and once you can surpass it, you will pretty much always surpass it, other than in rare circumstances, such as getting a bunch of new players when you're playing around with a ridiculous joke build, like AP Caitlynn.

In a competitive game, since you're fighting other people, you always have to be at the top of your game, since the enemy team is an unknown quantity. They may be better than you, or they may be worse. They scale with your own capabilities, due to ELO rankings, and will generally give you a good run for your money.

See, a bot is only a bot. No matter how good you make a bot, it's limited to being as good as it was programmed, and can never surpass that point. A player can learn to be just as good as you are, so no matter how good you think you are, there's some one out there who can match you toe to toe, every time.

A close game, where you have to fight for every scrap of advantage to win, is what puts a player on the edge of their seat. This increases a lot of the capabilities of the body, triggering a large set of advantages which were designed primarily for survival purposes. Heightened reflexes, greater peripheral vision, and so on, all contribute to your capacity to make the correct decision quickly.

Getting into a game that really puts you on the edge, is where the real fun of the game lies, and this is achieved through having the teams be as close to equal in power as possible. When you're being trounced, there's no fun in a losing battle that it feels like you're not having an impact on the outcome at all. On the other hand, winning with nary lifting a finger is kind of bland as well. The smurf/twink players out there, who make new level 1 summoner accounts, and kill newbies, really aren't that fun to play as. I've helped out a low level friend, but to be honest, it's boring. When you can rip through the entire enemy team, without even paying attention, why bother?

As such, you want to ensure that your designs for your champions are as balanced as possible. People often go "don't judge numbers, just judge concepts!".

What generally makes a champion OP or UP, isn't really their numbers, so much as their capacity to do a number of roles entirely too well. If you gave Master Yi a root, along with the rest of his abilities, he'd be flat out overpowered. It doesn't matter if the root is "fair" at only 2 seconds duration, which is below average for a root, especially compared to Ryze and Morganna's 3 second roots. He'd simply be too powerful because of everything else he can do.

Your design has to be one that can be fair to play against. If they're too strong, they're boring to play as, after the first few initial wins go through. If they're too weak, they're just as boring to play against, because they're not a challenge to beat.

It's all an intricate balancing act, as the end goal, is to win a tough fight, that took everything you had. If they were barely worth the effort, it's just kinda "meh", and if you didn't stand a chance from the start, it's still "meh".

So, this segues nicely into our next section...
Part 3: Evelynn, I heard some of the other champions saying you were good for free gold and exp, but don't worry! I stood up for you, and told them you were good for nothing!Just because you win or lose, doesn't mean it wasn't a fun game. If it was a close, tight match, that's where it really mattered most.

So what happens when you get stuck in a situation where it feels like you have no options?

We've all been there, at one point, or another, where we go back and think about what could have been done differently to have prevented the situation, and come to the realization that we literally did nothing wrong, and it was a fluke, blind luck, a glitch, or some other situation in which we flat out could do nothing to prevent it.

League of Legends has a philosophy of attempting to reduce these situations as much as possible. To any attack, there is generally a counterargument in kind. Physical damage gets armour, magical damage gets magic resist, stuns get tenacity and a veil, or cleanse/quicksilver sash. Even Vayne's silver bolts are countered through lifesteal or healing, which is why my tank Sona build slaughters Vayne 1v1 to many a Vayne player's chagrin.

The point of the matter, is that to every action, there must be the capacity for that action to be nullified, or at least lessened to a degree in which it matters.

Armour gets countered by armour penetration if it's overly stacked, the same scenario on the magical side of things. Carries are countered by stunlocking them down or using burst mages to one shot them. Mages are countered with bruisers who can shrug off the initial damage, who are killed by carries that are protected by a tank long enough to do their damage.

In the end, any action must be able to be countered somehow.

So... what if you have something that can't be countered?

Consider a powerful mana burn effect. Let's say it does 500 points of mana damage, and 1/2 of that mana is dealt as damage. Sure, it's only a 250 damage burst, but against a non-mage, it's brutal. Fiora suddenly becomes horrified that she's now close to 100% useless, and Annie finds that she can't just cast Tibbers 3 seconds later, like a silence would, but now has to leave the battle entirely, since she was sitting at half mana to begin with.

This kind of overwhelming attack strength with no real counter is not allowed in the game, because it's just not fun.

Stunlocks are a problematic area in here, because they're counter intuitive.

See, a stun is needed to interrupt players, and for some champions, like Tryndamere, it's literally the only real counter they have. Go ahead, stack 400 armour and see if Tryndy really cares. I've done it, and trust me, it barely annoys him, because he just kills the rest of your team instead, and if they all go heavy armour based, he just counters all of it with a single item, and your damage output is nil because of all that wasted itemization.

There needs to be things like stun locking in the game, but on the other hand... this also leads to the issue that a player who gets stunlocked really has no recourse, except to build against it, such as merc treads and a QSS, or a Banshee's Veil. Even then, it's sketchy sometimes.

How much stun lock is permitted into the game? It's obviously needed, but it's not particularly fun.

Killing someone who couldn't defend themselves, no matter what they did, is entertainment only for psychopaths, and doesn't really provide a challenge worthy of recognition. Getting killed without a hope of escape, no matter what you do, is also pretty boring, especially if it's on a low enough cool down that there's no way to prevent it.

Things like Veigar's ultimate are broken, in that they don't really show why the damage was increased, nor do they have an obvious counter. "Counter this ability by turning your AP carry into a tank instead, thus negating your entire job" is not a valid counter to employ.

While he makes for a good counter-pick in champion selection, in terms of the actual game itself, it just doesn't work like it should.

Several of the older designs suffer from mistakes, such as these, which have been slowly been phased out of the game, but some do still linger, while it's decided what to do about them.

Completely reworking Tryndamere to not have his ultimate would, indeed, fix the issue of needing to stun lock him, but would leave him far too vulnerable to that very same stun lock, which would also need to be fixed. And considering there are other champions, who rely on being stun locked, it would just lead to more problems than it would fix, and would take months of repairs to contain the collateral damage, while hemorrhaging players in the mean time who are upset, as they wait for a fix.

Eve already got this treatment, and that's only because they needed her removed from the game temporarily while fixing the stealth system. Unfortunately, after her nerf, but before the stealth remake was done, the person working on the stealth remake left Riot, leaving them with their hands tied for far longer than intended.

Anything which can't be adequately defended against is, simply put, not fun. A player must always be given the opportunity to at least TRY to escape. They may not always make it, but they have to feel like there was that chance. This will be covered in more depth in section 1-08: Choices.

This idea of abilities or effects which are "not fun", or, as Zileas put it, "Anti-fun", must be considered and weighed carefully.

The benefits of the fun added to the game, through an ability being introduced, must outweigh the amount of fun removed from the game in the process. In the case of a strong mana burn, or an instant-kill ability, neither is capable of doing this. A great deal of fun is lost, but only minimal is returned.

If we give someone an insta-gib attack, which instantly kills a player, regardless of all other factors, it doesn't really matter what the limitations on that ability are, anymore. That ability is now only going to provide a minor boost of fun to the attacking player, as it's like swatting flies. It gets boring fast, and is more of a nuisance, than entertainment, after the first few moments. For the enemy player, on the receiving end, it just flat out sucks.

As such, it can't be considered a fun ability.

Making abilities which are really strong, but have severe difficulties in hitting, or which just have disadvantages piled heavily on top of them, really aren't that interesting.

Consider a spell that does say... instant kill! But wait! It's alright, because it fires only in a straight line, and travels very, very, slowly, and is easy to miss!

But... that means that it's kind of boring, because it either is useless, because it never hits, or it's overpowered, if it does hit. There's too big a gap there.

For something like Nidalee's spear, the idea of something which is weak to start, but the harder it is to hit with, the more useful it becomes, ends up being a mixture of skill for both players involved, as they have to play against each other. The damage does sting, a great deal, but on the other hand, it's a risk vs reward. An enemy player has an easier time to dodge, if it'll do more damage. This leads to increased game play for both players, as they are actively working with each other, and the consequences of failing on either side, while notable, aren't without capacity to minimize the effects.

Nidalee has a low cooldown already, and can lower it further, still. Enemies can get some magic resistance, or get a banshee's veil, to eat the first one when it comes sailing out of the fog of war from the jungle. Either way, it's able to be negated, to a degree.

Make sure that any abilities you add to your champion have a way to be interacted with by an enemy. Make absolutely sure that you avoid adding in abilities that are severely penalizing, with no hope of escape. Compare how fun something is, to how much it sucks to be shot at by it. If you would hate to face off against your champion, then you probably need to make some adjustments on the design.
Part 4: I do not like green eggs and ham!Sometimes you're wrong. It happens to all of us, even the "greats". Stephen Hawking was absolutely certain that the universe would go into reverse and get sucked back together again in a neat, orderly concept, such as a tea cup falling off a table, shattering, then playing backwards and going back to a tea cup again. It was too complex, however, and the coefficients of some of the constants of the universe meant that it wouldn't have the gravitational force to pull itself back together, but the idea was neat. Shame it didn't work out, however.

No one gets through life without screwing up. We're going to break something, eventually, no matter what we do. We're going to have some awe inspiring idea, that will turn heads, and then someone's going to poke a hole in it, and it's going to deflate like a blow up do...er... I wasn't saying anything.

Moving along, the point is that stuff will go wrong, or we'll get new information, or something will change, and we'll have to change ourselves, and our designs, to compensate.

What works one day, may not work the next. My own champion design, Nemhain, used to use a new resource system I'd dubbed "BloodThirst". At the time, there were no other systems in the game which could do what I needed it to do. Since that time, Shyvanna was released, and Tryndamere got an overhaul to rage, and the rage system, with some tweaks, is now able to be force fit to work the way I wanted it to from the start, but wasn't capable of, back then.

The game slowly changes over time, and so, too, must you and your champions change along with it.

When LoL was first released, there were a great deal more mana regeneration items in the game, and they were significantly stronger, at the time, for relatively low cost. Energy and rage didn't exist yet, since every single rage and energy user have been released after the game came out, except for Tryndamere, who used to use health instead.

As such, mana used to be very expensive to cast, and you could only use a few spells before running dry, and then you would use high mana regen items to gain it all back again. This was kind of a mixture between the current mana and energy systems, and honestly, it kind of failed at both concepts pretty badly.

These days, mana works a bit differently, since there are other options to it to go around, other than "mana" and "cool downs only".

This means champions like Katarina have had to be adjusted, but still need further tweaks to make up for a change in how the game plays. It also means that many of the older mages have been undergoing significant remakes over time.

Mana users can't regenerate mana like they once did, and champions that lose health tend to keep it lost to compensate.

This also means, however, that support champions are no longer as valuable as they once were. Heals are less valuable these days, due to the decision to make damage last a bit more permanently in a fight, and the concept of having a long duration "siege" team, designed to whittle down another team from long range over time, has been diminished greatly.

As such, you have to consider these things when going through your champion design. Some people still suggest new "healer" champions, but the problem is, healers are intentionally being removed, bit by bit, because they harm the current design decision to make damage permanent. As such, you'll notice that the last few "support" champions have been pretty much just magic damage dealers, who happen to have slight support abilities tacked on. Lulu, Orianna, and Karma, are all pretty much damage mages, which do sub-par damage, but have some above average crowd control effects to counteract such.

The old support champions of the days of yore, such as Soraka and Janna, have had it pretty rough, lately. They don't really do much for damage, their CC capacity just isn't enough to make up for the higher overall mobility in the game these days, and their sustain capacity has been continually beaten down.

This isn't to say that the champions are BAD, it's just that the game's current incarnation is not the same as it used to be, when they were originally developed. This does mean, however, that they are going to have to undergo an entire rework, from the ground up, to truly be worth playing any longer. Giving Soraka a bit more damage on Starcall, although nice, doesn't fix the fact that three of her abilities are less than half as effective as they once were, while other champions have been getting stronger, she's only been getting weaker.

Riot will tend to these things in time, but it does take time. Reworking an old champion requires the skills of a designer to pull them apart and build them from the ground up. The team which usually does balance tweaks after a champion's out, tend to be more dedicated towards adjustments and tweaks on designs already in place, with focus on balance, rather than on creating a new concept, so aren't generally set up for large scale revisions of that nature.

Unfortunately, a champion, once released, gets most of it's sales early on. There's less incentive to rework an old design, unless it's getting an appearance update, that may draw in additional revenue from skin sales.

We are fortunate, in that we don't have the "must do this project first, because it makes more money" sitting over our head. If we want to work on a design, and sit on it for a year, fussing over it, then we're able to. This means you can keep tweaking and adjusting your design to fit into the current game as you please.

Even so, there are decisions made which need to be understood before you can change your champion.

For that, I personally advise going into the game, and checking their videos, as the patch previews hold a wealth of information as to why they're making the changes they are. The game is ever changing, and while people tend to toss out the term "meta-game" to mean almost anything, there is a distinctive set of phases through which it evolves over time.

I can provide the current ideals of the game as it is right now, but that's pointless, as, in a few months, anything written here will no longer be valid. Instead, pay attention to the patch notes, and consider why they would do something. If you see a consistent trend, such as the current one of health regeneration, life steal, spell vamp, and healing spells all being continually nerfed, then it generally means there's an over arcing reason behind why such is occurring.

Watch for these trends, and then consider what this new concept suggests.

Right now, that means that support champions won't be doing much healing, so any new support design would be best off avoiding healing almost entirely, and instead focus on the CC aspect of their design. Kind of like... Lulu. Funny how that translates into exactly what the logical line of reasoning would suggest.

Anyway, the point is to watch the shifting trends of the game as it evolves over time, and think about what it lacks in it's new incarnation, that you can plug the hole with, and you'll find that there are some neat ways to go about doing so!

As always, have fun in making your champion, but if you want to make something that would be truly awesome to play, consider where the game is right now, rather than a year or two ago. Don't forget to go back and update old, favoured ideas that have fallen to the wayside, either! Some of them still have life in them, and a little touch up every few months can be just what they need to stay current, and fun!

Well, that being said, it looks like we're out of time, and character count. Class dismissed!

Class is once again in session. Today's topic is... choices!

Let's start with a little light humour, shall we?

A texan and a rabbi are sitting next to each other on an airplane when the stewardess approaches them. She asks if they would like anything to drink during the flight. The texan asks for a whiskey, which the stewardess promptly retrieves and hands to him, and then turns to the rabbi, asking if he would like anything for himself. The rabbi states that he would sooner be ravaged by indecently clad women of a questionable origin than let alcohol touch his lips. The texan hands the stewardess back his drink and goes "Yehaw! I didn't know there was a choice!"

Anyway, we'll be covering choices today, and the following will need to be addressed.

First, we need to identify what a choice actually is, and why they're important. This sounds pretty easy, but it's actually a lot more complex than you might think.

Second, we'll be covering what ways we have to "create" a choice for a player to make.

Third, we shall then learn about what kinds of common choices there are in the game.

Finally, I'll go over how to avoid making "false choices", as they really do screw with the game.Part 1: So, what is a choice?So, before we go any farther, let me point out that there are choices all around us. Some of those choices are obvious, some not so apparent, some pleasing, others the kind that you'd really rather not make.

Each and every situation in life, you have a choice. You may not like the options presented to you, but you have a choice, always. Sometimes, just the mere action of refusing to make a choice, is still a choice, as you did, after all, still choose to not make one.

That brings us to how this affects game play. A game is, by definition, something which you interact with, in order to alter the final outcome, in a way that is enjoyable to the player. A TV show is not, in most cases, able to be classified as a game, as the viewer has no real control over the outcome.

So what ties choices and game play together? It's pretty simple, really. Any time a player interacts with something, they are making a choice. If Morganna tosses a skill shot at you, you have the choice to dodge it, to eat the hit instead of another player who's more likely to die will get caught, and you have the option, in some cases, to turn on a shield to absorb the blow, such as a Banshee's Veil, or Sivir or Nocturne's shields, and it's possible to also use abilities such as Gangplank's Remove Scurvy, Cleanse, or a Quicksilver Sash.

As long as you are able to alter the outcome in some way, shape, or form, then you have made a choice to interact with that ability or champion.

Note, however, that I specified that you have to be able to alter the outcome in some way, shape, or form. If you have an ability that stuns for 2 seconds, but if it's prevented by a shield, or is cleansed off, it stuns for 3 seconds, instead, then you have achieved "choice" in the way that a person reading a book has a "choice" to turn the page of the book, to continue the story. It doesn't really affect the outcome, or anything about it.

As such, true choices are the key to game play. They are what allows a player to actually play the game.

False choices, however, are not really choices at all. In the above example, you're given a choice as to whether to cleanse off the ability, or not. In reality, it's not really a true choice, as the outcome is the same, either way. These false choices are a bane to players, as it only frustrates them into thinking they had some way to alter the outcome, and they never, truly did. Sometimes a pseudo-effect can work, but generally, you want to avoid it, because these false choices don't really add anything to the game, nor the player's interaction with said game.

So, what kind of choices are there in the game? Lots, really. More than you probably might imagine possible.

Consider a lot of things, here. Let's say that the support has been shut down hard, no turrets have fallen, your team has not gotten a single dragon kill, but your carry is doing well on champion kills, so has a bit of extra gold to throw around. That carry can choose to expend a portion of their gold to help out the support in warding up the dragon so it's not lost, yet again, or they can choose to hoard their gold, and hope that the extra 75-150 is going to make the difference between getting their bloodthirster early or not.

Some don't consider it a real choice, and will simply state that it's the support's role to ward, but in all honesty, sometimes they need help, as we all do, in varying ways. A good player will be able to realize that the game has not gone well for their support so far, and can use that information to more accurately weigh in the pros and cons of that decision. A poor quality player may never notice anything outside of their lane, and may not even realize the choice was there in the first place, because they haven't been thinking about the wider ranges of options in the game, outside of their own little world.

How about itemization? That's another choice. Some players have the mistaken idea that they need a full build every game to look identical. If this were the case, it wouldn't truly be a choice in the first place. Would it truly be a good idea to build identically when facing a team that's heavy on bruisers, as it is to build for a game when you're fighting all AoE mages? It really does require an adjustment to how one plays the game, and there are several ways to go about doing such, since there are multiple ways to survive various forms of damage.

There are choices in how you want to itemize, such as for damage, or survival, but even then, there are also choices on how to go about itemizing for that specialization. Just because you go glass cannon, doesn't mean you go glass cannon exactly the same way as someone else who plays that same champion might.

Anything in the game which adjusts how you play, has presented a choice to the player. Anything which alters how one thinks, is also presenting a choice.

Let's consider that the enemy team is doing excessively well, and has been going around with 3-4 people doing endless ganks on your team. It now becomes a significant choice to even go past your tower, at all. That sense of fear and dread that you're going to get killed changes the weight of what may have otherwise once been a simple decision.

Note that I've mentioned the idea of weighing decisions several times now. Even things which are "obvious", are still decisions, and the only reason they're obvious, is the circumstances leading up to that decision are very heavily favouring a single option out of the choices presented. There still is, however, a choice to be made, and it's still possible to make the wrong choice, or at least, a less than ideal one.

There are many factors that go into making any particular decision, and our brains are designed to be able to process large amounts of information quickly, and then act upon it in short order. That whole "fight vs flight" response, is still a choice to be made. True, most of that choice is made via chemical imbalances pushing you to go one way or the other, but once you're aware of that fact, you can take control of it and consciously make the decision to overrule what your body has decided upon already.

Anyway, the point I'm getting at here, is that there are typically a large number of inputs that go into setting up the circumstances surrounding a decision to be made. Often, we may not see some of these circumstances. If you've not been keeping up map awareness, you may not realize that the enemy team has been doing team ganks, and might not take that into account when making the decision to leave your turret to push a lane, as an example.

In the end, we can't truly add real choices to the game, as such, as the vast majority of those choices already exist. The choice to build atmogs on Lux is always present, it just doesn't make any real sense to bother doing so. The choice to sit at the fountain from the first minute of the game and talk about popcorn kernels is also there, but once again, it's kind of a silly thing to do, so most people don't even consider it.

What you can do, as a champion designer, is you can bring choices that are otherwise braindead obvious to the foreground, by adjusting just how obvious they really are.

Why is atmogs a bad idea on Lux, after all? Well, she doesn't really benefit much from the attack damage, nor the crit, and she gains more damage and survival from AP, so why would she build damage or stack health? The choice is always present, but she's decided not to do so, simply because it doesn't provide any real tangible benefit. The player has made this decision pretty much subconsciously, because it's so blatantly obvious of an answer that it doesn't require kicking the brain into high gear to fully crunch down on the options and weigh in which is the better option.

Let's take Nidalee instead. She's actually got some pretty good offtank potential, and atmogs has become a semi respectable choice for her build, as it lets her live for pretty much as long as she feels like it, while still providing descent effectiveness damage-wise.

It's a tough decision, however, since she gains a lot of benefit from going heavier on the AP side of things. The player now needs to weigh in what the other team is using, in order to properly gauge whether this is really a good idea to go atmogs or not now.

No choice was ever truly "made" available, however, in either Lux, nor Nidalee's cases. The same choice has always been present for both, but one of them has additional circumstances which adjusts how obvious that choice is to work with.

We, as champion designers, work with choices on a regular basis. Giving your champion high scaling off AP encourages that champion to build AP. Giving them a few abilities that can also scale off AD, however, makes them debate whether they want an AP build, a hybrid, or a full on AD build. Perhaps they'll end up with a strange build like Blitzcrank, or Udyr.

You don't, as a designer, have the capacity to introduce a real choice. That choice is always dormant, laying there in wait. What you can do, however, is tweak the circumstances surrounding that choice, so that the player has to actively debate as to what they feel the correct answer to that choice actually is.
Part 2: You can choose from phantom fears, or kindness that will kill. I will choose a path that's clear: I will choose free will. - Rush, FreewillShame, then, that free will doesn't exist.What we believe to be free will, is that we get the option to make our decisions based on our own preferences. Thing is, those choices can be slanted and adjusted by subtle machinations and tweaks to the factors which go into a choice in the first place.

You lead people like you lead a sheep; you make the sheeple think that they choose the destination.
Alright, the choices are always there, but they're generally made on an instinctual level by the player, with no real interaction with the game itself. What we need to do, is to find a way to adjust the parameters that their brain is considering, so that it's not so obvious a decision that it may as well not be a choice in the first place.

There are a great number of ways to go about doing this, but the easiest way to do so, is to just identify a choice that's blatantly obvious to begin with, determine which things affect the end decision, namely, the pros and cons, and then tweak these until they're not so heavily slanted to one side or the other.

Let's start out with an example here. We'll have a character that's bland, and boring. No abilities, average stats across the board.

What do we do with him? No idea. The choices are infinite at this point, there's actually TOO MANY choices, to the point that there's so many, that it just becomes white noise, and it doesn't feel like there's any choice at all.

So, we need to find a way to make this bland champion get a few choices that are more obvious than others. We'll drop his base health a bit, nerf the armour a touch, but increase the AD growth and attack speed a bit.

We've now presented the player with something to work with. They've now determined that they're not going to play this as an AP champion, nor a tank, but rather, as an AD carry. This tiny adjustment has allowed us to "create" a pre-determined choice.

The choice to go AP is still there, technically, since an AP build can still be pretty descent against towers, even without any AP scaling abilities, it just is a pretty bad decision to do so, is all.

The point is, we now have a champion that is an AD carry, due to the tweaks we made, as we've now passively made that decision for the player. They see him as an AD carry, and their decisions from this point out, will be slanted towards that idea.

This narrows the problem from being "infinite possibilities" to "AD only possibilities", which at least gives us something to work with.

Our next thing we can work with, is to isolate the ways we can make an AD carry.

What do we want them to do? Attack really fast? Do lots of damage in one big hit? How are they going to apply that damage? Are they even going to want to be in melee in the first place?

Let's give them an attack range of 600. Alright, now it's pretty obvious they don't want to be in melee range, probably, and furthermore, it means they can now poke people and back off, who have shorter range than they do. This implies, to the player, that they're not going to want attack speed, so much, if they're going to be running in to take one poke, and back off.

As such, we want to make that a choice. Let's give them an ability that benefits them from being in range for several hits in a row. Every time they attack, they do an additional 3/6/9/12/15 bonus damage per hit, stacking up to 5 times, and wears off after 3 seconds without attacking.

For their passive, we'll set it up so that if they haven't attacked an enemy champion for at least 5 seconds, then their next attack will automatically critically hit.

By adding only two abilities, we now have a champion that may want to do hit and runs, but they have the option to instead stick around for awhile too. The player now has to debate whether they want to just run in and poke a player, then back out, or if they want to hang around, and put themselves at additional risk of retaliation.

Congratulations, we have just created a choice in a player's mind. That choice had always been present, the entire time, but we have isolated the infinite white noise of possibilities down to a concrete decision that can go one way, or the other. It's up to the player, now, to decide how they want to make use of this champion.

While you can't make a decision, quite clearly, you can bring a decision that was one sided before, to the foreground, by adjusting the factors that go into that decision, until the answer is no longer obvious, and requires taking active consideration.

This, is the nature of choice, and the greatest tool we have in instilling game play into our champion designs.
Part 3: So what decisions can I really make?Lots, to be honest!

Sure, they're artificial constructs, and don't really exist, with the vast majority of them being made for you on a subconscious level, where you will never get to actively participate in the matter, but they are there.

In League of Legends, there are a lot of decisions, but we only have access to so many from a design perspective. We can't instill fear in a player, nor can we instill confidence. These are up to the enemy team, and their allies, as well as their own situation at that moment, to provide such.

We can, however, give them a few obvious choices, by presenting them with choices that don't have an obvious answer. When the answer's obvious, they don't really regard it as a choice in the first place. When it makes them think, that's when they really feel like they have an impact on what happens.

So, let's take a look at them, shall we?


Itemization's a big one! Consider a champion like Malzahar, where every ability he has, has a pretty high AP scaling ratio! (Except his passive, which actually scales off AD, amusingly enough. AD Malz is fun to play vs bot games, but I wouldn't suggest it in a real game XD )

The high AP scaling means that the player will generally want to build lots of AP items. Since he's got low life, but needs to stick around an enemy player for a few seconds to let his abilities take effect, however, they may also want to build some defenses to go with that AP, so he now has a choice in how to build his items.

For someone like Yorick, who scales off total AD, bonus AD, AP, and health, this means that it's hard to decide, fully, what to build him as.

A champion with high scaling of a particular stat, is likely to build for that stat, while one that has multiple stats, or low scaling, is more likely to just build tanky, as they don't gain much benefit from going glass cannon.

As such, itemization is a great way to give the player some choices, as they have all sorts of ways to affect their game with it, such as covering up holes in their design (such as a frozen mallet on a melee with no chasing potential), or amplifying things they already do well (AP on a high AP scaling burst caster).

Other options include the following!

- Attack range adjusts how players act in lane, and in team fights

- Spell range can alter when they use their abilities

- Scaling heavily influences how a player itemizes their champion

- Defensive abilities can make players more confident, sometimes to the point of being suicidal (Vlad in particular)

- Steroids can significantly alter how well a character likes to autoattack

- Mixing ratios and benefits can lead to players going for hybrid, or other strange builds

- CC can reduce the choices an enemy player can make, so be careful about overusing these!

- Multi-form abilities, such as ones that have different effects whether they hit an ally or an enemy, can greatly change how a player uses them and when

- Skill shots involve timing, positioning, and numerous other factors, which can lead to interesting game play choices. Take Nidalee's spear, as a perfect example!

- Forcing a player to use an ability as either an offensive, or defensive tool, and refusing to let them use it for both at the same time, can really make them debate when and how to use their abilities

There are hundreds more choices around, but these should get you at least started down the path!
Part 4: We come in to the world and take our chances. Fate is just the weight of circumstances. That's the way that lady luck dances. Roll the bones! - Rush, Roll The Bones (Rush ROCKS! <3 )So, we have choices. Great. We've also covered that choices are permanent fixtures, that we can't really remove or avoid, and only the circumstances can be adjusted.

That leads us to something I'd mentioned earlier. False choices.

If every choice, is in fact a choice, even ones that are obvious, then what exactly is a so-called "false choice" in the first place?

Well... let's say you have an ability, where if you stand still, you die to the champion killing you. If you run away, the ability kills you instead. Yes, this is from the Bloodseeker from DotA.

This is a false choice, in that it presents several options to the player, but all of them are bad choices, yet it makes out some of the potential decisions to be made, to look superior to others, when they really aren't.

That thing I said awhile back about letting the sheeple think they make their own choices? Yeah, if you screw around with their heads by showing them that they really didn't have a say in the matter, but you made them think they did? They get a little pissy over that, and then they start to realize how little control they have over the rest of the game.

Pull stunts like that too often, and they decide that the best decision is just to stop playing entirely.

It's fine to jerk their chain, and make decisions for them behind their backs, but you can never, ever, play your hand and show them upfront that they were being led by the nose the whole time.

As with magic, game play is created through leading people around, but keeping the intricate complexities hidden out of their sight. A good magician never reveals their secrets flat out because of the fact that, once you've revealed your secret, all the magic is lost. It just... dies somehow.

If you explain to a player that they haven't really been controlling their destiny this whole time, and that their entire gaming history is a lie? They're going to get upset, and they're going to feel betrayed, or just depressed. Either way, none of this is good for business, and you don't want that kind of stuff going on.

Even my explaining this to you, is a very risky thing, on my part. You aren't supposed to know how little control you have over the game, nor your own lives, as a whole. It's what we call "blissfully ignorant" for a reason.

If you want to take the plunge into being the one pulling the strings, instead of the marionette dancing on the other end, though, you're going to have to come to grips with this reality of the world we live in, and of game design as a whole.

Writers toy with your emotions by placing a situation that elicits the response they want to invoke, such as happiness, sadness, fear, or anger, among other things. A champion designer does the same thing, but in a different way.

When you're making your champion, you have a list of ways you want your champion to be played. You have an item build in your head, and ideas behind what you think is the "right" way to play them.

If a player breaks those little rules you made, and plays them differently, you have to go in and either accept that as an answer, providing such as a valid form of play, or you're going to have to dismantle their capacity to play the champion in that manner.

Either way, you're toying with false choices, in that the player is always assumed that they are going to make a certain choice in favour of the decision that you, yourself, would have made in their place.

Technically, all choices are false, in something as readily controllable as game design, but the ones that really stand out are the problem cases. Those choices that you make, and you feel immediately after that sense of "GRRRR it didn't matter what I did, I was screwed either way from the start!".

Those are your big problems. Avoid them at all costs.

When you design a champion, you have to keep in mind that there are certain situations they're going to get themselves into, such as team fights, or being chased when they're at low health. You have to plan around these eventualities, and give them a shred of hope of escape, or at the very least, let them think they had some capacity to change the outcome there.

If you box them in, and limit them, they will notice, and they're not going to be pleased.

In writing, you learn that people have expectations, in their mind. They expect that the good guys will win in the end. That love will always triumph. That they can aspire to something greater than they are. If you provide them with these, they don't honestly much care, to a degree, how you go about providing such. They like to feel "right".

The key to writing a mystery novel, is not to dangle a mystery in front of someone's face, and withhold the information from them so they can't tell whodunit. It's to feed them tiny clues, a little bit at a time, to let them figure it out on their own, and then reveal it blatantly at the end, so they feel happy that they got it right.

The same thing exists in game design, and champion design as well.

A player wants to feel that, if they build themselves to specifically counter a particular enemy on the other team, that they will be able to defeat that enemy in a 1 on 1 fight. Things like Vayne's Silver Bolts, contradict that belief.

Yes, most of her damage is physical, but even if you build massive amounts of armour, the true damage still bleeds through with remarkable effect, despite your best efforts. You can't build health, you can't build armour, and you can't build magic resistance.

This is why Vayne leaves a bad taste in people's mouths after fighting her. She's not OP, and she's quite fun to play as, and against, except that her Silver Bolts taste like ashes, because, even if you win, it still feels inherently wrong.

Yes, yes, you're the great puppeteer, and have come to make a champion design that is the CC master of the world. They can lock down an entire enemy team for a week straight, as their stuns last longer than the cooldowns, and they have no mana costs to speak of.

You know what? Ditch that line of reasoning immediately, if you have it.

Game/Dungeon Masters, in particular, in tabletop RPGs come across this "puppet master" mindset with startling frequency, and it backfires every time.

Your goal, as a game developer, is not to create an impossible situation for a player, and then laugh at them because they're stuck in it. Of course they're stuck in it, you didn't give them a way out. Some game developers have sadly fallen for this trap, and made games where they want the player to lose. Badly.

This isn't in your job description. Your job is to make something that's fun to play as, not something that's ungodly powerful.

Any champion you design which has overwhelming power, that you think would be fun to play as... consider the flip side of the coin. Would it be fun to play against them? Do you even have a choice as to whether you can fight back?

If the answer is no, you've dun gone screwed up big time boy-o, and it's time to take a step back, and reevaluate the design in general, as well as your motives for designing such.

Any time you provide a player with a choice to make, you also have to give them a valid option in there as well. Sure, there's an infinite number of choices all around them, but if you're going to shove one in their face, by making it not obvious what the correct answer is, you then are obligated to make sure that there is a correct answer, and that the correct answer makes sense.

Trick questions aren't cute, and they aren't funny. They piss players off, and with good reason. You just stomped all over their little belief that the world is an organized, sensible place, where selecting the right answer involves getting a cookie, and the wrong answer gets a trip through electroshock.

Once you start screwing with their expectations, they're going to hate you for it. And if it persists long enough, they're simply going to get up, and walk away.

The harsh truth of the world, is that an awful lot of it probably doesn't have any higher meaning or purpose. Our brains go through great lengths to create order out of chaos, however, and we have individuals who spend their entire lives trying to structure answers towards the goal of placating the masses so that they don't panic via the realization that the light at the end of the tunnel, may in fact just be an oncoming train. Your job, in creating a character, is part of this, as you are distracting them from real life, by giving them a vent for frustrations, as well as a place to relax and enjoy themselves.

Work with your players, and provide them with the tools they require to make the correct decision in any choice you present to them. Don't play tricks, and don't jerk them around. This doesn't necessarily mean tell them outright what the answer is, either, but it does mean that you can't just lie flat out to their face.

In the final analysis, your job is to make their game fun. If your champion design isn't fun, and the problem is that the choices you've given them to allow them to interact with the game, are all false choices, then you have failed in that task, and need to go back and clean things up pronto.

Class dismissed!

Class is in session for the day, boys and girls, as well as those of indiscriminate gender. Also, potted plants. Just in case one of them is reading this. It'd suck to get sued for being a plantist.

Anyway, today we're discussing a few things, and all of them relate to Improvement and Criticism.

First, we'll cover why criticism is needed in the first place.

Second, we'll go over how to accept it, when it's needed.

Third, we'll attend to how to understand whether it's good criticism or bad.

Fourth, how to put that criticism into your champion design to actually make them better.

Fifth, and last, we'll cover how to be a good critic yourself.Part 1: "And while I'm composing it, I'm also reviewing it. It's my policy never to read my reviews." - Jeremy Hillary Boob Ph.D., The Yellow SubmarineEveryone's a critic. Thing is, we actually need critics, strangely enough. Many artists absolutely hate such things, others don't understand why they exist, and some just don't get the concept in general.

So why do we even need critics in the first place? Well, the answer's actually pretty simple. We, as a species, are designed in such a way that we typically assume that our own ideas are good ones. We're biased towards stuff we've come up with, since we tend to only see the reasons behind why we did them in the first place, and aren't particularly good at seeing the things we missed, otherwise we would not have missed them in the first place.

A critic, is someone who evaluates your work and verifies whether it's really all that good or not. Varying critics will look at things from varying angles. No one person can see all ends, so critics will rarely agree on specific points. Critics are still human, however, so they still make mistakes. They may misinterpret something, they may misunderstand, they may not know the reasons behind why something was done, or may fail to grasp an important point which is needed to be understood for the work being evaluated to make sense.

In something like a more standardized job with a clearly structured hierarchy, such as a game development company, you'll have supervisors, quality assurance, play testing, peer review, and many other forms of criticism which will ensure that the finalized design is as high quality as it can possibly be. The lack thereof, in things such as disorganized indie development games, higher end jobs where there are no real performance evaluations, or this forum, you're stuck with just critics, who often times aren't really all that well versed in what it is they're trying to review, and this makes it very difficult to truly improve oneself.

The point of a critic is always the same, however. Their job is to identify areas for improvement, and commentate on such, so that others are able to determine the value of the work being evaluated. Sometimes the audience of a critique is the audience that the work itself is intended for, other times the critique is the author of the work.

Either way, at no point is your goal in a critique to attack, harass, or attempt to upset the author, nor is it to sugar-coat problems, nor to boost the individual's ego.

Criticism exists for the sole purpose of having another person's point of view and perspective, who can identify issues which the original designer, or team, were not capable of identifying themselves. Whether this is to warn off audiences from viewing a bad movie, or to provide the designer with the information required to improve upon the design before a live audience sees their work, is pretty much arbitrary, as the only thing that really changes, is the way the end criticism is presented, but not the content thereof.

If you don't learn from the criticism provided, you aren't making use of a valuable tool that could have improved the quality of your own work.

If you get to the point that you absolutely refuse to even consider that you might be wrong, and just assume that any criticism is lacking a constructive angle, then the chances are you're narcissistic, and should probably be seeing a doctor about it, instead of reading this guide.

If, however, you accept that criticism can be a useful tool for improvement, then you're at least on the right path to making your designs better than they already are.

Keep in mind, that even harsh criticism, can still be valuable. Consider those individuals who complain on a forum. They gripe, moan, complain, etc, etc. Many others tell them to shut up and just be happy with what they have.

Guess which side I prefer in that?

The same side every decent game company is on. The side of the whiners.

Wait, what? Why!?

Well, think of it this way... "I liked it", is a nice little boost to the ego, but it doesn't do much to help improve the game as a whole. If someone complains, they have a gripe, and that means you may have a problem that needs to be fixed. If they complain, they also tend to be very specific in their complaints, and typically will point out exactly what it is that bothers them, which gives you plenty of information on how to identify if it really is an issue that needs addressed, as well as getting a feel for the community as a whole, as most people don't relate their opinions on anything, except when they're upset.

We complain when we're frustrated, but tend to stay silent when we're appeased. Rarely do we say thank you, as a people, when we're happy, and even if we do, it's typically in a very vague sense. If you felt the need to send a message to Riot about League of Legends, what would you say?

Most likely, you'd state that you love the game and are happy with it, and to keep up the good job, but there's one or two minor things that bother you, and you'd probably list them off.

As can be seen, the "nice" part of the review was pretty much useless from a developer's point of view, in terms of being able to improve upon their design. The "mean" part of the review was actually quite useful in isolating and containing problems before they got any larger, by at least identifying where they were, and giving a direction for the development team to focus their attentions upon.

As such, any time someone gets upset at people complaining, and does the fanboy dealie of getting mad and yelling at those who are complaining, it makes me facepalm. Seriously, our species is designed to try to improve our current standing. If something's good, it means it can be made better, into something great. By chipping away at the minor issues one at a time, you can transform it from just "good" into something "truly great". If you just accept it as "good enough", there's no improvement, and nothing ever gets better.

For those of you, who are reading this, and ascribe to the fanboy mentality of "It's fine so stop complaining!", seriously, just stop. You're actually harming the company you profess to love so much.

Criticism is a necessary part of the development cycle, and without it, we'll never get anywhere beyond that which we can see from our own, limited, perspective.
Part 2: "I turn on the tube and what do I see? A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me"" - The EaglesSo, now that we've established that criticism is required to foster a healthy design from infancy, through to finalized product, what do we do about that pesky little ego inside your head demanding that you smack the critic in the face and suggesting you tell them to bugger off?

Well... that's a little more tricky. It's an emotional response, and to be perfectly blunt, emotional responses are difficult to reason with, because they aren't exactly reasonable. The only real way to deal with this, that I've personally found, is to drown it in facts and hope the whiny little ego chokes to death on a sea of proof to the contrary.

Yes, honourable judge, I murdered my ego. It had it coming, though.

As a writer, and an artist, I can't afford the luxury of just assuming my work is top notch. Of course it isn't. At least, not yet, anyway. Anything I make is going to be flawed, broken, and need significant adjustments and improvement.

Once I became consciously aware of the fact that I'm not perfect, at that moment, I opened up the door to attain that very goal. The whole dealie of "Accepting that I know nothing" being the best place to start learning is, in fact, quite true.

To become defensive is natural, as we don't like to be viewed as less than perfect.

You need to break down this fantasy world, where you can do no wrong, and accept that we are, as a species, flawed, and that every single thing that we attempt to do, will also be infected by those flaws, and turn out flawed as well.

That doesn't mean that our works can't become flawless, but it does mean that, in order to cause that, you have to start getting rid of the flaws that cropped up in the design, and to do that, you need to first identify where the flaws are.

We suck at seeing our own flaws. We concentrate on things that aren't even problematic, and often become paranoid about things that are all in our heads. The real problems we have, we usually don't even know about. The ones we chastise ourselves over, are typically meaningless junk that is imaginary in the first place.

This, is why we need outside help. Objective criticism allows us to see the truth behind what our designs and creations really are. Without this, we'll never be able to figure out where the problems are to begin working on fixing them.

Sure, on rare occasion, we'll stumble across a problem, or we'll get a break of divine inspiration, but for the most part, this just doesn't happen all that often, and even if it does, we won't necessarily have any idea of what the solution is, or even where to begin patching it up.

Just because you know something's broken, doesn't mean you know how to fix it.

If my sink starts spewing blood up to the ceiling, I'm not even going to be sure whether I should be calling a plumber, or an exorcist, let alone where to begin fixing it by myself.

Alright, creepy imagery, I know, but it does fit. XD

The point is, if you want to get better, you need to beat your ego into submission, and let the critics do their job.

The first thing to do, is admit that you're not perfect. No one is. I may claim I am, frequently, at that, but I know better than to believe practically anything that comes out of my own mouth.

Next off, you're going to have to sit down, and consider that the critics *MAY* have a point. Note that I'm stressing the term "may", using AOLspeak methods, of which, I'm admittedly a little ashamed over, but it's important to stress that word on a very specific level. They may not. They may be completely, flat out, WRONG. The next section will cover how to identify whether they are, or not, but for now, accepting that they might be right, is a big deal.

The stage after this, is to evaluate whether they are right or not. This may sound like it doesn't involve your ego, but it really does, as it'll try to lie to you, and tell you they're fools, out to ruin your glorious plans for conquest and subjugation of the entire human race under your control. Make sure to smack it in the face if it's telling you to become a dictator, but otherwise, shove it out of the way temporarily, and see about trying to note their points, one at a time, and attempt to objectively analyze them as if it were someone else's design, rather than your own, so that your pesky ego doesn't get in the way.

Finally, once you've determined that you may actually be wrong, rather that get indignant about it, instead just tell yourself that, you know what? If you fix that problem, then you won't be wrong anymore. So long as you're wrong, that tarnish shall remain, and as soon as you fix it, you really are that much closer to perfection. This makes the ego grudgingly accept that it'll work with you, even if you do have it at gunpoint the whole time.

Well, whatever works. As long as you're able to fix your problems, you're farther ahead than most people XD
Part 3: "It doesn't matter if they're right. If they're right for the wrong reasons, then they're still wrong, no matter how right they may be." - Katsuni (actually this is part of a friend's comic after he quoted me on it XD )The next issue we have, is identifying good criticism, from bad criticism. This can be tricky to do, as we just covered that we suck at identifying our own flaws, so we can't really trust our own judgement about our own stuff.

The nice part here, however, is we're pretty good at picking up on the flaws of people other than our own selves. This means that the trick is to identify where the critic went wrong, rather than to try to consider your own material. If you spend all your time and effort trying to ascertain if they're right, you're going to find yourself staring at an impossible task before you.

It can't really be done.

So... break their argument, and prove them wrong. Identify each part of what they say, and see if you can find issue with their logic. As you chip away at their argument, notify them of such and inform them of what you're doing. The idea here, is to get continual feedback and discussion on the matter.

You really need to stress, here, that you're attempting to do this in an objective manner, in order to ensure that the highest quality of your work can be attained, and that you're not trying to just discredit them. Technically, you are trying to break their work, but it's not for the purpose of breaking them as a person, or to try to make their work wrong, so much as to see which parts you can't break, which will leave these as things that are probably true.

It's a strange method, but it does work remarkably well. Our brains are great at finding flaws in the work of others, but suck at finding the flaws in our own. Equally, we suck at telling when someone's actually right, and it's only when we go over what we said, that we run into the logical fallacies and other errors in judgement and reasoning.

We break things. We're really, remarkably, good at doing it, too.

So... play up to your strengths, and break their argument about your design, in every way you can do so.

Converse with them while doing so, toss ideas back and forth, ask for clarification, and debate the matter. When you finish this, and have found every tiny way you can damage their argument as possible, what is left, is the closest thing that you, I, or anyone else, will ever come to the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Once you have that, then you can tell what truly needs to be fixed.

If you can just wander through their argument, poking holes in it willy-nilly, and there's very little holding it up, then it's probably not going to be of much use to the design you have.

Keep in mind, however, that only the points that the person brings up matter. If you bring up their history, their personal ideals, or attempt anything in close approximation to an Ad Hominem attack, then you really aren't dealing with the flaws in their argument, but the flaws in them as a person.

If you're attacking the person, rather than the statement, you're doing it wrong. It doesn't matter if they're an idiot, or wrong 99% of the time, or if you hate them. Focus on the statements they make. Maybe they are wrong 99% of the time, but this could be that singular 1% of the time that they're right.

If it turns out that your only complaints are against them, and not about what they said, then, while you may still continue to dislike them as a person, the fact is, they're still right, so long as yeu can find nothing wrong with what they actually said.

Keep in mind that the purpose of this kind of debate isn't to break down an opponent, so much as to tear apart their argument until nothing is left of it but the truth. It's the whole "Sculpt an elephant by simply removing from the stone slab anything that doesn't look like an elephant" method, and it works remarkably well in a situation such as this.

Just make sure that ego of yours doesn't attack the person, instead of the statements. I stress that again, as it's a common failing, and you won't learn anything by doing so.
Part 4: I thought I was wrong, once, but I was mistaken.Alright, let's say that we've gotten to the point where you accept that the critic is right, and you have a problem. So what do you do about it?

Some critics will actually provide suggestions on how to go about fixing the issue, so that you have at least a vague idea of one method of overcoming a problem. To be honest, there's typically many ways to avoid the current issue, and the offering given, may not be the best method, as it may trip up on other areas in the process.

In the final analysis, it is truly your design, and no one can take that away from you. You can't just let everyone walk in on your design and screw with it. If they say you need to do one particular solution to fix it, ignore them. Unless, of course, they're a supervisor or producer. The supervisor probably has a reason for why they're suggesting a particular method, and they probably know more than you do on the subject. The producer is probably wrong, but they hold the paychecks, so suck it up, and what ever you do, don't tell them they're an idiot, even if you're only being honest. Especially if you're being honest. They really hate that.

Anyway, since we don't have supervisors, nor producers here, in this forum, we're going to go with just ignoring them, for now.

You have a goal in mind for your design. A purpose, a feel, a play style which you, personally, enjoy. We tend to make things we would, ourselves, like to play. As such, another person's solution may simply not mesh with your desired goal, and may ruin your design, in your own eyes.

Don't let them get in your way. They can be right that something's broken, and they may be right that their solution may be able to bypass the issue neatly, but you know what? They may also be wrong that their solution is the correct one, for you, to fix it.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, and the cat doesn't have to like any of them. I say this, reluctantly, as I rather lurve kitties, but the saying still stands in the purpose it holds.

Let us say that, yes, the critic gave a way to fix the problem, but you really don't like the way that's suggested. No problem. There's a ton of other ways to go about fixing it.

See, for any problem, there are multiple ways to correct such. Some may work better than others. Some may create more problems indirectly in their application. Some may make more problems than they're really worth. Some you may not even notice, or realize exist, but it doesn't mean they're not there.

We always have a choice. Any time someone says "there's no choice", they're just trying to placate themselves before they do something they don't want to do. Of course there's a choice! It's just... the choice may not be a particularly pleasant one. There's a near infinite number of ways you can go about handling any situation, it may just be that of that near infinite number, all of them kind of suck, in one way, or another, and one of them may just suck a little less than the rest. You still have a choice, though.

In this situation, we have an advantage, in that there's no immediate reprisal or ramifications for making a choice. If we break something else in the process of fixing the current problem, no big deal! We can just move on to fixing that issue afterwards, and if it's one we're consciously aware of breaking, all the better! It means we don't need to go through that messy process of dealing with a critic again to fix it, and we probably already have a few ideas on how to go about repairing the collateral damage that occurred.

Anyway, the whole point of this entire section, is that you know more, than your critic does, at least, about what you want. Unless you're me. I have no clue what I want most of the time, but that doesn't seem to stop me from doing stupid things in the attempt of finding out XD

Regardless, you have the option to agree that there's a problem with your design, but you also have the option to disagree on the best method of fixing that problem. Take charge of your design, and own it as yours! You have an obligation to yourself to make something that you, yourself, would love to play.

The critics don't know your mind inside out. They may think they do, but there's a significant difference between actually knowing, and thinking you know.

Your champion is just that: your champion, so don't let anyone make it into something you don't like anymore. Perhaps their suggestion on a way to fix things is a good one, and you like the idea they presented. Maybe you think it flat out sucks, because it goes completely against the whole purpose you had in mind from the start of what you wanted that champion design to accomplish.

Either way, make sure that the only reason you change your champion, or any other design you work on in life, is because you want to change it that way.

With, of course, the previous exceptions of supervisors and producers. Durn them corporate hierarchies! *Shakefist@*Part 5: No. No I'm afraid everything's wrong. Including this statement. Everything has to go.So, since we need critics, and you've received the benefits from having such, it's probably a nice idea to return the favour in such a way that you help the community further, yourself.

After all, if you are a good critic, then others will learn to be good critics in kind, and will therefore be able to provide you with better criticism than you had before, right?

So, since that's settled, let's work on becoming a good critic!

A nice critic pads the ego with platitudes such as "I liked it", or "Good job!". While these are nice, and that encouragement can give the designer the strength they need to carry on, in and of themselves, they're pretty much worthless towards making a better design as a whole.

A good critic, is one who provides useful information that can be applied towards making the basic design better than it already is. Ideally, a good critic will do so in a kind way, that will encourage the designer to want to revise their champion design, but that's a secondary concern to the primary one of simply having useful information.

Criticism, by the very definition thereof, involves criticizing. Who would'a thunk? This means, however, that at some point, you're going to have to criticize a bad decision, or point out a flaw or error.

The trick, is to do so in a positive way.

Actually, let me take a few steps back here, and we'll go over the process from the start.

First off, you're going to find a design that could use some work. Hehe... yeah, see that's every design out there. Even the ones in the game, produced by Riot Games themselves, still need work. Art is never "finished", it simply runs out of time, budget, or patience.

Next, you're going to decide that you want to help out, either because you like the idea, and want to see it improved upon to be even more fun, or because you hate it, and want to see it turned into something that doesn't suck.

Note that I said "help out", not "attack". Your goal in a review is to lend your personal expertise and aid towards bettering the design beyond where it currently stands for quality. If the only reason you're commenting, is to make them feel better, to get reviews for yourself, or to harm their ego, then back out immediately.

That thing I said earlier, about being right for the wrong reasons, still applies here. If you go in with the wrong attitude, you can, and will, ruin the work you set out to do. To review with malicious intent on the mind, will corrupt the work and leave the review as far less useful than it really should have been. To review with benevolence, will allow the design to bloom into a beautiful flower. Or a duck. Or maybe a boot. I dunno.

Anyway, you want to begin your review with a good mindset. If you go into a review in a bad mood, you're just going to vent your frustrations of the moment upon the designer and discourage them from working further. Friends don't let friends be pissy and review. We shoot them first, then cannibalize the corpse as zombies.

So, let's say you're in a good mood, want to help, and are now reviewing a champion.

Great!

Now, how do we go about reviewing this thing? Ah, that's a bit more tricky, now, isn't it?

First off, do a once over of the design. Check for things that jump out at you immediately as problematic. This could be lore, stats, abilities that work ridiculously well together, typos, it doesn't' matter, to be honest. So long as you find some stuff that's broken, that's a good place to start. Not everyone's able to do in depth break downs that will provide a whole new set of revelations about design as a whole, though if you finish reading this entire guide, you'll probably have a lot more ammunition to work with on that side of things.

Anyway, you've got some problems. Alright, that's great and all, but now you also need some good stuff, too. What? Good stuff? Yep! Pick out some things that you actually LIKE about the design! Perhaps an ability you think is really cool, maybe their lore has something awesome in it, who knows? More over, who cares? It really doesn't matter, just find some stuff that's good. We'll cover this shortly, as to why.

Your next step is to begin detailing the issues of what is a problem with the design in question. Make sure you're through, and that you give explanations for why you believe that these are problems. Just saying "this is wrong", but not explaining why it's wrong, won't really give them much idea as to where the problem is, which makes it pretty hard to fix it.

This is your opportunity to be a bit of a braggart. By going into detail about why something's wrong, you get to show off that big brain of yours. Oooh yeah, baby, so hot. It's soooo biiiiig. *Cough*. I didn't say that.

Erm... yeah. So, the point here is that you want to take this opportunity to really go into significant detail as to why something's a problem in the first place. The more information they have, the better their chances of being able to correct the issue.

Now that you've explained what's wrong, you want to explain what's right.

People are odd, and tend to hang on the last thing that was said to them. If you end on a downer note, they go kinda meh, and aren't that interested in doing anything to fix things. If you end on the positive side of things, they tend to cheer up, and are willing to put additional effort into revising the problems that were just identified.

That means it's time to break out the arsenal of good stuff you found earlier. Give them examples of why certain things made you smile, or grabbed your interest.

By providing a list of what they did right, they'll have a basis to work from of what their problems should end up looking like eventually. Sure, a doctor can tell you when something looks infected, but the only way to do that, is to know how it looks when it's not infected, first.

To have a base line reference of what "good" looks like, is a very important part of the revision process, as you can't really fix "wrong", until you know what "right" is supposed to look like. If you try to fix "wrong" without this, you'll probably just change it from one form of wrong to another form of wrong, with no real correction in the process.

Additionally, pointing out the good parts in something, tends to make that individual trust you more, as they feel you see them as more than just "some big meanie head" who's out to "get them". Give them reason to like you, and they'll be more receptive to your suggestions, as well as more accepting of when you say there's a problem.

If you just come off as a jerk, it doesn't matter how right you are, they're going to ignore all of it on the grounds that they figure you just hate them and anything you say is going to be assumed to just be being said because of that.

This doesn't fix anything, and ruins the whole point of doing a review in the first place.

As such, the steps are as follows:

1: Find a design to work on.
2: Decide to help.
3: Pick out some problems that need to be addressed (it doesn't have to be ALL of them!)
4: Grab a few nice things that you like as well
5: Explain the problems, and go into detail as to why they're problems.
6: Provide potential solutions for these problems.
7: State a few things you liked about the design.
8: Suggest they do some more work on it, but be encouraging on this part.

Ta-da! You can now review like a pro. Kind of. You're going to need to actually know what you're talking about to act like a true professional, but really, that's what the rest of the guide is here for.

Now go out and review someone's stuff! It doesn't matter whose stuff it is, just find something on the front page that catches your interest, and give them a review. If you do this, then they may start giving reviews as well, and eventually, we'll have a nice base of people capable of helping each other out, and our own designs will get the help they deserve!

If no one does reviews in general, then we're all screwed equally. You can't just sit back and hope people look at your stuff, if you never look at theirs, because they're doing the same thing you are. Mindlessly bumping your stuff a dozen times a day won't fix that, if no one's doing anything but bumping their own stuff.

Anyway, class dismissed! Wewt wewt!

Good day to all of you who have decided to attend!

Class is now in session. Or it could be that it's not in session. Maybe it's both. We could get into some debates on quantum theory, now that it's been verified that quantum effects can occur at a macroscopic scale that's large enough for the human eye to witness, but that's not why we're here today.

No, today, we are here to learn about formatting! Or, more specifically, legibility and presentation.

First on the list, we'll cover why it's even a big deal. There's technically reasons it's not important, but sometimes, it really is.

Second, we'll go over what kind of information you want to provide.

Third, we'll discuss the methods of presentation available.

Finally, I'll provide an example piece that I use for my own champions. I do occasionally update this over time, as more ideas come to me, so some of the older stuff I've provided may not yet have been caught up. Still, this will provide a great example for keeping track of things in an organized fashion.Part 1: I R TEH GUUD AHT ENGRUSH RLY I PAYZD MAH THURD GRAYD EDJUMAHKAYSHUN!Alright, first off, to dispel some myths.

Being good at spelling, or grammar, doesn't have anything to do with being intelligent, in the slightest. These are things which are merely pure memorization. Actual intelligence, on the contrary, involves being capable of processing new information, correlating against previous information, and making connections.

This means that if someone is told, individually, what the letters "k", "a" and "t" sound like, and then hear someone say "cat", and spell it "kat", they have shown the capacity to learn and use previous information in a new manner. If they spelled it properly, as "cat", without further knowledge, it would be in error.

Being tidy, with good spelling and grammar doesn't make you smart, nor does it necessitate that what you have written is any more worth reading than something with perfect punctuation.

See, the point of language, in general, is communication. So long as the information is passed from one individual, to another, with little to no problems in between, the purpose of language has been served.

Sure, I'm a writer, and happen to focus heavily upon making sure that I'm capable of providing that information in a very robust manner, in which even the tiniest details can be provided accurately, while still maintaining the capacity for the reader to come to their own conclusions. The thing is, if something's technically "wrong", it may still be more "correct" to do so anyway.

Consider the word "ugly". Technically, it should be spelled correctly. In practicality, were one to use the spelling of "ughly", I'd instead be forced to smile, slightly, because they managed to really give that guttural feel of exactly what the word entails, through tossing onomatopoeia into the mix. It's "wrong", but it really feels "right", and provides a better mechanism through which to communicate the purpose of what's trying to be said. Namely, that if you see something ugly, you really do want to instinctively say "ugh...".

The point here, is that you don't technically have to have everything perfect.

However, and this is a big however, to those who are grinning like idiots thinking that they can be sloppy, you can't just make a mess of things, just because you're lazy, or don't want to bother. If you're trying to communicate a point, then the point must be communicated, in full, to any other parties present.

In terms of champion design, this means that you want to be quite expressive about your information you give. If someone looks at your ability, and all it says is "it does 300 damage and stuns for 2 seconds", what does that tell us?

Well, it gives a vague idea of the damage and special effect properties to it, but it doesn't tell us if it's a skill shot, if it's capable of hitting minions, or what kind of range it has on it, to name a few.

What if it only hits champions? Well, it's better in lane, now, because it's harder to mis-click on a different target by accident, however, it does so at the expense of being useless in the jungle.

What if it's click on target to deal the effects, such as Sion's gaze? No dodging a skill shot, but now it's far easier to juke someone through the brush, and you can't land artillery style indirect fire hits on targets you can't see. That twitch who just stealthed an instant before, is now safe, and if you had a skill shot, you could've hit him.

How's the range? Is it on next melee hit? Does it make Nidalee's spear cry? Does your champion even have a melee attack?

This kind of information needs to be available to anyone looking over your design, if they're to understand what your champion is capable of doing.

By arranging the information into an easy to read format, you're doing several things.

- You're ensuring that, with consistent formatting, that you don't forget anything important.

- You make it possible for others to read through your champion, without stopping halfway through because it's physically painful for their eyes to try to concentrate on a huge block of text, without paragraphs.

- You also happen to make it much easier to tell, at a glance, what an ability does, and to find key information quickly, without feeling like you're wasting time on it.

If you want to post champions, then you're doing so for a reason. Either you want criticism, to better your designs, or you want people to see the stuff you made, to boost your ego, or, possibly, you just like putting fun ideas down to make other people happy as they read it.

Either way, you fail in all these tasks if the individual reading such gets fed up and ditches it because they can barely read what's being said.

If you can't communicate, effectively, what you mean, then you may as well not bother. If I can't tell what your champion does, then none of the above reasons for posting will be fulfilled.

As such, try to ensure that you explain, in detail, what your champion does. Extra sections which explain your reasoning behind why aren't necessary, but they can help a reader understand your own mindset better.

No matter what you do, though, err on the side of "too much" information, rather than "too little". In this task, the concept of TL: DR, simply does not exist, and anyone who says so, seriously, in a post on this forum, has missed the whole point.

Yes, I've said that before, but it still stands. Rawr!
Part 2: I know everything. Even that thing you did last weekend with a goat. Seriously, that's just creepy.So, I'll assume, though I shouldn't, that you want to make sure your champions have useful information in them now. Great!

Now that we have that covered, what do you want to know? EVERYTHING.

No, really. Everything.

If you can think about it, it should probably be in there, somewhere.

There are a few things, however, which are more important than others, and some are often left out, so let's go over some key pieces of information and why we need them.

1: Attack range. This is a big one that almost everyone seems to forget, and it really irks me. A champion plays significantly differently, depending on how their capacity to hit minions are in the laning phase, and how close they have to be to attack someone in a 5v5 team fight. Always go out of your way to double check that you have your attack range listed. If you're not sure how far champions attack, then keep in mind that "long" range is generally about 600 for a normal auto attack, and Caitlynn's special, at 650, with Tristana eventually clocking in at a touch over 700. Melee is usually 125, but can vary between 100-200. Generally just saying "melee" is good enough, unless you are a specific exception.

2: Resource system. It's strange, but I've actually seen people forget to list this! I've seen them write down their abilities cost "50" to use, but no where, in the entire design, does it say if this is mana, energy, or something else. If your champion design doesn't use anything other than cool downs to manage their abilities, say so. As Sion would say, don't be a bone head.

3: Targeting method. Abilities that do effects are nice, but often, the method by which they attack can be as important as the effects themselves. Ezreal would play an awful lot differently if all his abilities were click to hit, and if his Q was "on next attack", instead.

4: Targets allowed. Another major one that's often overlooked. Make sure we know if an ability hits allies, champions, minions, towers, etc. This can be the difference between being an awesome jungler, or completely useless in it, and may make a big difference in other parts of the game, as well.

5: Range of abilities. Many people don't know what "good" ranges are. For that, I suggest just picking a champion that has something that you want that's roughly about the same range, and check them up on LoLWiki. This will give you a good estimate of what other champions are capable of doing, and gives the reader a much clearer idea of how useful the abilities are. Keep in mind, skill shots tend to be longer range than "click to hit" ones.

6: Travel speed of abilities. Another massively overlooked one, especially on skill shots, where it matters most. You can probably skip it, when describing a click-to-hit skill-less shot, but for a skill shot, it can be the difference between making a clean hit, or having someone simply walk out of range of Sona's ultimate, or Ahri's Seduction, both of which are notorious for their slow travel times.

7: Scaling. Strange, but true: many people forget to list the scaling. If it doesn't scale, state so specifically, preferably. This can severely affect their itemization capacity.

8: Name. I already covered naming elsewhere, but seriously, put a name on it. If you haven't bothered to pick a name for your champion yet, then the first thing people are generally going to think of is "Oh, another half done, boring champion with no thought put into it". I'm not joking, name your stuff.

9: Damage type. Way too often I find people not specifying whether an ability deals physical, magical, or true damage. Don't get carried away with true damage, but make sure an ability specifies what it does. Just because it scales off AD, doesn't mean that it necessarily deals physical damage! Be clear on this matter, as it can make a big difference on how one would build to counter them!

10: Unique, additional information. Many people seem to get it in their heads that they only need to list the stuff that other abilities have. If you need special information to understand how an ability works, such as Nemhain's odd zero cool down design, then you need to specify that information. Even something as simple as a "NOTE: Blahblahblah" at the end of an ability can make for a big deal =3

IT GOES TO 11: Anything else you can think of. Don't skimp out on the details, just because you're lazy! If you can think of something that's important, put it in there! People will enjoy your ability a lot more the more they know about it, or, at the very least, will know where the problem issues are, more accurately, so they can help you improve it further!
Part 3: Eye see wut u did thar!Alright, so we know why we need to put stuff in, and what kind of stuff needs to be added, but we haven't really gone over how to put it into our posts in the first place.

First off, let me state that there's a lot of ways to do this. Personally, I find seperating things into sections, surrounded by a quotation, is an easy method of isolating key topics, such as individual abilities. Either just use square brackets around the word quote and unquote, or highlight the text you want to be quoted, and press the little speech bubble button at the top of the screen there.

Note that it's also possible to put a quotation inside of a quotation.

Additionally, adding Bold, Italic, or Underscore modifiers to your text, can help to make them stand out more for information that you feel is more important, or needs special consideration. These can be done by highlighting the text you want adjusted, and either pressing the B I U buttons at the top of the screen, or by using CTRL+B, CTRL+I, or CTRL+U, for Bold, Italics, Underscore.

I'd give a lesson on BBCode and HTML here, but honestly, you don't need it. That and it was giving me fits with trying to forcibly convert the code into actual information. A real mess that was.

Anyway.

You can technically also use bulleted lists, and advanced formatting, but really, they're not needed, and I, personally, find them a bit tacky. As long as the information is clearly separated and cleanly provided, the specifics of how you go about formatting don't much matter.

Rather than try to describe such out a thousand different ways, I'm just going to move to the next section, as it's easier to show, than to describe this.Part 4: I'll need an example of your demonstration so I can demonstrate the example to the class.
Q: Ability Name

Description: The rough idea of what it does.

Effect: What the ability actually does, in a short, concise manner.

Purpose: Why the ability exists, and what it brings to the champion design as a whole

(The following are mostly static things which don't change as the ability levels up, or would only show up on the top of an ability or when targeting it)
Targeting: Skill shot, click on target, AoE, etc.
Targets allowed: Allies, enemies, minions only, etc.
Range: Very important for determining how useful it is for poking. Especially important on champions where people don't specify if they're melee or ranged auto attacks >.<
Area of Effect: For AoE abilities, how far it reaches, so one can determine how useful they are at hitting groups or blocking areas
Travel Speed: For skill shots, to determine capacity to dodge such. Also useful for dashes.
Cooldown: I shouldn't have to explain this XD
Cost: Be it mana, health, or whatever.
Additional Information: Extra stuff relevant to only that ability that may not be needed otherwise.

(This section is what the actual tool tip would read when mousing over an ability; 5 ranks to give an idea of early game scaling, and which abilities may be more useful to put points into early)
Rank 1: Causes the champion's next melee attack to make the target bleed, dealing 50 (+1.5 Bonus AD) physical damage across three seconds. If the target is attacked, while bleeding, they are slowed by 20% for 2 seconds.
Rank 2: Causes the champion's next melee attack to make the target bleed, dealing 110 (+1.5 Bonus AD) physical damage across three seconds. If the target is attacked, while bleeding, they are slowed by 25% for 2 seconds.
Rank 3: Causes the champion's next melee attack to make the target bleed, dealing 170 (+1.5 Bonus AD) physical damage across three seconds. If the target is attacked, while bleeding, they are slowed by 30% for 2 seconds.
Rank 4: Causes the champion's next melee attack to make the target bleed, dealing 230 (+1.5 Bonus AD) physical damage across three seconds. If the target is attacked, while bleeding, they are slowed by 35% for 2 seconds.
Rank 5: Causes the champion's next melee attack to make the target bleed, dealing 290 (+1.5 Bonus AD) physical damage across three seconds. If the target is attacked, while bleeding, they are slowed by 40% for 2 seconds.


This format provides a large amount of information, but does so in a pretty clear way of doing so. Additionally, it also just happens to provide all the possible things that someone might want to include, so that they don't accidentally forget to put something important in.

Note that I highlighted the titles by bolding them, so they stand out more. This makes it easy to tell when a new line is entered, without having to resort to additional paragraphs, and makes it easy to look for a specific piece of information.

The static statistics of an ability that rarely change are grouped together, such as range, cost, or targeting.

Keep in mind that some abilities don't fall under that category, and that the only thing that might change with an ability being leveled, may in fact be it's cool down or cost to cast. For these, you'd generally put that information below, under Ranks.

Next off, we have the ranks, each listed separately. It's a simple, clear way to tell how useful an ability is, and generally looks the same as it would in the actual game as a tool tip. This makes it easy to get a feel for how powerful it is at level one, and how it scales throughout the game.

Yes, it's a bit repetitive, but it does make it tidy, and easy to understand exactly how good an ability is at doing it's job at all ranks.

The example given is, admittedly, just an example, but it gives an idea of how to provide the information in a manageable method, including what it does, and what changes each level. It also provides the scaling, what it scales off of, and what type of damage it deals. Secondary effects are listed afterward, and either bolded or underscored (italics don't work so well here, I find), so that it's easier to tell which part is based off the primary effect, and which are secondary effects, at a glance.

Ideally, you should be able to just glance at an ability, and within a few seconds, figure out where the information you're looking for is.

Anyway, this is pretty much all there is to formatting! There's technically a ton of tiny other things, but for the most part, if you can follow this, you'll be doing fine.

Now, as of the time that I write this, it's a rather beautiful spring day, and almost right on the hour.

As such, class dismissed!

Ding ding, class is in session, yet again.

Today we'll be going over character creation!

No, put your hand down in the back, there. We haven't touched on character creation yet. Yes, we're doing champion creation, as a whole, but character creation's a little different.

So, first off, we're going to have to cover the differences between a character and a champion!

Second, we'll touch upon why having a character design built into your champion even matters, such as how they increase the fun factor, and increase skin sales.

Third, we'll go over the idea of personality, and how this can help your design.

Finally, we'll follow up with some basics on how to make a character visually appealing, so they stand out.Part 1: While every champion's a character, not every character's a champion.So, let's start off with "what's a character, then?", as I'm sure this is a question that's already on your lips.

A characteristic is a feature or trait someone, or something, possesses. A character, then, is a list of characteristics combined to form a whole.

This can mean things such as personality, motivations, quirks, and so on and so forth.

In the case of a champion, this will include their lore, their appearance, speech, and their abilities. Some of each of the personality, motivations, and quirks will show through in these vehicles.

From a literary perspective, a character should be distinctive, in the sense, that if you read a statement made by that character, it should be plainly obvious who's talking, even without things like voice acting or "Bob said this" to tip the reader off.

A character stands out as being very unique and distinct from others. Perhaps they're similar, in some ways, but they're never going to be identical in their portrayal of the traits they encompass.

Consider Katarina, Sion, Swain, Riven, and Darius. All of them lay claim to being, essentially, the "face of Noxus". They each stand for what makes Noxus what it is.

In each and every case, however, they show such in a different manner. Well, except for Darius and Riven; Darius's character is essentially just a male Riven, and probably shouldn't exist in the game, from a writer's perspective, since he doesn't really bring anything new, lore-wise, to the game, and is just a re-hash of old ideas.

This can be clearly seen just by comparing the two: Riven's the "power child of the Noxian spirit", whereas Darius is described as "There is no greater symbol of Noxian might than Darius". They essentially read almost identically, except that Riven was betrayed, which isn't a very good defining point, as they're pretty much the same character, with slight variation on the circumstances that they find themselves in.

And here, we come to my point about making a character design. Hecarim and Darius are very poorly designed characters, in that they really don't provide much of anything to the game that wasn't already available. Sure, they look different, but they fail at truly defining themselves as individuals, rather than just "generic face with list of abilities".

In contrast, Varus and Sejuani actually have good character designs, in that they have a reason to exist, motivations behind why they do what they do, as well as a personality and morals with which to define them.

It's possible to just dump a list of abilities on a page, and call it a champion, but it's bland and boring to do so, with no true life and soul behind such. The player doesn't truly get into playing a cardboard cut out the same way they do a character design that truly speaks to them, as a person, rather than a player.

Anyway, there's only so much I can touch on here, without spilling into the other sections, so let's move on to those!
Part 2: Just who do you think you are!?I'm Rene D'anclaude. Actually, no, I'm not, but if you've watched Armitage: Polymatrix, you'd get the joke ^.~

Anyway, why is a good character design important in the first place? Why does it even matter at all?

First, and foremost, strong characterization is a great way to lure players into the game. I was interested in LoL before I knew anything of it's game play, simply because it had creative and interesting characters. Annie, Blitzcrank, Tristana, Soraka and Jax, to name a few, were brilliant designs, which stood out clearly from the mundane, generic concepts that DotA:Allstars had going for it. They were bright, colourful, and highly interesting.

Having a strong character design can be what really lures someone into playing a game in the first place, and can even become a primary source of the entertainment value. Consider playing Gentleman Cho'gath, who, with the skin's new voice overs, leads to a highly amusing game. Even if you don't particularly like Cho'gath, as a champion style to play as, you can still get wrapped up in the ridiculous concept of an enormous monster in a suit and top hat.

Each player has their own individual list of traits and ideals that they enjoy. For me, I've found that Nidalee is my preferred champion, who stands for much of my own preferences. A few of my other friends have found a home in Teemo, or Rammus.

In so doing, they're far more likely to purchase skins for their favourite champion, and they're also more likely to get their preferred champion to work, no matter how much effort it takes.

If a player hates the champion they're playing, from the very design concept, they're probably not going to bother putting much effort into them, even if the play style matches their own. If, however, they feel a kinship to that character, on a fundamental level, they'll go through hell and high water to get to play them, no matter how nerfed they may become.

This is one of the grails, of sorts, of game design, and of writing in general: to grab a reader, or player's, attention, in the form of something they can relate to. Once you have their attention, they're vastly more likely to stick around.

MMORPG's get away with this by making their players attached to their characters on a deeply personal level. Sure, it's just an abstract set of numbers, but it's *THEIR* abstract set of numbers. They like the way their character looks, how it feels, and the customization they did to make it "theirs".

In LoL, we don't exactly have customization of the character itself, so much, though we do have skins, which play a similar role. As such, if someone has a character they like using, they're far more willing, on average, to blow money on making that champion something they really enjoy. Sure, the appearance is superficial, and doesn't have any real value to game play, but you know what? In the player's mind, they really don't care, because it's worth it to them.

With strong character design, you can grab new players, hold onto them, and milk them for cash. These are exactly the things a business model seeks out relentlessly, and as such, you really want to focus heavily on this.

Half the fun of the game, honestly, is in finding a champion that really speaks to you, and making them your favourite.

Don't skimp on characterization, here. Make sure you give your champion a real personality, something that really makes them stand out. Give them something to believe in, an appearance that makes them unique, and build them up to be something that the player can relate to, in some way, shape, or form.
Part 3: Hello, I'm Bob. From accounting.Well, we've covered that having a personality is important, so how do we go about accomplishing this?

This is actually pretty tricky to pull off, and many a fledgling writer has floundered about trying to accomplish the goal of a character with a distinct personality.

Interestingly enough, I've found that there's actually a rather easy way to describe this, of which I'll just steal directly from Babylon 5. (Apologies to J. Michael Straczynski )

Who are you?
What do you want?
Why are you here?
Where are you going?

Through answering these four questions, about your character, you're able to define them remarkably clearly.

Who are you?

This is a tricky question, and, as stated in the show, there's never a "right" answer to it. Who you are is a mixture of many things, but what it isn't, is a title. Someone who is a doctor, can't really answer that "I'm a doctor" in reference to this question. That's not who they are as a person, it's a title of what their job is. Maybe they could stretch it and claim to be a healer, instead of a doctor, as, at their core, their belief is that all life is sacred.

"Who are you?" is a question which encapsulates the concept of attempting to define yourself without relying on the descriptions of others.

There's a lot of things that we assume define us, when really, they are just things that happen to be true of us, without really being that which states who we are as an individual. If you rip the job, the title, the name, and all this other garbage away, what's left underneath? Who are we, when we're not doing a job, or answering to a title given to us?

For the sake of example, I'll use "Bob. From accounting." as an example. (Also, this is Thayen's description of who "definately not Blitzcrank" is =3 )

Bob, is named Bob. Did his parents know him before he was born? No, he probably got the name "Bob" before they even conceived him. "If it's a boy, we'll name him Robert, if it's a girl, Roberta." Way to go, there, parents. Woo. Go, you. Ever consider that a kid's name will be stuck with them for the rest of their lives, unless they legally change it, and that people will associate that name with who they supposedly are?

Probably not.

In this case, Bob isn't who Bob is (actually, it's Blitzcrank, but bare with me ^.~ ), it's just an arbitrary title bestowed upon him by people who didn't even know him. If I decided to call this same individual "Larry" instead of "Bob", does that change who they are, as a person? If their parents named them Larry, instead of Bob, would that have changed their entire outcome in life?

It really wouldn't have done much of anything, in 99% of cases, because your name isn't who you are.

Neither is your job, your age, or any other titles.

Cut all these away, and narrow it down to what your core ideals are. What makes you who you are? What defines you, as a person?

Many people can't answer this question of themselves, let alone for their characters. As such, it's a tough question to deal with.

For myself, as an example, I can state that I enjoy teaching others, as this immense guide can attest to. I'm not a trained teacher, but it's something that I feel "right" doing. It's a core part of who I am, to not just hoard knowledge, but to seek it out, and share it. As such, one can state that, as a part of "who I am", is that I am one who teaches.

To make a truly in depth character design, you're probably going to want about 2-3 of these points that define the character as a whole. If you can get that many, you'll be able to build up to the rest of these questions, in sequence.

What do you want?

Another nasty one. Do we really want what we think we want? Many of us, here, may think we'd love nothing more than to work in the gaming industry. Having actually worked in it, I can warn you that it's a lot of hard work, long hours, and often very monotonous. The pay is iffy, working with corporations and executives can be painful, and everyone seems to be positioned against you, from hardware vendors that make it near impossible to play test the bugs out of a game, to pirates who don't want to pay, harming sales significantly, and meaning that you might not get paid for having blown thousands of hours of work on a project.

The point is, what you think you want, may not be quite what you first expected it to be.

If, however, you know who you are, you can then derive what you want from that. In my case, I like to teach people, as was previously discussed. Do I want to be a teacher? Not really, no. The rules and restrictions go against my beliefs, and if I were working in a high school, the testing methods I'd have to employ would have no real relevance on what it was I was trying to teach. I have no interest in teaching on a formal level, so much as just providing information for others.

The fact that I have a strong preference for comprehension and understanding, over that of just raw knowledge, is another sliver of "who I am", and it tells me that "what I want" doesn't involve becoming a teacher.

So, too, in your character, can you combine these things to realize what you want.

In Riven, she wants to grow stronger, and become the best, because within her breast beats the spirit of Noxus, and the heart of a true champion.

What she found out, however, was that she didn't actually want to be the champion of the Noxus military, however, with the widespread corruption taking place in it. As such, she discovered that what she really wanted, was to change her homeland for the better, by showing them what a champion of Noxus should look like. In so doing, she found her true desire of what she really wanted.

Give your champion a goal, but make sure it coincides with who they are. Shaco's a homicidal maniac, in the truest sense of the word. He wants to kill people, and have fun doing it. It's a pretty simple goal, really, but it fits his character. The same, however, would not be true of Soraka, who instantly regretted the one, single instant in her life, when she desired harm upon another.

Why are you here?

Well, why are you? For us, it's a bit more tricky of a question, but for our champion designs, it's a bit easier.

Why are they at the League of Legends, as a champion? What purpose do they have to be there? Is it to find revenge against another champion? Perhaps it's to showcase a belief to the world? To stand up for their homeland as a protector of justice?

There's a thousand ways to go through things, but this does tend to stem, directly, from what your character wants. They may not be consciously aware of why they're present, at that moment, but they're generally pretty certain that they're doing something for a reason, and that their being here, at the Institute of War, somehow is going to further their goals.

Hecarim's lore doesn't really give him any real motivation or purpose. He has no defining personality, no concept of what he wants, and there's really no explanation as to why he's a champion in the first place. He's powerful, yes, but why was he allowed into the league? Why is he there, of his own volition? We don't know, because it's never really covered.

Yes, the Shadow Isles are creepy, and full of dead things, and the plot of the game is starting to suggest an invasion may be imminent, but to be honest, at no point does that make him anything more than a mechanical tool, with any more personality than a V2 rocket.

Ensure that your character design has a reason for why they are at the league, and you'll find it helps in other ways as well. The lore section, which I'll cover another day, can help you build their appearance, their abilities, their skins, and so on, with ease. To get the lore, their reason for "why are you here", goes a long way.

In the end, you want a champion that has a fully fleshed out reason for the things they do, and this doesn't just magically fall into place, it takes steps, one at a time, in order, to attain that.

As such, we'll move onto the final question, which is the next step in this process.

Where are you going?

I've had to ask myself this, in the past. The answer I got, at the time, was "In circles". I'd been stuck in a loop of depression, causing apathy, causing further depression, with a circular motion with no reason to do anything.

Fortunately, I'm out of that loop, now, but this is a good example of what I mean by "where are you going?".

In the champion's character design, that you're working on, you should have, by now, an idea of why they're at the league, who they are, and what they want. Now, is the time to combine these together, and to recognize that your end goal, is to determine what their end goal is, and if they're actually on the path to reaching it.

In terms of that goal, we might know what they want, for example, revenge, but is that really the direction they're headed in life? For Varus, it really isn't. He's not going to get revenge at the league, it's just to give him an excuse to kill people, occasionally from Noxus, and placate the corruption which is chewing away at his soul like a pug with a bone. Maybe not so much like a pug. It's probably less slobbery than that.

Anyway, the point is that you want to be defining not just the end goal of your champion, but to ensure that their being at the league, and the actions they're taking, are actually leading them towards that end goal. At least, in some cases, you do. Perhaps you don't actually want your character headed in that direction, and you want them intentionally making a stupid decision, that won't fix anything.

Just because they're champions of the world, and supreme experts at combat, doesn't mean they're particularly all that bright. Even the "smartest" ones are rather brain dead, at times.

As are we all.

At some point, in everyone's life, they look down and wonder "what exactly am I doing, and why am I doing it?", and realize they honestly don't actually have an answer.

Perhaps your character design is fighting in the league to find a sense of self, to help define them as who they are, as they realize they may not even be sure of that on a basic, intrinsic level, yet.

Regardless, this is up to you to decide, but make sure that you know where your champion's going, even if they don't, themselves.Part 4: I may be bad, but I sure do make it look good.Well, let's say you have a character who has a neat personality, at this point, they have goals, a purpose, and are on their way to getting there!

So, why do they still look like a cardboard box with a happy face scribbled on the front?

I don't mean your art skills, it doesn't matter if you can draw them. That's nothing. The question here, is how do you know that they are who they are?

Consider Batman. Remove the face, the bat-symbol, and everything else. Just take the silhouette, with no details, of the head and shoulders.

You still know it's Batman, because... it's... Batman. Who else would it be?

A strong character design requires that it have a strong silhouette to go with it. Something that stands out as unique, that you instantly recognize, at just a glance.

Annie standing next to Tibbers is pretty bloody obvious who it is, just as Sivir's cross blade and armour style is equally distinctive.

By making a character visually striking, and unique, you manage to draw the player into recognizing them at a glance. In game play terms, this is useful to quickly determine who's on your team, or who you're fighting, and their capabilities, among other things.

Beyond just game play, however, this is also used to make your player base really want to play this champion. When I look at Tristana, and that cute, innocent smile, with an enormous cannon and realize she really just wants to merrily prance through a field of flowers, leaving craters and broken corpses in her wake, it makes me smile, and want to play as her, despite that she's really kind of sub-par these days, since the newer champions simply do her job better than she can, for the most part.

This also led to my quest to find ways to force her to be useful, and eventually ended up with the "WTF" tank Tristana build. Go figure.

The point is, if a character design is visually appealing, interesting, and draws your attention in to it, you're more likely to want to play that character, and even more so, are willing to buy those skins, which take far less time and effort to create, but provide proportionately a high amount of the income to keep the company going.

So, how do you make your design more interesting?

Inspiration! Lots thereof!

I'll be devoting an entire section to this, but for visual interest, consider having multiple aspects to work from. A "water" champion doesn't have to be a generic water elemental, with no other features. It could be a water nymph, a land shark, a diving suit, an exotic fish, or any of a thousand other things.

Don't get trapped thinking you're going to have to stick to a single concept. Kennen's a ninja. So is Akali. Shen is also a ninja, yet each have their own distinctive style and appearance. Kennen has being a yordle and a lightning master going for him, Akali's a female who dual wields an exotic weapon that many people haven't seen before, and Shen ...is... Shen.

Ah, yeah, Shen's kind of the boring one there, isn't he? He doesn't have much for a silhouette, no fancy bits on his armour that really make him stand out as special or unique, and really, he's kind of bland all around, since the only thing he has going for him is "He looks like the ninjas from Mortal Kombat!". The problem there, is that all of the ninjas from Mortal Kombat were boring in appearance, and looked exactly the same, with the only difference being a colour palette swap.

At the very least, they could've based him off Sektor, or one of the cyber-ninjas, who actually had some, slight, visual neatness to them.

Instead, Shen has "nostalgia" as his key, defining visual feature, but without Mortal Kombat, he's dull. This is primarily due to the fact that he really only has the one source of inspiration, and doesn't really expand upon it.

In the movie series ALIENS, the Xenomorph alien, an iconic appearance that stands out massively against any other villain in a movie line up, was designed off of the concept of a humanoid, matched with a type of wasp that lays eggs inside of spiders, wherein the larvae hatch and devour the spider alive from the inside out. Creepy stuff... the appearance, however, is a mixture between a human's upright stance, crossed with that of a wasp, and several other insects. This gives a unique and distinctive appearance that really stands out pretty notably, whereas if it were just "a really giant wasp", it'd have been more fit for a B movie, instead.

Mix and match sources of inspiration. Pick a few things about your character that you think would look cool, and then see if there's anything similar to that which you can use as a close comparison, and then, from that point, see if there are any additional elements that can be integrated into the design.

Consider just looking at a reference picture of what you think looks awesome, and do nothing but study it carefully for a good ten or fifteen minutes, and see if you can figure out exactly what it is that makes it so interesting. It's often a lot more subtle than you may have first thought, and something as simple as tassels on armour, or a chip in the edge of a sword's blade, can really make the design stand out a bit more than it would otherwise.

In any case, your end goal, here, is to make the character visually appealing, and that's going to be determined by your own personal tastes, so there's only so much I can do to help you out there.

My best advice I can give, really, is to just pick a few things you think are neat (Ninjas, pirates, cats! ), and meld them together into a really weird combination that stands out considerably more than any one of them would on their own.

Anyway, I haven't eaten today, so I'm headed out to the kitchen for lunch. Class dismissed!

Good evening!

Well, it's evening at the time of writing this. For me. It's still 3:30 in the afternoon in California, but you know what? Only I matter! Mwahehe!

Alright, I don't matter, but whatever.

Class is in session regardless, so grab a seat and here we go!

Tonight, we're going over the joys of inspiration! Yep, this is a big one for a lot of people!

So, inspiration!

First off, we shall go over the concepts of what inspiration even is.

Second on the list, we'll discuss where to go for inspiration.

Third, we'll cover some specific stuff about how to weave your inspirations into an actual appearance, theme, personality and so on. These are more important than you may think!

Finally, we'll close with how to avoid going too far. There's a fine line between being "inspired" and "ripped off from". Be careful not to cross this one, as it's the kind of thing that can land a lawsuit on your lap in a hurry. That and it's just bad practice.Part 1: Inspired by the retelling of a remake of the video game that was based on the memoirs of someone who swore it was a true story!So, what exactly is inspiration?

It comes in many names, from your Muse, to the case of C4 you use to shatter writer's block. It shows up in a lot of forms, but in the end, it basically boils down to the same thing.

Inspiration is basically what you get when you take something which already exists, and adapt it to your own uses in a creative new way.

You may notice that bit about "which already exists". That's right, inspiration doesn't exist in a vacuum. Sources of inspiration are all around you, right at this very moment. It can be anything from the way a joint on one of the toys on your desk top works, a concept you saw in that movie that's sitting on your chair that you keep meaning to watch again, or it could be something as simple as the bird that keeps ramming it's face against the window as you try to work.

The whole dealie with Archimedes discovering water displacement while in the bath tub is a form of inspiration, as a historical example. The story goes that he was given the task of proving that a crown was made of 100% pure gold as was claimed, and he couldn't think of any way to prove it. While debating the thought in the bath, he noticed the water level raised as he sank into the water, and supposedly ran through the streets yelling "EUREKA!" buck naked.

The idea was that, by observing the world around him, he was able to apply a concept that was relevant to his problem at hand, and solve it.

In Aliens, as I mentioned in the "index B" version of inspiration, they used the Spider Wasp as a basis for the concept behind the Xenomorph, and based it's look off of a similar insectoid look, and it's been an icon of action/horror movies ever since!

In short, anything, and everything, around you can act as inspiration. From real life naturally existing stuff, through to historical information, or even stuff you see on TV or read in books, everything you see and touch is potentially a source of inspiration.

This is why it's so important to subject yourself to as many experiences as possible! Watch movies, read books, play games! It doesn't even matter if they're your favourite genre or not, so long as you see MORE STUFF!

The more stuff you know about, the more sources of inspiration you have to draw upon, and therefore, the better the chances that you'll be able to make something even more epic than you would have been capable of otherwise!

Heck, just look at the intro titles to each chapter I put up in each section, if nothing else! There's on average 4 per article, and probably a good 60-75% of them are direct quotes from other locations, either movies, tv shows, books, songs, or well known puns / jokes.

So, now that you know where to look for inspiration (everywhere! ), what are you going to do with it?

Ah, well that's what we're going to get into next. Hold your horses, and don't run off trying to use this information just yet. You need to first learn to temper and reforge this inspiration. It's only in a latent state, right now, and we're going to cover how to mold it from just being a carbon copy, into something that's truly unique.

We don't want you just copying a character from a movie 1 for 1. No, what we're looking for, here, is for you to turn the Battleship board game into a bloody movie. Inspiration doesn't mean "rip off", so, let's get into how to do this!
Part 2: Alright this is easy, just go northeast by south-southwest baring 374 degrees latitude, take your thirty-seventh door on the left, then a right past the pickles, behind the mayo and to the left of the custard which has probably gone slightly moldy. Seriously, you can't miss it!Alright, alright, so inspiration is *EVERYWHERE*. That sure is helpful, isn't it?

No?

Yeah, let's narrow that down a bit.

You're not really looking to pull ideas from just "anywhere", really, so much as you are seeking out things which help with the particular situation you're in. At any given moment, you're attempting to work on a particular problem, as that's what your brain tends to like doing, even if you hate it, personally.

Puzzles exist all over the place, and they can be as silly as "what should I have for supper?" to things directly related to your champion, like "I need an ability for my W and I have... nothing...", or you could even be in a more fundamental problem of "I want to make... stuff. I have no idea what.".

If you just sit there and stare blankly at an empty page, you're going to be sitting there for an awfully long time, stuck in the hopeless box of writer's block, and no matter how hard you stare, it's flat out not going to go away, of that I can pretty much guarantee you. Sometimes you may get an idea, but it's pretty rare.

No, your best option is to go out and find sources of inspiration to clear out the block by force.

So where do you go for a source of inspiration? Well... that depends on the problem. Right now you just went from "no inspiration", by staring at your blank sheet of paper (or monitor! ), and now have a staggering overkill of inspiration since you're now looking at the internet. Great, too much information can be even worse than none at all. At least when you had none, you knew you could do something about it, now that you've got so much junk piled up, you're not even sure where to begin!

Well, have no fear, standard problem solving procedures take effect here!

First off, identify what the problem you have is, exactly. We'll say you're making a "water" champion, for the sake of argument, because I hate it when we get these things on the forum and every bloody ability they have is "Throws water at a target, healing them or splashing them for damage". C'mon, you can do better than that, and I'll show you how.

So, your problem is you're making a water champion, but all you can think about is that one word. "Water". Every single thing you think about comes back to water, over and over like a broken record (and I'm old enough to remember listening to music on vinyl! ), but you're stuck there and can't get out of it.

The problem isn't that you need something watery. You've already got water for that. What you need is something to go with the water to help make it more interesting.

See, a single dimensional champion simply doesn't have anything going for them. Having "Hydro the Hydromancer!" is pretty much worthless, because you're stuck with... water, water, and... oh yeah, more water.

So where can you go for the inspiration you need, now that we know we need something other than water? Well, first and foremost, consider things that are nearby the water, or are related to such. Pirates are often a good place to start, but then again, so are exotic fish.

Ever seen an angler fish? Creepy stuff! They literally have a tasty "treat" on the end of an extension of their body that hangs out in front of their face, that they treat like a fishing rod for smaller fish, then eat them when they get close. Think you could make a "bait" champion by tossing in a watery apparition of a target which creates a double of them and makes them run by at low health, luring an enemy into wasting an attack, or getting out of position to get what looks like a free kill.

How about a hermit crab? You could have a few different shells you could swap between back at base, letting you change how your champion plays with the same itemization.

What about a cuttlefish, a type of squid, capable of flashing strobe lights over it's skin in various colours literally thousands of times per second, able to practically cause a seizure in an enemy, or make them turn into a chameleon of sorts. Why not try out an ability which blinds any champions who are looking your way when you activate it?

Bam, three random fish and three new abilities, fit for making you a new and interesting champion.

To narrow down where you're going for inspiration, focus on what it is you're trying to work with.

Note that "water" isn't the only way to work with a water champion. An antipodal champion which mixes fire and water together, creating steam, could also make for some pretty awesome effects! Consider if you had a water spell that made the ground slippery, reducing movement speed or causing enemies to skid on ice, and then you lob a fireblast at it and it flash-evaporates the ice/water into steam, scorching the enemy so they're silenced!

This is just using the opposite of water, though, but there's so many other ways to work with. I had a friend (actually it was ElementSteel on the forum here) who made a crazy flying monkey pirate that had an addiction to dancing to a magic box for a D&D campaign.

That's right, D&D. Characters you've used elsewhere, in role playing, old fan fiction from high school, and so on, are all fair game! Stuff your friends have done are also valid choices. Seriously, anything you've seen in your entire life is a valid option, but try to stick to things that seem vaguely related in some way.

In another vein of thought, however, you also want to be distinctive enough that it doesn't feel like it's just more of the same.

Appearance is a tricky thing! If your champion's boring, or just doesn't stand out... well... it kinda sucks, honestly, but they won't be that much fun. If you don't have a name or mental thought of what they should look like, have no back story, and so on, then it doesn't matter how neat you think their abilities are, they're just a string of numbers, not a "character" to play as.

Half the fun of playing Cho'gath is his Gentleman skin! I swear I get more fun out of role playing as Mundo, than I do from actually playing him XD

If you stick to a single source of inspiration, it's awfully hard to get ideas which are that awesome. The more you mix and match it up, the better the chances you have of hitting on something that's unique and interesting, so long as you don't stray too far from your original source material.

See, that's the big problem, is it's possible to do "water" related stuff, and the opposite, fire, as well as things like pirates or so on, but how far is too far? Why can't you mix Lasers with Water?

Well, technically, you could, but it's a bit of a jump and it doesn't feel intuitive. If you're god's gift to character creation, you could probably pull it off, but since you're reading the guide, here, I'm going to assume that you're not, for the sake of argument.

What I would personally suggest, is staying within 2 leaps of logic from the original source material.

This means if you started with WATER, then your first jump would be PIRATE, and your second jump would be NINJA.

Alright, a shark-ninja could be pretty neat, admittedly. What else?

WATER jumps to GIANT SQUID jumps to B MOVIE MONSTER. Zomg, giant THEM ants! A swarming carpet of water ants that can rear up in a tidal wave, pushing the swarm forwards, or can dissipate and run in a variety of locations, then reform at a new spot!

Past the second jump of logic, however, it starts to get a little bit silly, as you're already outside of the realm of common sense. This starts to make things difficult to correlate back to the original design, whereas you could still backtrack Ninjas to Pirates, and make it into how the previous Ionian ninja was lost at sea when they were fighting Gangplank's father in a classic duel to the death on the high seas, only to turn out that they'd been blessed by pre-transformation Soraka before their trip, and when they were felled, knocked into the ocean floor beneath, they instead lived, and sustained themselves upon the abundance of life at the ocean floor, but as she was corrupted for cursing Warwick, it broke her blessing, and the ninja was gained part of the curse's fallout, being afflicted with the ocean life around him, turning him into a creepy ninja-landshark, and now has decided to stalk the land in search of the one who caused all these problems, only to find Gangplank, and figuring it was "Close enough", so joins the league to get at his enemy's progeny.

We're talking some really screwed up stuff here, already XD

Still, letting your mind wander like this can be just the ticket to getting you some really awesome ideas! We could give our shark-ninja some awesome throwing starfish! Tell me *THAT* isn't a pun worth implementing ^.~

The point is, wandering too far off course gets you in some really weird places, that don't really make much sense, so I personally recommend the 2-leaps of logic rule to keep things relatively on track. Anything past that just gets strange and difficult to incorporate into a design.
Part 3: We wove a weave which wrought wrenching wounds!Yeah, you see that alliteration thing up there? That's actually where I'm going with things.

It's one thing to have inspiration, but it's quite another to turn that inspiration into something actually useful that you can implement into your champion design.

That 2-leaps-of-logic rule applies here pretty harshly, since it's hard to work your way back, once you start making some big jumps. If you keep it relatively close, as with the Water -> Pirate -> Ninja, it's not too hard to come up with horrible things like that bad throwing starfish from earlier.

Even so, this isn't enough. Okay, so he has throwing starfish. Great. That's... great. What else?

We need more than just that, we need a silhouette, a personality, a visually recognizable concept... something to make them seem like they should be how they play like!

Well, have no fear, inspiration comes to the rescue once again! That's right, it's really that versatile and can be forced to do almost anything at gunpoint ^.^

So, we have a shark ninja. Sweeeeet. Of course, a shark ninja doesn't seem very much like a ninja... what does a ninja do, anyway?

I guess a shark ninja would be sort of a samurai more than a ninja, maybe. Kelp armour? Mmm doesn't quite fit. How about coral? Ah, there we go! Build a samurai suit out of coral, with a guy with a ninja headband made from kelp, and a tridant and throwing starfish!

Alright, well that's pretty bloody distinctive, I suppose XD

Does it... look like an actual champion class though?

Ah, well, let's move on to the next section, then, and cover that in a little more detail. It's easy to get too far off track, so let's see what we can do to keep from being swept off with the current ^.^
Part 4: "The ball is going back, Smith is chasing it, it's still going back, Smith jumps, he hits his head on the wall and it rolls off! It's rolling all the way back to the infield. This is a terrible day for the Padres!" -- A San Diego Padres announcer. ~San Diego Padres AnnouncerWell, now we've swung a bit off of the ninja aspect of things, and are going more with a samurai, so this suggests a bruiser, since coral armour's probably not the wisest of choices to use as a tank, as the actual samurai can attest that wood sucks against gunfire. (Just me, but I'd suggest wood wouldn't hold up too well to fireballs, either, unless you're' saturated in magic like Maokai. )

The trident gives a nice feel of being able to pull someone in, a la spear fishing, so perhaps we should consider the idea of an ability which "stabs in a straight line, and drags an enemy back". It wouldn't be as long ranged as Blitzcrank's, and we could perhaps change things up a bit where the trident could have secondary effects, but it gives us a feel of what the champion should do just based upon their appearance.

Akali "looks" like a sneaky ninja, so she does the invisibility and such quite well. Shen "looks" like he should be a big tanky guy who evades attacks or simply prevents them like a ninja would. Kennen "looks" like a Kennen, and you get the feeling you could punt him pretty far akin to a football, and, go figure, he crack-balls right into the enemy team remarkably well!

Anyway, for our shark-ninja / samurai we've got going here as an example, we really want to emphasize a personality to go with it.

Off our wanna-be lore, we came up with them being an Ex-Ionian ninja that got corrupted and has a grudge against Gangplank's family. This gives us a place to start, but we might want to also fill in a bit of that sharkyness to things too. This gives us a great number of places to pull ideas from, into building up an overall feel of the champion's personality.

Considering their fall from grace, and loss of their position, as well as the curse placed upon them, inadvertently, by Soraka, they may be of the "screw balance in all things" mindset now, and focus on charging in jaws first. (Like that Jaws reference? Yeah, you know it's a good pun when it inflicts physical pain in the form of a headache ^.~ )

So, we have that he's a bruiser, and kind of GRRR at the whole ninja ideal, as well as GRRR, mostly just in general. Okay, it's a bit generic, but we can dump in some references to his old life, some stuff about hating Vincent the Shadow, and that sort of dealie, to give him a gruff demeanor, which works well with a bruiser-type champion.

We also have a shark in coral samurai-esque armour and wielding a trident, which should give a pretty good idea that we're talking about a melee bruiser here.

Everything has to line up, as odd as that sounds, as if something's completely out of whack, it just feels... weird.

I mean, picture if you went to play Shaco, and he turned out to be a low damage support/tank hybrid. His attitude, his daggers, his face... it all cries out "I WANNA KILL YOOOUUUU". If you break that expectation that a player has, it really hurts their impressions of the character, and may actually make them dislike a champion they otherwise would have enjoyed!

Your two main options are to play up to a stereotype, or to go directly against it by flipping things 180. This sounds counterintuitive, but it works in that people now kind of expect the reverse to be true, since it's been so overdone that it's become cliche in and of itself XD

The thing is, you can't just do something way out in left field for no apparent reason! Your audience, which in this case happens to be players, has a set of expectations they have that need to be fulfilled. If you play up to those expectations, and reward them for it (the good guy wins in the end! ), they'll be satisfied. If you flip it 180 on occasion (the good guy died, by sacrificing themselves to save the world! ), they'll be happy that you're spicing things up. If you just do something strange that makes no sense (the good guy actually never existed, and it was all just a myth, and some other guy you've never heard of did all the work this whole time ), a few art students may find it awesome, and you might garner a niche cult following, but other than that, it's mostly going to be met with blank stares and people being disappointed.

Inspiration has to tie in with the end goal of everything meshing together well. By using your sources of inspiration appropriately, you can weave almost anything into something which makes sense, no matter how outlandish it is, but it's a lot easier if you play up to certain stereotypes.

On the other hand, you don't want to be "too" obvious about stereotypes. The real trick about awesome design, is you want to make the connection intuitive, without it feeling like "Oh. One of THOSE guys again...". It should make logical sense on an innate level, without being so blatantly obvious that it's been overdone to the point that it's a well known cliche.

If you stick to the 2nd jump of logic rule that I've come up with, it typically seems to keep things within the capacity to hold together before they get too far out of hand, however =3

In the end, inspiration will tie everything you have together on a fairly natural level, if you let it, so long as you keep it relatively close to home. Don't run off the deep end with your sources of inspiration, and you'll probably be fine with keeping them together when it comes to melding it into a single, unified whole ^.^

Anyway, that's it for tonight, so class dismissed!

YO YO YO SUP, MAH HOMIES, MAH PEEPS, MAH SUPDAWGS!?

Yeah, you can slap me if I ever say that again.

Anyway, class is in session! WOO!

So, today we're going to be covering unique ideas! Or more specifically, that they don't exist! O.o;;

I know, it's a strange concept, so bare with me!

First off, we'll have to go over the concept of what "unique" really is, before we can go much further. Start with the basics, first, after all, right?

Second, once we have that down, we can move onto the concept of why "unique" doesn't really exist as such. Specifically, this plays heavily on the whole "inspiration" dealie.

Third, there are things that haven't been done before. Sometimes... there's an awfully good reason for this. I'll be covering things like "monsterous" champions and such, healing skillshots, and so on!

Last on the list is how to make your abilities more interesting and "unique", despite that they technically aren't. This isn't about doing something "new", so much as it is about doing something that's proven to work, in a new way.

Anyway, we've got a lot to cover today, so let's get started! Labcoats on, please, because today... we do this... FOR SCIENCE!

*Cackles maniacally, and puts on goggles*Part 1: Always remember that you are a unique snowflake. Just like every other flake out there.

Alright, so I have said, and hold to, the statement that there is no such thing as "unique".

If we consider this to be true, how can that be? Are we not all unique in our own ways? Are our champions not unique in that they differ from each other?

Before anything else, clearly we must define unique!

For the sake of argument, I'll provide my own definition, as it pertains to this matter at hand. Unique is based off the prefix "uni", as in singular. There can only be one thereof. There's nothing like it, no predecessor, no earlier version, no inspiration and no precedent. If something is truly unique, it exists outside of anything that has ever been done before.

Obviously, as we've covered in inspiration, this can't realistically occur. Everything you create, is based on something else. Everything you make, is a rehash of an old idea made new. Everything you've done, someone else did first, in some way, shape, or form.

There are no unique ideas. There are no unique champions. Everything existed before you.

This isn't a bad thing, despite what you may be thinking. It means you have previous models you can evaluate, to see how they perform, and where they can be improved upon. You have ideas and sources of inspiration that can be combined in new and interesting ways, that will lead to a far more interesting design. You have failed attempts and mistakes, trailing back to the dawn of MOBAs, that you can look back upon and go "Well, that didn't work... I wonder why?", and begin to answer that question by tackling the problem yourself.

The end goal, here, is to make a champion that is a new "mixture" of various aspects, that brings something new to this particular game, League of Legends in our case, that hasn't been provided before.

This can show up in many forms, from a new personality, new mechanics, new play style, and so on and so forth. The ideas, themselves, are not new, however. How they're put together and amalgamated into a whole, is.

The key thing this section focuses upon, is drilling into your head that you aren't trying to be a unique snowflake. You aren't trying to be "different for the sake of being different". Anything you do has to be done for a reason, and that reason invariably has to be "because it will make the game more fun". If you do something "because it's different!", and ignore the concept of it being fun... well, let's just say that there are reasons why some things haven't been done before.

This, conveniently, segues into our next part!
Part 2: Pft, I've been different since before it was cool to be different! Obviously you people are just emulating me!There's a distinct difference between doing something new for a purpose, and doing something new just because you can. I bet you I could break every bone in my legs in 47 different places and then tie them into a fisherman's knot. I'm also reasonably sure this would be one of the stupidest things I could possibly do, and would not really provide any particular benefit to having done so.

The end goal of your champion is to be fun. Keep that in mind above all else. If you aren't having fun, then you really haven't accomplished anything.

To that end, there are only a few key things which work towards being "fun", and everything else is a variation on a theme.

One of the biggest ones, a huge primordial one which was discovered at it's core, and expanded upon back in Diablo 1 by Bill Roper and the rest of the design team at Blizzard at the time, was the simple concept of "Kill -> Reward".

Yep, really is that simple, and still in use to this day, even in LoL itself.

You kill something, and you get something for doing it. It's a simple detour down the road of "push button, receive food pellet" concept they use with labrats, but it works great on humans too, on a primal level, where your aggressive tendencies are rewarded on an instinctual level.

By being aggressive and deadly, you get a bonus for such. You kill a minion, you get a gold and exp bonus. You kill a weak enemy champion, they're a little more dangerous than a minion, so you get a bigger benefit. If you kill an overleveled fed champion who's been wrecking your entire team, you get a nice big fat reward. If you take 3-5 people to tear down Roshan or Baron Nashor, or whatever your particular game has for a "mini-boss", you get a huge bonus.

The harder the task, the bigger the reward. If you accomplish something difficult, you want to feel you were proportionately rewarded for doing so. If you got a huge reward for something easy... it gets kind of boring after awhile. You may notice that people often get bored of bot games (co-op vs AI), in that they really are pretty easy, and your reward just... doesn't match the difficulty of the task.

It's a strange thing, but getting a disproportionate reward to the effort put into something, regardless of whether it's "too little" or "too much", both have negative consequences, psychologically.

If your player doesn't feel like they truly earned the reward they were given, they'll feel guilty for accepting it, or grow bored of such as it's not a challenge. This is why you don't see a huge burly maximum level character in MMORPG's running around the level 1 starting zones mass slaughtering things for very long. They might go back out of spite, and gain some small, smug sense of satisfaction, but it quickly wears off when there's no challenge to be had.

The only reason that some players are able to feel satisfaction in butchering easy targets, is if there's some additional factor that they enjoy being added on top of it. In some people's cases, it's simply to make them feel more powerful than they are. In other cases, they simply can't have fun unless someone else isn't, and if they're not particularly good enough at playing a game so that they can do so by making the other team lose, then they begin trolling their own team wherein they don't need to have an ounce of skill to piss off a large number of people in one go.

The problem is, these are the trolls of the game that we don't actually want to cater to.

For the players that are actually playing the game for the sake of having fun, and are doing PvP because of the challenge factor, these are the ones where the difficulty needs to match the reward.

There are other factors, besides this. Just kill -> reward, is not enough. It's a nice starting place, and on an instinctive level, it works great, but it does eventually lose it's addictive properties if you don't weave in other factors to strengthen it.

Consider something such as a champion which is actually fun to play, not because they get kills, but because they simply have really fun mechanics. Draven, in particular, is pretty awesome to use, not because he's strong, though that helps, but primarily because his mechanics are actually really interesting to use.

Your purpose for doing something "new", is to capture the feel of a new form of presentation. You're not reinventing the wheel. The wheel already exists, so you're not being unique by making your wheel fancier than a standard wheel. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do so, however. Deck your wheel out with bling and polish it to a shine until it blinds people to look at it. Then you can sell seeing eye-dogs and make a profit!

...We'll pretend that made sense.

Moving right along!

Our goal here is to blend a mixture of game play elements together into something that is really more fun than the sum of the parts put into such. Mundo's pretty awesome, because he's Mundo. Even so, his kit is a little lack luster, and not nearly as enjoyable as it could be, as the only real thing he has going for him is his cleaver spam, which is pretty neat, but kind of lonely in that it's pretty much all he has, other than his personality.

To make a really fun champion, takes melding many aspects together, from their personality, to their appearance, their animations, their skill set, everything has to all incorporate into a whole that meshes together well.

As is covered in this series elsewhere, you really do want to have your entire champion concept work together as a unified whole. If you look at a champion's splash art, you should know right off the bat what to expect. You look at Graves and go "you know, I bet I know how he acts, how he talks, and how he sounds, and even how he plays." You enter the game, pick him up and... yep, he looks, talks, and sounds just right, he acts exactly like he should, and his game play is pretty much what you would expect. As a whole, he simply "works".

Personally, I hate Graves' personality, but that's just because he goes against my own preferences pretty heavily. I fully accept that, as a character design, he's a masterpiece. I hate his ultimate being so bland, and I hate his personality, but to be perfectly blunt, he's not made for me to play.

That's another major thing you're going to have to learn... being unique doesn't necessarily mean you're doing a good job. Actually, it usually means that you aren't doing a good job at all. You want to appeal to a niche market which hasn't yet been tapped into previously by the game, but at the same time, you also want to make sure that there actually is a market in the first place.

This is where we run into our third section today.
Part 3: Who cares if it isn't popular? Low sales just mean it's even more hip and underground, man!Well, let's face it, Riot, as with every other game company out there, is out there to make a profit.

Even so, they're not there to be greedy, they're there to make a game that they, themselves, enjoy playing. They want to be like "yeah, I made this, and it is AWESOME!".

You can fully make a profit while making something that's fun at the same time! The trick is to aim for things that a larger audience will appreciate and purchase.

As such, you have various champions who will be tuned towards different individuals and groups. Some of these markets are larger than others. A lot of the most basic archtypes already exist in the game, catering to the largest audience already. Now, they're gradually aiming for targeted audiences who like the game, but just haven't quite found "their" champion yet, the one that they'd love to pour money into for skins and so on.

For me, I'm lucky; Nidalee is basically "my" champion, being a potent siege/support champion with high mobility and healing. Her personality, appearance, and everything just works well with me.

I also realize, however, that not everyone's going to love Nidalee. Some people actually like Graves, as stated before. Graves is awesome for those people, as Nidalee is awesome to me. Great! That's what you want to capture, that feeling of "this is MY champion!".

The trick is, however, that you also need to be able to make that champion interesting to enough people to pay for the labour that goes into making that champion in the first place.

Hate to break it to you, but games are not magically free. It costs money in wages, in oil to heat/cool a building, for the computers, for the software, etc etc the list goes on seemingly forever. To make a skin takes an awful lot of time and energy. To make a champion, even longer, usually. Seriously, most people on the forum here honestly believe it takes 2 weeks to create a champion.

No, no it does not. It's closer to 9 months, due to market research, play testing, modeling, animating, and so on. Many of these steps can only be done in a specific order, and can't be done until the others are completed. There's no real way to do the particle effects until you've got the animations down. You can't do the animations until the rig's finished. You can't do the rig until you have the mesh. You can't do the mesh until you have concept art, and you can't have concept art until you have a concept to make the art of in the first place.

The list of things that has to be done to make a champion, and the hours spent building them, is enormous. You're looking at literally hundreds to thousands of work hours to make a champion, and the only revenue they get to pay for that effort comes through people buying RP to spend on skins and champions.

As such, if you want something that's awesome, you need to charge a lot for it, as people discovered with the whole Pulsefire Ezreal skin. It's expensive as hell, but considering the time and effort put into it, and the low number of sales it'll generate, they're forced to price it high to recoup the losses on wages spent making him in the first place.

Here's your problem...

We're here to make something that's awesome. To make something awesome, however, you have to keep in mind that there's often a very good reason as to why something has never been done before. Being "unique" just because no one else has done it before can often mean you're doing something very stupid that may wind up placing you on the "Winner" list of the Darwin Awards, a dubious award to achieve at that.

In this case, making something that isn't particularly good at catching a player's attention doesn't really work.

There's a few examples of these kinds of things, with some major ones being things like "swarm" champions, where the champion looks like they could be just one of a larger number (ie generic soldier), or a "monster" champion.

These have been specifically argued against by Morello himself, for a very good reason - it's hard to accept these as having a personality, no matter how much you try to fix that problem. If a player doesn't relate to the champion, they just... don't really get it. And if they don't get it, they don't really want to play them much, no matter how awesome their skill set is.

Urgot is borderline OP, as of the writing of this post, but he rarely gets played, not because his abilities suck, but because he's just not that interesting to play as. He's fat, he's ugly, and he's kind of bland.

People will play the champions they're attracted to. Even though Teemo's generally considered underpowered as hell right now, he's still got a ton of skins for him. Know why? Because Teemo is CUTE! Many players play Teemo simply because they like his character design. He's fun to play, and attractive in a way, and as such, people play Teemo, and buy Teemo skins, even if he sucks at tournament level play.

My point here, is that there's often very good reasons for why something's never been done before. We don't get "monster" champions, because it's hard to associate a personality to them. Some, you can get away with. Most of them, they just don't really translate all that well to a personality. Rammus gets away with it simply because he's Rammus, and people tend to make an imaginary personality for him, such as... well... this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8cSYQ9EkOQ&feature=g-all-u

Sorry for the external link, but it gives you the idea of what I mean better than I can say in words XD

Anyway, as I was saying, monstrous champions just... don't really get a personality very easily. Consider that you can be bad-***, like Darth Vader, but that he intentionally was given the featureless mask for the express purpose of removing his humanity, and severing the connection with him on an intrinsic level. You're not supposed to actually sympathize with him, he's supposed to just be a terrifying being that has no humanity left in him.

While this is great for a villain you're supposed to fight against, it kind of sucks in terms of someone you want to play "as".

You can line up an endless horde of termogaunts in 40k, and they get kinda scary when you realize that, if you butchered a thousand of them, it'd just mean that you'd now have a wall of dead termogaunts that the next thousand would use as a ramp to leap off of to land on top of you.

The thing is... alright, so you have a thousand termogaunts, so how do you make a "champion" that stands out as the leader of all termogaunts? How do you make there be a central figure that really cries out that they are worthy as a champion of their people?

In the end, it's not that easy to do, and takes an awful lot of additional time and effort, for minimal effectiveness.

Omen suffered partially from this, among a few other issues, which is why he got canceled. He was... generic bio-monster #5,782 and didn't really look like he had a personality. Even though they went out of their way to try to give him one, he just didn't really catch on.

The end point here, is that you want to be different enough to provide a reason for your player to want to play your champion, instead of someone else's, but you don't want to be so different as to alienate them entirely.

Other issues are things like the dreaded "healing skill shot". Consider that the purpose of a skill shot is that it provides game play on both the allied, and enemy side. The caster fires a skill shot, aiming it so it either hits where the enemy is this moment, or leads them for where they will be. They use bushes, fog of war, and all sorts of tricks to land that Nidalee spear. In turn, the enemy is able to dodge out of the way, do feints, and so on to fight back against such. It's a two way street, really.

In the case of a healing skill shot... it doesn't work that way. Alright, so you fired your heal and... why would anyone ever dodge it? This is what we call a "false choice", in that it presents to you the option to do something where there's only one right answer, and it looks like there's other options, but there aren't.

The problem is compounded, in that there's no benefit to a heal being a skill shot, as there's no counter play given to the other player involved. There's fun taken away, when you miss your heal, or hit the wrong target, or if someone dies while it's in flight, but you simply don't get any additional satisfaction out of it being a skill shot, only fun taken away.

There's a dozen other reasons I could cover as to why a healing skill shot should never be added to the game, despite that it'd be "unique", but once we hit the "it simply isn't fun" wall, the discussion ends there. I don't need any further reasoning. It's a mechanic that simply adds nothing to the game and isn't enjoyable. There is zero reason to ever add it to the game. It doesn't matter what other reasons I have, because as soon as it's not fun, the skill is dead, and there is nothing that can revive it short of making it fun again, and to do that, you'd have to remove it from being a skill shot, which defeats the whole purpose as now it's not a healing skill shot anymore.

See, just because something hasn't been done before, doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it now.

Often, this is the case. An idea comes that is like "Oh wow, no one's done this before! This is going to be so UNIQUE!". Well, consider the problems with it, and try to figure out why it's never been done before. There could very well be a very potent reason, or several even, as to why it's never been done.

Remember, everything you do has to be intentional. You add something because it adds something to the game, and how fun your champion is. You don't just add stuff by spinning a wheel and picking random abilities from a list, or rolling a die to find out what to add. It may be "unique", but it doesn't mean it's fun.

In the end, your goal is to make a fun champion to play as. Make sure all of your choices are done so with the express intent of making them more fun than they already are, and never, under any circumstance, make a choice simply because it's "different", without any reason beyond that.Part 4: You call that snowflake unique? Naw, that ain't nothin! I'll show you unique! Just... as soon as I figure out how to attach a flame thrower to a snowflake without it melting...

Alright, so nothing's unique, and most of the stuff that hasn't been done before, probably hasn't been done for a very good reason.

This certainly isn't to say that you shouldn't attempt to make your stuff more interesting, it just means you actually need to think about why and how you're going to make more interesting.

The answer to "why", is the easy one here. To make it more fun!

If it isn't going to be more fun, then you may as well stop right there.

The how part, however, is a little bit more tricky than that, due to it being such an open ended question.

Just tacking on "more stuff", rarely is the correct answer. Making an ability that deals damage, and slows, and silences, and increases attack speed if used on an ally, and damages for a flat value, and damages for a % value, and damages for both physical and magical, and also does AoE damage, and also causes the stars to align, and makes pigs fly, and and and and and STUFF.

Alright, yeah, back down there, just dumping more stuff onto a skill over and over doesn't make it better. It often just makes it convoluted and messy, and when you have similar effects overlapping, such as armour penetration and attack speed, both of which increase physical damage output, it can really start to get messy to figure out exactly how powerful it really is, when they both amplify the strength of the other's effects.

As such, you really need to wrack your brain on this! You don't want to do the same ol', same ol' that has always been done, but at the same time, you don't want to just throw stuff needlessly at the problem, either.

As I've said over and over before, you want to take direct charge of your design. Think of what you need to do before you do it, in particular. You need a way for your ranged champion to avoid getting attacked by melee? Hrm, well the obvious options are both present on Tristana; she either moves herself out of melee, or moves her enemy out of melee. Either way, they aren't in melee with her anymore.

Ashe slows or stuns an enemy, and simply walks away, while Twitch slows a target then runs away until he turns invisible and can't be caught.

There's a dozen ways to get out of melee range, from blinding an enemy so that they aren't even sure where you are to attack in the first place, to abilities which make you harder to follow, such as Anivia's wall dropping impassable terrain in between the two of you.

Regardless, the end point is that you want to isolate what options you have to do something. After you have a list made up, consider which ones haven't been done before, or see if any of them cry out to you that you could do so in a new way than has previously been done.

What about a ranged champion that puts up a wall in front of her, similar to Anivia's, but that the wall isn't impassable terrain, but instead, the wall acts like a giant trampoline or bouncer from a pinball table? As soon as that nasty bruiser dashes at you, he gets flung like a ragdoll away, if he tries to come at you from the direction of the wall, without walking around it.

Maybe the bouncer wall is a 360 degree dealie, but has a very short life expectancy, similar to a spell shield on Nocturne or Sivir, so you have to blow it either when the enemy is in the middle of their dash, or before they dash, to buy you a few seconds of them hanging around at the edge, waiting for it to drop?

This is just one example (well, a few I guess), but it's never been done before. It's still just a combonation of Aniva's wall paired with Janna's ultimate, but that's the beauty of it... it's taking things which already exist, and blending them together into something new.

No, it's not unique, but it is something that didn't exist in the game in that manner until now, and can now be used to make your champion that much more interesting to play as.

Mix and match abilities. Pull benefits from one and merge them into another like some really weird version of a bartender.

Whatever you do, don't just pull random stuff out of your head without direction or reason, though. Keep yourself focused on the task at hand; you have a champion that needs to get into combat range somehow, so find a method that they can employ that will let them do so. Your key goal there, is to ensure it's something that lets them in combat range, most likely melee.

Regardless of how you do things, ensure you're thinking about it at the time and that you're using several sources of inspiration together. After you have it figured out, simplify the ability down to it's basic components of what it needs to do. It's easy to get carried away tacking on more and more stuff, and then just being left with a big mess. Ensure that each aspect of an ability has a particular function for a particular reason.

Follow that, and you'll probably be fine =3

Anyway, for the moment, that's all I have! I hope you enjoy making your champions more fun and interesting now, without the risks of just making a mess by trying to be a trendsetter, without understanding what makes something a trend in the first place!

Good luck on your future and current designs!

Class dismissed!

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow... you can then eat drink and be merry again? No reason not to do it every day, honestly. ^.^

Anyway, class is in session once again!

Today, we're going to be discussing the wonderful world of DIDNEY WORL! That or Lore. Whichever. Same thing really, assuming you have borderline terminal brain damage.

So, what are we going to cover in specific? A few things, really! We've already covered a lot on appearance and character design, so I'm also going to drop in some stuff about making a character that's actually likeable, which begins with their background and personality. These are reflected in their lore, so this is as good of a spot as any to put them!

First, we'll go over how to make a winning personality! This actually is not as easy as you may think, due to the wide range of people who play the game!

Second, we'll touch on various aspects of how a champion should be presented (these are the 4 questions again from earlier! ) to the community.

Third, we'll then have to take a minor detour in how to write a character that integrates themselves into the existing intellectual property (LoL's current lore, essentially ), without stepping on anyone's toes or making your champion cause people to facepalm, while at the same time still making them neat =3

The last thing we'll discuss today, will be how to use your lore to add additional depth to your champion design. Much of this was covered under inspiration, but keep in mind that lore is both inspired, and inspiring; it converts your raw ideas into useful resources!

So then, let's go! TO DIDNEY WORL! I mean... oh whatever...Part 1: "I once knew a fellow from Taiwan who attempted the same sort of reinvention and the strain eventually got the better of him... but then, he was always prone to stress. It turned out he had a Taipei personality."
"In about two minutes, I'm going to get that and roll my eyes." - D.C. Simpson, Ozzy & Millie

RAWR! I sure am scary, huh? ...What do you mean I'm not scary? I used caps and everything!

As you can see, there's a little more that goes into making a character fit the personality type you want them to fill, than simply saying they do. Even beyond that, lining their personality up with their play style can be tricky as well!

Having a character is one thing, having a cohesive character that actually makes sense to the player in a way that they intuitively accept, is a little bit more difficult to accomplish. So, here's where we go over how to ensure your design matches up and is a real winner!

Now, as of this writing, I haven't done the previous chapter "unique doesn't exist", but for the sake of argument, we'll say I have. The brief rundown of things, however, is that you can make something unique pretty easily, but most of the time, there's a pretty good reason why something hasn't been done before.

Let's take the example of a champion who's supposed to be a brutal looking, hulking ogre with a massive club and speaks in even more broken english than Mundo. He's a bruiser, straight up, no doubt. How do you even know this? Well... the giant club assumes damage, especially melee damage, and his personality (kinda dumb) and appearance (big hulking slab of muscles) implies heavily that he can take a beating, and dish one back out again.

It would then, of course, be rather startling to find that he uses his club as a wand, speaks 137 other languages fluently, and is a support champion that prances around in ballet shoes.

While this is highly entertaining as a one-off joke, it just... doesn't quite do what people expect. In a literary sense, that can be good, as you can lead people down one path, then have a surprise waiting for them at the end!

In terms of LoL, however, you're not trying to surprise them. You're attempting to meet their expectations. They see a big hulking brute, and they bloody well WANT a big hulking brute! They want to be chewing on skulls and the closest thing they want to come to a delicacy is the joys of popping their opponent's eyeballs like grapes.

If you fail to provide that for them, then the players aren't going to be amused, and they aren't going to flock to the champion in droves to buy it. As an off-skin? Sure! Gentleman Cho'gath is one of my favorite skins in the game, and totally worth being a legendary, as is Corporate Mundo!

That being said, however, these are skins, not the base design. Give these humourous options to players as a possibility they can actively select, not an enforced rule that makes him tilt their head and wonder WTF the designers were smoking. Especially because then you might start getting phone calls asking about where they can get some for themselves.

Anyway, you want to have everything line up.

This means the following:

Personality
Animations
Appearance
Weapon choice
Lore
Voice overs
Anything else you can think of!

RAWR!

...Still not scary? Guess I'll have to work on that.

In any case, the key component is to ensure that your champion's personality is consistent. If you want to make someone who's a little bit... special, then ensure that it's clearly visible.

Consider Annie. Sure she's a "cute little kid", but that also means no physical brawn either, for the most part. Additionally, she's holding onto fire, and has an evil menacing looking fiery bear in the background, which generally does a pretty good job of saying "Remember those little girls from The Shining, and of course Carrie, and a half dozen other evil kids from horror movies? Yeah, they distilled their evil into a single evil monster of a kid."

The fire shows she's a pyromancer quite well, and gives a good idea of her overall play style. She's a mage, and she fries things.

Note, especially, that you want to broaden your targeted audience to a degree as well. Everyone has their niche, but many of these are already covered. Darius, as much as I dislike his skill set, does do a really good job of "jerk of a bruiser who crushes everything underfoot". As such, you don't need generic badass bruiser #3,872 to show up. We have them already.

At the same time, don't pick "ridiculously narrow niche market that no one's likely to actually be interested in". Zileas was joking at the time (probably... it's hard to tell with him sometimes XD ) when he said the following:



While the specific examples are kind of amusing, the fact of the matter is, he has a valid point. You really do want to try to grab people's attention as "whoa, there's someone I'd love to play as!".

The majority of the gamers that play LoL, here or other servers is irrelevant, tend to pick a champion they particularly like, and claim it as "theirs".

By making a new design, you need to appeal to an audience that has yet to get that nice little niche covered, but at the same time, you also want to ensure that this niche is a large enough size to actually offer descent chances of getting paid for your work.

In the champion concepts forum, here, we aren't paid, so it's less of an issue, but if you ever want to join the big leagues, then keep this concept in mind.

For Nemhain, one of my own designs, I focused heavily on the concept of a champion that had a very brutal, powerful presence, yet still remained feeling feminine and protective. We're talking like "mamma bear's pissed you looked at her cubs the wrong way, boy-o" kind of attitude, and there's enough people that can really get along with that kind of vibe she gives off, and there aren't any others in the game that really match it. The other tanks are all rather unique, but avoid the "I will END you if you so much as lay a finger on my carry!", in large part due to the issue with their cool downs typically being long, and their damage output being relatively low, for good reason.

Having decided upon the name, and personality to fit it, her skills really sort of just fell into place, as this is deriving characterization and skills from lore.

Anyway, in short, make sure you have a champion that's consistent, and that it's aimed at a niche that's large enough to support it's development cycle! Avoid rehashing old ideas which are already covered, however. Zilean is the crazy old male mage, and Warwick is the feral bloodthirsty stalker. If your champion is an identical carbon copy of the "feel" of something already in the game, you might want to branch outwards into unexplored territory =3Part 2: "Location, location, location!"
"Your fly's undone."
"Tack presentation onto the end of that list."

So we have a great idea now, or at least, I'll assume you do. We'll say you have a nice design, a perfect niche to fill, and a champion that would just love to be out on the fields of justice! WOO!

Now then, their lore... ah, all those things I covered before? They show up here.

Yes, you have a champion, but you now want to get the real visceral feel of their personality and history to the player.

Here's the catch: you get roughly two paragraphs to do it in. Have fun!

Well, it's not too bad, because you can still pull it off pretty easily. The 4 questions I've mentioned before, ripped straight from Babylon 5, are as follows (again):

Who are you?
What do you want?
Why are you here?
Where are you going?

In a properly executed lore, your champion should have all of these questions answered in the space you're provided.

Who are they? Their name's irrelevant, as is their title. What you want is the core essence of their personality. Are they a psychotic killer like Shaco, or a battle hardened veteran as unto Garen?

What do you want? Your champion has a reason to do what they do, even if they may not be consciously aware of such. Perhaps they have a grudge they're seeking out, or maybe they're looking for answers. Twitch, in particular, wants to create a whole new race, while several of the earliest champions got summoned to the world by force and just want a way back home. No matter what, they have a purpose behind what they do, and you need to describe this clearly.

Why are you here? This is the League of Legends, and it exists for many reasons, but... why is your particular champion here? What do they actually get out of being at the league? In most cases, this is going to coincide with what they want, but sometimes it's a bit of a roundabout way of doing things. Cassiopeia wants to serve Noxus, but she's kind of not in the capacity to perform her previous role of information retrieval / city ****. As such, she's at the league to follow in her sister's footsteps (as best she can, lacking feet ^.~ ), and help her nation out in the only way she now can.

Where are you going? The idea here, is not where you are, or what you want. These usually imply where you want to be going, but it doesn't mean you actually are. Take Brand, for example. He's mostly just around for the sake of burning the hell out of anything he can reach, and would love to just fry Valoran as a whole. Unfortunately for him, he's at the league at gunpoint. As such, his desires and his reason for being at the league simply don't match up. Where he's going, is open to interpretation, he could be on a spiraling path to self destruction, or he could be on the verge of destroying the world as a whole. Regardless, we know he's headed towards the path of fire and brimstone, either way, and the league is not about to stop him, it's merely a mildly annoying delay in his plans. Your champion, also, needs to have a path they're traveling, the destination may not be what they want, but they need to be progressing beyond where they are currently.

Overall, by taking these questions into account, I've found it works great as a structure for providing the details of a champion's life. It gives you the feel for them, why they're at the league, and what their hopes and dreams are. By doing so, you get a feel for who your champion really is, and it can be this knowledge and understanding that anchors a player to that champion.

I personally love Nidalee's design as a character. I like her story, I like her skillset, and I like how she thinks and acts. She's my personal "go to girl" for when I want to play someone and I'm not sure who =3

She's also the champion I own the most skins for, and have no issues with blowing more money on if new skins show up. She's fun to play, and meshes well with my own personality and play style.

Ensure your players can get a good feel for who your champion is, so that they can really latch onto them and go "That's it, I *NEED* this champion!".

Not everyone will like every champion, but for your targeted niche, you really want to ensure that the people who would want to play them, are going to have the champion catch their eye, and then reward them for looking into things further.Part 3: "Supreme Intergalactic Ruler of Everything Nob, Commander of Microsol Super Fleet Alpha, Leader of Everyone, Master of All, Well-Liked by animals." - Commander Nob, Tyrian 2000, Dread-not level data cubeAlright, let me be blunt, you have a champion. A champion is a step above the ordinary citizen or human being. Or Yordle. Whatever.

The thing is, a champion is simply "better" than regular people. You really do want to stress that they really are JUST THAT AWESOME.

On the other hand... you don't want to make them "so awesome" that they're "more awesome than anything else the world has seen".

You want your champion to be roughly the same power level, in their lore, as other champions already in the league. If they're supposedly stronger, give a reason to knock them down a notch.

It's pretty easy to get carried away with Mary-Sue-ism, a literary term, which basically means your character is way too strong for what they should be, and infallible. These standards are centered around the standards of the world that they exist within, however.

As stated, your champion should be just that: a champion. There's no real reason why Orianna was added to the league originally, and she died for a reason (because she flat out sucked). The remake of her into a robot didn't make a great deal of sense, and it's new addition to the league makes even less sense than she did. In short, she's kind of just... there.

On the other hand, you don't want to take the other path, the Mary-Sue (or Marty-Stu) character, by making your champion "just like this other character, BUT BETTER IN EVERY WAY!"

No.

Stop right there and cut that out right now. You want a champion, not a god/dess. They're powerful compared to regular people, but they aren't to be described as the most powerful being in existence.

This will actively turn many people off from playing them, to the point that they just don't feel fun, or don't generate the sales they should. If you get an instant gut reaction that makes you feel "this might be going a little bit too far", then you've probably already hit that line running, and accelerated, rather than slowed down. We're very poor judges of our own creations, so it's hard to say for certain, but be careful.

In any case, try to keep in mind other lore that's already presented as well. Darius, though a neatly designed concept as a character... basically steps all over Riven's toes, as she already filled his exact same position in the game. Hecarim takes the really bad path of harming a strong opponent to show how bad-*** he is, by making someone who knows no fear, be afraid. (Ie: A top of the line, hand picked "finest" soldiers Demacia had to offer)

If you're going to show how awesome your champion is, do *NOT* under any circumstance pull stuff like Hecarim did. It's bad writing, and it hurts to read like pre-teen fanfiction. Worf, in particular, got this treatment far too often on Star Trek: TNG, where any "strong" enemy faced would beat up "the big strong guy" to show off how bad-*** they were. Doing so really means that Worf just wasn't that much of a measuring stick, however, because pretty much everyone beat him in a fight.

If you cross the line, even once, it's hazardous, as it sets a dangerous precedent. Sometimes it can be pulled off with style and flair, but to be perfectly blunt, you need to be an expert, top notch writer to get away with it. The chances of anyone reading this being so, is virtually nil, because there's only about a hundred of them on the planet alive right now with that level of skill as it's one of the most difficult things to do properly in writing, without it turning sour in the process. Pulling something like that off is the work of a true master, and yet it's done so often it's become cliche. Take my advice, please, and avoid this XD

Anyway, the end point, is that you want to pick things out about the world to tie your character to it. Locations which exist, champions which may know them, political events they may be intertwined with. While it's possible to "pull" a champion from an outside source, such as the original few summoned monsters, you may notice we haven't gotten any since the game was released, that weren't directly related to the original group.

Renekton is tied to Nasus, and... and... yeah, the rest are from Runeterra.

The point is that you might be able to link in someone that's related to the plotline of say... Morganna and Kayle's war, but you'd have to step carefully to pull it off. This isn't a bad thing, as it's not that difficult, it just requires paying attention is all, via being consciously aware of the pitfalls you could run into.

Avoid anything along the lines of a champion who is overly tied into the world, however. If they know 37 members of the league, on a first name basis, and their lore has them being best buddies with literally everyone, you've probably gone way too far.

I'd suggest, honestly, one location, and one champion, no more, until you're used to how far you can push those boundaries.

The idea is that you want your champion to exist within the world that already has been built, but you don't want the world to suddenly start orbiting them.
Part 4: My muse is speaking to me, shame it's all Greek to me. Curse you, Μοῦσαι!Alright, so you've gotten some ideas for your lore, great! Now, how's about we ensure that this lore is actually useful.

Ah, what's that? Useful lore? Yeah, lore is another source of inspiration for your champion. Strange? I suppose it's a little bit circular reasoning to consider that your champion just inspired itself, but it actually makes sense in a twisted sort of way.

See, everything you do plays off everything else you do. Each time you take an action, or write something down, then what you just wrote will reflect off of the previous things you'd written and may give you additional thoughts into those things that were already given.

Consider the example of a generic webcomic. There's a bazillion of them out there, now, so take your pick. Personally, I'm going to go with S.S.D.D. but I can assure you that virtually all of them will work, from Ozzy & Millie to Sluggy Freelance.

In virtually all of these webcomics, the same principle exists. You start off with a few character designs, and very little plot line, and blow the first hundred or so comics just testing out art styles and getting used to the characters themselves. After awhile, however, if the comic actually catches on, the stuff that was written later on is attempted to make a story or plot, and generally, they'll do so in such a way that the previous information provided now has greater meaning, even though you're pretty certain it didn't at the time of the original writing.

The fact of the matter is, your own work will inspire itself, as strange as that is to wrap your head around. Due to this fact, however, this means that your lore becomes an integral part of making a champion that is awesome to play as and fun to use.

That previous statement may sound redundant, but keep in mind that it's possible to have a champion design that's not much fun to use on a mechanical level, but which is just dripping with awe inspiring personality. Conversely, it's also possible to design something which is mechanically interesting, but with all the personality of a brick wall painted black.

Good song, but not very effective in terms of making a player enjoy the character.

Unless it's Darth Vader. He was given the whole black motif and mask specifically to make him less human, and therefore harder to relate to. That same trait made him the badass that he was, in that he really seemed that much more creepy when you couldn't really quite relate to him until the very end.

Anyway, that's just an exception to the rule! They do exist from time to time, you know.

The point I was getting at, however, was that your character's mechanics and personality are two different things. People can have a blast playing a boring champion mechanics-wise, but which just is "fun" in the sense that it's a psychological joyride. Trust me, Mundo would be awesome, no matter how boring he was to play, simply because he's Mundo. The reverse is also true.

Ideally, you want to match both of these things together, as they play off each other and strengthen both. Something that irks you, but has good aspects, will often let you tolerate the bad parts to get the good stuff. If it's just flat out golden all around, however, that's the stuff the real golden egg is made out of.

All of these champions you see on the forum, who don't even have a name, or title, and no lore, while technically they might be playable on a mechanical level, to be perfectly blunt, they're not half as awesome as they could have been if they really had some real kick to their personality to go with it.

So, we use lore, among other things, to enhance how a champion feels to play. Artwork and skins are other useful resources that work well with this.

Well then, how do we leash our lore into actually helping? I've been talking about it for at least a page now, and haven't even touched on it! Well... first I had to get it into your heads how important lore is, since too many people brush it off and ignore it entirely!

You have a few things that can really make or break your champion's lore. The first and foremost, I've covered already, being the four questions up above. No big deal. But now we want stuff that specifically gives us things to work with as a champion, which will enhance their appearance, personality or game mechanics.

Let's take an example here, and start with that.

Ahri is based off asian mythology based around the concept of a 9-tailed spirit fox. There's a few different versions, from kitsune to youkai, with traits varying between their origins, but in the end, they do have some relatively similar traits between each other.

One of the biggest, is that the kitsune, regardless of the specific myth, feeds on the spiritual energy of men. Or their livers. Or their semen. All of these things have been used to hold "spiritual essence" in myths all over the world, so it's not really surprising. They're basically vampires, in that way.

By working the story of Ahri being one of these vampiric creatures, it gives a key feature of her kit: her spell vamp, and excessively potent capacity to stay in lane for long periods of time so long as she has mana.

This ability, I guarantee you, originated with her basic lore, and then got converted into her kit, then, once it'd been solidified as part of her ability list, then, in turn, got finalized into her lore as an actual occurrence in her history.

Note that it goes back and forth. Lore, to ability, to lore again. Back and forth, it's never a single order, if you're doing a good job. Everything you do reflects off of itself and mirrors it's own self. If your abilities and lore aren't continually evolving and shifting based on each other, then you're almost guaranteed to be doing it wrong.

Normally a champion design, or any character design, for that matter, goes in passes. You create each aspect in turn, but then you go back to square one, and using the things that you came up with during your first pass, you apply new features on the second. Then you go back for a third pass, and add more tiny details that popped into your head while working on it previously. Over and over, this slowly builds up like a sculpture, where you discover more and more minor traits.

For making your lore work for you, you're going to have to utilize the idea of your lore affecting your abilities, which in turn affect your lore, which then affects your abilities again. It's like calculus, in some ways, or trying to stare into two mirrors facing each other. Eventually you get to a point where it's essentially a null value, or small enough that it may as well not matter any longer, though where that point lands, is a personal thing, of which I can't tell you.

Regardless, the layer passes are required for you to get anywhere at all.

Next off, you still need to set it up so that your lore actually has useful information!

We have the four questions, which gives us some information, but it doesn't give us much else to work with. What about their weapon? What do they use? Is it something special and interesting? Is it a unique weapon, hand-forged just for them, or is it something passed down through the generations of their family line? Something as simple as this can give you ideas for neat little tricks or concepts that a specially crafted weapon can do, or at the very least, can get you thinking carefully about how it works, which can give you some neat ideas on what kind of abilities it could use.

Their history before the league can also be highly important! What did they do beforehand? Did they fight in an arena, making them adept at 1v1 battles? Perhaps they used to be a pirate, but are now reformed, and have renounced their previous ways, yet still have a few tricks up their sleeves from the good ol' days. Try to identify something about their past that can be used to explain an ability that they already have.

Note especially, that just because you have an ability, doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I'm reasonably sure that Swain didn't originally revolve around having a laser bird along for the ride, but I would suggest, instead, that his basic concept of "fires a beam that slows" was probably just something that came from his hand at first. Once he started to develop a stronger personality, with the whole raven motif going on, they probably decided that the CC he needed would be an awesome pun on "Quoth the raven, nevermore!", and so, nevermove was born, likely despite that it would've been a stun otherwise, given that it's very similar to Cho'gath's knock up effect.

By adding points to the appearance or lore, you can then backtrack and make an ability look different, or, by simply adding onto it in this manner, you may also find it worth it to make it work differently, as was probably the case with Swain.

What else can you add? Lots of things, really. And by lots of things, I mean "more than I can cover in this one post, and more than you could fit into your lore anyway".

Do they have relatives or acquaintances, friends, tutors or so on that they may have learned from? Did your champion receive some sort of scar or injury which affects them in a negative way, such as Swain's poorly set leg after he broke it, Lee Sin's eyes, or Teemo's face? I mean Trundles face! Honest!

Another great example, is the MCCC a few months ago about a Noxian support who relied on the Noxus way of life, where the strong are made stronger, and the weak are culled. In this way, the Noxian support couldn't use any heals of any kind, as this would be aiding weakness.

Grabbing something like this is a great way to emphasize your champion's personality, and really cement their play style more than they may have been otherwise.

Regardless, if your lore doesn't tell us anything about what they can do, or why they're around, or who they're working for, then it's pretty much just dead weight, and you've wasted a perfectly good space in your character's design which could have improved their kit and fun factor dramatically.

As such, the next time you want to release a champion, without any lore, and call it done, go over to a mirror and slap yourself in the face, and tell yourself you're not done until you've beaten a frozen pig carcass with your bare fist, and that carcass is the lore, and your fist is your brain, so GET TO IT!

Since you have lore to write, I'll let you go do that now.

Class dismissed!

Class is back in session. Time for some summer classes. I hope you're ready, since we're going to be plowing through a lot of material in a remarkably short time in the next few weeks.

Now then, today we're going to be covering naming conventions in specific.

Did you name your kid Jennifer, or Bob Junior? Is your champion design named "Larry the Pyromancer" or is your name Volibar and your bear champion somehow named Volibear?

If so, GET OUT.

No, actually you're the ones who need this the most, so get yer butts back in those chairs and start taking notes. There'll be a test afterward. Actually, there won't be, but we'll pretend there will be so that you take notes anyway.

(Actually, a quick note while I think about it: I know Volty made Volibear, rather than Volibar, and I'll be discussing this matter later, so don't worry about it.)

The points we'll be covering today will be varied and important. Yes, this is a long article over just a name alone. I know, it's strange to consider this as important, but trust me, it is.

First, as per usual, we need to define why this is even a relevant topic in the first place. What's in a name? What makes it so important for a good name for your champion, or even your child? Many people have champions who have "unnamed" or "name to be determined", so why is this practically suicide to their design? It's not just what a name is, but what we want a name to actually convey that's important here.

Second, what are some really big things to avoid? There's an awful lot of BAD names. Horrendous, terrible, awful names. There's some things that simply shouldn't be done.

Third, since we've just run through what we can't do... well that's everything! Now what do you name your champion!? Have no fear, in this section we'll be discussing what sources of inspiration there are for names, and where you can go to get some help for your little uh... problem. I mean the naming thing. Probably.

Last on the list is some specific differences between titles and names. Titles aren't quite the same as the name of a champion, but they're part of the whole dealie. "Bob the Necromancer" is about as bland as you get, though his close friend "Larry the Pyromancer" is a close second. It's not just their names that are problematic, but also their titles. We want descriptive, without being facepalm worthy, so we'll see where the differences between names and titles are!

Now then, grab a text file, or a pen and paper, or if you're one of the "Bob the Necromancer" people, you might want to break out the fingerpaints and crayons. Once you're done chewing on the crayons (I hear the red ones taste best. Don't ask how I know this), we can get started!Part 1: So, what's in a name? A rose by any other name, may smell as sweet, but to call it "a grotesque pile of stinking garbage that makes you puke your lungs out at the slightest whiff of it" kind of makes it so people wouldn't actually want to try to smell it in the first place.

Alright, I admit I stole the title to this chapter from the short version back on page 1. What can I say? It's effective.

Regardless, the question you're all asking right now (or you should be, at least), is why am I devoting an entire section just to names?

Consider it this way... first impressions are the most important part of any relationship. On a forum like this, with your champion's name and title being your first impression... well... if it's "untitled", most people are going to assume it's unfinished, the designer hasn't got a shred of creativity, and they aren't even going to bother clicking on it. Funny, that.

If it's a bad name, like my favourite "Bob the Necromancer", once again, you've managed to show you have no creativity, and that the remainder of the post is probably going to be about as interesting as the name.

"Vash the Gunman" is as interesting as "Simon the Driller" or "Hackjob the Blatant Ripoff". You haven't shown that you're likely to have anything of value inside of the post, so why bother looking any further?

Your first job here, is to get something that's descriptive, without being blatantly obvious. Catchy, without being so trendy or cliche that it's irritating. Interesting, without trying too hard to take the spotlight. Trust me, if you dress up in drag with forty-seven and a half layers of make-up on, it's going to show, and not in a good way.

You know how in the last few articles preceding this one, virtually all of them drill the same message in over and over and over again? It's repetitive, just like that last line for a reason. It's to catch your attention and force you to realize how important it is.

Some of you may be shaking your heads in confusion at this point, which shows that I need to continue repeating myself, it would seem.

The message, simply put, is that all aspects of a champion must converge on a singular point. A bruiser has to not only have bruiser abilities, but look like a bruiser, sound like a bruiser, have the backstory of a bruiser, and the name of a bruiser. Every little tiny aspect needs to play into each other in a way that lives up to the audience's expectations, or they'll walk away feeling a little disappointed or cheated.

Now, sometimes you can get away with a bit of a bait and switch for comical purposes. Annie could have gotten away as a bruiser if they had have had the technology in place at the time to more directly control Tibbers, similar to Syllabear back in DotA: Allstars. The reason this would have worked is simply because of the point that a little girl shouldn't be thrown into life or death situations in the first place, and the sheer absurdity of it would make the audience accept it at face value due to it not just being "wrong", but so ridiculously and horribly wrong that it could be no other way.

In the case of names, you generally don't want to do this though. Breaking someone's expectations requires you to first understand how to live up to them in the first place. To have a "style" in art, you are intentionally doing something "wrong". To do something wrong intentionally, you first need to know how to do it "right" before you can do it "wrong" with purpose.

So, too, does this rule apply in naming, and the rest of your character's design. Being "bad" is easy, you just don't know how to do it right. Doing it right is difficult. Doing it so horrendously bad that it makes people laugh at the absurdity of it, however, requires a true master of the art.

I know this is repetitive, but the point I'm trying to stress so hard on you is to not go screwing around with things you don't fully understand yet. Going "oh, I don't need to know how to do it right if I just doing it wrong on purpose" doesn't work. You will fail even more miserably than you would've otherwise. This is why we get so many fail trolls in the game... they aren't trolling their teammates because they're intentionally being bad; they're trolling because they don't know how to be so good that they piss their enemies off by winning, so they piss their allies off by failing, because it's all they're capable of.

So, what do we need in a name? What are we looking for that goes "right", that will make it just... work?

Well, I'm glad you asked me, self, because it's right here in the class planner. It's almost like you planned it that way, self. Creepy, huh?

Unique name; can't be the same, or almost similar, to anything else in the game currently.

Possible to pronounce. Xjblorkgrwabbwle is unique, but try saying it aloud.

Fits with the champion's character. This means their backstory, their appearance, and so on just has to "mesh" well together.

Provides a feel of what the character's theme is, without being too blatantly obvious about it.

Just sounds "nice". The definition of "nice" changes based upon the targeted audience for that champion's personality.

So, what does each of these mean?

Unique name: Riven's in the game so Raven can't be. It's just too similar in appearance and sound, which makes it difficult to tell who you're talking about.

More than just that, however, you also need to take into account shortened forms of names. I've used the name Nogitsune before in places, and never took into account, until in use, that I'd be shortened to "Nog" or "Noggy", which just sounds... weird. Regardless, this means that since Vladimir is in the game, you can't name your character Vladoff, since it gets weird when calling Vlad MIA, and then you have to ask which one, since it didn't tell you anything.

This "unique" part also means no stealing names from blatantly obvious locations. Naming your champion "Vash" or any other popular anime or game name is a big no-no. Furthermore, well known gods like Ares or Vulcan just don't work, either.

Now, that being said, grabbing a rather remote and unused name that most people won't have ever heard about before? Sure! There's thousands and millions of cool and awesome sounding names out there that no one's ever going to use otherwise ^.^

Pronunciation: If you can't say it out loud, it's awfully hard to call out an MIA over skype, or to get all that attached to Gbdludwlpv when you're not even sure how to say their name.

Part of this is ease of use, but another part is just attachment. If they're going to like the character, buy skins, that kinda thing, then they want to be able to chat about their favourite champion in idle conversation with friends, or even to just get the feel of them for themselves.

Anything which makes it harder to relate to your champion, such as a name that's not physically possible to pronounce, is problematic. Just ask Sony, who made their name specifically so that it could be easily pronounced in both Japanese and English. I know it may take a few hammer hits to the forehead to do so, but try to think like you work in marketing for a moment. Hopefully the concussion is only minor and you won't end up working there after making your champion's name.

Characterization: So if Annie were named Cho'gath, well... yeah, it just doesn't work. In the same way, Nasus just couldn't be named Fancypants McGee, for the obvious reason that every fangirl out there would be upset at the implication that he actually needs to wear pants. ...I've said too much again, haven't I?

Anyway, the point here, is that you want to make your champion's name fit them well. Graves just sounds like a stubble ridden jerk of a guy who you'd meet in a back alley. His face lives up well to such, as does his personality. As much as I don't personally care for Graves, as I've said before, he's a masterpiece in having all aspects of his design work together well in terms of characterization. I'm not his target audience, but I can guarantee you that his target audience will find him near perfect of a match to what they were expecting.

Cop a Feel: Alright, maybe I'm using that term inappropriately. Actually, I know I am, but I couldn't help myself ^.~

Overall, you want your name to reflect your character's "feel". Veigar just... "sounds evil", in an... adorable not-evil-at-all-really-but-pretends-to-be-really-hard sort of way. You can almost feel the crackball hyperactivity dripping off of Kennen's name.

Even so, these aren't blatantly obvious. Vladimir is... boring. Yes, it suggests "vampire", but it does so by beating you over the head with it. It just pushes the concept way too hard, and doesn't work because of such. It's what we call "too obvious for it's own good".

A tank named Brick doesn't work. A tank named Caerwyn (my name, you can't use it >=O I've already got a champion in production named that XD ) however, does, as anyone who knows the name's definition (white fortress from Caer + Gwynn in Gaelic) will recognize that it's implying a tank, without being really blatantly obvious about it.

Cassiopeia was a Queen in Greek mythology who was more than a little bit vain, going on about how ridiculously beautiful she and her daughter was. She flat out said she and her daughter were more beautiful than the nereids, and Poseidon got... well... pissy and punished her harshly and permanently for it. Kind of like... Cassiopeia in the game, though in a different manner.

The idea is, you want to hint towards something about your character that makes them "feel" right, without being so obvious that it hurts to look at.

It sounds nice: This sounds simple but... well, people come up with horrible things all the time. For an example, I'll grab one off the front page as of the time of writing this.

Arachansi - "Arach" pretty much flat out says "I couldn't think of a good spider name", but past that, it just doesn't flow off the tongue well at all. A soft vowel to start, followed by a hard k sound, followed immediately by attempting to slide into a soft consonant at the end.

Conflicting sounds can sometimes work, but generally you want to try to keep a name to keep a feel throughout it the whole way.

Ahri, Annie, Anivia, Amumu and Ashe all have fairly nice names that just slide right out because they're consistent in their flow.

While Akali and Alistar finalize the A's in the game, you'll find they still are easy to say; Ah-kal-ee can be seen that the stressed syllable is the hard consonant in the middle, where it starts in the middle, spikes up, then eases back down.

Al-iss-sstar has the s merge between the second and third syllables, forcing them to flow together into almost a 2 syllable word, despite it's technically 3. You also get the inverse of Akali, where it starts high, dips low, then finishes on a high note. It just flows well.

Ahr-ahk-ann-see feels disjointed in comparison, starting mid, going high, then back middle, then low, leaving it kind of a weird flop at the end. You also get the feeling that it should almost be two separate words.

This is something that's difficult to describe without blowing an entire english lesson on things, so I'll put it in an easier way: say the name out loud. If it feels a bit awkward, or just "wrong", even if you can't figure out why, don't use it. There's a thousand little tiny things that our minds pick up on that we aren't consciously aware of, but which irk us in tiny, small ways. You want to limit as many of these as possible, even if you're not sure where they're coming from.

If a name just "feels wrong", but you can't for the life of you figure out why... scrap it and try again, because it's going to bother other people as well, guaranteed, and the fact that they can't place what it is that bothers them about it, is just going to annoy them even more. So long as that nagging doubt is in their mind, it's going to make it that much harder to have fun playing the character.

Anyway, let's get onto the things to avoid in a name, so that we can start working more in depth on where to do things right!Part 2: Hello. I'm Bob. From accounting.

The Bob from accounting joke's been going on for awhile, and to reiterate to those who may have missed it, it's what Thayen has decided to call "Definitely not Blitzcrank". The joke being that it's so blatantly bland and generic that it just stands out like a sore thumb as feeling "false".

Most of the problems with names are actually pretty similar to this, honestly, so let's start digging into the list of things not to do.

No overused names. This sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many people do this. Unless your name is Jenn, Pat, or some other name where you got stuck being known as "Jenn H." or "Jenn 3" due to having 2-4 people all in the same class named the same thing. I figure pretty much all of us have run into people who have this problem at some point in our lives, even if it's not us personally. If you've heard it before as a friend's name, or casual conversation? It's already in the trash.


Avoid overly obvious names. Brand's name for a pyromancer is... borderline. Morte, as a name for an undead character? No. No no no no no. This also includes NOT naming your bruiser/thug "Vinny" or other Italian gangster name.


Just say "no" to words with obvious meaning. This is closely related to the above, but a bit more broad spectrum. Talon doesn't necessarily mean he uses claws, but it's cheezy and just doesn't work that well. Avoid anyone named Razor or Lightning, or anything else similar.


Names that mean nothing can work, but not that often. A name defines who someone is, and virtually all names in use have some relation to meaning something. Just making up a name off the top of your head probably won't fit right. Pick a random champion in the game... they'll have a reference to SOMETHING. I picked Anivia at random, because I was curious. Nivea, "Snow white" in latin. Next, I went with Hecarim... ended up being an anagram of Chimera.


Naming things after yourself is just bad form. If your name is Zileas, you don't get to name your champion Zilean. Your CO-WORKERS, however, are perfectly free to do so out of respect! You just can't do it yourself. If you're friends with someone on here? Sure, name your new champion after them if it seems appropriate! Just... don't name it after yourself. That's just kinda smug and arrogant.

And... yeah. Yeah, that's actually pretty much it. There's not many ways to screw up names, since it's such a broad subject, oddly enough. Almost anything works, so long as you maintain a few key points in doing things right. Naming conventions are remarkably open and unorthodox, so don't be afraid to get creative ^.^Part 3: We're doin' it right on the wrong side of town! ~April Wine

So, there's really not that many ways to make a "bad" name, but how do we make a particularly "good" name?

You got a taste for this in Part 1, but we can do better than that, right?

There's actually a lot of great resources for names, and you already got a few hints at these previously.

Notice a few of the previous examples mentioned... Anivia's based off a latin word, Caerwyn's based off of a Gaelic name comprised of two base words, Hecarim's based off of an anagram, and Volibear's based off of a co-worker's name.

You have plenty of sources of inspiration for names, as you do for everything else in your creative works, the trick is mostly finding something that fits, sounds nice, and isn't quite so blatantly obvious.

A pyromancer with "pyro" ANYTHING in the name is not going to work. Now, that being said, Google is the most powerful tool you have access to. Train up your Google-foo, and kick that writer's block in half! ...Too much? Yeah, yeah I thought so... oh well.

So, the first thing I did, was type into google the following: fire in different languages

I come across this site here... http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090702110833AAcmFvp

Fire:

Spanish - Fuego (fwEh-go)
Italian - Fuoco (fwoo-okoh)
French - Feu (fuh)
Portuguese- Fogo (foh-go)
German - Feuer
Japanese - 火　Hi (hee)
Chinese Mandarin - 火 Huo (hoa)
Hebrew - אששה Eshshah (esh-shaw)
Greek -φωτιά Fotia (foh-tee-ah)
Source(s):

Native Spanish-speaker
French Student
Kanjisymbol.net
nciku.com
google.com
larousse dictionnaire
Hebrew Lexicon (studylight.org)


Not only did they list a number of languages which list "fire", but they also were so helpful as to list a number of sources which they got this information from! How wonderful!

Now, notice something odd about these? Fuego, Fuoco, Fogo, Feuer, Feu... all the latin based languages seem to have the same base root, and from which "fire" arose.

Brand is "just" different enough of a name that it works, but only barely. It's still a little too obvious for my tastes, but at the same point, Feuer sounds way too close to Führer, which is probably not a good idea to go with that one.

Of the list, they're not that interesting, but we can go farther with this. A simple search for "Names that mean fire", minus the quotation marks (quotes in google denote that it will look for that EXACT phrase and ignore anything that's close but not quite perfect), brings up http://www.20000-names.com/fire_names_hot_names.htm

Look at the description of this one in particular:

McKenna: Irish and Scottish surname transferred to forename use, from an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Cionaodha, meaning "son of Cionaodh," hence "born of fire."

Aodh is shown earlier to mean fire, and Cion would be born thereof. It's twisted into an anglicized format, and then changed again from a surname to a forename.

See how silly the amount of effort we can go into just to make a name? All this came from... "aodh", or fire, and instead we get McKenna.

This kind of thing tells us that, you know... with a little more information, we could make our own name.

Nic a', in Gaelic, is "daughter of", instead of "son of", so we could change this quickly to Nic a' Kenna, or even blur the two together into Nikenna. From there, you could make minor alterations to make it sound better, same as most any other name in history has had happen, as even seen in the McKenna example (It's even shortened from MacKenna of all things... 1 letter! ).

This is just an example, but you can find examples all over the place, of how names are twisted and wrought from all sorts of other words.

Here's one of the best tools in most cases, though considering how "fire" is overused, it probably won't be so useful in this one case, sadly.

http://thesaurus.com/

There's baby names, thesaurus, dictionaries, and other languages to work with. Personally, I'm thinking... if I made a pyromancer, I'd want to work it within the lore of my other characters I've made for LoL. Caerwyn and Nemhain are both gaelic gnoll based female champions. A pyromancer here would be likely on the same line of reasoning. Gaelic's a bit of an odd one since it's a group of languages, similar to how latin languages are grouped together, so there's manx, irish, scottish, welsh, and a few other gaelic variations.

A bit of searching around in google and I come across this... aile, in Manx, is fire. It's a nice ending to a name, but doesn't fit on it's own.

Saorsa, or freedom, pronounced Saer-sha, blends quite nicely into aile, however. Saorsaile won't be pronounced in the way it would in irelend or scotland, but that's fine, as we literally just made it up a few seconds ago, so it's not like anyone's going to find it by searching for it. A few might recognize it, but they'll fortunately be in the minority ^.~

Go ahead, do a search in google for Saorsaile. You'll find ONE example of it, which means... apparently it's just random gibberish. It's a rather long list of... I guess words, but there's no real explanation for what they are.

The point is, we now have a name that means "fire", or more specifically, freedom fire. Sort of like how you get things like the phrase "a blaze of glory".

Most likely it'll be pronounced by most people as Say-or-sal, which although not really technically "correct", it still actually sounds kind of nice to the ear, I find.

The end point is, we just created a name out of mixing and matching a number of concepts together.

You don't have to do THAT much work... if you want to simplify things, look for these for inspiration on a much quicker scale:

Baby name meanings
Languages other than your own (works regardless of region ^.~ )
Thesaurus
God/Goddesses of cultures that you rarely hear about
Disease names
Random google searches

There's some weird stuff on that list, but... wait waitwaitwaitwaaaaaaaait. Disease names? DA FAQ!?

Yep, you can pull inspiration from literally almost anywhere. I even named a character Ataxiana once, based off the mental illness Ataxia. She was more than a little crazy, and it worked and sounded great ^.^

The point is, you have at your fingertips the most information that any generation has ever had before. The internet is swelling in size at an astronomical rate, and more and more resources like this are flooding it daily. Anything from the name of a dish of food, to a scientist who focused on a particular field of study can work, and you have the capacity to find any of these things with ease.

The trick then, becomes honestly sorting through all the bad names that just don't quite work, to find, or stitch together, something that does work nicely.

In the end, you have so many options open to you that you're going to get overwhelmed. Pick a theme that fits and stick to it, is my best suggestion.

For myself, the vast majority of my character names are obscure and unknown minor gods/goddesses, occasionally with variations on the spelling to sound a little better.

Pick a culture that fits your champion. Nasus and Renekton are from egypt, so any champion from their homeworld should be similar, while Leona and Pantheon are greek/roman, so those from their area should also be similar. Kayle/Morganna are Irish, and the gnoll race I'm working on slowly is a mixture of scottish and irish blended together, which I'm sure would get me lynched ^.~

The point is, you want your champion's name to fit with those of the others in that area already. If you have an Ionian champion, their name's probably going to sound Asian in some way, shape, or form. Try not to deviate too much from this as it's really jarring if you do.

Other than that, you have the tools you need at your disposal, so go use them! =3Part 4: "Yes, I'm the Grand High Supreme Mistress of Environmental Engineering for the entirety of the Stockholme Estate."
"So... you're the head maid."
"I just said that."

So, there's such a thing as going overboard on a title as well, as we just saw from the title of this section. Fortunately for us, titles are specifically meant to actually denote what someone does, so it's pretty hard to screw them up compared to names.

Leona is "the lion", in female form, so more specifically, "The Lioness". She's aggressive and protects her young, or in this case, she's a highly aggressive tanky support who takes care of her carry in lane by butchering the enemy and teaching them how to hunt ^.~

The name's nice, and describes her personality well, without giving too much away. "The Radiant Dawn" of her title, however, pretty much flat out says "I'm a sun worshiper!" in about as blatant terms as one can possibly manage.

The rules for the naming convention change a bit for titles, as you can see. A name should give an idea of the character's personality, saying "who they are", but without being right up in your face about it.

Their title, however, you can be pretty upfront with. "The Necromancer" still sucks, flat out, because it's too bland. Alright, sure you're a necromancer, but... what do you specialize in? Are you a necromancer who prefers skeletons or zombies? Are you yourself a lich/ess or some other form of undead yourself? What is it you DO, other than "dead stuff"?

Karthus is "The Deathsinger", while Yorick is "The Gravedigger". Sure it says what they do, but it's not just generic necromancer. Admittedly, gravedigger's kind of bland, only halfway thought through, and should probably be changed, but who are we kidding? That describes Yorick's entire design quite nicely as is.

Sorry for the cheap shot there, Yorick, but you really were released long before you were ready, sadly. I'll look forwards to your rework, but I'm sad I bought you. It's possible to be effective, while still being boring as hell.

Anyway, the point I'm getting to, is the title is generally "what this champion does". I don't care that Brand is "The Burning Vengeance", but honestly, this is basically calling your champion "Fire, the Fiery Fire!". Really now, is that honestly ALL he has going for him is fire? Problematic, perhaps you should work on the personality a bit more, then.

Sometimes you can do a play on a theme, implying something reverse of what's truly there in a name, such as how Tristana means "sad", due to it being a variation of Tristan, but she's giddy as all heck.

For a title, you can't really pull the same hijinks. You want something descriptive of what they do, without any wordplay or tricks or misleading concepts. Your end goal here, is to ensure that the player knows exactly what your champion DOES.

Make it blatant and clear, but try to keep it from being bland at the same time.

And... yeah, actually that's pretty much it, oddly enough.

Names and titles are pretty major parts of how you get your foot in the door. It's how people on the forum look at your design and go "Huh, that sounds neat...", and it's how a champion in the game makes you just look at their name and go "I want to learn more about this one!".

It's your first hint at what they do, and it's how you capture their attention immediately, paired with their splash art / icon.

If these line up, and look kinda neat... someone'll click on them out of curiousity.

If it's just "No name as of yet, I'm bad at names", then you probably won't get much of anything for attention.

Now then, it's hot outside, and I want ice cream.

Class dismissed!

Y HALO THAR!

*Coughs* I mean, class is in session! WOO! Summer school get!

Anyway, today we'll be discussing the joys of resources!

First off, we'll be going over why resource systems even exist in the game, since without this, the remainder of this discussion can't occur.

Second, we'll cover such things as resource-less champions, AKA Garen or Katarina (d'aw such a kyuute couple! <3 ), and why they work at all.

Third, we'll be touching on how to select the "right" resource system for your champion.

Finally, well end off with tertiary resource systems, and what to avoid when implementing resources.

Anyway, let's get started!Part 1: Mana mana bo banana autoattacks, do rei mi fa Sona... er...Alright, so to start off with, resource systems play an important role in many games, and have for a very long time. Specifically, there have been resource systems around since long before mana even existed, and it was simply used as a generic "quantified" version of such.

So what does a resource system even do?

The primary purpose of any resource system is to restrict the capacity of a champion to spam out their abilities non-stop at full power.

There are varying methods of applying this, but in the end, all resource systems boil down to this one goal. Any "new" system you come up with which doesn't do this, isn't actually a resource system at all, as you're not managing your resources.

A few examples of alternate resource systems include things such as Rumble's heat, Karma's mantra charges, or Mundo's health. These restrict the capacity for a champion to spam their abilities non-stop, either through direct methods, such as Rumble flat out silencing a champion, preventing them from continued casting, or an indirect method such as Vlad being unable to spam his abilities endlessly without putting him low on health to the point of being easily one-shot.

Other methods are things such as the Fury system that Renekton uses, where he's able to use his abilities, however, by doing so with less than 50 rage, he's sacrificing some of their power in order to be able to spam them sooner. This allows for a player to decide whether it's worth the sacrifice or determine if they should wait a few more moments.

One of my own champions, Nemhain, uses a highly modified version of the Fury system, which is done to prevent her from being literally able to spam her abilities non-stop, due to the fact that she actually has zero cool downs, other than a standard 1.5 second global cool down between abilities.

Regardless of what you do, in the end, you want your resource system to limit the capacity for a player to unload their abilities endlessly. In some cases, this is managed purely through cool downs (as I'll discuss in part two of this article ), in other cases, an ability may have a remarkably low cool down, but uses it's resource system to prevent long term use, such as Swain or Aniva's ultimates chugging mana like hillbilly downing moonshine. (If you are a hillbilly, I would apologize, but I'm too busy staring in awe that you got the computer working by plugging it into a car propped up on cinderblocks ).

If you didn't have this restriction, Karthus could spam his ultimate all day and everyone would die horrible, horrible deaths. By introducing cool downs and a resource system, you can balance your abilities to make use of these to restrict casting so that they're not overpowered.

Note that mana restricts long term casting, but doesn't affect short term spam at all, so typically cool downs are used to mana short term spam, unless you use a increasing cost system such as the ultimates on Swain or Kassadin.

Energy tends to restrict short term burst potential, but doesn't harm long term staying power. Fury emphasizes being weak at the start of a fight, but stronger the longer it goes on.

These are the primary tools to managing your abilities so that you can make them more powerful and interesting, without them going overboard. There are, however, exceptions to the rule, and this leads us into our next section.
Part 2: Garen has no mana. Garen needs no mana!By now, you've probably noticed that some of the champions in the game don't actually have a secondary resource system outside of cool downs on their abilities. You may ask why. You may pull your hair out, screaming incoherently with confusion. You may stalk Tom Cadwell (Zileas) and threaten to eat his pet cat if he doesn't give Katarina mana costs so she stops spinning like a top and shredding your face because you didn't think to pick someone with a stun on your team.

Regardless, the point is that some of the champions in the game simply don't have a secondary resource system, so why is that, and how do they even get away with it?

Primarily, as stated, resource systems are used to limit how often you can spam abilities. If an ability isn't particularly powerful when spammed at the maximum rate allowed by it's cool down, it doesn't really need a resource system to keep it in check.

Remember, the end goal of any resource system is to provide a second option on how fast you can spam something, other than just the cool down. If the cool down does the job just fine, you may not actually need a resource system in the first place.

In the case of each of the champions who lack a secondary resource system, they simply don't really need mana, energy, fury, or anything else. They work just fine by tweaks to how fast their cool downs are, and that's it.

To put it in a short, simple manner... if you want to make your abilities a bit stronger and such, then find methods other than just using cool downs to limit them. If you want to make abilities that can be cast very often, once again, limit them in other ways than just the cool downs. If you're fine with having a champion with long term staying power in lane, then cool downs may be all you need.

Honestly, there's actually not much more to say, on this matter. It's really that simple!
Part 3: Eenie, meenie, mana mo! Catch a Kennen by the toe! If he ulti's let him go, and spaz uncontrollably on the ground, screaming in agony!Alright, so you've got a champion in mind. YAY! So you're just going to give them mana and you're done ^.^

No.

No you're not.

You're going to sit down and think about this and go "does mana actually work with what I have in mind for this champion?", or Imma SMACK you with this fish. Do you want to get fish slapped? DO YOU!? No? I didn't think so.

As previously covered, mana's intended, primarily, for allowing short term spamming of abilities, but restricting long term casting. This is more of an in-lane kind of dealie, than it is a late game thing, in most cases, as you probably won't be wandering around long term late game long enough to blow through 2,000+ mana with ease, though there are exceptions to any rule.

For the most part, however, mana is used primarily to restrict a player from just tossing a poke at the enemy every time it's up. If you do so in lane, eventually you run dry, and now you're at a major disadvantage if the enemy decides to bum rush you and slap you with that fish again.

Yeah, those red herrings hurt. Trust me. I've seen it firsthand with my own eyes, and it wasn't pretty.

Anyway, mana has it's use, but if your champion design isn't one wherein they need to be limited on their pokes in lane, then mana may not be the most ideally suited choice for you.

Keep in mind, however, that mana also exists on many items, and by removing it, you may be inadvertently harming your champion. Just how badly do you think Vlad would *LOVE* to have 1500+ AP from 5x Arch-angel's staves and a Rabadon's Deathcap? Not very much, since he has no mana, so can't benefit from this at all, which I would suggest is probably intentional, given that he'd be absurdly overpowered if he did have such.

Sometimes it's actually beneficial to intentionally take mana away from someone as a penalty, rather than as a benefit, due to such!

Regardless, we have other options! No resource system is a plausible one, if you think your champion can be held in check in a tidy manner without anything else but cool downs.

Others, such as energy, can work great if you're wanting them to be able to burst hard, then back off, in a hit and run style method.

If you're looking for a champion that will stand their ground and last through long, drawn out fights, then Fury's another nice choice to go with.

You can even make up your own resource systems as well, or use tertiary systems, such as ammo counters, to further restrict the capacity for your abilities to be spammed.

One question becomes this: Why does Teemo's ultimate have a mana cost at all, when it already has an ammo counter to limit it's power? Honestly, the answer's likely just that "it was left over from his original design which didn't have an ammo system".

You could, quite literally, ditch the mana cost on Teemo's shrooms, and it really wouldn't have all that much negative impact on him, as he'd still be limited in how often he can drop them by about the same amount as before. The only real difference, is that if he goes AD instead of AP for a build, he'll have a much harder time spamming his shrooms out, due to the harm it does to his other abilities. As such, it might actually be better to remove the mana from his shrooms, to make his AD build more viable!

No matter what you do, consider the reasoning behind why you're doing something. If you don't have an answer that truly stands on it's own merit, you probably need to rethink things through. This means that if your answer is "Well... most champions have mana", then you don't really know why your champion has mana, and are just giving them such out of some strange sense of tradition.

Everything you do with your champion should be directed and intentional. You should know why you're giving them mana, or energy, or whatever, and you should know the purpose behind what changes to these will do.

The end goal, is to give yourself more methods to tweak and adjust the balance of a champion. If you only have one value, being "on" or "off", then if "on" is too powerful, and "off" is too weak, then you're pretty much screwed, because the ability can't be fixed beyond that point.

By adding a resource system, you're directly giving yourself more tools to use in order to balance your champion out.

Darius, as much as I hate his design, balances himself through the tertiary system of his bleed effect, which is actually a good idea. It means that he can't just unload 100% of his power on someone instantly, and rather, has to build up towards that point over a few seconds.

Now, that being said, Darius has his flaws elsewhere, such as his E being more dangerous to his allies than his enemies, and that his ultimate rewards players for trolling their allies, neither of which are a good idea, but the idea of his passive is actually a very good one which has been suggested several times before in the past.

Keep in mind that Darius's bleed, just as his brother Draven's axe, are both tertiary resource systems, in that these directly affect how useful their abilities are, in addition to any mana costs or cool downs they may have.

You may be able to use things such as these to limit your champion's abilities in ways that don't require using mana or any other primary resource at all, so keep this in mind when working on your design!
Part 4: There must be the third, and last, dance - this one will last forever. ~Dream Theater

So, I've been using the term "tertiary" a lot lately, haven't I? What does it even mean?

It's pretty simple, really. Primary is "first", secondary is "second", and tertiary is "third". Yep, it really is that simple, told'ja so!

Now, what this means in game play, is that a primary resource system is generally taken care of by cool downs in League of Legends. This is a static system which controls how often you can spam your abilities, no matter how much mana or energy you have, and is the first line of defense in keeping otherwise awesome and neat abilities from becoming overpowered and uncontrollable, to the point of having to be nerfed into the ground.

Next off, we have the secondary resource systems, of which I'll be going into considerably more detail as each has it's own special nuances that need to be covered, so each will be given their own unique article, as I simply don't have the room here to cover each in nearly as much depth as is required.

Finally, we have the tertiary resource systems. These are typically pretty basic additions which just further limit spell casting beyond the basic limitations that are imposed by the primary and secondary systems.

These include things such as Draven or Olaf catching their axes to reduce the penalty of using their abilities, or Karma having to blow Mantra charges in order to get full use out of her abilities, which operate at only half their effectiveness without such.

Anything from Heimerdinger's turret ammo counter, to Ahri being able to cast her ultimate 3 times in a row, are tertiary resource systems.

In short, they're generally pretty limited, basic things, which only apply to one ability, generally. A bit more exploration of this territory has gone on, lately, as of the time of this writing, where Darius and Draven were the last two champions to be released. The fact of the matter is, however, that ammo systems, and other tertiary systems have existed since the game came out, in some way shape or form.

Note that even Shyvanna's ultimate is technically a tertiary resource system, as it controls her capacity to use her abilities to their fullest potential, and the secondary resource system, Fury, is only used to control her tertiary one, so, in an odd way, they're actually reversed in function!

Anyway, adding additional things such as this can be a nice way to control how potent your champion is.

Consider the idea of stacking debuffs, such as the Fire Lord from Warcraft 3's expansion, The Frozen Throne (interestingly enough, Zileas was the one to make this hero! ). In this, his autoattacks deal 1/2/3 additional damage on every hit, with no limitation, causing enemies to take more and more damage over time. This could very easily turn into a tertiary system similar to Darius, simply by having other abilities benefit off of the number of stacks present.

Twitch already had such when the game first was released, in that his poison stacks amplified the effects of two of his other abilities (his slow and his nuke).

Let's take Twitch, for an example, and make a change to his ultimate. Instead of just making his attacks a line AoE, let's say that he actually does spray and pray, spewing out a large number of very weak shots in a cone, applying a stack of his poison for each hit, and that they pass through enemies in the radius, similar to how Miss Fortune uses her Bullet Time. He now has an actual capacity to apply his limiting reagent rapidly to multiple targets, which would greatly change how his character works.

You don't have to make a champion using this exact method, but it does give you a rough idea of what's possible!



There's one final part, here, to cover. What not to do...

This actually isn't that hard to follow, as long as you understand why resource systems exist in the first place.

You want to limit the capacity for someone to spam their abilities, but on the other hand, you don't want to limit their capacity to use their ultimate in a clutch play. As such, you'll notice that Renekton, Viktor, virtually all the energy users, and so on, do not use their secondary resource systems when using their ultimates, and the only real reason that mana is allowed to do this, is that mana costs are long term disabling, rather than short term, so you tend to keep enough mana around to power your ultimate intentionally.

At no point should you be like "Awe my ultimate was off cool down, it was a perfect moment to hit it, and... it was greyed out!". Even Darius can use his ultimate at will, he just doesn't gain quite as much benefit off of it as such, leaving it up to the player to decide whether it's a good idea to use it at limited capacity or not.

In short, use your resources to limit how powerful a champion's abilities are, by making them choose when to use them, or restricting their capacity to do so. Ultimates are a special case scenario though, and you should be very careful about limiting the capacity to cast an ultimate, outside of it's cool down. If you give it a very low cool down, such as Akali, or Teemo, then yes, a tertiary system can be used to limit it's power, but otherwise, don't screw with ultimates.

There's a million other tiny things I could go over, I'm sure, but for the most part, this should be enough to give you a good primer on the general purpose of resource systems, and how to put them to good use!

Now then, it's supper time for me, and you're probably tired of these summer classes, so... class dismissed!

Today we'll be exploring the mysteries of the fuel injection system! I mean, mana! Yes. Mana. No fuel here. Other than for MAGIC!

Our number one question of the day we'll be going through, is exactly what is mana used for, and why's it so important? I'll cover such things as it's purpose, itemization, and so on!

The next thing to go through is mana costs, and how come they're so integral to balancing a champion. The tricky part here is that this gets really messy math-wise! As such, this will be broken into two sections, with the next section being:

Mana regeneration! Yep, mana's really just that much of a pain on subtle levels that it's going to take a whole extra section to cover how to balance mana regeneration effects!

After we've roughed our way through the nasty stuff, however, we can relax a bit, and just focus on why mana-burn abilities aren't in the game, among other things.

So, without further ado, or adon't, MANA!Part 1: The question is, what is a mana-mana? The question is, WHO CARES!? - Statler & Waldorf, Muppets TonightI touched on this lightly in the previous section, but, in general, mana is a secondary resource system which is used, in tandem with cool downs normally, to limit how much a champion can use their abilities. Mana, in particular, is specialized in long term restrictive properties, rather than the short-term limitations imposed by energy.

See, mana is designed to allow you to cast as much as you want, so long as you have your cool downs up, at least in a short term scenario. Over time, however, you eventually have to hold back on spamming your abilities, so as to give your mana time to regenerate back again.

The idea, here, is to make it possible for a champion to poke repeatedly fairly hard, but to limit their capacity to just stay in lane forever. This is also a large portion of why all of the support champions in the game, currently, are mana based, as their main weakness is intended to be their long term capacity to lend their power to a lane or a fight. Soraka, for instance, can pour on the healing in a heartbeat, but it's going to drain her dry if she tries to maintain that healing by popping it every time the cool down is up, leaving her to tactically decide just how badly her laning partner, or herself, really needs that heal.

Generally, if your champion design is dedicated towards the concept of being useful in the short term, but you worry about the long term ramifications of their abilities, you dump mana on their lap to severely restrict their capacity to just go all out at all times.

Note, however, that many items in the game also affect mana and mana regeneration, as do many masteries and runes. As such, adding mana to a champion isn't a simple decision, though it's the "default" placeholder, in many people's eyes, until they see reason to do otherwise.

Removing mana can severely alter how a champion plays, as well as completely altering their itemization options. You'll note that virtually all tanks, all supports, and nearly all mages use mana as their secondary resource system, in addition to cool downs, and it's pretty hard to break them out of this.

For most AD based champions, bruisers, and hybrids, there's an awful lot more leeway than there has been traditionally, with itemization being shifted over time to limit how much mana bonuses there are on items, and limiting the need of mana throughout the game.

For example, when LoL was first released, mana costs were often nearly double what they are today, but mana regeneration and maximum mana options were significantly more potent as well to compensate. Since that time, mana's been stripped off many items, and many others now have AP on them without any mana at all.

In any case, mana is still a mainstay of the game, but that doesn't mean it should be tossed around lightly! It's probably the harshest mistress of all the secondary resource systems to balance properly, as strange as that may sound!
Part 2: Manna from Heaven; An excellent source of magical nutrition! Mana potions are high in calories though, so please do not overuse unless actively participating in the arcane arts.So, mana's pretty good stuff, it's got lots of itemization options, it's a simple number to dictate how much it drains per cast, and it's pretty much as basic as it gets, right?

Well... no. No it's not.

Out of all of the resource systems currently in the game, mana's the trickiest of all to balance the numbers on correctly, since you're not just balancing off of the total value + rate of gain, such as Energy or Fury, which are static values (mostly; energy gets a little leeway on regeneration rates ), but rather, you're balancing against the entire mana bar, which is a variable which changes based on various champions, items, and abilities. Mana costs on abilities also have the nasty habit of changing as you rank up an ability, making it even more of a pain to balance around!

Fear not, puny mortal, for I, SUPERKAT, am here to rescue you from the endless abyss and quagmire that is mana costs! DUN DUN DAH DUNNNN!

...Yeah, that was pretty lame.

Anyway, mana's pretty tricky, since you need to assume the rate at which a champion is going to itemize for mana, as well as their regeneration rate. Even a tiny increase in mana cost can go a long way to screwing up the champion's ability as a whole!

First, we'll use an example ability, which we'll be adjusting throughout this article, to show the various effects that even subtle tweaks can have long term.

Q: Mana Bolt
Quote:
Deals 60 / 120 / 180 / 240 / 300 damage
Mana cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65/ 70
Cool down: 10 seconds

This is a super generic lame ability so that we have basic numbers to work with. I wouldn't want to see anything this generic in the actual game, so don't think I'm endorsing such on your champions! >=O

The point, is that this is a nice, easy to use design for experimental purposes as we'll see now.

This ability deals (N*R)/CD damage per second, where N = the numerical coefficient of the ability, R = the rank of the spell, and CD = the cool down.

It also drains (MB+(ML*R))/CD mana per second, where MB = base mana cost, ML = mana increase per rank, R = the rank of the spell, and CD = the cool down.

Additionally, the damage output per mana is equal to (D/M), where D is the output of the first equation, and M is the actual mana cost of the spell, or (N*R)/(MB+(ML*R)).

I'll be going into numbers and what the represent later on, in another chapter, but for now, just focus on the concept that numbers mean nothing, except for what they represent. Think about this not as a math problem, so much as comparing how the various aspects of the spell interact with each other.

All we're really discussing, is that at rank 5, it does 300 damage, and costs 70 mana to cast. This can be seen by taking the (N*R)/(MB+(ML*R)) equation and filling it in with easy numbers (60*5) / (45+(5*5)), or 300 / 70. (Note at rank 1, it comes out to 45 + 5 for the mana cost, which is why it's 45, not 5! ).

This means that at rank 1, you're pouring in 50 mana to get 60 damage, which is only 1.2 damage per mana. It's inefficient, but it drains mana pretty slowly, so it's not that big a deal. At rank 5, you get 300 damage for 70 mana, or 4.29 mana per damage, which is a huge increase!

Now, let's add a 1.0 AP coefficient, which basically means for every 100 ability power you get, you do 100 more damage!

At rank 1, this turns into 160 damage for 50 mana, and rank 5 this is 400 damage for 70 mana, so 3.2 and 5.71 mana to damage ratios. The 1st rank is still better, but it's not nearly as obvious as it once was, and at first glance, someone may not necessarily guess it correctly anymore if their math skills aren't that hot.

If we ramp it up further, to 600 AP, you now get 660 damage for 50 mana, or 13.2 damage per mana, while that same 600 AP only gives 900 damage for 70 mana at rank 5, or 12.85 damage per mana.

As can be seen, mana coefficients begin to make things a little messy at times, and when you start throwing in things like mana regeneration, it turns far, far messier than you might at first begin to imagine.

The issue isn't so much in the mana per cast, as we've been discussing, for this is only a primer course to get you used to thinking about the numbers in terms of what they represent.

Sure, if you have 500 mana, and it costs 50 per cast, you can get, theoretically, 10 casts of 60 damage, or 600 damage for 500 mana. In reality, mana is constantly regenerating, which means this isn't an accurate value any longer, and so... we have to go deeper!Part 3: If quantum physics doesn't confuse you, then you don't understand it. ~Niels Bohr (The same rule applies to Mana regeneration! ~Katsuni )So, if this hurt your head to look at so far, you're going to be screaming within the next few minutes. Sorry, but them's the breaks. Mana sucks to work with at a developer's level!

Thus far, all I've covered is the basic concept of how to compare your damage to the mana costs, but in reality, that's not what we're really looking at. Mana is constantly regenerating, and it's value over time, due to being a resource system dedicated to long-term restrictions on casting, is when it really begins to rear it's ugly face as being a pain to work with.

Here's what we're really interested in: (cMT / (MsLR)*CD)
cMT = character Mana Total
NMsLR = Net Mana (spammed) Loss Rate
GMsLR = Gross Mana (spammed) Loss Rate

GMsLR = (MB+(ML*R)) * CD
NMsLR = (cMR*CD) - ((MB+(ML*R)) / CD) * CD

cMR = value of character mana regen per second (negative values = loss)
I = item mana regeneration
P = % modifiers to mana regen (which would be a separate formulate to combine all % modifiers together)
B = Base mana regen on the champion
V = Per level increase of mana regen on the champion
L = Level of the champion
C = Cooldown of the spell in seconds
M = Mana cost for the spell

cMR = (( I + B + (V * L) ) * P) - (M / C)

Ow. WTF.

No, seriously. WTF is all that!?

Ah, it's the description of how many times you can cast a spell before you run out of mana. Wow. Messy!

Alright, to simplify things, essentially what we need, is how fast you regenerate mana (cMR), and how much mana you go through by casting every single time your spell's off cool down (GMsLR), as well as your maximum mana (cMT). This will tell us how many casts you can get in a row before you run dry.

If we assume you have 500 mana, and regenerate we'll say... 15mp/5, then we're halfway done already!

We can simply plug these numbers into our equation, since we know what they stand for, and we get:

500 / (((15/5)*10) - (50/10)*10)) = 500 / inverse(30 - 50) = 500 / 20 = 25

In short, since we regenerate 3 mana per second, over the 10 second cool down of the spell, and drain 5 mana per second, over the 10 second cool down of the spell, so lose 20 mana per cast. With 500 maximum mana, this means in 25 casts, we'll run out of mana. This equation can be simplified further, but I'm leaving it expanded so that it makes more sense.

If we took the same equation, and used the 5th rank of the spell, replacing the 50 with a 70, we get:
500 / (((15/5)*10) - (70/10)*10)) = 500 / inverse(30 - 70) = 500 / 40 = 12.5

Wait, wait. By changing it from 50 mana per cast to 70 mana per cast, only a tiny 40% increase in mana cost, the amount of casts we get is cut in half? That's nuts!

The problem is, we're not comparing total mana costs, we're comparing the rate at which you blow through mana to the rate at which you get mana back.

This means that, if we gain 30 mana back in 10 seconds, then what we're really testing is the 50 mana spent in those 10 seconds, compared to 30, or 70 compared to 30. This means 50-30 and 70-30, respectively, so at a mere 40% increase in mana cost, we're losing mana 100% faster.

If you make the cool down even a tiny bit faster, or increase the mana cost a fraction of the total amount, it makes a severe change on how fast you drain mana.

To make things even more complex, you also have to start comparing all of your abilities together at any given level if they all have scaling mana costs! If your Q alone drains 20 mana total per cast faster than you regenerate, and you start spamming your W, which takes another 70 to cast, you now have a total of 70+70 - 30, so are losing 110 mana per second, and this adds up remarkably fast.

Mana regeneration items, especially a chalice / grail, will help a great deal to mitigate how badly you run out of mana, but if you're going to be using mana in your champion, you seriously have to consider the rate at which you blow through mana over time, compared to how much mana regeneration you're likely to have at that level.

This is what I meant by mana being the most complex of all the secondary resource systems to work with, since you have so many additional variables running around. Your maximum mana can be affected by your level, your runes, your masteries, and your items, as can your mana regeneration, and your mana drain can be drawn by what order you rank your spells in, especially if they get a lower cool down *AND* a higher mana cost with each rank, turning it into a compounding issue that spirals quickly out of control.

Seriously, balancing out the mana costs of a champion can take more time than designing the champion's basic ability list, and for most of the people on this forum, setting up mana costs will probably take more time than you have spent on your champion in total so far.

Of course, you could always just dump in random values and go "pft, close enough", but honestly, you probably weren't even considering the mana drain versus mana regeneration until you read this, so it really probably isn't close enough.

Note that even so much as a tiny difference like 5 mana extra and 1 second faster cool down per level, can completely shatter any remote pretense of equilibrium you may have had in your abilities. Toss in more than one ability draining mana at a time, and it becomes a nightmare fast.Part 4: I scream, you scream, we all scream WHEN MANABURNED ZOMG IT BURNS PUT IT OUT PUT IT OUT AYIEEEEEE!Whew! Well enough of THAT!

Alright you've earned a rest. Mostly. There's still some tricky stuff to go over, but fortunately, in comparison to the last bit, this is a cake walk!

Mana burn is a commonly questioned issue, as to why it exists in DotA and doesn't existin LoL.

To put it bluntly... DotA is pretty fail for game balance. Most of the stuff I've covered here, they haven't even vaguely considered, and by simply reading through the guide (assuming you have been going through it in order) to this point, you already have a better understanding of game mechanics than they do.

In the DotA realm, balance is achieved through imbalance. By making everything universally overpowered, therefore nothing is overpowered. At least, that's the theory, but in reality, it doesn't actually work.

Toss out terms like "anti-fun", because they don't mean anything where we're going. (Actually, they do, but I'm not covering that for about 15 more chapters or so).

Mana burn causes a core issue with the very basic premise behind a resource system in the first place.

Mana exists for the sake, as we covered earlier in this article, to restrict long term casting, while not hampering short term casting prowess. Mana burn completely screws this up by frying large amounts of mana from the player, meaning their resource system no longer functions as intended, as now it's been turned from a long term restriction, into an immediate one.

The downside, is that the only way to counteract mana burn, is to get ridiculously excessive mana regeneration to regain the mana that was just burned away back so you can continue casting, but at this point, you've just screwed up the balance of the entire game, because if one champion gets a strong mana burn item, there has to be an even stronger mana regeneration item available to counter it, and, once you have an item that insanely good at regenerating mana floating around, there's nothing to stop people from getting it even when the mana burner isn't around, thus trashing any benefit you may have once had by balancing mana as a whole based around long term casting restrictions.

In short, mana burn screws up the whole game's balance, and it's not fixable once it exists.

If mana burn exists in LoL at a strong enough level to even matter, then mana costs are essentially rendered pointless. There's no way to fix this as they are mutually occurring situations. One causes the other, and all it takes is one champion and one item to counter said champion, to trash the mess we just went through in trying to make our mana costs balanced, and considering how much of a bloody headache it was to do that, I don't think anyone wants to toss all that hard work out the window.

Even if you were willing to sacrifice that, you're still left with the fact that the new mana regeneration principles have just defeated the purpose of mana in the first place if there's no mana burner in the game.

You could, theoretically, make an item which reduces mana burn effects by a remarkably large amount, say 50% or more, but at that point, you literally have just added an item which has 0 effect on the game, other than to directly hard-counter a single champion's ability.

As such, there will never be a strong mana burn in LoL, because the people in charge, such as Morello and Zileas, are well aware of just how complex this situation is, and that there can be no fix to it once it's let into the game even once, as the only counter play possible breaks mana at a fundamental level.

This doesn't even count in that a flat mana burn is brutal to low mana users such as an AD carry, who typically has mana but no mana items and low costs, if it's to harm an actual mage. If you have 500 max mana, and the caster has 2,000, then you're going to be affected 400% stronger than the mage is.

Unless, of course, you use a % based mana drain, but once again, an AD champion simply doesn't have the regeneration to get such back, whereas the caster will likely have some sort of mana regeneration item to help them out by default.

This isn't even taking into account the issues related to "anti-fun", where you gain little fun from mana burning someone, but it SUCKS for the person getting mana burned. It's remarkably disproportionate down side to the afflicted player, in relation to the benefit to the casting player, which is another reason why it's a bad idea.

As such... no mana burn. Sorry guys, but it's not getting added to the game, and there's some remarkably strong reasons for why.

You could have a spell which strips someone of their mana for a short term... and then returns it... but uhm, why not just use silence, instead, which has the exact same effect?

Regardless, mana burn bad. Very bad. GRRR!

Anyway, I think that's actually it, for mana! Surprising, I know!

You're probably all clutching your heads in pain from the math parts, so I'mma just let you go for the day.

Class dismissed!

Welcome, welcome, take a seat!

EXCEPT YOU.

Yeah, you know who you are.

You can stand.

HRMPH.

Anyway, for everyone else, class is in session!

Today, we'll be covering energy! No, not the Energy=Mass(speed of light) squared type energy, but rather, NINJA ENERGY!

Oh, and Lee Sin. I guess he's there too. Monks, ninjas, whatever. Same thing right? That's what Gangplank keeps telling me. Then again, he seems to find an excuse to call everyone a ninja, even Amumu. I haven't quite figured that one out yet, but whatever. Must be pirate logic.

First off, we'll discuss what energy is, and why it's different from mana!

Second, we're going to go through the concept behind energy regeneration in combat via procedurally generated events (procs).

Next, we'll cover how to balance energy procs so as to make the champion design fun.

Finally, we'll.... we'll... hrm. Course syllabus... *flips through pages* Nope, looks like that's pretty much it. Well then, I guess we may as well get started, then!Part 1: Energy = Milk Chocolate SquareRAWR! Eeeenergy! I have lots of it today, being the third article I'm working on ^.^

That being said, what is energy, anyway?

Well, let's take a look!

Mana is a secondary resource system, same as energy, but unlike mana, energy is dedicated towards emphasizing short term burst capacity and hit/run attacks, rather than long term restrictions on casting.

All energy users (at least, to date, as of the time of this writing) have 200 maximum energy (runes/masteries can increase this slightly), and regenerate 10 energy per second (also capable of being increased via runes/masteries). Note that no item currently in the game is capable of adjusting energy in any way, shape, or form.

This means that all energy users are capable of regenerating the entire energy pool back every 20 seconds, under worst case scenario conditions. Under best case scenarios, you're looking at 16.165 energy per second, which can refill a 210 large energy bar in just a sliver under 13 seconds.

Honestly, this is mostly a moot point. The point of energy, is that you have a relatively small, more or less fixed, maximum value to work with. Abilities tend to cost a significantly high amount, generally 40-100 per cast, but also have a method of which the energy will be restored under certain conditions, which coincide with performing the role a champion is designed to do.

For example, Akali is a melee champion, and though her Mark of the Assassin can be used at semi-long range as a poke, it's inefficient to do so, and only provides half of it's benefit by using it as such. By running into melee and actually striking her target with an auto-attack, she not only triggers the mark for the other half of the damage, but also is given back a portion of the energy cost, rewarding her for playing her champion properly.

Shen gets energy back for hitting people with his skill-shot taunt, Kennen's energy mechanism relates to managing to get a full 3 stack of his passive on any given target, and Lee Sin is rewarded for staggering his abilities out in between auto-attacks, emphasizing his hybrid spell-caster/melee nature.

In each case, the costs of an ability are prohibitively high to spam, and instead, it's through using these mechanics to restore energy that an energy-based champion is able to stay in combat for an extended period of time, and make full use of their skill set.

Where mana was a royal pain to balance, due to many factors, energy's actually pretty simple to balance in comparison. When mana dictated long term restrictions, energy hops in with harsh short term restrictions, but no long term restrictions at all, outside of 20 seconds. Mana has itemization issues, energy finds itemization to be irrelevant to it's acquisition. Mana has longer cool downs, while energy promotes short cool downs with high costs.

The two are pretty much polar opposites in every way, other than the fact that they're both secondary resource systems that supplement a cool down system already being in place.
Part 2: Imma stab you so hard, you'll wish I didn't stab you so hard!So, now that we've got the basics down, let's see about toying around with the energy procs!

First off, I'll list all the current ones to give you an idea of how they currently work!

Shen:

Ki Strike
(Innate): Every 9 seconds, Shen's next attack will deal bonus magic damage equal to 4 + (6 × level) + (10% of his bonus health). Whenever Shen hits an enemy unit with a basic attack, the cooldown is reduced by 1.5 seconds. Shen restores 10 / 20 / 30 energy when he Ki Strikes.

Shadow Dash
(Active): Shen dashes to a target location, dealing magic damage and taunting enemy champions he collides with. Shen gains 40 energy per enemy champion he collides with while dashing, and has 50% physical damage reduction from taunted targets.

Shen, being both a jungler, and a tank, is the only champion with two separate methods of proc'ing his energy restoration effect. One is an auto-attack benefit for while he's jungling, and the other benefits him directly when he manages to taunt an enemy champion, with additional benefits based on how good his skill shot's aim was at hitting multiple targets.

Shen's ultimate does not use energy at all, and uses no tertiary system to manage it's costs, instead relying on a cool down of 180 / 150 / 120 to keep it balanced.

Akali:

Mark of the Assassin
(Active): Akali throws her kama at a target enemy, dealing magic damage and marking the target for 6 seconds. Akali's melee attacks against a marked target will consume the mark dealing the same magic damage again and restore energy.

Cost: 60 energy
Range: 600
Energy Restored: 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 35
Cooldown: 6 / 5.5 / 5 / 4.5 / 4 seconds

For Akali, she's a melee assassin who leaps into melee range and tears into a target with remarkably high physical + magical damage. By actually triggering her Mark of the Assassin, Akali is given a large portion of the energy she spent on it back.

Akali's ultimate does not use Energy at all, and instead uses an ammo-based tertiary system.

Kennen:

Mark of the Storm
(Innate): Kennen's abilities add Marks of the Storm to opponents which last for 8 seconds. An opponent is stunned for 1 second upon receiving 3 Marks of the Storm, and Kennen receives 25 energy. If the stun applied more than once within 7 seconds, it has a diminished effect so it will only stun for approximately 0.5 seconds.
As Kennen is designed around spamming targets with multiple spell hits, being the "mage" of the energy users, his energy restoration occurs when he strikes a target with multiple hits.

Kennen's ultimate is the only one of the energy users to use any energy at all, at the rate of 50/45/40, and even then, this is likely only because he's the most likely of all the energy users to have runes and masteries to increase his maximum or regeneration rates.

Lee Sin:

Flurry
(Innate): After Lee Sin uses an ability, his next 2 autoattacks within 3 seconds gain 40% attack speed and return 15 energy each.

Lee Sin is a combination melee/caster, and every single one of his non-ultimate abilities has two parts: a primary hit, and a secondary hit that makes use of the primary hit's effect or amplifies it. In this manner, he's intended to strike with his primary attack, then sink in two autoattacks, and follow up with the secondary hit. This allows him to maintain his energy levels practically indefinitely, so long as he continually ensures proper timing on his abilities and weaves in auto-attacks appropriately in between each cast.

Lee Sin's ultimate has no energy cost, and doesn't use any tertiary method of limiting it's power, instead relying solely on a 90 / 75 / 60 second cool down to keep it balanced.



As can be seen, in every single energy-using champion in the game, energy is rewarded through the player using their champion properly, and their ultimate either doesn't use energy (for 3/4 of the champions), or uses a very minimal amount of energy (for Kennen, who will have the highest maximum or regeneration rates of all of the energy users due to being the only mage).

If you are considering making a champion with energy, it's actually pretty easy to lay out, all things considered. Figure out what your champion is supposed to do in their role, and reward them for doing it!

Is this section short? Sure is! Energy's got NOTHING on mana in terms of difficulty curve to learn to use it!

Managing mana costs on a developer's level is like pulling teeth, but energy's actually pretty intuitive to use! I'd actually recommend starting out with making a champion using energy, over one that uses mana, if you're new to champion design, because of this.Part 3: How many ninjas does it take to change a light bulb? Honestly, we're not sure, they just mysteriously seem to change themselves whenever we aren't looking...Managing the energy costs and proc values on energy based champions is a lot like doing so on mana champions, but... oh gawd, get off the roof! YOU HAVE A REASON TO LIVE!

Anyway, before I was interrupted, I was saying it's easier to do it with energy champions by a large margin, since you can pretty much work with 200 energy and 10 regeneration per second as a base line, without needing to worry about nearly as many intricacies.

Also, unlike mana, you're not looking for a "perfect breaking even with X items and Y skills", so much as you actively want the player to run out of energy fairly fast. Fortunately, this isn't too hard to figure out how quickly it'll happen, considering how few variables there are in play.

Rather than go through the complex equations listed in the mana section, the energy section is pretty tame in comparison, so I'll just list it in a rather brief manner.

Max energy / ((energy cost / cool down) + (energy regeneration rate * cool down)) = seconds until out of energy.

This is actually remarkably easy, since we know max energy is, by default, 200, and the energy regeneration rate is 10/second, in almost all situations, as most of the energy users don't use max energy nor energy regen runes/masteries, other than, perhaps, the +10 energy mastery.

As such, the only thing you really need to consider is the cost of your ability, and the cool down! It's really almost that simple!

Note that I said "almost", rather than "just". That almost does come back to bite you, at times.

For the most part, you will actually want abilities which drain you from 200 to roughly 0 within a single rotation of casts. For Shen, he goes through 230 energy in one go, assuming he doesn't get any back from hitting a taunt or an auto-attack proc. Akali costs from 200 to 180, depending on spell ranks. Kennen costs 260 (or 210 without his ultimate), and Lee Sin costs 150 / 240, if he doesn't bother to autoattack at all.

The amount of drain is based primarily off of how fast they're likely to spam their abilities. In Lee Sin's case, he's probably going to get in two melee hits in between casts, so will cost 50, then get 30 back from two hits, then 30, then get 30 back, constantly alternating like this on his abilities, so that he doesn't really go down any.

In Kennen's case, he tends to grab some extra max energy, so he can burst hard, especially because his ultimate, though it costs 40 to 50 to cast, also happens to restore a good chunk of energy back, as well, if it's used in a team fight, giving up to 50 / 75 / 125 energy in return to a mere 50 / 45 / 40 cost.

Regardless, energy is far less picky than mana is, since the whole idea is to run out of energy quickly, and restore it using abilities.

Ideally, you want to run out of energy, almost exactly, in the time it will take you to use all of your abilities once. Toss in a method of getting energy back fairly quickly, preferably enough to get another two extra hits in, if you count in regeneration, and you're pretty much done.

Since there's no itemization to worry about, balancing energy costs is a thousand times easier than mana.

Now, that isn't to say that you shouldn't wrack your brain over getting it balanced "just right", but for the most part, it's probably possible to get your energy costs done in a fraction of the time it takes to do mana costs.

Consider how shen costs 230 to do all his abilities once, but that he gets 40 back for hitting a target with his taunt, and 30 back, at max level, for his passive. As long as he does either of these, he's good to go.

Akali has 200 total for her costs, but honestly, she's likely to be spamming her Q every 4 seconds to get that hefty +35 energy bonus, on top of the 40 energy from regeneration, so you can pretty much just view her energy regeneration as being more or less doubled, so long as she's in melee still. Toss in that her E is spammable, but her W isn't, and there you go, she only has two abilities to worry about for the most part, and so long as she's attacking, they pretty much balance out.

There's some variation, but for the most part, you really just need to figure out your costs based off one round of attacks, and factor in the assumption that your champion will gain their bonus energy restoration back by doing their job properly, to sustain them at more or less a break-even point.

And that's... pretty much that. There's really not much more to say that I didn't cover in the mana section. Balancing energy costs really is that much easier than balancing mana costs.

Alright, well, looks like we're done!

Class dismissed!

ROAR! >=O

I mean, class is in session! =D

Today we'll be covering Fury / Rage, so make sure you have your GRRR'ness ready!

If you're having problems getting a good rage going, supplemental material can be found here for the purposes of the class:Anyway, Fury is a modified version of the "Rage" system which WoW uses (almost a direct rip with virtually no changes, honestly), and I wouldn't be surprised, in the slightest, if WoW got theirs from somewhere else before even that.

They're more or less interchangeable, honestly, so if I say rage or fury, just assume they're the same thing, even though LoL calls it Fury XD

Aaaaanyway!

First off, we'll be covering what fury is, and what it's good for.

Second, we then shall go over the current methods of rage in the game, costs, and so on (it's a ton easier than even energy! I KNOW! It's weird! )

Third, we'll cover what kind of situations would be a good choice for fury over mana or energy.

Finally, we'll discuss alternate ways to use Fury, and how to get it to work in your benefit!

So, put on your angry face, and RAGE OUT WITH ME! RAAAAAAAWR!
Part 1: What do you mean "wrath" isn't a virtue?Alright, so what is this whole "Fury" thing anyway?

To put it simply, Fury is a secondary resource system similar to mana. It's used to limit your capacity to spam spells.

To put it a little bit less simply, Fury is specifically focused on limiting the capacity to spam spells early on in a fight, but is great for allowing spells to be used repeatedly within a fight.

Specifically, all Fury champions (to date anyway, though yours could be different! ) have a maximum fury of 100. As the champion uses their auto-attack, they gain additional Fury, which can then be spent, either like mana/energy to cast a spell or ability, or in some cases, can be used to enhance spells which already exist, but doesn't limit casting otherwise, such as seen in Renekton.

Under the default "normal" scenario, Fury gradually decreases over time, when out of combat. Fury's a bit weird, as resources go, however, in that it doesn't fully work the same way on any champion that has it. For Renekton and Tryndamere, Fury goes down over time. For Shyvanna, Fury goes up when out of combat. For the "average" case scenario, we'll assume that Shyvanna's a special case, and that normally Fury decreases out of combat =3

The idea, here, is that you (normally! ) don't want a player to have a great deal of power stored up at the end of a fight, and then simply run around waiting to unload. Rather, Fury's strength is in a protracted battle. The longer it drags on, the stronger that champion gets.

Mana and energy both benefit people spamming all their abilities off at the very start of a fight, and then waiting on cooldowns, whereas Fury gives a benefit where, after everyone else has run dry, the Fury user is still capable of dishing out the hurt, and if they didn't die in the first spamfest, then Fury will gradually overtake the others.

As such, you'll notice that all three of the current Fury users are melee, with two being bruisers, and the third also being good at lasting in combat for more than a few seconds. Normally, Fury's best on a champion who isn't known for being remarkably high DPS, but just does constant damage over time, and you can't really put them down. They have "presence" of a sort, where you simply recognize they exist, because they're always in your face, and just. Won't. Stop.

Fury's great for many bruisers, as it plays up to their strengths, and honestly, I would have probably have made Darius into a Fury champion, rather than a mana one. This didn't happen though, so no big deal.

Olaf would have made for an obvious Fury based champion as well, just like how Udyr could also be converted over to Fury with remarkably little issue.

In short, if you have a champion that you want to be using melee swings constantly, and they want to be in the enemy's face, but a bit weak early on in a fight, but great for a long term battle, then Fury's probably going to be an ideal choice!

Ah, but tanks... yeah, tanks don't do Fury so well, despite what you may be thinking.

Yeah, you were, weren't you? I figured as much.

Fury's a nice benefit long term, but note that a tank generally needs to unload hard at the start of a fight. Their job is to initiate and begin a fight, whereas Fury's typically very weak at the start of a fight. There are ways around this, but I'll cover that a bit later, in adapting Fury to personal use.
Part 2: I said "Shrink? I wanna kill. I mean... I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead, burnt bodies. I mean, kill. Kill! Kill! KILL!" And I started jumping up and down yelling "Kill! Kill!", and he started jumping up and down with me, and we was both jumping up and down yelling "Kill! Kill!", and the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, and said "You're our boy." ~Arlo Guthrie, Alice's RestaurantSo how, exactly, does Fury work in the game as is?

To be honest, that's a bit more complex of a question than you may first suspect. Fury's pretty weird, in that everyone who uses it has a different take on how it works.

Renekton was the original Fury user, and his version had it where he had no costs on any of his abilities, but his auto-attacks would generate Fury. Once he had over 50 or more Fury stored up, his next non-ultimate ability would automatically drain 50 Fury and enhance the effectiveness of the ability used.

In this method, Renekton uses Fury as a tertiary style resource system, in that it doesn't actually prevent him from casting his abilities, but merely enhances their effectiveness. Stranger still, is that he skips over having a secondary system entirely. Strange stuff!

Note that Renekton also has multiple ways to gain Fury since he blows through it so quickly. As such, his abilities tend to each deal damage, and by doing so, also provide him with additional Fury. His ultimate also causes him to generate 5 Fury per second while active.

Next off, we have Tryndamere, who was the second one to be given Fury. Originally, Tryndamere was designed where he gained benefits the lower on health he was from his passive, and his stacking heal and damage, was based off of an 8 stacking buff. The Fury remake made it significantly easier to see his overall power level, without having to mouse over the icon, or squint at a tiny number which was hard to read. Given that he's supposed to stay in combat for awhile, especially while jungling, it worked quite well, though came with some minor complications, such as it taking longer to stack up to full power than previously.

Tryndamere's Fury works a bit differently than Renekton's, in that he only has a single ability which actually uses Fury. Rather, he gains Fury, using it as a passive steroid effect, where he gets stronger the longer he stays in combat, and he can choose to trade off that firepower for healing to let him live, instead.

Once again, Fury does not prevent Tryndamere from casting his heal early, and instead simply drains all of his Fury to amplify it's effects.

Finally, we have Shyvanna, who practically doesn't use Fury at all, instead using it only on her ultimate, and rather than gradually losing it while out of combat, she generates Fury constantly in small amounts. This is used solely as a restrictive method of preventing her from casting her ultimate early, and allows her ultimate to not have a cool down value at all.

In each case, the champion is rewarded for attacking in combat for an extended duration; even Shyvanna is able to artificially extend the duration of her ultimate, keeping her more powerful for the duration of a battle by continually attacking.

As you can see, however, Fury's the least... stable, I suppose, of all of the secondary (or tertiary) resource systems. All things considered, it's kind of fitting, however! Fury's designed around benefiting champions who stay in combat for extended durations, and this affects each champion considerably differently, far more so than you get by just being able to unload early on, or doing hit and run effects. As such, Fury is pretty much manually re-built from the ground up around each new champion that uses it. The basic concepts are always there (100 maximum Fury, gains fury on attack, benefits from being in combat with auto-attacks), but past that, the specifics need to be adjusted on a champion by champion basis.
Part 3: "I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is going to kick your sorry *** all the way back to Earth. I am death incarnate, and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me." ~Susan Ivannova, Babylon 5So, since we've determined that Fury's a little bit of a special case to work with, and requires some tweaks, we'll need to go about seeing how to convert it for use for your particular champion. Before that, however, first off we need to see when and where to use Fury. Jax probably wouldn't work that well with Fury, but Olaf would. Understanding these nuances is required, since we first need to tell whether your champion should even consider using Fury, before we try to get it work with them. If it won't work by default, either the champion will need an overhaul to make it work, or Fury will have to be left out, in favour of another resource system entirely.

So, here's a quick reference sheet to determine whether Fury's a right fit for your champion!

Needs to be in combat for an extended time to "ramp up" in power.
Emphasis on surviving long enough to make use of Fury.
Doesn't require much for burst casting capacity.
Preferably minimal hard CC.
Absolutely requires auto-attacking as a primary method of their effectiveness.
Especially beneficial if the champion gains value from attack speed increases.
Should be able to rely solely on cool downs with Fury as an added bonus.

Now, if you were to give something like Fury to Darius, it probably wouldn't work out so well, in his current state, due to the fact that he mostly just gets a few stacks of his passive on a target, and then has no real further reason to continue attacking. One could argue the concept of applying 5 rage per target hit by his Q's blade, but honestly, it wouldn't quite work in line with his design, as a whole, due to his kit discouraging attack speed items considerably on him. If he had have been built from the ground up, using Fury? Then yeah, he'd be perfect for it.

If you're trying to make a tank to be a Fury user, keep in mind that a core aspect of tank gameplay, is that they absolutely must have full access to their power at the start of a fight in almost no time flat. There are ways around this, such as in my Nemhain design, as an example, but it requires careful thought to get it to work right, and it took me literally over a year of tweaks and adjustments to get her able to use Fury effectively.

In short, anything you see on that list is "optional", as you can apply case-specific exceptions, but to be perfectly honest, if there are more than 2 on the list that are giving you problems, it's almost guaranteed that Fury is a bad idea to use in that situation.

Preferably, you wouldn't really want a champion to be particularly against any of them, but this is unlikely to occur. Renekton doesn't have much reason to get attack speed, Shyvanna fails at the "ramping up in power" concept, and Tryndamere has issues with survival in that, even with his ultimate providing, he's only around for a relatively short time before he's focused into the ground, meaning he really needs the +Fury from his ultimate to really make any use of Fury in general at times.

In each case, the particular champions have their problems with what rage emphasizes, but, also in each case, is there a method of dealing with the problem.

Renekton gains Fury through his ultimate and his abilities generate large amounts to supplement his limited attack speed. Shyvanna bypasses her issue entirely by using Fury only on her ultimate, and allowing Fury to be generated over time, rather than lost outside of combat. Tryndamere is able to sit on at least a bit of Fury at pretty much all times, due to jungling and his abilities being free, his mobility with his spin-2-win, and can live for a pretty good time, by AD melee carry standards, via his ultimate.

Regardless, as I stated, be cautious about using Fury if you're lacking more than 2 on the list. More than that, and you'll be spending all your time pulling your hair out by trying to force your champion to work with Rage, rather than implementing an intuitive fix. You could probably force a champion to use Fury, even if not a single one of the things on the list were covered by your basic design, but honestly, at that point you've wasted so much time and effort, as well as devoted a massive amount of their kit, towards just making them able to use Fury at all, and haven't even started on making them actually fun yet.

As such, steer clear of Fury in that case if at all possible, unless you're especially stubborn XDPart 4: Nobody's going to help you, you've just got to stand up alone, and dig in your heels, and see how it feels to raise a little hell of your own! ~TrooperAlright, so we've come to the conclusion that you really think Fury's a good choice for your champion at this point. Great!

So, how do we go about customizing it to fit your particular champion? Ah, now that's the trick, isn't it?

Let's take a look at that list again!

Needs to be in combat for an extended time to "ramp up" in power.
Emphasis on surviving long enough to make use of Fury.
Doesn't require much for burst casting capacity.
Preferably minimal hard CC.
Absolutely requires auto-attacking as a primary method of their effectiveness.
Especially beneficial if the champion gains value from attack speed increases.
Should be able to rely solely on cool downs with Fury as an added bonus.

As covered, the chances are almost guaranteed that you're going to have an issue with *SOMETHING* on this list with your design. Probably 1-2 aspects, honestly. That's not so much of a problem, though, in that you can probably work within the boundaries of this.

In this particular list, Nemhain, my own champion, fails on the "ramping up" and again on the whole cool downs issue... mostly because she doesn't actually HAVE any cool downs.

As this is only two issues, however, no big deal. We can work around that.

In the case of my design, I used other mechanics to allow her to get to her full potential faster, and made some tweaks to the Fury system to allow it to do what I needed it to do.

First off, she's a tank, so she can't wait around all day to build up 100 Fury before she's useful. By that time, her whole team would be laying on the floor, dead, and while that might be useful, to a degree, in her particular case... it's not a very good thing for a tank to have.

As such, I added in the "Bloodied" tertiary resource system which allows her to gain the vast majority of her power immediately in a fight, just by hitting a target in melee once. This still means she'll be a bit weak when she first enters combat, but she'll be able to ramp up to the majority of her power almost immediately on at least 1-2 targets, which is all she really needs.

Tossing in Fury regenerating and granting her a benefit off CDR items as a tank's more likely to have CDR than attack speed items, and she's golden.

For the second issue, this gets a bit more tricky, but this is also why I chose Fury for her in the first place. Nemhain actually doesn't have any cool downs on any of her abilities, and instead relies on a second tertiary system, where she can only attack any given target with an ability occasionally. As such, while she can spam her Q 5 times in a row if she wants to, she can't spam the same target 5 times in a row.

Even so, this means she can still spam her abilities, and as such, I specifically made the change to Fury, which made it work closer to Shyvanna's version, in that she has to have the Fury necessary to cast a spell, unlike Renekton and Tryndamere's versions. This makes Fury act a lot more like some weird, twisted hybridization of Energy and Fury combined. Probably because that's pretty much what it is in her case XD

Your own design will have to account for issues such as these, however.

If you have an issue with needing to have power early on, take a page from the Shyvanna book. If you have problems with attack speed not being viable on your design, then hit Renekton up for some pointers. If you have problems with dying out prematurely, talk to Ashe about it, as I think she's far more of an expert on dealing with Tryndamere's little problem than he is. Or you could just ask Sejuani, as it's pretty obvious he's cheating on Ashe with her sister, anyway.

*Coughs*

Aaaanyway.

The point is, identify the challenges that your own champion holds, and then come up with a work around. Sometimes this may involve changing how Fury works to a degree. Other times it may involve adding in a tertiary resource system, or just giving them a buff. Nemhain's technically pretty fail at attack speed since she can't itemize for it very well with tanking items, so instead she gets an AS buff to compensate.

It all comes down to troubleshooting, in the end. Isolate the issue, find the root cause that's making the issue present itself, and then come up with a fix.

As each individual champion design brings with it their own individual problems, you're going to kind of have to work on this on your own to a degree. Peer review's a pretty major component of trying to work with the challenges that Fury has, so make sure you check with friends and other people on the forum!

In any case, the only real other issue is setting up your Fury Costs, since I haven't covered that yet. Oh wait, Renekton's Fury costs are all a flat 50, and both Tryndamere and Shyvanna drain their bars entirely since they both have only one ability which uses Fury! Well that was easy!

Unless you're forcing Fury to act in a manner similar to mana/energy costs, it's no big deal. If you do, however, do so, go up to the energy section, in the post directly above this one, and all the same rules apply there as they would here.

And there we go. Congrats, you now know how to RAGE OUT like a true barbarian!

Now go! GO FORTH MY PRETTIES AND KILL! KILL KILL KILL!

I mean, class dismissed!

Zho, mien prettiez... yuu kome too zee moar invormayshun aboot ze rezorz zyzteemz yez?

Great, that means I can drop this ridiculous accent.

Also, coincidentally, class is in sessions! Also coincidentally, the class just happens to be about making your own "new" resource systems. Go figure!

So, since we've covered all the major resource systems in the game in detail, one by one, what's left? Making new ones? Ah, now that's the trick. Normally you don't actually want to do this... but... invariably it's going to happen eventually anyway, so let's make sure we're doing it for the right reasons, and in the right way!

First off, we need to cover what resource systems actually are before we go breaking them or making new ones.

Second, we also need to know when's a good time to actually make a new resource system in the first place.

Third, in the process of making one, we need to identify what it needs to do that the current systems aren't capable of performing adequately on their own.

Finally, we'll also need to discuss tertiary systems which can be used to further enhance a design without stomping on the toes of primary and secondary systems in place, since they work a bit weird usually, but are a great place to start learning.Part 1: PEWPEWPEWPEWPEWPEWPEWPEWPEW! That's the sound my guy makes because he doesn't have resources to stop him from spamming mind lasers. And rockets. Oh and MIND ROCKETS. AND MIND ROCKET HEALING LASERS LIKE DISCIPLINE PRIESTS!As I've covered in the other sections, but these may've been skipped over to get to this one part... resources are used to slow down or prevent abusive use of your abilities so that they don't get out of hand. These come in three main flavours:

1: Primary resource systems are a hard restriction on how fast you can spam an ability in the short term. This is, in virtually all circumstances, taken care of by cool down in LoL. There are a few exceptions, but generally cool downs are your first line of defense to prevent an ability from getting way too strong.Teemo's mushroom ammunition is a primary resource system which limits his capacity to spam mushrooms out, similar to cool down, but allows him to do so in short bursts. If your primary resource system isn't ready, you're not casting anything.

2: Secondary resource systems, such as mana, energy, fury, heat, and so on, all exist for the purpose of limiting the power behind the abilities in some way, shape, or form. Some prevent long term spamming, others limit short term burst, or limit power at the start of a fight. Most of your "new" resource systems end up being of the secondary variety. Rumble's Heat system is a secondary resource which lets him either do big burst in one go, or sustained damage over time, but not both at once without overheating. Secondary systems tend to allow a bit of leeway in casting, where you can cast a few different abilities, but typically have limitations on how many can be cast in a certain timeframe, rather than on an individual basis.

3: Tertiary resource systems come into play when primary and secondary methods just don't cut it, and you still need some alternative method of limiting the strength of an ability beyond that. Darius's bleed is an example of a tertiary system, wherein his cooldowns and mana costs aren't really the primary limitation on his ultimate. Sure he can cast it, but he probably doesn't want to until he's got a few stacks up. In general, a tertiary system lets you cast your abilities even without it... you just might not particularly want to without it.

Now, that being said, you generally don't want to screw around with primary resource systems until you really know the game inside and out. Cooldowns are one of the easiest ways to control the strength of an ability, and most people don't fully understand just what the difference between an 8 second cooldown and a 9 second cooldown is. It's almost the same, so who cares, just say 10 seconds, right? Problem is, that level of understanding isn't enough to ditch cooldowns entirely, so if you're not really sure about this, avoid it entirely. No ammo systems until you master cooldowns.

Next off, is the secondary resources. This is what most of you probably think of when you hear "new resource system!". You probably assume it's something to replace mana entirely. In some cases, this is true, in others, it may not be. You probably have an idea for something to replace mana though, so I'll work with that as the assumption here. This'll be covered in detail in a moment, so just keep reading.

Tertiary systems are probably the safest things to change in LoL's overarching framework without breaking everything into tiny pieces in the process. There are obvious exceptions to this rule, where it's gone horribly, horribly wrong... but for the most part it tends to hold true. Before you start replacing the first two, I'd honestly suggest getting used to tertiary systems and adjusting your champion's abilities either on a small scale, or individually utilizing tertiary resources to get used to resource management. It's a great way to learn, and the damage is relatively minor and easy to fix if something goes wrong, since you still have other systems to back you up as a safety net.
Part 2: Pft, mana's overrated. Just ask Katarina.So, you want to break free of the chains of tyranny and make your own resource system! For the sake of argument, I'll assume you mean "secondary resource system", because that covers about 95% of the cases on this forum.

Well... why?

No, seriously, why do you even want a new resource system?

If the answer is anything along the lines of "It'll get more views" or "it sounds cool" or "I don't like mana", then you've already basically said "I don't need a new resource system and this is a really bad idea".

Seriously, don't go screwing around with new resources until you understand why the old ones exist. The only, absolutely *ONLY* reason why a new resource should be introduced at all, EVER, is because the current systems simply aren't capable of performing the task you need them to accomplish without such heavy retooling that they aren't even recognizable any longer.

In my case... it actually took me awhile to figure this out myself, and I've only kind of gotten the hang of it within the past two years or so. Go ahead and check back on some of my older designs... they're left for dead because they were really bad ideas that didn't work out. In several of these situations, it was due to attempting, and failing, to add a new secondary resource without sitting down to fully consider exactly what I was doing. Sure they were a neat idea, but they weren't necessary, and it led to the design's downfall almost from the very start.

Here's the main things that are already taken of by the current resources:

MANA: Spam spells all day long, as long as you have mana for it. This is a long term solution to prevent early game domination when mana's scarce, such as the laning phaze, or during a base siege later on in the game. You can cast all your abilities easily, but over time, eventually you'll run dry, and will likely need to return to base to refuel, pulling you out of combat. The idea, is to allow short term casting to go unhindered, other than by cool downs, but that long term casting is problematic.

ENERGY: ALL the burst! But... well, that's the thing, you can unload fast, but run dry fast too. Cooldowns for energy users are typically very short, as their restriction is more so in the limitation on staying in combat for more than 5-10 seconds. They're great up front, and can do hit and runs, with none of the long term issues mana has, as they'll be back to full power in 20 seconds tops, but... they can't stay in combat for very long at a time generally without making very careful use of their energy restoration factors from proc'ing certain events.

FURY: Infinite long term staying power, but takes awhile to ramp up to speed. This is ideal for bruisers and champions that are going to be in combat for awhile, but who you may not want to be particularly strong at the first few seconds of combat.



These three systems cover virtually all of the main things you could need for a secondary resource system to do.

Note, however, that key word "virtually". There are... exceptions.

In the case of my Nemhain character, she needed to be capable of a zero-cooldown system, of which none of the options available at the time were capable of, as there was no such thing as a zero-cooldown champion in the game. After she was written up, however, Shyvana was added to the mix, who provided a decent enough approximation to her Bloodthirst system that I was able to convert her over to fury, as it was now capable of doing the job I needed it to do.

These specific gaps do exist, but they're very rare. We have short term / late fight restriction, long term restriction, and early fight restriction. There's not too many holes left uncovered. As such, I can't go through a full list of examples for "when this happens, make a new resource system!".

It's really a judgement call, honestly, and one which needs to be updated as new patches come out. Aradia, for instance, could probably use to be converted over to the Heat system that Rumble has, since it serves a very similar function to her own Void Shards system. Rumble didn't exist when she was added, and thematically it doesn't quite work, but I could probably make her system much more similar to heat, and get more or less the same effect.

Anyway, the point is, "when is the right time to make a new resource system" comes down to this point, and this point only:

Nothing in the game that already exists is capable of making your champion play the way you want them to.

It's really that simple. If you have something particular in mind you're trying to accomplish, and the game doesn't have anything that lets you do that... then make a new resource system. As stated, however, there aren't too many holes left uncovered at the moment, and as new champions are released, those holes will slowly be plugged up, one by one.

It's exceptionally rare that a new resource system is required, so think about it very, very carefully, as to whether you can't mangle mana, energy or fury into doing the job for you first.
Part 3: I want a pony and ice cream and a unicorn to go with my pony so the pony's not lonely and oh I also want some lasers because everything's better with lasers kind of like BBQ's, and we should have one of those too but we should keep it away from the pony and the unicorn, oh and the ice cream too, because I don't want melted ice cream, but we could BBQ the lasers because they're already hot but they aren't BBQ'd so maybe BBQ lasers would taste better somehow.Alright, alright, so you want it all, I got it. You're certain you want a new resource system. Great! So... what do you want it to do?

Note that bit at the top which states that the purpose of resources is to limit the power of a champion's abilities so that they are able to be kept under control? Yeah. That means you need to know what it is that's failing to be kept under control by the current systems.

Before you do ANYTHING with a new resource system, your first task is to write out your goals for the system. You need a list of key details that it has to be capable of performing. There's probably going to be at least a little overlap with the current systems, but so long as it's mostly a bunch of holes that the others aren't filling, then you're good to move onto the next step.

Here, we now go over the parts that don't work, and say "well, we need it to do X... so how do we actually make it do X?".

I'll use Nemhain as an example, and my reasoning behind why I did the things I did, so you can see why it worked out that way.

Needs to be at full power at the start of a team fight (energy)

Needs to allow spamming of abilities rapid fire (energy, mana)

Needs to allow for long term casting of abilities over time (mana, fury)

Needs to restrict burst capacity (energy, fury)

Needs to be able to recover during combat, after already having utilized burst (fury)

In the game at the time, none of the resource systems present were capable of doing all of those things together. Energy and Fury both had some good points, but neither was realistically capable of performing all of it.

So... I merged the two together into a weird amalgamation which I branded as Bloodthirst.

At the time, it worked fine, and fixed all of my problems I was having. Or, well some of them anyway. The resource issue-ones =3

There were some other problems which required the introduction of a tertiary system on top of that, but it worked out well.

These days, the game's changed, and she now uses a heavily modified version of Fury.

Get yourself a list like the one above, and cover each one carefully. Ensure you consider which of the current resources in the game is closest in relation to what you want to do.

Note that "changing from light to dark spells" is not a secondary resource system, and it shouldn't replace mana at all. If anything, it should be a "stance", similar to Nidalee's cougar form.

Also note, that your passive still needs to have an effect beyond "just" explaining the resource system. A new resource system should be explained in the passive, and the passive should relate to it somehow, but you need an actual real passive in there too, somewhere.

Anyway, I could go on about this for hours, but it'd be mostly just going in circles. The key points you need to understand, are really as simple as stated above. Figure out what you need to do, why the current options don't work, and tailor a new one based on a list of things it has to accomplish. If another system works fine already, there's no need for a new one. If the new system fails to do what you need it to, then you have to start over.

There's really not much more to say, oddly enough!Part 4: 011011010110010101101111011101112 There's 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand this is a binary joke, those who don't, and those who know it's actually a tertiary joke. ~ Source Unknown

You probably came here looking for how to make a new secondary resource system. You probably also left here realizing you didn't actually need a new secondary resource system in the first place. Fortunately for you, I'm going to fill you in on tertiary resource systems so that you don't leave here empty handed.

Tertiary systems are used usually to modify a singular ability, or to adjust how abilities work as a whole. Consider Brand's passive... that's a tertiary system because it affects how all of his other abilities work depending on which one he cast first, but it doesn't really harm his ability to cast his other abilities, it just modifies how they work. Same thing with Darius's passive.

Orianna's ball is another form of a tertiary system, in that all of her abilities are limited by the placement of where her ball happens to be at the time, not her own body.

"Tertiary" really just means "third", in the way that secondary means "second". For the sake of argument here, however, it applies to anything which does not directly prevent you from casting your abilities, but which indirectly changes whether you'd actually want to cast your abilities in the first place or not.

The original fury system on Renekton is actually a tertiary system, except for the fact that he doesn't actually have a secondary system, oddly enough. Using common sense, one would think that 1st and 3rd with no 2nd would mean the 3rd is actually the second, but we don't do common sense around these here parts ^.~

The point of the matter, is that these are things which let you enhance abilities which are already present in unique and interesting ways.

Take something as simple as Vladimir's Tides of Blood. This ability has a tertiary system built into it where every time he casts it, it gets stronger, but drains more of his secondary resource (in his case, it's health being used as if it were mana). This affects, indirectly, how useful the spell is, and when and how often he wants to cast it without directly preventing him from doing so, such as his primary (cool down) and secondary (life bar) resources do.

If you really want to make a champion that's interesting to play, try messing around with the concept of tertiary resource systems, and you'll find they often hold the key to making your abilities more fun. From Anivia's chill effects, to Nasus's Siphoning Strike, they already exist all over the game. These are the primary methods of tweaking abilities to be more fun than they would be otherwise.

Far too often on this forum I see people provide ideas that are just "more numbers". Alright, yay, so your ability not only does damage, but it also slows... why not make it so that instead of slowing, each ability your champion has does something to affect the next one cast? The Q causes the next ability to slow, the W causes the next to silence, the E causes the damage to do true damage instead of magical, and the R makes it stun.

I don't know, it's just an example, and I'm not sure how that would have to play out in an actual champion, because I don't know their full skill set, but the concept of having their abilities affect each other based on the casting order is one which can be played with significantly more than it has been so far to the date of this writing.

Honestly, there's a lot of options out there, from singular abilities being affected, through to an entire kit based around a concept. Darius and Draven have both used tertiary effects to make their gameplay more interesting than they would have been otherwise, though admittedly Draven did so in a far more effective implementation, but that's how it goes.

Not every tertiary system's going to turn out to be a masterpiece, but it's almost guaranteed to make your abilities and champion a bit more interesting than it had been previously.

The real beauty of this, is that a tertiary system doesn't overwrite or prevent primary and secondary resources generally, meaning that if something goes wrong and an ability's far too strong, you generally don't need to do heavy handed changes, as it's easier to fine tune the tweaks.

Note that tertiary systems generally give a "benefit", in a way... primary and secondary systems are usually pretty obvious in that they say "without us, you can't cast your spells AT ALL". In the tertiary world, they LOOK like they're giving a benefit. This isn't really the case, it just looks that way for the psychological implication. They didn't do a very good job covering it up with Renekton, admittedly, though.

Instead, abilities with a tertiary resource are moreso "supposed" to be cast with the resource present, giving them their full effectiveness. Without it, you "can" still cast them... like yeah, you *COULD* cast Anivia's Frostbite on a target that isn't chilled... but why would you? There's nothing stopping you, other than your own desire to get the full effectiveness out of your spell.

Done right, the player feels that it's their choice to cast the ability. They feel happy when they catch Draven's spinning axe, and it enhances their abilities or resets their cooldowns. They feel kind of meh, however, when they want to cast an ability on Renekton and they don't have the fury for it, and it just ends up feeling wasted to do so.

Be careful to ensure that the player feels like it's their choice to cast an ability when it's limited in power, and that they're somehow getting a "benefit" for using their tertiary resource, instead of being penalized for casting it early.

In any case, work with the tertiary resources to make your champion designs more interesting. Trust me, they go a long way towards making them more fun and interesting, without just relying on generic buffs or number boosts, and it's a lot safer and easier to work with than completely replacing primary or secondary resources.

As for me, I'm hungry, and there's some hot dogs that need munching on!

Class dismissed!

Ah summer. A time when the heat is sweltering, the kids are out of school, the wage slaves pretend their vacations don't suck worse than work itself did, and Hep C for all who vacation abroad.

A time when people realize "Wait a second, I haven't made a champion in awhile!", and decide to throw something together in half an hour and call the resulting cesspool of virulent half-baked ideas and poorly composed concepts "finished".

*Slaps a ruler on the desk*

Well we won't be having any of that around here! Oh, no we won't! You're here to learn how to turn that sludge heap you call a champion into GOLD! Alright, maybe not gold, it's pretty heavy and honestly silver looks better anyway, even if it tarnishes. Maybe gems? I dunno. I think I've long since passed the usefulness of this analogy anyway.

The point I'm trying, and likely failing miserably, to make, is that we can do better than that! Sure it's fun to make new stuff, and the tiny details can be monotonous at times, but honestly, it's for the better, isn't it? To have something that makes you proud to look back on it, rather than something which resembles the lunch you... deposited... from the E.Coli from that half-done burger down by the pier?

I'll just assume you want the former.

So, class is in session!

Today, we'll be discussing Purpose and Specific Roles.

Oooh, fancy title. It almost makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about, doesn't it? Yeah, I could totally go into marketing if I had that on a few powerpoint slides. Like nothing else for a presentation, just "PURPOSE" "AND" "SPECIFIC" "ROLES" as single words on each slide.

...Alright maybe not.

Anyway, first off we need to cover what purpose even is, and why you need this very early on in champion development. Often people will "finish" their design, then decide after the fact what it was they were trying to build, so this is kind of important.

Second on our "To-do" list, is to go over the importance of making sure the purpose meshes with everything else in the character design.

Third, we then will be discussing the differences of purpose from role. While similar, they're not quite the same, and both should really be developed individually.

Last on the list, we'll then be doing a bit of a once over on the concept of largest purposes in general.Part 1: There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us, that binds us. It is purpose that defines us. We are here because of you, Mr. Anderson, We're here because of you. We're here to take from you what you tried to take from us. Purpose! ~Agent Smith, The Matrix ReloadedSo, what exactly is this "purpose"? Sure Smith ranted on and on about it, but he didn't do all that great a job of defining it.

In short, purpose is that which defines why you're here. Without purpose, your champion is going to turn out, almost guaranteed, a failure.

You generally want to start with an overall appearance and personality to your champion... essentially, build their "character" before anything else. This ensures they're at least interesting on a personable level that will draw players into them.

After you have a character, however, you then want to instill them with a purpose which suits them. This can even occur in the middle of their character creation process, so it's a little blurry here, but generally you don't want purpose first. It's true what Smith says; it can define you as a person.

The thing is, you don't want purpose to define your character. It leaves them bland and flat, one dimensional constructs that have no life to them. Kog'maw's purpose is to eat. Past that, Koggy just doesn't really have any real personality. Kog's stomach is all that matters, and nothing else has any effect.

For Riven, she's a warrior first, and a proud citizen of a pure Noxus. Her purpose is to reclaim that dream of a pure Noxus, and it defines her to a point, but she had a personality and such before that purpose began.

Now, this is describing purpose on a personal level, but not in terms of game mechanics. For that... purpose changes a little bit.

Kog'maw is listed as being "living artillery", and thus has a bunch of long ranged attacks which really hurt. The thing is, when you start a champion design by listing your end goals for them to have, you restrict them, refusing to let them grow during character creation. They get stifled, and rarely get the chance to grow to be more than they currently are.

Kog'maw had "stomach + food" added to purpose in character... but because the purpose of long ranged artillery had already been focused upon, it never really made it's way into the actual abilities and design as a whole.

If we take another example, let's say... Annie, then we see the two forms blended together fairly nicely. Annie's mechanical purpose is "nuker", but her personality's purpose is "Cute little devil girl", and as such, she's able to blend these two things together, such as through Tibbers being a fluffy adorable psychotic killer teddy bear. Adorable <3

You may notice I've listed two kinds of purpose here. Mechanical, and Personality. These are two things which both need to be addressed, and the lack of one or the other will lead to the design failing, such as how Hecarim has no purpose for his personality whatsoever, as he doesn't actually have one.

So, let's cover these both in detail. By having a character, we don't just need them to exist as being likeable, but we need a purpose behind why we're giving them a personality at all. Who are our targeted audiences going to be? Why do we have this particular personality? What do they do differently that other champions fail to scratch the itch of?

If you have a character design without a purpose to their personality, they're not going to be that interesting. They won't be sculpted into a finely wrought masterpiece, because you're not even sure where you're going or what you're aiming for. You just chisel and chip away at them, bit by bit, seemingly at random, without any real idea of what it is you're trying to accomplish, and in the end, you will just end up with a mangled, twisted mess of nonsense.

The "purpose of personality", is to direct and define what you want them to be in a broad, generalized sense. Ezreal is an "explorer". He reaches out, personality-wise, to those individuals who like to make their way off the beaten path and do things not done before them. His entire personality revolves around that purpose, where he strives to give the feeling of exploration, newness, and adventure.

In contrast, you have Draven, whose purpose behind his personality is self-idolization. He caters to the ego of the player by proxy, as we "step into our character" in a sense, when we play them. As someone playing Draven, you get constant compliments about just how awesome you're doing, in the form of self-congratulations where Draven talks to himself as being "all that". Some people really love this kind of thing, and he fills the role admirably.

Note that these are still fairly broadly defined, as purpose is meant to be. Tristana, Teemo, Annie... they're all examples of a champion whose purpose of personality is to be "cute yet dangerous". The specific role thereof, however, is a specialized format.

Where Annie is a little kid obsessed with fire, yet a bit grim through her playfulness, Tristana's clearly an adult, yet able to pull off "bouncy and fun" while still being determined at the same time. They're both "cute" in their own ways, and cater to the crowd who wants cute adorable things that leave a swath of destruction in their wake (I'll confess I'm part of that crowd XD ), but at the same time, they focus their attentions more so to a specific minority amongst that broader spectrum of players.

And of course there's Teemo, who caters to the "I want to see him DIE" crowd. Supposedly, some people actually like him, and I have two friends who state they're in this grouping, but honestly, who's going to believe that? Teemo lovers are just a myth, after all ^.~

Anyway, the point is that you want your character to have some overarching purpose behind their design that makes them unique and special in some way. It's possible to overlap their purpose with other champions who are fairly similar, without stepping on their toes, so long as the difference is notable in the specific context of how that purpose is implemented.

This means not making the mistake of Darius duplicating Riven in everything but gender. Now that we have personality out of the way, and you've given your champion one, let's now see about mechanics.

This is a little different from personality, in that the goal here is to specify a way in which they actually play.

Note that "DPS" is not a purpose. It's a role.

What's the difference you may ask?

Honestly, it's mostly a level of scale, more than anything else. The purpose you have behind making a champion, or picking them to play as, is "damage", perhaps mixed with some sub-variants such as "mobile damage" or "excessively high output, but squishy damage".

Regardless, the purpose behind that character is to KILL things. The specifics behind HOW they kill them is where their role comes into play.

Annie instagibs a target from full life, and does immense AoE damage + stun to a group, turning an entire team fight in her advantage, whereas Tristana stays really far in the back, and is able to either push enemies away, or move herself to a new location, all the time pouring out consistent damage. (Under normal builds, of course)

The specific roles are a burst caster, and a sustained DPS respectively, but they both do "damage" as their overarching purpose for why you'd even have them in the game in the first place.

When you're making your champion, you don't need to start out too specific. Keep in mind that, even if you do have this awesomesauce ability you just ADORE, you may have to edit or remove it, and the entire champion can't just be revolving around a single spell. You can have them revolve around a purpose, such as "AoE damage", or "pushes lanes really fast", which is fine. There's lots of ways to go about doing those things. You just can't limit yourself to "all their abilities are based off of bleed effects", or you get stuck with the mechanically precise tunnelvision that brought us Darius, who works great in terms of his personal mechanics... but was built to make himself fun, and did a horrible job of making him actually have any real "purpose" in the game.

To explain a little better, Darius doesn't bring anything new to the game. His mechanics are neat, on an individual basis, but he doesn't do anything that someone else can't do better. He kill steals nicely, but in a team fight, he needs to be useful for more than just the last hit, and to be blunt... he isn't. He's a wasted team slot who has no value because he has no purpose of mechanics behind him. No one ever sat down and said "what do we want him to bring to the game?". The answer "he does bleed effects!" is the implementation of how he carries through on his purpose, but he doesn't actually have a purpose to begin with, so it kinda falls flat on it's face.

If we take say... Vayne, and ask what her purpose is, it's pretty clear. She's intended to kill any single target and butcher them mercilessly. Her mechanics all revolve around this concept, from her chasing, to avoiding skill shot CC, to stunning, to killing even those who specifically try to build tanky. No matter what you do, Vayne is going to kill you unless you kill her first. Her sole purpose is to pick someone out, and make them disappear.

Since Vayne was built from the ground up around this concept, she works very well mechanically. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a purpose behind her personality, so although she's technically effective at her job, she's kind of boring, and you don't really get any thrill out of playing her in the way you do playing Mundo. This means that, although she might be played because she's considered to be powerful and easy to use, overall she's just not really "fun" to play in the sense of playing a character. This leads directly into her skin sales being a bit lackluster, and it has nothing to do with how "sexy" they are. Give her skimpy outfits and inflate her breasts with a tire pump, it won't matter, because she's simply lacking in purpose of personality, and doesn't actually have a target audience that she appeals to personality-wise.

At this point, you've probably (or at least hopefully) started to have the truth dawn upon you. Both of these forms of purpose are equally important, in the long run. One without the other does not equate to a truly enjoyable design. Having neat mechanics but no distinctive personality leads to a boring champion that honestly isn't that fun to play. Having a great personality but bland game play still leads to a champion that just feels lackluster.

The difference lies in how they present themselves, more than anything.

A champion with strong mechanics will show up at higher levels of play, where they simply are more interesting, and people tend to prefer characters that take a little bit of skill to use overfacerollers, whereas a champion with strong personality will earn a lot of revenue in the way of skins and impulse buys.

Without mechanics, you can't have a professional circuit, but without personality you can't have profits to drive that professional circuit. Both must coexist, hand in hand, and it's there that you get champions which do well overall.

Aiming too harshly down the path of mechanical perfection will eventually lead to the game running dry of resources, as players won't be interested in the champions any longer. Sure they're fun to play, on a technical level, but they just don't "click" with the players, and it'll hurt long term.

Aiming too harshly down the path of personality perfection, conversely, will eventually lead to the game becoming little more than a casual gamer's haven, but wherein the professional circuit is non-existent, to the point that much of the player base will drop off due to just not having anything to aspire to, or feeling embarrassed to play it.

No matter what you do, you need to cater to both. In most cases, your design will lean heavily one way or the other, and it's very rare to get a design which is capable of catering to both in adequate measure.

Regardless, now that we know what purpose is, let's see what we can do about ensuring that it works throughout the whole design!Part 2: A little yang in every yin, and a little yin in every yang. For some reason this statement always makes me think it should be the subtitle for a gay porn movie O.o;;So we have a champion that's under production, but we really, really, really want them to be awesomesauce across the board. I know, I'm using that word too often. Toughbeans to you, huh? ^.~

Regardless, the point here is that we want to ensure that our purpose is actually met in all aspects of our design. We technically have two forms of purpose, as we just covered, so this is a little tricky to pull off, since we also have to ensure that those two place nicely as well!

First and foremost, before we do anything else, we're going to have to get the purpose of personality and the purpose of mechanics to work as a well oiled machine. If this doesn't occur, then our champion simply isn't going to be as good as it could've been otherwise.

Now, this is easier to do than it looks, but it can be a little tricky. "Cute little kid" and "TONS OF DAMAGE" don't normally work together, unless you're specifically playing up to particular stereotypes, such as comedic value in the whole "refuge in audacity", where it's so ridiculous of a concept that it WORKS (Urf the manatee), or where you're pulling for a concept of "poking those hidden fears" a la children of the corn style (also a la Annie style).

In short, normally you want your personality and game play to coincide, where an archer uses her bow for long ranged combat. Ashe would be rather silly as a melee champion, all things considered.

If, however, you want to break your players expectations, you either are going to do so in a way that plays upon a hidden fear (a woman being stronger than a man, a child being anything but innocent, cute being dangerous), or a comedic value. You can't break an audience's expectations and expect them to accept it without overruling their initial feelings of confusion and discomfort, with a stronger emotion. Fear and Joy are two of the strongest emotions out there, so you're going to have to pick one or the other to drown their complaints in, to the point that they don't even notice that they were going to complain to begin with.

Seriously, Annie could *NOT* work as a support champion. Without that "fear" she forces onto the player, they would reject her presence on the fields of justice entirely. Without the comical value of Urf, he, too, would have been rejected outright at an emotional level before even processing if he was fun to play as.

In some cases, this isn't as big of a problem as others. Annie's pretty much forced to be damage, no matter what you do. You have to be scared of her for her character to work. Urf, on the other hand, could fit practically any role. He could use his spatula to whack people away as a tank, or to flip burgers for buffs as a support just as easily. Sillyness is pretty open to interpretation, whereas fear requires a level of imminent danger to be present.

Regardless, the point is that you will want to consider your personality you're aiming for, consider who it appeals to, and then consider which champions they're likely to enjoy the most.

Ie: Draven would never have worked as a support champion with that personality.

Anyway, our next order of business, now that we will assume that you have the two purposes playing nicely together, is to then move onto other areas.

Personality has to fit flush across the board. No gaps, no holes, no mistakes and bumps that stick up in odd areas that make people ask awkward questions. This means you need your appearance, your game play, and your voice acting, as well as the lines the voice actor/actress reads to be consistent.

So, too, does mechanical purpose have to fit well. You can actually have a bit of variation here, more so than in personality, but not by much. If you make a tank, they have to have tankyish abilities. If every ability they have is offensive in nature and feels like it should be on a DPS champion, it doesn't matter how tanky you "claim" they are, they just won't feel right.

Strangely enough, this actually isn't that difficult to do, so long as you're following your purposes you have set out.

Personality - Fun, energetic, bubbly, happy. Make them look cute, give them a big smile, and a bouncy voice actress. Ta-da, Tristana's in good shape!

Mechanics - Consistent damage output, high safety net. Toss her a way to escape if surrounded, a way to remove a singular threat, and long range and she's safe to attack all she wants in a fight. Drop in some long term damage buffs (7 seconds is a looong time in a team fight =3 ), and she's able to maintain her damage output throughout the entire fight without having to worry about stopping to run away, or to worry about getting spells spammed on her. Tristana's still in good shape!

So... you have a champion who's now capable of fulfilling their purposes due to simply having the things they need to do both of them.

But, if that's the case, what do we do next?

Aha, ROLES. Yes, those things I talked about earlier on. Let's go have a gander, shall we?
Part 3: My girlfriend likes to role-play. For the last 5 years, she's been playing the role of my ex-girlfriend.Alright, creeeepy title. Also, if you honestly believe this yourself, you may need to go see professional help. Quickly, preferably.

Anyway, your roles for your character are basically the specific things you intend for them to do to perform their purpose.

In the case of a purpose of "damage", we have a few ways to express that purpose into specific roles which can be valuable to a team.

Burst damage, where it applies upfront in very large amounts, then kind of peters out afterward.

Sustained damage, which is consistently high, though usually takes a few seconds to kill anyone, unlike burst.

Physical damage is typically high, but easily defended against with armour items being much easier to get than spell resistance.

Magical damage tends to be more adept at burst than sustain, but Cassiopeia and Rumble show that it's possible to do otherwise so long as you "replace" your basic auto-attack.

Melee damage puts themselves in harm's way, so tend to either have to be abnormally tanky, limiting damage output, or to have a method of avoiding CC to allow for them to do their job.

Ranged damage allows one to do damage on a more consistent basis over time, so typically has lower overall firepower to make up for the fact that they're almost always raining down terror the whole time through a fight.

These are just a few examples, but the end result is that there are many, many roles and hybridizations between these in order to get a final role.

You'll notice, as well, that due to having so many different roles, in comparison to purposes, you'll actually have a relatively easy time making your champion unique, in that it's near impossible to have every single possible combination of roles available.

For the rest of this section of the guide (the next few articles), I'll be discussing the most common purposes, divided by various roles. Many of them actually overlap, however.

For example, a tank's job and a support's job are very similar in many ways. They both tend to try to keep their damage dealers up, they both tend to focus on negating the enemy's capacity to be effective, and they both tend to build for tanky items with high cool down reduction on them.

The specific purpose each has is different, but the methods of implementation often overlap. This is a large part of why Leona isn't quite 100% sure if she's a tank or a support.

I can't realistically go through all the possible incarnations and variations of every role in the game. There's literally HUNDREDS of them, and they can be arranged in a nearly infinite number of ways. It's to the point that a mere 100 champions simply isn't enough to even make a slight dent in the ways you have available to make a champion.

In short... you have no excuse for your champion to be boring or a carbon copy of an idea that already exists.

On the plus side, it means if you simply pick a purpose for what you want your champion to do (say... I want my champion to kill bases! ), then you select a few roles which allow them to do that in particular (Ranged damage to kill turrets easier, strong AoE damage to wipe out minion waves fast to push quickly to a base, attack speed buffs to benefit me whether AD or AP vs towers, and great escape mechanics) and you get... Nidalee or the old Sivir pre-remake. Even so, these are just two ways of doing the same purpose, and they go about doing so in vastly different methods, even despite having very similar roles attached to them!

It's actually remarkably easy to make your champion unique. Figure out some stuff you want them to do, and then work around getting them to do it. If your core concept of what you want them to do is solid, ie their purpose, and their implementation, ie their roles, are set up in a way that others haven't had the same combination before, you'll find your champion will simply be more interesting than they would be otherwise.

The personality's pretty much the same concept as the mechanical aspect, so I won't go into much detail here, since the same rules apply. Pick a starting point of a purpose (cute!), apply a few variations of roles (sugary sweet, innocent, oblivious to causing harm) and you get... Lulu!

At least, that's what you can end up with. It's not hard to make something end up unique and interesting, so long as you build it up, from base to structure, branching out into finer detail as you go.

Just make sure you have an idea of where you want to end up, but don't be afraid to let it wander on it's own as you go. Let your mind do other stuff, such as watching tv, listening to music, that sort of stuff; the less focused your mind is when trying to come up with concepts such as these, generally the better your overall output will be, I find. Thinking about it too hard mostly just limits you to only things that your conscious intellectual mind can come up with, and stifles the emotional and creative sides, which often have the best stuff for content stowed away.

Anyway, we're in the home stretch now!Part 4: If you wanted to take damage, why the hell'd you pick Kog'maw? ~LilyPichuSo we have some broad ended purposes, which often break down into more specialized roles. The purpose of a champion is a bit hard to define since it's often so broad in scope, however.

Sure, there's a few big ones, but it's really quite rough at times!

Let's take a look, shall we?


TANK: It sounds easy doesn't it? But... there's damage soaks, initiators, off-tanks, main tanks, support-tanks, and so on and so forth! Honestly, a "tank" isn't a purpose, it's a mixture of various roles. In general, the "purpose" here would be more "keeps my allies alive long enough to do their job". Interestingly enough, this also applies to...

SUPPORT: Once again, they keep their allies alive long enough to do their job. Sometimes this is through stunning an enemy team, other times it's through healing them, the list goes on and on. Supports are one of the most open ended of classes, capable of doing so much "stuff", with that definition of "stuff" being so broad that it's hard to nail down. In short, though, support champions tend to focus on indirect benefits other than just raw damage. A "high damage support", such as Karma, Orianna, or Lulu, aren't really supports, so much as a weird hybrid between a low damage burst caster and a hybrid.

DAMAGE: Well that's... vague. Burst mage? Melee AD carry? Assassin? How can you tell!? Damage in and of itself is a broad reaching concept that covers quite a lot of the game! From old Sivir's pushing, to Fiddlestick's surprise ultimate from the brush for a whole team, to Poppy's single target beat down, each does damage, but often to different target choices, and in different ways. The end goal, however, is they kill stuff. One way or another, something dies when they're around.


Is that really it? Not by a long shot, no. But honestly, there's only really three main ways to deal with this game. Doing damage, taking that damage, and preventing the damage from happening in the first place. There's really not much for alternatives beyond that. Everything else is... well... a variation on a theme.

Roles break things down further, but even these are messy. Is Karma a support? She has a heal, shield and a slow/haste, but on the other hand, she also does terrifying burst damage and honestly acts very similar to a bruiser in some ways, strangely enough.

Is Nidalee a tank or a siege caster? Is she a pusher or a support? It's hard to say, since she can be built in a wide variety of ways, and scarily enough, they almost all work to some degree!

Saying "We need a damage!" doesn't help, that much, because you haven't specified much past that point. Do you need physical or magic? Do you need someone capable of fighting lots of enemies at once, or single target removal? Poppy's great for killing a single target, but if you needed AoE damage, perhaps you would've been better off with even an AP Soraka of all things.

In the end, the "metagame" that people go on about... it's not quite as real as people think. The roles that it dictates (jungle, tank, ap carry, ad carry, support) are all very broad and generic in scope, and some just don't work well together. Nidalee's a great top lane, but so is Riven. They have almost completely unrelated roles in terms of what they do to help their team (I suppose Nidalee can be similar if she goes tanky AD though), but they both fit in different team compositions.

See, if you have a team that's dedicated towards a base siege, such as say... long range firepower and heavy sustainability, you might actually want Soraka and Nidalee both on your team, whereas many people would panic and throw a fit that you're not following the meta.

The meta, as it's become twisted to mean, now just means "this is a generic basic outline of a team comp that sort of vaguely works in most cases". It does not, however, define that composition all that well. It doesn't know the difference between Ashe, with initiation and strong support capacity, and Vayne, with single target terrifying damage output, or even Corki with broad target AoE damage. They each serve a completely different role, and yet, as far as the metagame's considered, they each are the same thing: AD DPS.

In various team compositions, one may work better than another. Even if that champion is "countered" in lane, you may still want to pick them because they work with their team better for team fights.

The end point is, pick some roles for what you want your champion to accomplish in the game, both in team fights, and in lane or the jungle. Identify what you WANT them to do, and then go about giving them the tools to accomplish it.

Overall, "role" is a remarkably broad term, even though it's more narrowed down than "purpose", and it still leaves a lot of room to maneuver within.

More than anything, this isn't about specific "I want to be a melee DPS champion!". It's about setting goals you want your champion to accomplish, and making them able to do just that. So long as you follow that line of reasoning, they're going to turn out reasonably okay, without too many problems.

Think on that awhile, because the next few articles we're going to be delving into the main "meta roles" (I know, I just covered this as inaccurate, but whatever!), and breaking them down for what they need to do their jobs.

Until then... class dismissed!

Hello class. Class is in session. Please listen to the monotonous drone of my voice as I speak to you about the origins of tanks.

A "tank" is an MMORPG term denoting a character who is particularly difficult to kill, whose job it is to capture the attention of enemies and keep them away from squishier members of the group. The term "tank" itself, dates back to early WW1, back when it was still being called "The Great War". Tanks, the machines that were huge armoured beasts of war, were known by the code name for the project as "Water Tanks", to throw the enemy off of what the project was about. The name, oddly enough, just stuck after that point.

Alright, history lesson's over. I swear, the whole time I was writing that, I had that monotonous droning voice stuck in my head >.<

So, today we're talking about tanks. Yay tanks!

First off, we'll be going over what makes a tank... a tank... specifically it's the generalized purpose/role of a tank. This is a pretty broad definition, however, and as such...

Our second thing we'll have to cover are the specific things that are considered to be "tanky". There's a pretty good mixture of these things, and no one tank is capable of doing all of it.

Third on the list, will be the differences between the different types of tanks. There's actually a few of them, though often they just get lumped into "tank" in general, despite having different purposes on the battlefield!

The final thing we'll cover for the day, is how to make your own tank!

So, let's get started!Part 1: Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword! ~Joke comic about a Warhammer 40,000 commisar in a Leman Russ. It looks an awful lot like this:So... tanks. What really makes a tank anyway? Why do you even need a tank on your team? What advantage is there to having a tank over a team that doesn't have one?

Alright, calm down, that's a lot of questions to go through, so let's try to take them one at a time.

What makes for a tank? Well, the easiest way to describe this, that I can think of at least, is to define their purpose. The purpose of a tank, in LoL at least, is essentially to go out of their way to keep their squishier members of their team from getting killed.

That really is about all there is to it, and you'll notice that it's so remarkably vague of a statement that it It really covers "too much", to the point of being meaningless, now doesn't it?

I'll narrow it down in a bit, but we'll save that for a different section. For now, all you really need to know is that tanks are generally A: hard to kill, and B: good at making sure their allies aren't killed, either. Beyond that, everything else is a variation on a theme.

So... let's see the next question on our list. Why would you even want a tank on your team?

Well, this is pretty easy. Often there are a lot of rather high damage people running around. These high damage people also tend to be squishy as hell, to the point that if they don't have someone running up and taking the flak for them, they'd melt instantly, and then be useless to the team.

Back when LoL first came out, you generally had one big tank that would cover their whole team, or at least attempt to. In practice, it often didn't work so well, but fortunately heals were strong enough at the time to cover for the things they missed.

Since that time, heals have been nerfed over and over and over. They're literally less than 1/4 as effective as they used to be, so if you hate Soraka right now, she was insane before when she could cast twice as often for twice as much at half the cost and had an infinite mana bar.

It worked, however, at the time, due to there being lots of people with high damage and low health. You could burst a target pretty easily.

These days... well, the "tanky DPS" dealie of having high damage players going for very hard to kill builds, now means that they can take a little fire, and still dish it back out. This unfortunately means that high powered healing is no longer a viable option, because the old Soraka could literally keep an entire team up indefinitely these days, due to the fact that her team would be far, far harder to kill, and the enemies themselves would also be outputting far less damage due to also being tanky over the concept of a glass cannon.

As such, most of the time, these days, you'll actually find that, although at lower ELO rankings people love to build glass cannon, considering a 1:1 kill ratio good... at higher ELO rankings, they've realized that if you make the enemy run to base, and you don't die doing it, you gained proportionately more than if you killed them but died afterward in the process.

This means that a singular tank is still used often in low ELO, but that they simply can't cover for the fact that their healer now sucks in comparison, and people die a lot more than they used to.

It also means that at a higher rank of ELO, that you tend to get the entire team building fairly hard to kill, and it may not be worth it to even have a dedicated tank, as everyone's relatively hard to kill in the first place and doesn't need to be babysat any longer.

In short, the role of the "tank" is gradually being phazed out, along with the support role. Everyone's getting so homogenized in terms of damage and survivability that it's just simply not as big of a deal as it once was.

Does that mean tanks are bad to have? Of course not! It just means they're not as absolutely needed as they once were.

A "true tank", who has their entire kit dedicated towards doing the job of drawing fire and actually surviving it, still can be a great tool in your arsenal. Furthermore, since tanks are a lot closer to the difficulty to kill of their DPS than they used to be, there's not nearly as much frustration in attacking the tank instead of a damage player, since they both pose a comparable threat in their own way, and it's not so one sided on how easy they are to kill compared to their threat index.

Actually, let me take a brief detour here for a second, to cover a point that has been needing to be covered for ages, and one of which people still get hung up on.

A tank is intended to draw fire. Their job is to get hit in the face so that someone else doesn't have to. In some cases, this has been accomplished poorly, by making champions such as Rammus, where you don't get a say in the matter, due to taunt. Most of the tanks I see on this forum actually use a taunt, which is generally just bad form.

You also run into a lot of lower ELO players who insist "NEVER ATTACK THE TANK FIRST!".

In reality, the purpose of the tank is to be dangerous enough to the enemy team that they WANT to kill the tank, otherwise, at higher ELO, no one would ever attack a tank. And yet... they do. So why?

There's a lot of ways to do this, but here are a few examples of ways tanks piss people off enough to try to kill them:

Lots of stuns or disables. If you're constantly interrupting or preventing the other team from acting, it may be better to disable or kill the tank first to keep them from screwing over your whole team.

Stacks. People loooove killing off stacks, and Cho'gath's Feast is wonderful for this. Once you see him waddling towards you at high speed and the size of a two story building, you realize "If we killed him even once, he'd be far less dangerous". This is a great encouragement to killing him off, as if he's dead, he's less of a threat in the next team fight.

Constant aggressive behaviour. Amumu's crying doesn't do all that great a job, since although it stacks up the damage surprisingly fast... it fails in the fact that it's not a highly visible or obvious damage output since it's small amounts over time. A higher ELO player will tend to recognize the danger, but not nearly as well as a tanky Garen or Udyr who's constantly smacking your ranged carry and support in the face, diverting their attention from the rest of the fight.

Debuffs and set-up abilities. Many tanks have things they can throw out which will cripple an enemy or set them up for a kill. Lee Sin's kick of an enemy into the middle of his team, or Shyvana's armour reduction and knockback can easily set their allies up for a kill. Armour/MR shreds, knockbacks/tosses, you name it, anything that makes it easier to kill an enemy can really make them want you dead fast.

Channeled abilities, such as Nunu or Galio's ultimates, can send immediate warning signals and elicit a stun or silence response which would've been normally tossed at a burst mage or a DPS instead.

These aren't the only things that draw fire well, nor are they the only tools in a tank's arsenal by any means. They are, however, the most likely way to get yourself noticed as a threat to the point that you get killed instead of someone who's easier to put down.

The real question becomes... what advantage does a team with a tank have, over one that doesn't? Tanks don't kill particularly well, so what's the big deal?

Overall, a tank is useful for a few things, such as eating up tower hits so their squishies can dive in safely during a major fight around a turret, and they're great for sewing chaos into the enemy ranks. Generally, a well played and well-crafted tank will be capable of causing so much confusion and problems to an enemy team that they will either play far less efficiently than they would otherwise, or they may get out of position, or otherwise neutralized.

What you're giving up for a tank is damage, but what you're gaining is control. A team which gets locked in place by Amumu and torn apart before they were ready to fight back, can often result in them wasting flashes to escape, or people getting out of position, panicking, or doing anything but fighting back properly as they should have.

In the end, if your enemy is confused or scared, disoriented or pulled out of position, then they're not playing at their best.

This isn't a game of "stand still and shoot each other in the face back and forth until one side dies". At lower ELO, yeah, some people think it is, just as some people throw a tantrum on FPS games when you set up an ambush or use your head instead of just blasting away at each other without even any cover.

In a team fight, being tossed over a cliff because Singed was around, can be the difference between winning that fight, or losing it. It's now a 5v4 which is in their advantage if you're not able to get back within short order, and no, flash is not always up, much as you'd like to think it can always save your butt when that happens.

Sure the other team had an extra DPS player, but you'll notice that key word there of "had", because they're not in combat any longer.

Just because your DPS are tanky due to building for it, it doesn't mean they actually have the tools a tank has built into their kit to really mess up the enemy team.

Anyway, now that we've covered why it's a good idea to have a tank, let's see the list of tools they get at their disposal that lets them do their job in the first place.Part 2: When all you have for tools is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When all you have is a flame thrower, they don't even look like problems anymore.The right tool for the right job. Because it'd be silly to use the right tool for the wrong job.

Anyway.

A tank gets a wide range of tools to use, but no tank has "all" the tools. They've be horribly overpowered if they did!

There are a lot of cases where someone mentions the tank should initiate! This actually isn't necessarily the best case, but a lot of the time, it helps to have the person with the most health being the only one in range to get hit.

Ashe's ultimate and Blitzcrank's grab are perfectly valid initiations, however, and they normally aren't played as tanks. Alright, so Blitz CAN be tanky... and admittedly I have actually made an Ashe tank build which works far better than it has any right to (what can I say, 2.4 second cooldown on an AoE slow is nuts XD ).

The point is, however, that initiation is often a task that tanks are expected to perform. Not every team will have Blitz or Ashe on their side, which means it's often better for a tank to be capable of opening a team fight.

So what exactly is this initiation, anyway?

In short... it's starting a team fight before the other team's ready.

In theory, both teams would just mindlessly run into melee range and smack each other around. In practice, the team who rips an enemy out of position, or stuns an entire enemy team, is the team which has a massive advantage, where they can often kill one of the enemy players before they can even fight back.

This is the fine art of initiation. Typically it occurs at long range, since you're assuming the two teams are far enough apart that they're generally safe from getting hit by ranged attacks, otherwise they're already in combat at that point. Skill shots tend to have abnormally long range, however, due to the tradeoff that the farther it travels, the easier it is to avoid a skill shot.

As such, you'll see things like Amumu's bandage toss being a prime example of an initiation; he flies out of a bush, stuns on of them, and then roots their whole team in place, giving his allies all the time they need to take advantage of the situation. (Hopefully, anyway! )

This can range anywhere from massive speed benefits, such as how Rammus can come flying across the map at ungodly speeds and ram into someone, then taunt someone, curl, and ulti the whole team, through to other options such as Malphite just running into melee and knocking up an entire team, or Lee Sin kicking one member of their team out of position, either into the waiting jaws of his damage dealers, or far enough over a hill that they won't be able to realistically be around for the first 5-10 seconds of the fight.

No matter how you cut it, a tank with initiation means you don't have to rely on someone else to start the fight who may be significantly less ideally suited to such.

Note that no matter what you do, you can't rune or itemize for initiation in LoL. You could back in DotA: Allstars, but not in LoL. The other things here? You can itemize for them, making sacrifices to do so, but a tank without an initiation move will never be able to initiate. Keep this in mind when making your own.

What good is a tank that dies instantly?

Tanks tend to have abilities which grant them all sorts of survival bonuses. Literally ANYONE can build tanky, but a tank tends to get that extra push for power that they otherwise wouldn't have.

Oddly enough, tanks tend to have sub-par defensive stats to make up for the fact that they have skills and items to cover for such for them. They also tend to oddly enough have overly high damage base damage on their auto-attacks and abilities to counteract the fact that they're probably lacking for any kind of adequate scaling from itemization.

For the most part, a tank is going to have to take a beating, though. If they died as fast as a glass cannon, then they didn't really save anyone else from dying at all. They need to live long enough that the enemy team is wasting time killing the tank, rather than fighting someone else they'd rather be fighting.

This's one of the easiest things to give a tank to make them useful. Even if you don't have a taunt (and you shouldn't; they're a lazy excuse for an ability ), you still want to keep your enemies from killing your allies. Being able to lock them down with stuns, silences, slows, and so on, can be just the way to get your team on the winning side of things.

After all, an enemy that's CC'd while their team runs away is now out of position, and in prime range of getting eaten by your allies. Additionally, CC can be used to initiate, to catch runners, to get people out of position, to prevent them from attacking while you shoot them back... it's a highly versatile tool which is beneficial in almost all situations.

As such, you'll find virtually all tanks have at least one form of CC. Most have two. And of course we have Nautilus and Leona, but we don't talk about them.

Team fights are fast and brutal, often being decided within the first 5-10 seconds, and occasionally even from the instant of initiation.

Occasionally I'll see tanks on this forum be suggested that have fury, or other mechanics which let them ramp up in power over time. This is generally a bad idea unless you're intentionally using it to punish ignoring them.

Yes, a tank can survive for a very long time in a fight, but the thing is, they need to have the vast majority of their power, if not all of it, upfront during the first 2-3 seconds of a fight. They need to be able to unload themselves hard.

This has unfortunately had the consequence of many tanks being like your average guy... blows their load first thing, then they may as well not be there past that point.

Consider Amumu, he leaps in with a bandage toss, blows his ultimate and then... and then... yeah, he tosses the occasional tantrum out and cries a lot, but he doesn't really make his presence particularly well known past that point.

Tanks often tend to build a lot of Cool Down Reduction gear, since most of it's pretty heavily tanky to begin with. This tends to mean, however, that tanks typically have rather long cool downs, which is bad. In most cases you want your tank to remain in their face; if you're like Malphite, where you blow your load on your initiation, and are little more than a mild nuisance past that point, you're probably not going to be focused down all that hard, and will instead just be more or less ignored.

Regardless, the point is that you absolutely HAVE to be useful during the first few seconds of the fight! Just try to keep in mind that, if you're not able to maintain being a constant threat after that point, that you're really not going to be doing much tanking.

If a physical DPS champion reduces armour, it tends to be piercing, meaning that it only affects themselves. The reasoning is mostly that an armour shred, which reduces the enemy's armour, benefits the whole team, but primarily will only benefit those who use a physical attack. Generally you have 1 primary physical damage carry, so there's no point for them to use a shred over a pierce, especially if the shred will probably be less effective due to benefiting more people that won't use it in the first place.

For a tank? Yeah, you generally want debuffs, lots of them. From shreds to damage reduction auras, you pretty much want to benefit your whole team in some way, shape or form. Often a support will help out on this role as well, considerably, but if you have a tank tossing out really nasty effects such as a -50% armour debuff? If you were the other team, I think you'd want to stunlock or kill that tank ASAP as well because of the power they're granting the DPS in the process.

Stacks are similar, in that it's something which makes the enemy team WANT to kill you. You sit there on like a +100% damage buff, but which they can reset back to zero upon killing you? Yeah, they're going ot go out of their way to remove that ASAP.

Cho'gath's ultimate and Leviathan both have an interesting effect of making people really, really want you dead. They'll go out of their way and even suicide to kill you, since if both of you die, they still "won" because you got permanently weakened in the process and theirs was more temporary in nature; as soon as they revive, they're at full strength, but you aren't.

Tanks in general just LOVE to screw up people's positioning. From locking their movement, to dragging them through their teammates, to punting them across the map, most tanks have some methods of screwing with the enemy's capacity to move, and not always in the form of crowd control.

Yes, a stun or an immobilize or slow affect movement, as was listed above in the CC section, but being able to actively reposition where an enemy stands is pretty big too. Sometimes just making a particular location severely unpleasant to stand in can work just as well, though disappointingly, this method has yet to be seen on a tank in game.

I honestly will confess I'm not sure why Graves has an AoE smokescreen, but no tank has anything quite similar. Cho'gath's Rupture just isn't quite the same.

You have an opportunity here to use abilities which make positioning your enemies indirectly useful to a tank. Consider a tank which can mark an area where, if enemies stand within it, all damage against them is amplified by 25%. This is exactly the kind of thing a tank wants to do; to benefit their team, and sew chaos into the enemy ranks!

Regardless, most tanks have some way to make enemies move, make enemies want to move on their own accord, or force them to not move at all.

The last major part I'll be covering, is when a tank directly runs into the line of fire, either shielding an ally, or taking the blow that was meant for them.

While this is easy to do with things like Caitlyn's Ace in the Hole, many tanks actually have similar concepts built directly into them.

Shen has a teleport where he shields an ally, and rushes to their rescue, while Taric, when built as a tank, works quite well in that, even if he's ignored, he still makes his allies harder to kill.

Beware of auras, as they're far stronger than they feel. Generally you'd be better off not giving your tank an aura at all, as tempting though it may be, as even a weak aura is powerful when it applies to 5 people. This tends to mean your ability, when given to the champion, will just feel lackluster, even if it's anything but. Aim for the "feeling" of strength to match the strength it provides.

A tank should "feel" tanky. If they feel like they're just as squishy as anyone else, then they really aren't as good of a tank as they should be.

In that sense, the ability to actually prevent an attack from harming an ally as much as it would have otherwise can really give your player that feeling that they can directly prevent their allies from dying. Just be careful not to overlap with allied support players too much in this case!

You'll notice, if you've seen my Nemhain champion, (I reference her enough XD ) that she specifically takes the next hit meant for someone else. The hit still goes through, but hopefully to a target who's better able to eat the damage and survive it.

The idea there, is that she gives the feeling of being able to directly intervene on the behalf of her allies and save them from death, but not just by tossing up a "temporary heal" like a support player.

There's a lot of other ways to go about such, but things like buffs to allies (Galio ), auras (Taric ), or direct intervention (Shen ) can really add to the fun of a tank, without being overly frustrating to the enemy players in comparison.

In the end, everyone wants to have fun. If an enemy gets frustrated, feeling like they didn't have any options with which to prevent something from happening, they're probably going to eventually get frustrated enough to stop playing. Instead, you want to give them the "chance" to make a kill, or at least feel they did SOMETHING of value, or had the opportunity to. Never emasculate your enemies to the point that they quit. It's not a multiplayer game if you're playing solitaire.Part 3: Three people insta-locking, fine by me... I picked a jungle, now we need a tank... why'd you pick Nidalee? ~LilyPichuSo, the definition of a "tank" is pretty broad, as we've discussed... in... detail. Actually, I'm nearly out of space, so we're going to speed things up a bit, here.

"Pure" Tanks: These are generally pretty well rounded tanks who are meant to take on most roles a tank can provide. They initiate a fight, draw fire, and prevent enemies from killing their allies back, while surviving the whole time. An example of a "Pure" tank, would be Rammus.

Damage Soak: These aren't so much great at all the things a tank's supposed to do, but if there's one thing they're GREAT at, it's just eating ungodly amounts of punishment. You'll quickly discover after smacking Mundo or Singed around for awhile that they just... don't... die... They're not as pure of a tank as Rammus, but they can really screw up your game badly, and they're just squishy enough to make you think you really could've killed them with just a few more shots, luring you into making some rather poor choices in hindsight.

Off-Tank: These do a lot of the tasks of a pure tank, but don't quite have enough of the whole package to really stand up to close scrutiny. Often they trade off some of that extra tanky prowess for additional damage or supportive benefits, similar to how Galio does so.

Bruiser: A bruiser is tanky and hard to kill, but they almost universally suck at keeping enemies off their allies. More so, they're a bit low on damage as DPS go, but a bit high on survivability, letting them cover the gap to reach squishy champions like ranged carries easier. These are one of the best examples of how "just because you're hard to kill, it doesn't mean you're a tank". Yorick is a great example of a bruiser, but he's definitely no tank.

Initiator: There are those who are great for opening up a fight, but they may not be particularly great tanks beyond that point. This is where people like Malphite come in. Sure, he has great health, and top notch initiation... other than that, you can pretty much ignore him for the most part. While it's not necessarily the best choice to do so, the chances are almost everyone else on the enemy team are a bigger threat in relation to how difficult it would be to kill them than Malphite is.

That's pretty much it for the primary tank types. There's a bunch of hybrids in there, such as tanky supports, but I'll deal with them at another time ^.~
Part 4: So I want to make a tank, what should I do?
Rub some bacon on it! ~The Bacon Hotline (402) 88-BACON
Disclaimer: No, I have no idea if this works XDThe main things you need are:

A way to make the enemy want to attack you instead of an ally (preferably not a taunt or damage output).

A way to survive getting shot in the face once they decide they want to attack you.

A way to begin a team fight in your favour, such as an initiation ability.

A way to begin a team fight at full power, or very close to it.

Yep, it's really that simple!

Keep in mind that the last two can *NOT* be itemized for, with the one exception of mana. As such, be careful about using designs which use fury or lack initiation entirely.

In terms of actually putting them together? You'll probably want your tank to have subpar basic defenses, such as armour and magic resistance, but good health and growth on their health per level.

You'll probably also want to give them some way to manipulate, directly or indirectly, the enemy's positioning, either by locking them in place, moving their position, or making some positions seem less ideal than they otherwise would be.

Make sure your tank has at least one ability which allows them to maintain themselves long term in battle; this doesn't necessarily mean they need a shield, damage absorption, or some other form of reduction, but can be as simple as just regaining health back quickly, similar to Mundo. If a tank gets dropped to low health, they can't just back out like a normal champion; their job is to stick in there and keep themselves getting hit instead of someone else. Remember, a tank at 25% health still takes about as much to kill as a glass cannon at 100% health, which can be a big deal in a team fight.

This also brings up the point that tanks virtually never have any true escape mechanics. They might be able to break free of CC somehow, but in terms of capacity to run away? It's not their job to run away screaming. Well, except for Singed, but once again, he doesn't truly have escape mechanics as such, he's just ridiculously fast and has a great slow and toss to go with it, and chasing him through his poison trail is suicide. Regardless, the point here is that your tank isn't meant to run. Having a dash where they can land ON an enemy is generally great! Having a dash where they can run through a wall without a target on the other side is generally less than ideal. Why am I pointing angrily at Shen you may ask? No reason. >.>;;

In any case, you basically have the tools to make a tank on your own now! There's still a lot of fine, minute things to take care of, but for the most part, ensure they have the tools to do the job you want them to, and you're golden.

As with any champion design, it's simple if you list out what you need them to be capable of doing, and just ensure they have the tools to do so. Just make sure to be careful that you don't give them the tools to do *EVERYTHING* at the same time. Limit them to either have gaps in their design, or if they don't have gaps, that they can only use some of their abilities at any given time, so that they can't just do every single tanking task by themselves from the start of the game.

And we're out of time, and character count!

Class dismissed!

Aweeee yeaaaa!

...What?

I've been waiting to write about supports for awhile now!

Anyway, class is in session, and today we'll be covering... oh right, we just covered that part. Well, yay supports I guess?

So, first thing, before I even get into touching on supports themselves, there is something I want to mention in advance.

Supports have been slowly being phazed out of the game for about two years now. Each and every patch, another round of nerfs gets handed out, the most recent set as of the time of this writing being whacking Janna, Alistar and Soraka over the head yet again. In return, Sona, Lux and Morganna got minor buffs to their offensive firepower, and Zilean got a bug fix which he should've had years ago.

Note the specific changes... reduced heals, reduced CC and so on, but stronger offensive capacity.

Time and again each patch, supports have had their capacity to support diminished substantially, and their ability to do damage gradually increased. Within the next year or two, at this pace, supports won't even exist, and the remakes that most of them have in the works will simply turn them into burst casters with slight support tendencies.

I could go into detail on why this is happening, but it's a rather intricate and complex situation relating to a shift towards bulk and low damage output over sustain and quick, brutal combat. In short, it'd take an entire article to explain in depth, and this is supposed to be about supports, so I'm going to just cut it off here.

All you really need to know, is that if you really want to make a support champion (yay, I lurves supports! ), then keep in mind that they're highly in disfavour at Riot at the moment, and probably are going to be phased out entirely fairly soon. This doesn't mean you can't make one, it just means you have to be aware that the game's overall focus is shifting and has been for awhile, so try to keep your new support caster working along the lines of the recent trend: more offensive power capacity, and far, far, far less team support. If you have a huge heal on your champion, it probably isn't a wise idea.

Anyway, enough about my lamentations over the death throes of the support class, let's get into learning about what makes them tick, and how to make them work within the changing game!

First off, we're going to need to define "support" before we do much else! It's a vague term that gets thrown around haphazardly, so this needs to be narrowed down considerably.

Second, we'll touch on a few of the primary ways that support champions tend to change the outcome of a game, as well as the goals they have in a little more detail.

Third, I'll go a *LITTLE* into depth on the reasoning behind why the current state of the game prefers offensive supports over defensive ones.

Finally, we'll cover where you should probably begin when making your own!

So, let's get down to business!Part 1: It's time to get down to business, that's why they call it business socks! ~Flight of the ConcordsSorry, couldn't help myself. I was dancing too, to the business socks thing. A sight, which I might add, that no mortal should ever witness for fear of clawing their eyes out in shame. XD

Anyway, so what is a support anyway? People use the term all the time, but what really makes a support... a... support? Other than apparently working for the Department of Redundancy Department.

Well, to put it in basic terms, a support is someone who supports someone else other than themselves.

Alright, perhaps that was a little too basic.

The idea of a support is mostly focused around indirect benefits. Damage people, regardless of whether they're an assassin, a DPS, a burst caster, or whatever, do damage. The enemy players, the turrets, the nexus, the minions, everything in the game relies on killing them with damage. No damage means you physically can't win, no matter how good you are.

Supports work in the method that they don't really rely on damage as their primary method of changing the game's outcome. Instead, they rely on secondary and tertiary effects, such as stuns, knockbacks, healing, shields, debuffs, positioning changes and so on to indirectly benefit their team and harm the enemy team, so that the rest of their team is simply more effective.

This can show up in a multitude of ways, but in the end, a support pretty much is always relatively weak on their own, but strengthens their allies to be far in excess of what they would have been otherwise. The more allies they have, the more useful a support becomes. This ends up leading to supports being heavily disfavoured in Twisted Treeline due to the fact that they simply don't really have enough people to benefit to make up for their general weakness on their own self.

As you've probably noticed a few times now, I've mentioned that a support is typically weak. This is kind of a misnomer, really, as they really aren't. Often a support can take on people 1v1 in clashes you wouldn't even expect possible. Sona can faceroll Vayne if built properly, just as Soraka can make Veigar cry as she outdamages him with ease. They're not "weak" in the sense of being particularly ineffective, so much as they are simply less effective in 90% of situations when they're alone than almost any other champion type would be. Supports thrive when their allies are near, and can make their allies swell with power and strength, but are a bit lackluster when they're alone due to this.

Consider an aura; it's one of the primary tools of support champions, in that it benefits an entire team. On a single target, an aura is kind of pathetic, often not having enough effect to honestly matter for what you give up to get it. When you apply it to five people instead of one, however, it becomes brutally powerful, often being worth twice it's weight in new found power.

In the end, almost anyone can be played "as" a support, by building support items and playing them in such a way as to benefit their team more. Focusing on Ashe's slowing effects, or Lux or Morganna's shield + roots + puddles (Lux's Lucent Singularity is pretty much a puddle effect with how enemies treat it ) can make them act like support champions to a degree. Some are better at this than others.

Your end goal as a support is to ensure that you win the game, same as everyone else, it's just that a support does so through means other than just raw damage.

So what happened to the last few so-called "supports" to be released? We have Lulu, Orianna and Karma. Each of these were touted to be the next new awesome support! Each of them also failed miserably in living up to the name. What went wrong?

The biggest problem all three of these face, is that they require a great deal of farm and damage to do their job. They require hurting things constantly and pouring out the damage to be effective. Their overall "support" abilities are rather lackluster, barely above par for any normal burst caster, and they don't really live up to the damage of a burst caster either. They're somewhere stuck in between a true support and a mage, leaving them in a lame position all around as they can't perform either role particularly well. They're still fun, and they're effective in their own right, but playing any of these three as a full on 100% support is asking for trouble. It can be done, just not nearly as effectively as if you'd used someone more suited to such.

In more simple terms, they failed miserably at the two universal things that define a support: being weak solo but strong with allies, and indirect effects.

Lulu, for example, has a rather surprising amount of damage built into her design. This goes with the newer design philosophy that LoL's taking, but it's problematic from a support's perspective. All of her abilities have secondary effects which seem supportive, but she can make just as good use of them as anyone else. She has no real need or reason to indirectly benefit or buff her allies, as she does a perfectly good job of just killing stuff normally, and using her support style stuff as a secondary effect.

This goes with the other two as well. They simply aren't that effective as supports because their "support" spells are less effective when supporting someone else, than they are when they're used offensively to harm the enemy.

Annie has an AoE stun... does that make her a support? Not really, since she can do ridiculous damage output as well. Janna can do a slow, a knock up, a knock back, a haste, a shield, and an AoE heal, this does make her a support, but her damage is a bit low in comparison.

The difference between these two is that one is heavily slanted towards damage, and the other finds herself heavily slanted towards the indirect effects.

For someone like Lulu, although she has a lot of indirect effects available to her, she still ends up being far more leaning towards damage than indirect support. Same goes for Karma, which is why so many people have issues with her; she's great if played as an AP bruiser with some support capacity on the side, but unfortunately people view her as only ever being able to be a support simply because she has some support effects... she's a pretty lame support though, honestly.

Soraka has a lot of damage between starcall and infuse, but she's also very frail and unable to maintain starcall long enough to gain it's full effect generally. She can do damage, sure, but she's simply far better at not doing damage, such as how Riven's able to jungle, but why would you when she absolutely wrecks almost anyone who goes top lane? Yes, Soraka's adequate at damage, but she's terrifying as support.

In the end, a support is simply top notch in doing the role of a support, but not particularly all that great elsewhere. The last few "supports" have just been good elsewhere but only moderately effective as supports.

Trying to play them 100% full on passive support doesn't work, and they're not acceptable to be played any other way, so they mostly just languish in obscurity.

This leads to the next section, though. What is a support ability anyway, and what really differentiates Karma from Janna?
Part 2: I love having Janna on my team. She's such a great support that she may as well be a bra, which is probably why she doesn't seem to wear one!So, there's a ton of ways that support champions can... support. It's that redundancy thing kicking in again, I know.

Anyway, supports have a wide range of tools at their disposal! More than anyone else, actually, since pretty much anything that doesn't fall under "does damage" or "makes the caster take damage", can technically be a support ability.

Let's start with some basic ones!

Heals: These are the most basic form of support spell out there, and the type most people think of when they think "support". If an enemy deals damage, you make the damage go away. It's simple, effective, and can indirectly turn a fight in your favour. Downside, is that it's also very powerful, especially if you can't burst down a target faster than they're healed. Back when LoL was released, insane burst damage was common; these days most higher ELO groups simply flat out don't have the firepower to burn down a champion being propped up by a pre-nerf Nidalee.

Shields: Almost as good as heals, but not quite! A shield prevents the damage from ever happening in the first place, which can save someone's life, but they're all imminently expendable. If the shield isn't used, it poofs, and all that damage absorption is lost. On the plus side, it means shields tend to be able to be a bit stronger than heals, to make up for the fact that, after a shield runs out, a nearly dead target is still nearly dead.

Buffs: What better way to make an ally more useful, than to make them stronger? Make them faster, make them hit harder, make them do a bunch of stuff better than before! This is such a wide open option that it can be used in a ton of ways! Most damage dealers have their own self-buffs, but supports can supplement those even further with additional buffs to go with them! The down side, is that a carry knows whether they need AD or attack speed or crit or whatever. A support won't necessarily help that much... Nunu's attack speed buff is insane, but it doesn't help Tristana out so much, generally. Movement speed is the most common support buff, simply because it's generically useful in almost all situations and for all allies.

Debuffs: If it's hard to help your allies with buffs that will be guaranteed useful, how about debuffing your enemies? Ah, that's more common, since you can generally assume an armour shred is going to make your AD carry smile, regardless of how they apply their damage. Urgot, Tristana, or Tryndamere all love a good armour shred, even though they each itemize wildly differently and would rarely get much benefit from the same buffs.

Crowd Control: This is a biggie. A support with strong CC can directly interfere with an entire team fight, as Janna just loves to show off at every opportunity. If they can't fight back, or can't run, then it doesn't matter if it was 5v4 due to the support doing weak damage; it's now 4v4. Oh and then the support knocked another one of them out of the fight, I mean 3v4. Suddenly, things are in your favour considerably.

Positioning: Several supports have abilities which make enemies either move forcefully (Alistar ), or which make a particular area just flat out unpleasant to stand in (Morganna ). Making enemies move out of position is a highly effective way of changing a team fight into your favour. If someone's forced out of range of the fight, or has to walk too close to your bruiser/tank, it can suddenly swing the battle 180.

Map Awareness: There's a few champions on the support role which can provide immense map awareness. Most of them are primarily damage champions, however, such as Teemo or Ashe, who just happen to have some support ability. That being said, warding is often left up to the support (it's everyone's job, but supports are ideal for taking additional advantage of such), and so is clairvoyance. Toss in some actual abilities for sight, such as Nidalee's traps, or Lux and Orianna's capacity to see into bushes, and you'll soon find that they can be a godsend for avoiding ambushes and ganks.

These are just a few of the tools that supports use. To be honest, many of the abilities that non-supports use still have support mechanics built into them, it's just that a non-support doesn't go far enough with the concept.

Great examples of these kinds of things are like Ahri's seduction, Anivia's wall, Graves's smokescreen, or if Sivir's spellshield could be cast on allies. Most of the abilities in the game can be used by a support to great effectiveness by simply allowing it to affect allies instead of a self buff, though as discussed, many buffs are less than ideal on a support.

Regardless, there's plenty of things to pick from, so feel free to get inventive!
Part 3: You maniacs! You blew it up! ~Planet of the ApesAlright, so I've mentioned a few times that supports are kind of on the way out. I could discuss this for ages, but I simply don't have the time nor inclination to, as it's a brief period which may not even remain stable for very long. This depends on how they have the game go long term, honestly.

For now, the biggest issue is that the exceptionally high damage output, paired with exceptionally high healing caused people to explode instantly, only to be back at full health an instant later. This got to the point where there was practically no reason to build defensively, since you'd just explode anyway without your healer present, and wouldn't have much difference if they were there.

Lately, Riot has come to the conclusion over the last few years, that this isn't really all that fun to just mindlessly explode, and that it really makes it hard to squeeze in those clutch plays and really awesome high end skills being shown off. If you go from 100% to 0% without getting to interact with the game... well... it doesn't work so well.

So what does one do about it?

The method they've been taking, is to gradually reduce damage across the board, limit the effectiveness of chained CC, and to harshly drop off the usefulness of healing and sustain in general.

In short, they want you to take longer to kill, but for damage that's dealt to you to stay dealt to you, not to vanish instantly, leading to the necessity of burst damage to overcome sustain.

In some ways, this is great! This means that you get way more time to have fun playing your champion, and it's much more likely you'll be able to do your job without exploding into tiny pieces before you even get to move!

The down side... is that it pretty much is killing off the support class entirely, bit by painful bit. Healing and shields are bad, because it's wasted damage that didn't have any effect, thus "temporary". Support buffs to sustain are out, and so on and so forth.

To make matters worse, things like CC are far less effective than before; Janna used to be able to ensure 2-3 kills at her peak of power. Now... well, now you can't kill people instantly just because they're slowed or out of position for a second or two, usually. At lower ELO, sure, where people still try to go glass cannon, but the farther up in the ELO ranks you get, the more you'll notice that being out of position or stunned just isn't as bad as it once was.

Compounded yet again on top of that, things like positioning control is even less useful than it once was due to how much maneuverability has been added to the game. As of the day I write this, Jayce has been released. Movement speed buffs and gap closers combined lead to people like Janna simply being unable to escape. At one time, Janna could kite people all day, now there are people like Ahri or Graves who can chase her down with ease, no matter how much she spams spells to slow them down in their pursuit of her.

Overall, the changes are for the better, but older support designs simply aren't holding up so well under the changes, and will likely be converted over primarily to damage dealers within the next year or two.

That being said... there's still hope. A support can still have a massive impact on a team fight, without relying on things like sustain. Lulu's a particularly poor example, but she's kind of heading in vaguely the right direction.

The new emphasis for the support champions of tomorrow is likely going to be a focus on reducing the effectiveness of enemies. Spells which reduce a targets damage output, or which silence or otherwise limit mobility uses such as dashes, will be of great effect.

Note that CC in general just won't be as powerful as it is even today, since if you live long enough to escape despite being stunned for 4-5 seconds, due to low damage output and high survivability across the board, you'll just not get nearly as much advantage out of such.

Being caught out of position is still going to hurt, just not quite as much as it does today. As such, you'll probably want to still include some form of positioning control, such as Blitzcrank's grab (only do this is you have a way to keep them from killing your team when they get there, such as his knock up! Darius flat out SUCKS because of this, don't make the mistake they did with Darius! ), or puddle effects such as Graves' smokescreen which makes certain areas on the ground highly unpleasant to stand within.

Regardless of what you do, you're going to have to accept that the old days of heal spammers is dead and gone, and they're not coming back. Newer supports just haven't managed to capture the concept of what a support "should" be doing in this new change of pace for the game, and to be honest, it's not really their fault, considering virtually everything has been nerfed hardcore, from CC through to healing, anything a support used to do has taken a heavy toll.

For your own support, however, you can get around these problems, so let's see what we have for options!
Part 4: Meet the new support... her name is... VUNDAHBRAH. ...Why are you laughing? It's a perfectly valid name!So, since the "old" support style of mass CC + healing is pretty much dead and gone, what's left?

Well... there's still some stuff left, and some which haven't been adequately explored all that well.

Consider things like Graves' smoke screen. I know I've mentioned it repeatedly, but it's for good reason; way back when, ages before his release, or even the announcement of Nocturne, I had a champion with a very similar ability. The idea was that allies could stand in this area of effect and attack while stealthed. Enemies, however, could walk into the area as well and see them, but at the cost of continually taking damage while within the confines of such.

Now that I look back on it, I think it was a bad idea, but not because of the invisibility effect; more so because of the damage. If enemies simply got penalties to armour and MR while in the area, it'd have to be an active decision for them to back out of range, taking pot shots as they run, or to run into range and take even more flak, but be able to hit back immediately.

Personally, I think it needs a lot more work still, before it'd be ready for use, but the concept of positional tools, where enemies have to choose whether to stand in a given area or not is a good one.

This is the kind of stuff that newer supports should be looking into. Spamming BIG HEALS AND INFINITE SUSTAIN simply isn't a valid option anymore with where the game's going. Sure it worked upon release, but it just doesn't work that way any longer.

Aim your new designs towards crippling enemies, such as resistance shreds, or amplifying the damage output of an ally. Consider the effectiveness of being able to toss a 30% damage boost on an ally for even a few seconds as an ultimate, or marking an enemy so that for the next 3 seconds all damage is increased against them.

Heals are going the way of the dinosaur, but damage is here forever. How much damage, however, is a bit of an issue, isn't it? If we assume that Riot's aiming for more health but lower damage, it means that they may sound like they don't really want damage boosts.

Damage in burst to kill, is not appreciated. Damage bonuses which simply allow a target to get harmed more for that "permanent damage" that they're loving so much, such as 20-30% boosts? Oh those are nice...

Consider an ability that cleanses all CC off of a target upon casting, with no travel time (or it'd be severely less useful), or an ability which increases a target's tenacity substantially while it's on them but has a very low recast and moves to a new target similar to Orianna's ball. It'd turn into a game of "who can we target with CC before the tenacity buff hits them first", leading to play and counterplay on both sides.

The idea, is that you're going to have to get substantially more creative in your support champions than you used to. Just slapping a heal and an AoE CC on someone won't cut it anymore.

To that end, there's still a lot of hope for the future, if you roll with the punches supports have to take, then you'll likely be able to make a far more interesting support than has previously been designed.

There's a paradigm shift going on in LoL right now, and yes, I'm actually using that term (almost ) correctly, unlike most managers ^.~

If you go along with it, and build a support champion that works within the new ideals, you'll probably be pleasantly surprised to find you have a far more interesting champion than you would likely have had otherwise!

Supports may stay, they may be phased out entirely. I honestly don't know which way it'll go, since, honestly, it depends on how well Riot themselves understand exactly what they're doing with the changes they've made. Considering their last few support champions, I'm not really sure they do, and they may be removing them entirely and will possibly just rework all the older supports into new damage casters.

You can still do better than this, however. Whether they see the path ahead of them or not is irrelevant. You now see where this game is going, and can plan out your next support champion appropriately, and hopefully, we'll get some really awesome stuff out of such! ^.^

Just... no more generic druids or other holy champions. Try to at least make something interesting, rather than every other "generic healer in any game ever".

Give me a champion that cauterizes wounds with fire, or a freaking dragon that breathes ash, clouding the air. If I see one more champion that's a generic holy priest healer, I think I'm going to scream XD

Anyway, that's pretty much it for today! Supports are shifting in nature, and you now have the knowledge of where the game's going, and what support's position will be in the near future. Now go make me an awesome support that matches these ideas!

Class dismissed!

ROAR IMMA SKEERY DEE PEE ESS! MAH E-PEEN IZ LYK ZOOOO MUCH BIGGAH THAN URZ!

Alright maybe I'm not that scary. I bet I could be if I tried though. Then again, I think I attempted back on the rage section and we discovered it may not have been the case...

Ah well, for now, let's just get to work, since class is in session!

And today we have... DPS / Carries! Aweee yea!

Oh, wait why's there a section separately listed for burst casters? Aren't mages carries?

Relax little grasshopper, all things shall be made known in time.

First on the list we need to define DPS carries. It's a bit weird, since you'd think this would be obvious, but after one of the recent MCCC(P!) contests, it became rather blatantly obvious that a lot of people here are a little fuzzy on the subject, so this seems like a good place to start.

Second, we'll go over what a melee DPS really needs to do their job well. There's only a few true melee DPS in the game, so pay close attention, since I've got very few examples to work with here!

Third, we'll cover the ranged DPS champions. Fortunately, there's a lot more of these, so it should be easier!

Finally, we'll touch on magical DPS champions. Currently there is... uhm... one. Cassiopeia's the only magical DPS champion in the game currently, since Rumble and Karma are more along the lines of magical bruisers, than anything else (I know, people peg Karma as a support, but she's more of a bruiser who just happens to have some support capacity tossed in). This one may take awhile to explain, so let's get down to business!Part 1: Oh yeah? Well MY carry can beat up YOUR carry, so take THAT Taric! ~The real reason Taric became a tank/support hybrid.So, what is a DPS/Carry anyway?

First off, just let me say that a DPS champion or a carry is pretty much the same basic concept, and I don't feel like constantly talking about both, so I'm just going to call them DPS, because I need to grill this concept into your people's heads!

DPS stands for Damage Per Second.

Note the "per second" part in there.

This is the lead reason why mages are almost universally not true DPS champions.

See... unloading 3000 damage in 2.5 seconds is great! It's just... when the next 10 seconds you manage to squeak out only a pitiful 1000 more, it means that once someone's survived your initial barrage, you're really just not that much of a threat anymore.

Carries are universally DPS champions. There's no real option in this. For you to carry a team, you have to be able to wipe out the entire enemy team if they don't focus you down and kill you first. To do that, you have to be able to maintain sustained damage over time that's in the levels of "Da FAQ just happened to my face?" and "OH GAWD IT BURNS IT BURNS MAKE IT STOP!".

A burst caster can unload 3000+ damage easy in a few seconds. A DPS is only able to do about 1000 damage per second on the top end, usually, but the difference is... 10 seconds later, if Veigar already blew his load, you may as well ignore him from that point on unless you have a clean shot. Master Yi, if built AD... well... if you ignore him you probably just lost the game.

When the burst caster ends their reign of terror, two seconds after it started, the DPS just keeps going on their little rampage, ripping stuff up because you can't stop them from killing things except for when they're either dead or stunlocked.

This is the key distinction between most mages and most AD carries.

Note that an AD caster, such as Urgot or Pantheon, are honestly more akin to burst casters, despite being AD, and that Cassiopeia, despite being AP, is clearly a DPS champion, and hence, a carry.

So long as you pour out the damage consistently, you're a DPS, and thus, have the capacity to be a carry.

Keep in mind, however, that there's more to it than just damage output. Why do you think you never see Fiora or Cassiopeia running around? Sure you do, on occasion, but it's honestly not that common, and for good reason. Let's go find out what they're missing that makes them not nearly as awesome as the others.
Part 2: Imma cut you so bad, you're gonna wish I didn't cut you so bad!Alright, so you've decided to make a melee carry, have you? Good for you, skippy, get in line.

Nah, it's not that bad, but there are an awful lot of them on the forum. And an awful lot of bad ideas for them too...

Let's see what makes them work, however.

As any melee champion, as I've said over and over before, there's 4 main things you need:

A way to get into melee combat.
A way to be effective in melee combat.
A way to stay in melee combat.
A way to survive being in melee combat.

Why are these things so important? Well, I'll break them down one at a time.

Without this, it doesn't matter how awesome you are at melee, you're useless. This is why Olaf has never really been all that impressive. Sure, he wrecks faces once he's in melee, but he's a bad joke when it comes to getting into melee in the first place. Yes, he can toss his axe to slow... by stopping his movement entirely, then throwing a very slow, easy to dodge axe in a straight line, which even if it hits, only slows the enemy a pitiful amount, to the point that he probably lost more ground by stopping to throw it than he gained from them being slowed.

Alright, I exaggerate a bit, but he really has no way to get into melee range realistically. Slows are not really gap closers; if the enemy flashes or slows/stuns you back, you're still not in range.

A gap closer of some kind is needed. With Blitzcrank, he has a rocket fist which pulls you into melee with him. This is one example. With Master Yi, and most every other melee champion in existence (except Darius, but really, who cares about him ^.~ ), they have a dash or teleport which lets them either dash to a particular enemy, or to a location, either rapidly, or instantly.

Ranged champions have ways to block you from getting near them, from slows, stuns, walls, and all sorts of things, so you need a way to close the distance between their max range and melee.

You can't itemize for gap closing. You can't rune for it. You can't rely on flash to make it into melee every single time. As such, you'll notice that virtually every melee champion in the game has a gap closer, and the ones who don't, are pretty much unplayed for the most part, since they require someone else to help them out in their most basic of needs.

Well, what's the point of being in melee if you have no advantage for being there? Just having a melee attack isn't enough, or Taric would be a melee DPS, so what gives?

This is done either through on hit effects and direct effect spells (mostly bruisers and AD mages use these), or using some sort of steroid to make the effects of their items that much stronger.

Consider a buff that makes you attack 100% faster so long as you've hit someone in melee combat within the last 5 seconds.

Itemization would mean that you'd want to focus on high AD boosting items to make you more effective, since you already have lots of attack speed. Toss in some crit, some lifesteal, and you're set!

The point is, you need something in there that makes you particularly effective at being in melee range. For a carry, well... we need DPS, so abilities, unless they're on an insanely low cooldown, aren't going to cut it. You need to be able to spam your attacks far harder than an "on next hit" ability can provide, and they have to HURT.

There are ways to avoid using steroids, and still being DPS. Consider if the old Evelynn had've not had any burst capacity, but instead had a gap closer instead of stealth. Make her hate spikes do physical damage around her in a circle, with 100% to champions and 50% to minions, and it's a toggle ability that pulses based on the speed of her attack speed.

Bam, she's now a melee carry, despite that she uses a spell.

The point is, you need to either A: make your physical attack brutally strong, or B: replace your physical attack with something else which hits remarkably fast.

If your "carry" is only doing damage once per 5-6 seconds, then they're not really a carry. They're a burst caster at that point, even if it's for physical damage.

Tryndamere crits people's faces off for insane damage.

Master Yi rips through enemies with obscene damage and attack speed.

Fiora... gets rooted in place for the duration of her lame 3 second steroid, and after that she has no further sustained damage, only subpar burst.

Alright, so let's say you got into melee combat! YAY!

Let's also say that you're really SCARY in melee combat! Even MORE YAY!

But once you're in it, they just stun you and walk away while you cry.

Ohhh...

Well, that sucks, doesn't it?

Yeah, you'll notice there are only a few melee carries. Master Yi and Tryndamere being two of the biggest. Fiora... Fiora's got a problem, which is why she's vastly inferior to Master Yi, and always will be until she gets a remake.

You'll notice that when Tryndamere's in melee range, he slows an enemy to a crawl and simply won't DIE. During that time frame, he can wail on you all he wants.

Master Yi goes completely immune to anything that slows him, meaning exhaust is virtually useless (it bothers him for the damage reduction, but he does so much that he honestly doesn't care that much), and Ashe simply can't kite him for the life of her. Once he's in range, he stays in range.

If Olaf actually DOES get into range... well, you're not CC'ing him with the hopes of escaping any time soon, so good luck there.

Fiora... has nothing. Yes, she has a second dash to get back into range again after she's stunned and they walk away, but honestly, the dash's range is so small, and movement speed in LoL is so fast, that they're out of range before she can act again.

Now, that being said, there is hope. It's possible to itemize to stay in range. A Frozen Mallet's a rather nice way to get people to sit still when you tell them to. Sure, they'll stun and run, but it'll be slow enough that you can just walk right back up and smack them in the back of the head again in most cases.

It's not the most effective of ways, but it sort of works.

The problem is... Frozen Mallets don't come cheap, and without one, Fiora's pretty much useless. So are pretty much all the other melee champions on this board that are supposedly "carries" that lack any method of staying in range.

A speed boost steroid does *NOT* count, since a slow is so many times more effective. You need +100% move speed to counteract a -50% slow, and that's not even counting the problem that move speed has diminishing returns over 415 MS.

For those who are curious, 415-490, any bonuses only give 80% effectiveness. 490+ gives 50% effectiveness, so if you're at 415 already, and get a +10% move speed buff, instead of reaching 456.5, instead you only get 448.2. Sure, not that big a deal, but at 490, and get the same +10% buff, you instead only got up to 514.5, which isn't really worth it anymore.

This also means that 100% move speed bonus is not really 100%, it's probably closer to 60% in most cases as it'll push you part way through the 415-490 gap, and then a bit over it. In short, it's not nearly as effective of a way to stay in range as most people would like. The only reason it works on Master Yi, is you can't slow him to counter it, as otherwise a single Nunu snowball would leave him crawling at -60%, wasting all that bonus speed.

As repeating previous abilities is not a good idea, meaning you can't just recreate Master Yi (unless you made Fiora...), you can't use the same excuse so... yeah, going to need to think of a new way around this one.

Poppy had the bright idea of being able to render herself immune to all enemies but one chosen one, but sadly she's a burst caster, not a carry, leaving it kind of wasted on her since she doesn't actually need to stay in melee for more than 2 seconds.

In any case, if you get into melee, and just get stunlocked or unable to actually stay there long enough to do that damage PER SECOND (note it's over time, and if you aren't able to stay there for any length of time... well... ), then you don't really have all that viable of a build.

Slows are great for keeping people from running, as are silences which prevent them from locking you down or flashing away. Look into these options. Also keep in mind that virtually every ranged carry or mage is going to have some way to remove you from melee with them, so you need to not just get into melee once, but probably twice, and THEN stay there after that point.

Alright, one last thing your melee champion needs. A way to live through melee.

You'll notice that once you're in melee, you're in range of EVERYTHING.

All of the enemy team's focus suddenly turns to you, because you're the only thing they can hit. That Ashe? Sure, she does way less damage than you, but she gets to plink away at them the whole time while they're ignoring her and focusing on you instead.

That's right, you're in range of their AoE spells, their burst casters, their tank and support's CC, and you're also in range of their own melee and bruiser.

Yeah, you're pretty much screwed unless you have some way to live through their whole team being hellbent on making your face disappear.

Tryndamere has the advantage of simply not being able to die, which is great. Master Yi can ignore alot of their abilities, alpha strike to dodge a lot more, and is fast enough to dodge skill shots on his own. If he actually does get nailed with a root from that Ryze he was chasing down, he can just meditate and eat the damage.

Fiora can... uhm... she can... block a melee hit? One of them?

Yeah... now you see the other reason why she's a failure. She doesn't have enough steroids, unlike Master Yi, to be able to effectively build tanky enough to live through being in melee range, so she doesn't have a way to be effective in melee for a long duration, she doesn't have a way to stay in melee, and she doesn't have a way to survive being in melee. All she has going for her is a gap closer, and Akali has that and more, except for being more bursty than sustained damage output.

In the end, you don't want to give your champion EVERYTHING. You want them to make some decisions. They have to decide whether they want to itemize/rune for survival or more damage. It has to be an active choice on their part, though. If you make the choice for them,

For a melee carry, they need a mixture of the above, and definitely a gap closer and some form of survival, even if it's a minimal one.

There's a few champions I haven't covered, such as Jax (with his immunity to melee), or Evelynn's AD build (since she's been nerfed to hell and back), or the bruisers and a few others.

For the most part though, the same concepts apply to them.Part 3: Awe yea, Ashe is gonna shoot her load all over your face! Tryndamere's just going to watch her do it, too. He's creepy like that.So, melee carry not your style, then? Hrm, well how about ranged? Wouldn't that work?

Let's find out!

Ranged carries are actually a lot easier to make than melee ones, but they have some different problems than melee champions.

First off, they're ranged.

Wait, isn't that a good thing?

Well, yeah, it is... it means they're safer from harm, and when they're at max range shooting the melee carry and bruiser, they're out of range of the enemy ranged carry and burst mage, as well as also being semi-protected by their tank and bruiser from the enemy.

At least, in an ideal world.

Things aren't ideal though. For example, ranged carries, due to their benefit of range, though they can attack far more readily and consistently, without having to run away as quickly, also just so happen to have the problem that they tend to do much, much less damage than a melee carry would, due to having that additional safety net.

For the most part though, much of what I said about melee DPS still applies to a ranged DPS. They need some way to do damage. In Ashe's case, she just never stops shooting you, because she's nearly impossible to run away from. She has absolutely zero steroids, and is the weakest ranged DPS in the game for damage output... but she's also pretty consistent about it, since she doesn't really have any real breaks in between her attacks. She's always hitting something, even when running away or kiting.

In any case, let's get into the key things ranged carries need.

A way to be effective when at range.
A way to stay at range.
A way to escape if they get into melee.

Well that was a shorter list.

Yeah, ranged carries are easier to make. You may notice there's about 4 or so ranged carries for every 1 melee carry. Yeah... even Riot has problems with the AD carries, since they either turn into pubstomping glass cannons, or low damage bruisers. There's honestly not that much you can do about it, sadly.

But, anyway, let's cover ranged carries.

No, really? O.o;

Well, we did just cover it with the melee, but yeah, without some sort of benefit to attacking from range, you may as well just be a mage, which don't work particularly well for autoattacks.

Ashe really doesn't have any steroids, but she has other benefits which let her still pour out the damage, such as her highly spammable Volley.

Most everyone else has a steroid of some sort. Actually, the only other one who doesn't, isn't even a carry at all. Yes, it's true, Caitlyn isn't a carry. Many people call her such, but she's honestly far more of an AD burst caster. About the only thing that makes her autoattack at all is her excessive range, and she's honestly not very good at it. Even Ashe is more valuable for consistent damage output.

In every other case, you generally want some kind of boost to their firepower while at range.

In Cassiopeia's case... well... I'll save that for the next section, since it covers AP DPS.

Before an enemy even gets into range with you, you want to be able to back off as well.

Ashe has a strong slow, Graves has a dash and a blind, Vayne has her roll, and Tristana has both excessive range and a rocket jump, among a few examples.

In each case, it's not good enough to merely be useful at range, but they have to prevent a singular target from getting into range with them. This can be done from moving themselves out of harm's way, or simply making it a pain to get anywhere near them in the first place.

You actually have a ridiculous number of options to work with, but these are the most common ones.

Remember that thing about dashes? Oh... yeah... melee champions tend to have a way to get into range, even if you have a way to stay out of range... well that's bad. That's why you need....

Yeah, you're going to have someone land right on your face, and it's going to suuuuuck.

As such, you need some method of making them not be in your face any longer. Graves may simply dash away and use the blind to slow them from being in range in the first place, or Tristana may send them flying across the map from her. No matter how you deal with the situation, your carry needs some way to survive a single target focusing them down, because they WILL be focused down.

The thing is, though, you don't want them to be so awesome at evading capture that they're safe no matter what! Ideally, your ranged carry should, with a skilled player, be able to keep themselves relatively safe in a 1v1.

What they should not be able to do, is be able to keep themselves safe in a 3v1.

If they get boxed in from all sides, they either should be godlike skilled, or lucky as hell to escape. They should not have the tools to simply wipe out three people solo without effort, or to simply leave on a whim.

Note that, again, there's no itemization for this, though there is itemization to stay at range (frozen mallet again... versatile item, isn't it?).

As such, you are going to make sure that your champion either has a massive benefit for not having any way to escape (Kog'maw's silly range and damage output), or that they have some tools to survive. If you don't do either, then you're probably doing something terribly, terribly wrong.Part 4: I'mma snake! I'mma snake! Suck my... erm... did you know they had two? Creepy huh? No wonder Cass seems to enjoy it so much...So, you're not happy enough with being just an AD carry... you want to be a MAGE carry!?

'kay.

Seriously, there should be more in the game, and it's annoying that there aren't, so let's see what we can do to fix that!

Cassiopeia is the only true magical DPS carry in the game right now (as of this writing). Everyone else is burst, mostly.

Rumble's a bruiser with low damage but high survivability and near-melee range. Singed is the same thing. Other champions, such as Malzahar, may do their damage "over time", but they unload all their spells in the first 2-3 seconds anyway.

Cassiopeia is the only current magical DPS.

Except for Evelynn's Hate Spike. But we don't talk about her.

So really, what's so different about this mythical magical DPS carry? Why's it so special?

First off, it's a lot harder to build Magic Resist in LoL than it is to build Armour. It's really that simple for the most part. There's also the tiny thing that Riot assumes it's player base is about as bright as a moonless night in the woods. (Double meaning there, get it? ^.~ )

The point I was getting at, before I was so rudely interrupted (durn you self! Always talking over me! I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE! ), was that Riot assumes their player base is too dense to honestly understand the concept of a sustained DPS mage.

Considering how people react to Cassiopeia... well... they probably have a point, sadly.

The biggest thing you need to keep in mind about an AP or magical damage based carry, is that they have to have some way to pour their damage out consistently. Generally spells are "fire and forget" in LoL, but if you have some sustained form of damage, such as Hate Spikes, or Twin Fang with poison up, you can lay on the hurt pretty fast.

The thing is, more than anything else, really, that you simply need to be capable of maintaining your damage over time. That means no long cool downs, or if you have some, that you need at least one ability which either amplifies your basic auto-attacks into being useful, or you need to replace them with something else.

In Cassiopeia's version, she replaces autoattacks with remarkably fast spammed spells. This isn't the only way to replace an autoattack, it's just the most convenient.

Other ideas include stacking debuffs, such as a poison which continually grows more powerful with each cast, dealing increasing damage over time and needing to be continually applied, or stuff like dealing magical boosts to your physical attacks, like AoE explosions or such.

The point of the matter, comes down to a magical based DPS being nearly identical to a physical based one, except that they use magic to somehow replace their otherwise weak physical attacks.

If you're using a hybrid design where they use physical attacks but scale off AP... well... check the itemization in the game. There's some items for it, but they're not that great, and most of them have been nerfed pretty hard in the last few months, or were never really all that viable in the first place.

More likely, you'll go with a design similar to Cassiopeia, where you spam a continual stream of magic out, in which case standard AP build items work just fine.

Beyond that... check the rest of this article for how to treat them, whether they're a melee or a ranged champion, it's irrelevant, just check the section which matches.

Magical DPS is something which really needs to get more representation in the game, and it's a bit tricky to do, but well worth looking into!

Other than that, DPS champions are probably some of the easiest to make. You have a lot of luxury in terms of choices on how to build them, and they can mix and match a bit from every other role, to a degree. Graves is a bit of a burst caster as well, just as Ashe is a bit of a support. Don't worry about it too much!

So, since it's late at night, and I'm rather tired...

Class dismissed!

Ninj like a pro baby!

So, now that we've set the mood... NINJAS!

Seriously, class is in session, and we're covering assassins. Not all ninjas are assassins, but are all assassins ninjas?

No, sadly not, but it'd be neat if they were.

So, let's see what we need to cover today!

First, we need to define what makes an assassin very... assassinyish... it's a real word! ...that I just made up...

Second, we'll cover the key differences between a standard burst caster or a DPS carry and an assassin.

Third, we'll go over what an assassin needs in their kit to do their job.

Finally, we'll cover some ways to make your own assassin design a little more interesting!

Now then, on to business! Or pleasure... can you have pleasurable business? Hrm. Business lunches... mmm.

.......Yeah, so assassins. Right.
Part 1: Secret... aaaaaagent maaaaaaan!
There's a man who leads a life of danger.
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger.
With every move he makes, another chance he takes.
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow.
~Johnny RiversAlright, so assassins. They're... well, they're not all sneaky and stealthy. Some actually run right up into your face, like Poppy, so what exactly IS an assassin?

The main thing that makes an assassin an assassin in the first place, is they are specialized almost purely on killing champions, especially low health squishy ones.

The job of an assassin is to run in, completely slaughter an enemy target, and vanish into the night.

At least, that's the plan, in theory. In practice, things are a bit more difficult to pull off, especially in a team fight.

Overall, an assassin is a single target powerhouse. They can unload terrifying amounts of damage, on par with a burst caster, but more than that, they can also do so when you least expect it. Sometimes they use stealth, sometimes they just come barreling out of nowhere with an overly large grin on their face and a look in their eye that's probably not healthy to anyone who isn't a suicide bomber applicant.

The problems most assassins have, tend to be they're squishy, they lack for much in the way of CC beyond a set up to kill their intended target, they suck at farming, they suck against buildings, they suck in team fights, they suck mid-game onward, and generally are useless for virtually anything other than butchering a single target in rapid order.

There's exceptions to each of those rules, but the generalized point of the matter, is that an assassin does exactly what their name implies, and honestly, not a whole lot else, otherwise they'd be overpowered.

Early game is their forte, to hunt and track down isolated enemies, and tear them apart into tiny little pieces. From jumping a jungler in the middle of attempting to grab red buff, to a surprise appearance in another lane, an assassin just loooves to appear out of nowhere and make their target's health bar disappear like some twisted form of a magic trick.

As stated, however, early game is their true strength, when the laning phase is still going on. As soon as people start bunching up into a tight ball, they become progressively more and more useless. For low end ELO games, not that big a deal, as people tend to either run around aimlessly or leave the group to farm solo (free kills for LeBlanc! ), but in a higher ELO game, you'll soon find after about 20 minutes in, no one's ever alone. EVER. There's no easy kills, and going even remotely near anyone means you get stunlocked and torn apart by their entire team due to how dangerous a threat you pose to their support and carries.

Such is the life of an assassin; live hard, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. Your goal is to kill the enemy team so hard and trounce them into the ground that they give up, or are so underfed that your team is heavily advantaged mid game, and hopefully never makes it to late game.

The longer a game drags on, however, the weaker assassins become. Their power is all in their upfront early game burst and harassment, and after that, they tend to become remarkably lackluster.

So... now that we've covered what an assassin is, why is this really so different from other, similar damage dealers?
Part 2: MY FACE! MY BEAUTIFUL FACE! YOU MELTED IT RIGHT OFF!The two main other damage dealers in the game are DPS carries, which we've discussed, and burst casters.

So... what makes an assassin so much different from these two?

Why, I'm glad you asked, self! (This would be easier with a live class to ask questions >.>; )

As we've just covered with the DPS carries, they pour out consistent, continual damage output. Their primary role is to constantly just keep hitting over and over, anything and anyone that gets near them. You give them items, they give you wins, because nothing's left standing after the carry's through with them.

The assassins... well, they're bursty. Very, very bursty, at that. Their goal is to make that soft squishy carry that built glass cannon simply vanish before they can be a threat. If two carries kill each other, no benefit to either team; if an assassin kills a carry, then dies in the process? Their own team's carry is still up and cleaning house, with a much harder counter.

The biggest difference, really, is how they apply their damage, and to whom. In most cases, carries have some AoE effects, and some single target damage output, with some defensive tools to keep them alive.

An assassin simply goes nuts on an enemy's health bar and makes them disappear before they even get a chance to fight back. LeBlanc is a great example, in that she's an anti-caster specific assassin, whose specialty is in making a mage be ground to dust instantly before they can fight back. Ideally, she'll have them silenced before they can toss up their defensive abilities, and dead before it wears off, and then she'll escape.

Note that a carry has tools for avoiding people attacking them. An assassin is similar, but a bit different; they have tools for getting into combat and slaughtering someone, and their "escape mechanic" tools are specialized towards escaping the rest of their team after they a splode their mage or carry.

This is a subtle difference, in that they get into combat, and they get out fast. If you bring combat to them first, however, unless you die, they don't really have much in the way of tools to get out in one piece, short of killing you. If a bruiser starts to chew on an assassin's face, the assassin's probably dead, since it's unlikely they'll have the damage output to kill a bruiser before their own tiny health bar vanishes.

They're all about pure glass cannon; the best defense is an absurdly high offense. If the enemy's dead, they can't fight back sort of reasoning.

Which brings us to the difference between a burst caster and an assassin.

Annie can probably nail LeBlanc's damage output in the short term burst, so why's she so much different? Why isn't Annie a particularly good assassin?

The difference here lies primarily in what their secondary choices of abilities are.

Annie gets AoE abilities, and some stuff to keep her alive if she gets attacked directly, but she also has wide ranged AoE CC and other things she can bring to a group fight other than "just" her damage. Her CC is more to be used as a tool in a group fight, or defensively as well.

She has limited methods of escape, and limited methods of getting into range to ambush someone in the first place. If you see Annie, you can just run away. The problem is, if you see LeBlanc, you're probably already too late.

The assassins trade off their utility in a team fight for additional upfront capacity to get in and massacre a target, then get back out again before more friends show up. I'd go with Shaco as an example here, but I'm already working with LeBlanc, so we'll continue with that.

LeBlanc will dash in, prevent her target from dashing out, and kill them with her burst, but then has the capacity to leave the fight after her target is dead, before another enemy comes back to finish her off.

The difference is pretty much that LeBlanc is purely specialized in killing off a single target efficiently, whereas Annie is a mixture of single target burst, AoE burst, and utility. When Annie kills someone, she's missing her cool downs and probably doesn't have much hope of escape if Tryndamere suddenly flies out of the jungle grinning like an idiot. LeBlanc, Shaco, Poppy, Akali, you name it... most of them probably still have a pretty good opportunity to survive anyway. They killed their target, and now it's time to go.

Keep in mind that assassins tend to be the most specialized of all the "classes" in LoL. They don't tend to overlap much elsewhere. Sure, Ahri does some assassination duties, but her burst isn't really nearly the same with that of a true assassin, and she has too much additional utility to make up for it. Irelia's labeled as an assassin according to LoL, but really... yeah, that's pretty much anything but true. She's a bruiser, not an assassin, and has almost none of the traits an assassin needs.

Katarina, however? Yeah! She leaps in, butchers a target (or in her case, often many targets), and then leaves instantly afterwards with another Shunpo out. Poppy? She charges in, decimates one target, and then runs away screaming. From Talon to Nocturne, they kill their intended victim with ease, and fade to black.

Beware of false prophets! And false assassins ^.^
Part 3: I've got more tricks than a Q-car, or Bond's latest date ^.~So, what do we need to make an assassin anyway?

A way to get into range with an intended target rapidly, before they have the time to run away.
A way to prevent the target from locking them down so the target can't escape.
A way to kill the target in very quick order before help can arrive, or they can escape.
A way to escape quickly after the target is dead.

Let's go over each individually.

Without this, an assassin isn't much of an assassin at all. It doesn't matter how much damage you do, if you can't get in and close range on your enemy rapidly.

Stealth (Evelynn, Twitch, Shaco) is one way, others include long range dashes (Nocturne, Akali, Poppy), or teleports (Twisted Fate, Katarina, LeBlanc).

Regardless of how you do fill this, this isn't something that can be skipped over in an assassin's kit. You can't itemize for this, so if it's not present, you don't have an assassin.

An assassin that you simply walk away from because you don't feel like fighting them is not an assassin at all.

You've closed range, and started ripping them apart, and... THEY FLASH AWAY!

FFS AGAIN!?

A silence, a slow, a stun, a root, SOMETHING has to be on your assassin to prevent the target from simply up and walking away from you. You often only get one shot to make your kill as an assassin, so you don't get the option to just wander around at your leisure, waiting for the next opening. When your target exposes themselves to poor positioning, away from the safety net of their allies, you have to be ready to jump in and make full use of it.

That Tryndamere that just spun out of the team fight and was low on health? Yeah, you need to be able to nail him as he spins right into you. If he can simply slow you and walk away, you've failed in your job.

A strong single target CC is pretty much needed, so that you don't get stunned while they walk away. Silences are favoured due to the prevention of the enemy from flashing, and also from preventing them from stunning you. Stuns can also work nicely. A slow is only really effective if you have some method of preventing them from stunning you instantly, such as Shaco's clone, where they won't want to waste it on the wrong one and may hesitate, waiting a moment to figure out which is the right target, which can be all the time you need to kill them.

Assassins are opportunistic, and one of your biggest advantages is getting the drop on your enemies. If they can weasel their way out of it, you can't do your work. Considering most mages and carries have some sort of safety net to keep them alive through such an ambush, you need a way to break their capacity to do so.

Remember, you are the penalty for poor positioning. You are the penalty for poor game play. You aren't supposed to lose a 1v1 against a weak target, and you're not supposed to chase them all across the map. You're supposed to simply make it so they don't get to walk two more steps in the first place.

Firepower. Lots of it. All the burst you can ever dream of. If your assassin doesn't have high end base damage and lots of it upfront, able to be chained together rapidly in short order, then you're doing it wrong.

You can't wait for itemization; once you've got an archangel's, it's already too late, and your role in the game is already over. Your goal is to be able to crush people by level 4, bare minimum, up to about level 10. This is your strongest part in the game, when you're at your prime. You don't have much for items, so you'd better be able to unleash holy hell right out the gate.

You'll notice that many assassins have very high scaling so that even a little bit of AP or AD will make them powerhouses at the start of the game. A mere 100 AP is all they need to go from "scary" to "What... what happened? Did I die? My screen's grey... I don't know what happened...". And then you hit the recap of your death, and all you see is a single image of Shaco's jack in the box popped up and laughing maniacally at you.

Assassins don't really have "escape mechanics" in the traditional sense. They're not designed to run away when getting shot at... they're designed, instead, to run away before anyone else is around to shoot at them.

This usually presents itself in speed boosts, returns to previous locations with short ranged teleports, or a form of invisibility. In an assassin's eyes, they want to be in, kill their target, and leave again within 5-10 seconds. They shouldn't be able to be boxed in and cornered, they want to get out in one piece before the reinforcements show up looking for vengeance for that Sona you just butchered while she was placing her wards.

In short... if the enemy's reinforcements show up before you're long gone, it's already too late for an assassin, usually, as their escape mechanics are specialized to avoid getting into that situation in the first place.

Akali gets a refresh on her ultimate, letting her dash to a nearby minion and run away ASAP. Poppy gets a speed boost, just as Nocturne does. Katarina's Shunpo will refresh instantly, letting her hop to an allied or enemy minion or ward, while LeBlanc will just return to her previous position before she even attacked in the first place, or leave her clone in the back, running a different direction.

No matter what you do, you need a way back out again, and your assassin design will have one, or they'll just be a suicide bomber on a one way trip, which isn't honestly all that useful to your team.

You'll notice one thing about these... they're all "Must haves" on your kit. This isn't a "gap or hole" in the sense of most of the other builds. Everything else I've given you for "classes" in LoL have options. You can sacrifice a bit of damage for a bit of staying power. You can pick one thing or another. In the assassin branch, you don't get that option, because their power is all in the first 10 levels of the game.

You can't itemize for anything they need, so they need ALL of these attributes to be effective in their role.

Their "gaps and holes" are elsewhere in their design, such as poor farming capacity, poor survivability and so on. Virtually every assassin ends up with the same strengths, and the same weaknesses, with just varying methods of how they apply them being the difference.

In a way, this makes it easy to make an assassin. In a way, it makes it harder to make one that's truly unique and interesting, and not just yet another rehash of the exact same idea.

I think we can pretty much agree that Nocturne and Poppy are almost nothing alike, despite that they use almost the same tool set to do their job. They enter combat with a dash, they prevent others from stunning them with a shield, they lock their target with a CC, and then they unload burst all over their target's face, and run away with a speed boost.

At first glance, they sound identical, but it's the nuances in how they actually go about performing each task that matters.

Go ahead, check all the assassins. They pretty much all operate the same way, so... how do we make one that's unique and interesting then?

Here's where it gets tricky, and fun!Part 4: DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP! ~AC/DCSo, you still want an assassin, eh?

Alright. I'll play your game, you rogue.

See... it's funny because it's both from Sean Connery's line on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy, and you're making an assassin so you're making a rogue, and could also be considered a rogue because you're going against the suggestion it's a bad idea...

Oh forget it >.<

Anyway, it's not "really" a bad idea to make an assassin, but they have limited value past early game, and they pretty much all end up more or less playing the same, with minor variations on a theme.

As I just mentioned a moment ago, Poppy and Nocturne sound, at first glance, almost identical to each other.

It's only due to the specific mechanics they employ, and how they actually deploy them onto the field, that they're really all that different.

Nocturne can gank you from halfway across the map, making it near impossible for him to not be in ideal positioning to gank a low health target, in much the way that Twisted Fate or Pantheon can.

It doesn't really matter if you're playing Evelynn and using stealth to get into range, or Katarina shunpo'ing to a ward in the river from a nearby cliff, they show up in your face out of nowhere, tear you apart, and run off giggling to themselves like little schoolgirls.

You should hear Pantheon do it; Leona's never going to let him live that one down, which is why half the time he gets back to the locker room in the Institute of War and his spare armour's been done up in pastels again.

Tee-hee-hee indeed, Pantheon, tee-hee-hee, indeed.

Anyway, what makes your assassin so special, anyway? What makes them so unique and awesome that no other assassin has done before!?

Honestly, probably nothing.

That's not an insult, it's just more of a statement that assassins tend to pretty much all be more or less the same. You can really only do so much with them, while still making them able to do their job, without them being overpowered.

Remove any of their key characteristics, they're useless as an assassin. Give them any utility or other effects other than their assassin role, and they're flat out OP.

There's no real middle ground to work with, honestly, so the only thing you have to work with is their specific methods of employing their key traits.

Once again, these are:

A way to get into range with an intended target rapidly, before they have the time to run away.
A way to prevent the target from locking them down so the target can't escape.
A way to kill the target in very quick order before help can arrive, or they can escape.
A way to escape quickly after the target is dead.

Without these, your assassin just isn't an assassin. It's like a sammich without miracle whip. Unless it has peanut butter. Peanut butter and mayo would just be... ew...

Anyway, pick a method of getting into range that none of the current assassins can do. Consider say... the ability to walk through terrain as if it wasn't there! ZOOM you walk right through a pack of trees and into their lane, and start smacking them around!

No one's done it before, and it lets you close a gap they didn't even realize was there, letting you appear out of nowhere!

So you just ran out of the woods and... awe they tossed a stun and ran away ;_;

No! NO RUNNING!

You pop your ultimate and your shield goes up; when the stun impacts, it reflects their stun back in their face, locking them nicely in place and letting you run up to smack them around! WOO!

Better kill them quick, I think their jungler's pissed!

You pop a steroid that makes your melee attacks do massive damage, diminishing on every hit, and start wailing on them, tossing a slow out when their stun wears off and they try to escape. A mere 3 hits later and you went from +120 per melee hit down to 80, to 40, and 0 again, but it's alright, you unloaded 240 bonus damage in their face along with your other spells and they're dead!

****, their jungler's going to be here any second! You just saw them run past a ward!

Fortunately, your ability to walk through trees refreshed when they died, and you simply slink back into the forest, never to be heard from again... until next time... when you have a date with... THE BUTLER IN THE KITCHEN WITH AN AXE!

Seriously though, see how easy that was?

In every case, an ability was used that isn't currently in the game, allowing you to get in, do your job, and get out again.

The end results and overall concept, however, were pretty much identical to any other assassin. This can't really be helped, honestly, but that's how it goes.

All you honestly need to make an assassin, is some cool ways to do the tasks set out before you. Come up with something that does what already exists in a new and exciting way, and you've got it made.

In this way, assassins are probably the easiest of all the "classes" to make, since they're honestly remarkably restrictive in how they work, leaving very little room to screw things up, so long as you know the rules to follow.

Anyway, I hope this has helped your brand new shiny assassin concept!

I mean, dark, brooding, dreary wrist slitting assassin. Because goths and emos are far better brooding killers.

Class dismissed!

............PASTEL ARMOUR! BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....!

Waaaait a second... all the other posts on this page are +2, but this one's +1?

WHO HATES MAGES!? SHOW YOURSELVES HEATHENOUS CURS!

...?

No one?

Huh. Weird.

Well, anyway, class is in session, then!

Today we're going to learn about the wonderful world of mold! Oh wait, that's after class... yeah I'm going to have to get a few of you to clean my kitchen for me for extra credit...

Alright, what we're really learning about is mages. Yay mages! BURST mages! WOO! Since pretty much all the mages that aren't DPS, Assassins or Support tend to be burst. There's not really a lot of options to go around, honestly.

So lessee... first off we'll do the standard dealie of defining what a burst mage is.

Next off, we'll cover the wonderful world of... wait I did that joke already. Rawr, more tired than I thought. Well anyway, we'll be discussing what a burst mage needs to do their job.

Third on the list today, is to touch on their support side aspects, since it's a bit complex compared to other classes due to their specific requirements.

Finally, we'll go over the damage aspect. I know, saving the best for last. Mostly I'm just taunting you, but that's because I'm evil like that. EVIL! Veigar's got nothing on me. Mwaheheee... see? Totally awesome evil laugh.

So, let's get started!Part 1: IMMA FIRIN MAH LAYZUR BEEM! BLAAAARGH!!!!!1!11!elevenSo, you want to make a mage huh? Think you're just the hot **** don't you, soldier? Well, we won't be having any of that around here, no SIR! Or ma'am. Or other. I dunno. Maybe you could if you really wanted to.

I guess we'll assume you want to or you wouldn't be here. Great, well then why do I keep calling them "burst mages" anyway? Why not just "AP Carry" like everyone else?

Well... for starters, the only AP carry in the game is Cassiopeia as of the time of this writing, as we covered a little bit ago. Other than that, the issue is really just that a carry requires sustained damage output, and a burst mage really doesn't live up to that role all that well, honestly.

To be honest, they're sort of a weird amalgamation in between a support and an assassin for the most part, and I know that sounds strange, but it kinda works. They have their own key points as well, though.

Consider someone like say... Veigar, or even Malzahar. Even though Veigar does his damage almost all upfront, and Malz does his over time, they both unload hard on their target within about 2-3 seconds of excessive killing power. They pour on the hurt nearly instantly, and their target drops like a feather in a vacuum. Ever seen that? It's pretty awesome to see a feather fall like a rock XD

...I suppose I could've just used that simile instead, but whatever.

Anyway, a burst mage has a few things going for them that they tend to do pretty much universally. Some variation on a theme exists, with changes here and there, but the end goal is that most everyone who wasn't covered by the last few chapters ends up here. So, what is the burst mage's capabilities?

Well, they have excessive short term firepower, typically of the AoE variety. They also tend to have some strong support abilities such as hard CC, also often of the AoE variety. Their scaling is high, which helps to make up for their low movement speed and physical attacks, or sustained damage output.

Honestly, burst mages are pretty basic in concept, so how's about we move onto part two, and learn a bit more about all that stuff I just listed off a second ago?

Part 2: Goodness, gracious, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE! ~Jerry Lee LewisExcessive short term FIREPOWER: Well, I did say "burst" didn't I? Yeah, mages tend to unload hard. There's a few strange exceptions like Ahri or the update on Xerath, for instance, but generally speaking, burst mages tend to drop their entire load in about 2-3 seconds, with 5-6 seconds being the outside end of things. Once they're done unleashing hell on their enemies, however, they're just not that scary anymore, so it's generally not that good an idea to kill the burst mage first, unless you can nail them with a CC and kill them before it wears off so they can't do their thing. Killing Malz after he's already dropped his combo is just kind of a waste, and it's not going to stop the target from dying, nor really make him any less of a threat, as now that he's on cooldown, he isn't one.

AoE firepower: The vast, vast majority of the burst mages have at least one really strong AoE spell. The idea is that they are able to severely punish an enemy team which is out of position. Everyone bunched up together in a bush next to a ward without realizing it? Say heellloooooo to Tibbers stun! This is also why you don't go 5x squishies in a game, such as massed AD carries. Guess what happens when 5 melee champions are all in melee? You counterpick with two burst mages, and fry the whole lot of them while the rest of your team goes and kills baron or does something useful.

Support spells: The burst mages almost invariably also happen to hold another trick up their sleeve: CC of some sort, usually in the AoE variety. The idea is that mages tend to be stronger early game, and fall off a bit later game once you can eat their whole combo and survive. Get a veil, and they're not nearly as terrifying as they once were. As such, if they ever get to the point where their damage drops off to essentially a mild nuisance, they're still pretty potent for helping out a team. It only takes one Karthus or Anivia wall to turn a team fight from "yay!" to "Oh hellbunnies" in about half a second.

Failsauce auto-attacks: Auto-attacks are generally the realm of sustained damage output. Every once in awhile you'll get a mage who can do some physical damage, but it's generally supplementary to their spells, rather than a driving force. Oddly enough, mages tend to have abnormally high AD in many cases early on in the game, often starting with more basic AD than carries. The reasoning is more so that they need to last hit, and it's awfully hard to do that with a remarkably slow attack animation and a slow moving ranged attack. Later on in the game, this tends to fall off pretty hard against anything but towers. The tower dealie is mostly because you do either 100% of your AD in damage, or 40% of your AP in damage to towers, whichever is higher. This means 200 AP is identical to 80 AD in terms of tower damage. When you start rocking like 800 AP in an hour long game where everyone's swinging around their finished builds? Yeah... that tower's going to feel it when you poke it to speed things up.

High Scaling: Generally mages are interested in being at least sort of useful during the game. Back in the old days of DotA, all you had was aghnim's and a refresher orb to help you out for spells. In LoL, you have that lovely ability power ratio to prop your spells up, instead of them just screeching to a halt at level 7. This allows the mage to continue to be relevant later on in the game. Since they need to keep up with the defenses of others far more than supports or assassins do (supports rarely need to kill, and assassins aim typically for glass cannons who barely have any defenses in the first place), their AP scaling tends to be pretty high to let them perform their "melt yo face" maneuver properly.

SLOW: Ever notice that about mages? They're sloooooooooooooow. Most of them are only about 300-305. The thing is, they tend to have hard CC, and remarkable firepower. It's possible you might die before you even got into range with them if they simply chose to run away. As such, they're not particularly fast. Their items rarely have any move speed, their kits virtually never have move speed, and their base movement is more of a joke than anything. This also happens to leave them perfect targets for an assassin who can burst and CC just as hard as they can, but is far more mobile. Keep your mages guarded!

There's a few other traits they tend to have, but honestly, that's generally the gist of it.

You'll probably be thinking at this point "But Katsuni, why aren't you covering hybrids!?". The main reason you'd be thinking that is you were reading it out loud again. Please stop talking in class, tsk, tsk. Other than that, however, the issue is mostly that I'm mostly ignoring hybrids as there's a ton of them, and there's really not much else to cover on them, other than blending the strengths and weaknesses of two separate roles together.

Sure, Ryze is basically a bruiser / burst mage. He sacrifices some of his burst and AoE for a bit more sustained damage output and more survivability to let him keep that sustained damage going. It's also part of why he's so annoying to fight; strong CC, good damage, good survivability.

Overall though, we're just going to finish up on the burst mages and move onto abilities instead, afterward. So, let's talk about the support side of a mage then, shall we?
Part 3: I swear, if you don't stop calling me OP Janna, you're going to find yourself on the receiving end of some foxglove to the face! ~Ahri (Alright, maybe not)So why is it that a burst caster is so tricky to set up their support side of things? Well, a few reasons really.

First off, they only get the one form of CC or other support ability usually, rather than a devoted kit. Second, they have remarkable damage output, so you have to be careful to keep them from becoming OP by being able to not just lock someone down like a support, but also killing them in the process without backup. More than that, however, is that they typically don't get much in the way of escape mechanics, since their job is mostly to run in, blow their load, and die afterward since they're pretty much useless with everything on cool down anyway.

This means that a burst caster has to use their one support spell both offensively and defensively, as it's their only hope of escape, short of killing their enemy, and it's their only hope of nabbing a kill as well, much of the time. Take a look at Annie for an example.

She has a "defensive" steroid, but it's honestly not that powerful, and generally just gets overlooked, with players instead having to typically rely on her stun instead.

Veigar, conversely, doesn't even have one besides his stun in the first place, which is the entirety of his methods of running away. He drops his stun on the ground and waddles away, hoping really, really hard that he's able to waddle fast enough to escape whatever it is that's stuck in his stun right behind him, and make for the cover of his allies or a tower.

Most others end up being more or less the same way, though there are exceptions, such as Ahri but she's admittedly more of a hybridized assassin/burst mage with the strange concept of her "burst" being spread out over nearly 4-6 seconds most of the time.

For the most part, you'll notice that, from Viktor to Brand, they just really don't have that much in the way of escape mechanisms short of dropping their only real support ability on the target and hoping that's good enough.

As such, giving them two support abilities similar to Fiddlesticks where he both gets to do a silence and a fear can really be difficult to balance. For the most part, you're probably better off sticking to one, and aiming for damage mostly elsewhere.

The downside of this, is that you really need that one "supportyish" ability to REALLY be awesome as support abilities go! Oddly enough, this often means that burst mages wind up with more awesome support powers than the supports themselves, but on the other hand, it's mostly to make up for the fact that they really just don't do enough stacking effects to matter as much.

Janna can keep nailing you with CC after CC seemingly forever, whereas Xerath drops his stun and... yeah, yeah he's pretty much done after that.

Toss in that it needs to be used both offensively and defensively, and you have a really tricky problem to work with there!

In most cases in the game, so far, this is solved by simply giving them a single hard-CC ability, such as a stun, which is remarkably common.

The problem is, there's only so many ways to apply "stuns target" without starting to feel like just a rehash of old ideas, and normally a silence just isn't good enough on these champions.

So... what do?

This is where you pull out your brainbox and start thinking hardcore on the matter. Hard CC is the "easiest" route, but it's certainly not the only one to choose.

In Ziggs' case, for example, he has no hard CC at all, and instead simply has a slow effect and a knockback which affects both himself and enemies. This has the interesting effect of making him surprisingly mobile for a burst caster, but at the cost that he needs to give up one of his high powered burst attacks to propel himself away from an enemy that isn't already in melee.

Matching your abilities up so that they're fun and interesting, while still giving your burst mage the capacity to both kill and escape to a degree, is a pretty rough job if you rule out hard CC.

On the other hand, it also makes for some pretty neat and unique champion designs as well! Sure you can just go the generic easy way, but to be perfectly blunt, "Damage, damage, stun, damage" for your spell kit is kinda bland. Veigar gets away with it because no one takes the little runt seriously anyway ^.~

Actually, it's more so because he was one of the original "basic" champions and they wanted an easy to use one on the list to go with Annie at release. Since the "my first burst champion" role has already been covered by Annie and Veigar both serving more or less a similar role, with different nuances for specific situations and counterpicks, there's really not much need for yet another one, so try aiming for something a bit more interesting.

If at all possible, actually try to strive to avoid using hard CC at all on your burst mage, and use other, more interesting methods around it!

If, however, you need a hard CC, making it a little more unique or less reliable can be a good way to go (as Ahri has shown us), but you're also going to have to make sure they have other reliable choices to go with such (Ahri can still use her ultimate to escape, even if her seduction misses).

Damage output, however, really should be a fairly consistently reliable choice for a burst mage. The unreliable ones we've gotten lately don't see much play, primarily due to the problem that they honestly just aren't that good if they're only good for doing one thing and that one thing has only a 50/50 chance of working against an opponent of equal skill.

As such, if you're going to make a burst mage whose burst capacity is unreliable, then their CC needs to be reliable to compensate, and vice versa. One or the other, not both.

Otherwise you get the post-patch Xerath who can't land his ultimate to save his life, and his CC isn't in a much better position, leaving him unable to accurately perform either role at any given time.

There's something to be said for high skill cap champions, and that is primarily that "just because it's hard to play them well, it doesn't mean it should be easy to negate them on the enemy's end of things either". There's a big difference between something being difficult, and complex.

Complexity without any benefit to doing so (it doesn't make the champion more fun) is just frustrating to players.

Difficulty without complexity (such as a really slow moving skillshot) doesn't mean you really put in a high skill cap, it just means you made something that should be intuitive annoying to perform instead. Fighting your interface more than the enemy team isn't "hard mode", it's stupidity, which is why FFXI was such a bad joke. Not a bad game, but DEAR GAWD what were they thinking with the GUI?

Anyway, the point I'm getting at, is that you can't just make their skills unreliable and call them high skill cap, especially if it's not realistically within the player's power to control that unreliability. Rolling a randomly generated number where they may be useful, or may not be, isn't skill, it's luck. Firing a super slow moving skill shot that's easily dodged doesn't make it "hard to play" in the "skilled" category, since even if you properly line up the shot and did everything right on your end, the enemy can simply bypass it with ease by stepping to the side.

There's nothing fun about having control taken out of your hands and left to fate, random chance, or the enemy team. It should be your skill against theirs, not just their skill.

Regardless, I think we've dallied here long enough, so let's get to what you've all been waiting for anyway. THE BURST.

Part 4: "There comes a day in every girl's life, when she has to learn that firing orbital death rays at civilian populations is considered to be un-neighbourly. Fortunately, I haven't gotten around to learning this yet and it came with a really neat remote control with shiny BUTTONS!" ~ Kiana Schrödenger (Personal character design =3 )So, you want to kill stuff, do you? You want to blow **** the **** up? You want to rain holy hell from the sky upon your enemies with the might of the ancients at your back?

Okay.

Aaaah ah ah! There's a catch!

Yeah, you can't do it in a way that's been done before.

Well, there goes the "4 damage abilities" champion designs I continually see around the forum... seriously, ditch the "every single ability deals damage" idea unless you really, really have something unique and interesting to share.

Just having four abilities which all essentially read "deals damage to target enemy" is not a skill set for a burst mage!

Ziggs gets away with it because he actually has some cool ideas and some methods to get around the problem of the generic hard CC being removed. Ahri gets away with it because her abilities also do awesome things and let her maneuver well.

When I say "four abilities that do damage", what I mean is the seemingly endless slew of champion designs on here where all their abilities DO is damage. They don't have any defensive nor escape mechanics, no maneuverability or other neat ideas, all they get is "I kill stuff" for four spells in a row.

NO.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

You want to blow stuff up, you need to do it the right way. Just throwing on every single ability does damage to target is not the way to go about doing it.

No, you're going to go back and read the previous section, and you're going to come back here AFTER you have an awesome idea for how to make your champion do something win for their team that isn't even damage related.

Don't worry, I can wait.

I didn't get more than 3 hours sleep last night, so trust me, I have aaaaaall the time in the world to take a nap right about now.

Alright, I'll assume that you went and did that (don't let me catch you cheating, because I'm one of those teachers who still believes that a smack to the back of the knuckles is a good idea sometimes so GRRR >=O ), so yay, now we can get back to the damage part!

So... how do we go about making stuff blow up real good anyhow?

Lots of ways! There's a bunch of choices, so I'll cover a few of the big ones here.

Direct Damage: This is the "Click on enemy, they die" style spell, where there's no skillshots or anything fancy involved. This kind of spell is pretty good for when you want to reliably be able to do at least SOME damage. Unless you're going for an Ezreal style build (which you shouldn't be, since he already exists), you will probably want to avoid pure skillshots. Note that Direct Damage is typically shorter ranged, and a bit weaker than an equivalent skill shot, to make up for the fact that it's reliable in the sense it's going to hit. Unless you misclick.

Skillshots: These are one of the bread and butter spells in the game, along with direct damage spells. They tend to get extra range and effectiveness, but have a travel time, and tend to hit the first thing they run into, meaning you can miss with them. The idea is that you're trading off reliability for more potent effects. Another interesting advantage of skillshots, is that they can be fired blindly over a hill or into brush. Nidalee in particular has a penchant for showing what a well placed skill shot on a blind fire can do in a good player's hands.

Delayed Effect: Things like Swain's Nevermove are delayed effect, in that they don't take effect immediately upon casting, and instead have a bit of a wait time before they do their thing. This is very similar to the skillshot category in that it's possible to dodge them, generally, so long as the delay is long enough. Some other delayed style effects are spells which can be triggered mid-air, such as Anivia's Q, or can be triggered after they reach a certain destination, like Gragas's barrels which can just sit there, effectively walling off a section of the lane so that you don't want to stand there.

Vector targeting: I luuuurve these! You know Rumble's ultimate? Yeah. That's vector targeting, and it is WIN. I'm saddened that they don't make more use out of this, so you should probably consider it since it's underused, and holds a lot of potential! The idea is that you target where the spell originates from, and the direction it travels. It's similar to a skillshot, but it doesn't necessarily come from you directly, leading to some really interesting interactions. One champion I had awhile back had a dash where she teleported to the first location, then dashed and damaged anything in a straight line across the vector, making for some rather interesting forms of mobility and damage. I wouldn't suggest carbon copying it, but it's an example of the neat stuff you can do with this.

Single Target: Often great for killing one person, and usually a bit stronger because of such. Not so useful for clearing out minions waves, nor for team fights, though.

AoE: This is the basic form of multi-target abilities. There's a thousand variations, so I'm not going through them all, but the most common is a simple circular area of effect where stuff inside of it gets hurt. Works well with delayed effects or skillshots.

Combos: These exist in many champion's ability lists, not just burst mages, but it's most commonly found on burst mages, where they have abilities that play off of each other. Brand, for example, requires hitting with two spells in a row to pull off a stun. This can greatly increase the unreliability of a spell combo though, which can equally lead to overpowering strength when it hits, and overly painful penalties for missing, such as losing 3/4 of the damage for missing only 1/2 of the spells in a sequence.

Spell modifiers: This isn't quite a combo, so much as it is a preparation. One of the champions I was working on (and hasn't quite been released yet) has a spell which drops an item on the ground. If she targets that item instead of an enemy, it adjusts how her spells work, such as turning a single target spell into an AoE centered on the location. There's lots of other ways, such as Katarina's Killer Instincts spell, which affects how her next spell cast will work, and they can be pretty fun to work with, as they give your champion a few options in how to make their spells do their stuff. Consider looking into this as it's a great way to make an otherwise dull champion get some really interesting stuff going for them.

Instant Effect: BAM, you're fireballed in the face. You feel the damage instantly. It's that simply.

Damage over time (DoT): Oh noes, you have the plague! Take 50 damage a second for 5 seconds! DoT spells take awhile to do their thing, which gives enemies time to heal them, shield them, or use other effects to negate the damage such as health regeneration or cleansing debuffs off. As such, the damage output on these are a bit higher, generally, to make up for their semi-unreliability.

Stacking effects: It's not good enough that I just set you on fire. No, I need to set you on fire... AGAIN! AND AGAIN! MWAHEHE! Yep, when you don't just deal damage, but continue to make it worse the more you do it, you've got stacks, and the fact that it takes awhile to apply these can be a big deal. You probably actually won't have one of these on a burst mage, as it's not really a bursty effect, so please stop putting them on your mages. This is more of something better suited to a bruiser (Heeeey that sounds like Darius...), or someone with an incredibly fast way to apply it (Wait, do I hear Twitch's name in there somewhere? ), but in that case, you may as well not be bursting stacks, why not just toss up a single DoT instead? These are neat effects, but they just don't work out well on burst mages generally, unless you build the whole design around such from the ground up.

Centered on Self: These are typically AoE abilities that make standing next to you a rather unpleasant experience. One of my champion concepts from awhile back, had a high damage small AoE centered on herself, and she would dash into the enemies, explode, then dash out again. Another example would be Blitzcrank's ultimate when activated, or Skarner's spam. Generally it makes melee a bad idea for people, and makes it preferable to shoot you at range. As the natural predator of the burst mage is the bruiser, who can survive the initial round of burst, this is kind of counter intuitive, unless you're building a champion specifically designed to fight bruisers, in which case this may be a good choice for your burst mage!

There's a thousand more ways to do damage, admittedly, to the point that this has barely even scratched the surface. Hopefully, however, it's given you a little insight into when you would likely want to use a particular spell for your particular champion.

Remember, you have a goal in mind. If you don't, you should at this point in the game so get one! Pick something you want your champion to accomplish. If you want them to be an anti-bruiser, then sure, stacking damage effects on them could work well, as could combo spells as they're probably going to be walking right into you in a straight line.

If you're looking to fry lots of squishy targets that are bunched up together, however, well... let's just say that the DoT spells may not be the wisest decision.

Figure out what you want to do, and then plan around your options on how to accomplish it.

Note that it's rare to have only a singular goal for a champion's kit, and you probably should consider having a few choices to work with. Annie's got her Q for farming minions early game, just as she has her W for wiping out a whole minion wave in one go, midgame and up. You generally want a bit of a mix and match to set you up for various situations.

Even Ezreal, where he has three separate skill shots, uses each of them at different times. His Q and W just don't tend to be effective at the same points in time. Q hits targets that are far away and unprotected. W hits targets that are closer in range, but hiding behind minions. Both have their value, and if you have a clear shot, you're probably going to unload everything anyway, but you still want to keep in mind that each ability, on it's own, when not just thrown in with a big round of burst, should have a unique purpose on that champion's kit, that sets it apart from the other abilities.

It's through maintaining the rule of your abilities being unique to each other, that you keep your ideas fresh and new, without feeling repetitive in the same design.

If every single ability you have is "target enemy to deal damage" with no other effects, well... what purpose do they have, honestly? One could be melee and hurt more, another could have longer range and hurt less, but honestly it's still rather limited to work with.

Try to emphasize each one being unique, with as little overlap as possible, but still ensure they can be used in tandem to greater effect. This means chaining combos can really spice things up in a positive way!

Anyway, end point is... blowing stuff up is easy. Making it actually FUN to blow stuff up usually requires blowing them up in new and exciting ways. Not just by having neat abilities in and of themselves, but by also having those abilities be varied and interesting compared to each other, as well!

For now, I'm tired as hell. For me, I'm going to bed. For you, class is dismissed!

Class is in session, and today we shall be discussing ABILITIES.

Oooooh. Scary though, huh? We're over halfway through the guide and we're only just now touching on them. Creeeeepy.

Anyway, first off, we're going to cover the "standard" set up for abilities in the game.

Second, we'll go over things like how to work with ability sets which break the standard 1passive/3actives/1ulti rule.

Third, we'll discuss the idea of champions with more than the standard 4 active abilities.

Finally, we'll eat cake. Oh, and talk about when and where you should opt for unique ability sets. That's important too, I suppose.

Soooo yeah! Let's get started, then, shall we?Part 1: Pushing my buttons.So, by now, you probably realize that the "normal" concept for LoL is 1 passive ability, 3 activated regular abilities, and 1 ultimate. The passive either doesn't level, or levels automatically at 1/6/11/16 or somewhere along those lines. The 3 regular abilities tend to level 5 times total, with a 2 level break so that you can level at a maximum pace of 1/3/5/7/9. The ultimate ability tends to have 3 ranks, which levels at 6/11/16. Occasionally there are exceptions, but it's pretty rare, and 90%+ of the champions in the game follow this formula.

Now, theoretically, I could end the lesson here, but you wouldn't learn much from that, now would you?

Let's instead take a look over how these abilities work, and why it's such an interesting set up.

Passives: These ensure that the champion always has something to work with, no matter what, and can be a pretty neat way to define a champion's design. Some are very powerful, others are more of a joke. Overall, the strength of your passive tends to rely pretty heavily on the rest of your champion's kit. If their overall design is strong, it's typically a bad idea to feed them free power in their passive to go with it.

Note that passives, despite their name, do not have to be passive. Sure, there are some really lame, boring ones (luls +X stat aura) that don't do anything interesting... yeah, they might be technically useful, such as Soraka's or Fiddlestick's passives, but they're pretty lame. The really good passives, however, are ones with which you directly interact, and change up how your champion plays entirely.

I'll be covering fun passives far more in the next section, but sufficed to say, Ziggs and Sona have awesome passives that make them way more fun to play as, and more effective as well!

Regular abilities: These are the bread and butter that define your champion. Without these, it's probably pretty boring, honestly. These are the spells you get to USE on a regular basis, with low cool down times, which makes them effective throughout the game. Many people focus too hard on the ultimate, and leave their regular abilities as boring or underpowered, and honestly, that's almost always a mistake.

The fact of the matter is, your ultimate won't always be up, especially if it's a standard one with a long cooldown. Ensure your normal abilities are awesome to use, and you'll soon discover that it's well worth it when they make your champion awesome to play as on a regular basis.

If you leave it up to just your ultimate, it's going to be bland, since if it's down, you have a boring champion design without it. Always ensure that your champion is still fun to play as, and effective, without their ultimate around to back them up!

Ultimates: These can really help round out a champion, enhance their strong points to epic levels, or grant them some really interesting effects that make them unique. Strive to ensure that you have an ultimate that really "feels" ultimate, not just in the power it has, but also in how interesting it feels to use.

Zilean's ultimate flat out feels... well... ultimate. It does an interesting effect which can severely alter how a fight goes when it's up. It's fun to use, adds new play options to the game on both teams, and can really let you know he's around!

In contrast, Graves' ultimate is... a joke. A bad one, at that. His Q is generally more effective and, honestly, more interesting to use. His "ultimate" is just a second, generic nuke, that does more damage for his burst. It doesn't define his character, add to his level of interest, or really do anything that makes him more FUN.

Veigar suffers from much the same problem. A third nuke, on top of his other two nukes, where the only benefit it gets is... it does more damage. It "defines" him as a mage that's an anti-mage due to harming people with high AP, but honestly, even this is a bad design as it means it's a bad idea to build AP on a champion that needs high AP, directly screwing with someone else's build in a ridiculous fashion. "Build to counter your enemy" should apply by adjusting your itemization to be more effective. Being 100% forced to change your entire build and scrapping the primary parts of it just because of one person on their team, no matter how bad they are, so you don't get one shot, isn't good ultimate design. In fact, it's poor game design in general, and has been mentioned repeatedly by Riot staff as being a big disappointment. I can't possibly imagine why.

Then... you get other champions like Teemo. Without his mushrooms, he's still Teemo, but they add a new dimension to how he plays. Now he's got map presence everywhere, and it's near impossible to gank him any longer. It grants him an interesting effect which alters his potential game play, and gives him the potential to set up some neat chained effects, with it almost becoming a game of "hide the shrooms" in places where people think they'll be safe to walk (like right next to a bush), or places where someone with an Oracles may walk right into them anyway (immediately around a corner so you can't see it until you've already hit it). Things like this can bring new life to a champion, even if it doesn't really specifically benefit their other spells, because it gives them new tools to work with.

Remember, when you hit level 6, and get your ultimate (unless your champion doesn't have one, but we'll get to that in a bit), you should immediately be going "YAY!" and picking it up first thing! Maokai and Twitch are in the "Uh... I guess... I'll get it eventually..." category in that their ultimates do have a distinctive use, but they honestly just aren't that useful when you first get them, and you're literally better off with just taking another point in a normal ability because of such. do everything in your power to avoid situations like this.
Part 2: I've been breaking trends since before it was trendy to do so!So, sometimes you get a champion which is... "special". They get a spell line up that just isn't quite "normal". Examples of this range from Udyr, with 4 normal abilities and literally no ultimate at all, to Karma, who has an "ultimate", but she gets it at level 1 for free, and her regular abilities all have 6 levels instead of 5.

These are a little harder to balance, since they don't level in the same way as normal champions. Their power level doesn't get that real spike at 6, or if it does, it does so in a weird way. This can be good, or it can be bad. It depends, honestly, on how much forethought you put into what you're doing.

Giving a support champion no real ultimate (Karma) was a bad idea, as she can't stand up to other supports at all because of this crippling disadvantage. Interestingly enough, she plays wonderfully well as an AP bruiser who just uses her support abilities as a secondary thing on the side.

The point here, is that you shouldn't be screwing with the number of abilities or the order in which you get them, just because you feel like it. The standard 3 regular abilities and 1 ultimate means that the player has to make some tough choices. They can only level 1 regular ability early on, with one other as a secondary to go with it, and they need to set aside room for their ultimate as well. This often leads to a 4/2/0/1 build by level 7, or in some cases, 4/1/1/1. There's exceptions to this, but it does mean you have to make a choice on when to get each ability and which order.

By altering how many abilities you get, you severely screw with this formula, and often pretty much make it so that you're killing off the choices to be made, or just letting your champion focus on a few things. Most Karma players just go q/w/q/w/ back and forth until level 12, as her E, though quite useful, isn't nearly as useful in lane, and can't make use of her mantra charges very well in most situations. It means, unfortunately, that she doesn't really have much in the way of options, really. Udyr ends up with too many options, but specifically, has to pick an ability to sacrifice that will never get to maximum ranks, which is problematic in it's own way. No matter how he builds himself, not only does he not have an ultimate, he doesn't even really have 4 regular abilities; just 3 regulars and one which doesn't even do much.

If you're going to do something like this, make bloody sure from the start that your design actually calls for it. Karma can do this because her entire design is based around the concept of her mantra charges, and those being available at level 1, but too weak to be a real ultimate so not worthy of being added at 6 only.

If you just go "I want a champion who doesn't have a standard set up for their abilities!", then you've probably done something horribly wrong. You don't start with the implementation, you start with the idea you want to implement, and then decide how to implement it.

Picking out the artwork for the wrapping before you even know what goes in the wrapping just generally doesn't work. You might get lucky, but considering how complex champion design is, the chances of that are pretty close to nil.

Instead, you will almost invariably want to start out with an idea that sounds cool, and then be like... well... this makes more sense with a strange number of abilities, so I guess I'll work that into the design then.

You add stuff to your champion because it needs it to work. You don't throw things at it which really screw up how it works simply because you want to. Everything you do in your design should be intentional. If you do something "wrong", or against what I've said here, that's fine, so long as you specifically did so with active reasoning and intent. You need to think the consequences through, and determine it's worth it to do so, because the benefits outweigh the detrimental effects associated with such.

If, at any point, you find yourself just slapping stuff on without even thinking about why you're doing it, then you're not painting a masterpiece; you're playing in the mud. There's a distinctive difference, and that difference is intent.

When you control your design, and everything that goes into it does so for the sole reason that you intentionally put it there, with full awareness of why you put it there, you will simply have a much easier time in making something awesome, than just randomly chucking stuff together and hoping it works.

I know this is a strange concept to many of you, but for srs, think before you act, and carefully construct your ideas by thinking before doing.
Part 3: Oh yeah? Well I'm the Nidalee. I get 7 spells instead of 4. Sup, *****?Pft, 4 actives? Not enough! NEED MOAR!

Some champion designs simply have more than the standard allotment of abilities. As of the writing of this post, Jayce is the most recently added champion to the game, who also has 7 abilities, similar to Nidalee.

There are other ways to do so, such as spells where, when you cast them, they toggle to a different spell, or abilities where you press one button (say R for your ultimate), and it changes the options you have available (say R activates your ultimate, and whether you press Q/W/E after will trigger different effects to be used by it).

Once again, that rule I just gave you about planning your stuff out? Yeah, that still applies here, too.

It's one thing to carefully and meticulously consider and weigh the benefits of having more than the standard ability loadout, but it's quite another to just go "Lulz I added a stance so now I can have more spells!".

Note very carefully that your abilities should each have a distinctive purpose to them, and that there should be a reaosn why you would use any of them at any given time.

Nidalee, being the posterchild of the "zomg more buttons!" build, shows us how to have more spells in such a way that it actually works.

Many champions have very complex abilities, which have multiple effects built into them. Tristana's explosive shot was probably the first, where the passive effect causes her last hits to blow up minions, and the active can be used as a pseudo-ignite. This is basically two different spell abilities wrapped into one, which is a trend that's gradually getting more popular.

For champions like Nidalee, you'll notice that her abilities are all pretty basic. Rather than building multiple effects in together, her abilities instead have one, maybe two effects total, and are split up into smaller, individual abilities.

As such, you'll notice that, although she may have a heal and attack speed boost together, that's essentially just a single spell with a primary and secondary effect. It's not like Lulu, where literally her abilities are often 2-in-1 spells which have completely different effects depending on the target.

Lee Sin has extra abilities, sure, every regular ability he has does two parts, but once again, his abilities are pretty basic, mostly in line with Nidalee's own kind of stuff.

Regardless of how you split your abilities, however, you also want to ensure that this is done so in a method in which they make sense. This doesn't mean that the abilities themselves make sense (although they still should), it means that abilities like Nidalee's make sense simply because of where they are.

Her melee abilities are all on one form, and her spell caster abilities are on the other. Jayce has melee and ranged, Lee Sin has abilities that mark a target, then do something in relation to that target.

In each and every case, their abilities make sense in that they serve a distinctive and separate purpose from each other. One set of abilities does one thing, the other set does another. It's like two separate roles being taken care of, letting the player choose when and where to utilize each.

Regardless, in the end, you need to grip firmly on control of your champion design. If you want to load them up with tons of abilities, you can do so... but keep in mind that simply having 5 or more abilities instead of 4 makes them flat out more powerful if those abilities are all equal in power to someone with only 4. Ensure that your ability load out is roughly equal in power, both in damage, and utility. You'll notice that Nidalee doesn't have any CC on her, despite having far more than the normal amount of abilities. This is part of her weak points, and her gaps still occur, despite having lots of stuff.

Nemhain, my own champion, has essentially extra spells in that her kit is insanely flexible, able to adapt to most situations... but her limitation is that she can't utilize every ability she has to it's full potential at any one time, much in the way that Lulu can't. There's also the issue that Nemhain's positioning is rather important, as is her attack order, which affects how useful her abilities are, especially when comparing melee to ranged use of her spells.

Always ensure that your champion designs have intentional gaps in how they're made, so that the player still has to make decisions. Don't just keep throwing stuff at them endlessly, so that they can do literally everything.

If you're like "I want my champion to do EVERYTHING", then you've already broken something in a terrible manner. Their overall kit should only cover PART of what they want to do, so that they have to decide when and where to place their itemization and such.

I'll get into that in a later article, so let's worry about that then. For now, just keep in mind that if you really want your champion to have the ability to do "everything", then put a limitation in so that they can only do some of the stuff, some of the time, and eventually, over time, can do "everything", but not all at once. Not being able to change stances for 3 seconds after casting a spell can prevent chaining combos together in an overly bad way, but can still allow for swapping between roles quickly. Doing so, however, also means it's unresponsive to your commands, because you can't always change during the time you'd most want to, and this instills other problems.

As such, be careful in how you add "More stuff". Keep it tightly controlled and under wraps. If you want more stuff, you're free to do so, just don't let it run wild, either.
Part 4: There's a time, and a place, for everything. Except maybe for that thing you just did with your mouth where words came out. You should probably stop doing that.So, you really, really want a champion with extra abilities, or at least a non-normal ability setup, do you?

As I've said during this entire class, article, or whatever you want to call it, that's fine, but once again, the same rule is going to apply here as everything else.

You have to do so intentionally.

I don't mean "well I want it, so I'm going to do it!" kind of intentional.

I mean more along the lines of "This would solve many issues, and I'm fully aware of the problems it will create, and think I know how to deal with them when they show up".

You CAN make a champion where you just totally screw with their spell order, where Q gets 7 ranks instead of 5, and W gets 3 ranks, and E gets 2 but R gets 5. Alright, it still adds up to 18, but were you really, honestly, thinking about the effect that this would have on the game, or how confusing and seemingly random it would be to the player?

If you said yes, punch yourself in the mouth. Right now. I can't reach you or I'd do it for you.

The point here, is that you need to plan out your champion design, and carefully place each part with intent. You're not just slapping it together because it seems like a good idea, but rather, you're placing the pieces together because they fit best that way.

The difference is you want to be putting lego blocks together into a masterpiece that shows skill and dedication, not just mashing pieces together and hoping it somehow turns into something other than a mangled mess at the end.

As such, there's only really a few times when you'd really need to specifically do anything to your champion that would make them have extra abilities, or a non-standard 1-3-1 spell lineup.



They have two separate modes: Alright, so they're very distinctive in these modes; one's a caster, the other's an autoattacker. One's a tank, the other's an assassin. Wait, no they're not. Trying to force opposing ideas to work together, such as a tank+assassin hybrid simply doesn't work that way, and just letting them swap stances to do so isn't the right way to do it. If you really wanted to let them do that, you'd just make two separate champion designs. Now, if you want a champion that's versatile, and can pick between ranged AD or melee AD? Go right ahead! They're still similar enough that it works! You could technically even have one that has multiple modes, such as ranged AD/melee AD/ranged AP/support caster, so long as you were distinct in how their scaling worked, so that they could build hybrid for high versatility, or either AD or AP and still get some of the benefits of either. The more you add, however, the more stuff you have to juggle together, and the more complex it becomes. Personally, I'd advise against it, since it's probably not worth the effort.

You want to have lots of simple spells, as opposed to a few complex ones: This is a valid choice as well. Sometimes you might have abilities that do a thousand things on them like Vladimir's pool, which has enough things it does to fill the entire kit of a full champion. You have the option, however, of actively splitting one big, complex spell up into several smaller ones. Instead of something like Heimerdinger's turrets, which do damage, and reduce armour, and splash, and act as meat shields, and slow (with his ultimate), you could instead have a champion that places turrets perhaps, but have multiple spells which benefit them, more in line with Heimer's ultimate, where you can buff your turrets, or cause them to pulse an AoE slow around them, or similar effects. Taking a good idea and exploring it more in depth by utilizing multiple, smaller effects, can work out quite well.

You just have so many awesome ideas you want to use all of them: NO. Seriously, this is not a valid choice. If you want to do more stuff, then make two champions and filter the abilities between them in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, you're going to have to pick and choose which ones work well. Every single ability your champion has should have a purpose on that champion, and not just "I thought it sounded neat" or "I wanted them to have the option to do EVERYTHING". No, you need to carefully isolate the parts that are most important and trim it down a little at a time until only the parts that matter most remain. Sometimes this still ends up being a lot of stuff, like Lee Sin, Sona, or my own Nemhain. Other times, you just end up with the editing room's floor of a movie, with half the movie's footage laying in tatters on the ground because it wasn't needed.

Their design is such that they need their abilities spaced out to work right: If you have a kit that makes sense, but you need it to be broken up across a larger area, either to limit the use of it at one time, or to stagger the effects so that you can't just dump it all out instantly at once like a burst mage, then having extra abilities may be a good choice! For champions like Karma, her design simply didn't work with a standard ultimate, due to the fact that her ultimate would then have to make the effects much more powerful on a longer cool down (bad idea as it ruins how she plays), or would have to have her severely underpowered early on. Technically... she could have just been made with a free ultimate at level 1, and it could be leveled at 6/11/16, but the route they went worked too. Regardless, it was an active choice to make her play a certain way. It may not necessarily have been the best choice, but it was an intentional choice. Same dealie with the Invoker, though honestly, he probably was a bad idea.

There's probably more reasons that I'm missing or can't think of. Honestly, I'm still waking up, so I wouldn't be surprised due to lack of sleep the last few days. Regardless, the point is that there's not really that many reasons for why you would screw with the formula that works. Yes, you can break the rules, but you really need to ensure that it's a good time to break them, not just because you feel like it at the time.

To that end, study your design and carefully ponder if it's possible to build it without altering the standard build so that it would still work properly. If so, you probably didn't need to change anything in the first place, and it might be a good idea to cut back on things to normal levels. If there's no need to change it, then don't.

That being said, if you see a valid reason to make a change, then don't be afraid to do so, just do it cautiously and with purpose, watching out for anything that can go wrong when you make said change.

Change isn't bad, just needless, pointless change is.

And with that, we're done!

Class dismissed!

Good evening, class.

Tonight we'll be going over Passive Abilities. Those lovely innate skills you get by default! Of course, sometimes champions also get passives in their active slots as well, so we'll go over those too.

For now, sit right back and get ready to take notes, because class is in session once again.

So, passives. Sure they're called passives, but it doesn't mean they should aid passive play, nor does it mean they should be used passively. There's some older passives that really aren't that great, and it shows. Instead, we're going to find out how to make passives that don't make the mistakes of the past, and instead lead to... THE FUTURE!

...Or something.

Whatever.

First off, we'll be going over the idea of non-passive passives. These are essentially activated spells that you don't have to press a button to activate, which sounds a little weird! They can be some of the most fun passives in the game though.

Second, we'll then move onto what kind of passives to avoid; especially ones that are extra-passive passives!

Third, we'll touch on when and where to implement scaling and leveling for your passives. A fair number of champions have passive abilities that grow as they reach new levels, or scale with AP or AD, and this needs careful consideration.

Finally, we'll finish up with power balance on passives, as they are far more heavily influenced by the champion's kit than most abilities in the game.

So, now that we've covered that, it's time to get into the hidden world of the passive-aggressive champion...Part 1: Well of COURSE the passive should be active, how SILLY of me.An active passive? How does that even WORK!?

Well, it's not that hard, and there's a few already in the game.

Consider say... Sona's passive. Upon her third cast, her next auto-attack will deal additional damage, as well as an extra effect based on what her last cast normal spell was. Not only do you get to have the interaction of timing your casts to get an extra effect, but you can actually choose what that extra effect is.

This is an example of an excellent grade passive, which kind of makes up for her other spells being a bit more bland.

Ideally, what you want is for your passive to have a direct influence on how you play your champion. Soraka's aura? Well... it's "nice", but it doesn't actually change how you play her. It's passive to the Nth degree, in that it doesn't matter if she had her passive or not, it would make zero difference in how she plays.

There are some half-way ones which change your build, or the order you level your abilities. Consider Akali; her passive is such that Akali players almost universally make a special rune page just for her to ensure she has both halves of her passive get activated. It also has a direct influence on how a player itemizes her in game, but on the other hand, doesn't really change how she plays in combat.

Sona's passive can actually emphasize the idea of not just having active use of it in combat, but it can also affect her itemization if someone wants to build a high-AP Sona build, in which case they're almost guaranteed to get a Lichbane for the on hit effect, since it stacks with her passive, and her regular abilities charge it quickly due to the nature of how they work with her passive (rapid casting to gain charges).

In someone like Riven's case, she actively DOESN'T build a Trinity Force, despite that she's a bruiser with some good damage output, specifically because her passive has the effect already built into it. It also is so kind as to adjust how she plays by having her deal more damage by weaving auto-attacks into her spell spam. Toss in, on top of that, the itemization to not really want attack speed, since she's casting a spell, then attacking, then another spell, back and forth, it really helps define her as a champion concept.

The point is, you want your passive to be interesting, and for your champion design to have some way to actively control it's use. Just because it's a "passive ability", doesn't mean it should be so passive that you don't even notice it's there.
Part 2: Little known fact about this guide's author: I actually won a lazyness contest once. I couldn't be bothered to fill out the application form and won by default. Sad, but true XDSo, you think a passive should be passive simply because it's a passive?

Do I need to break out the haddock again? DO I!? You make me do these things to you, you know. You should probably stop before I get the lubricant out to go with it.

Anyway, there are some really, really rotten passives in the game. Some are more obvious than others, such as Soraka's, which is just annoying.

There are, however, worse passives already built into the game than Soraka's already. Consider Sion's passive... he does... what? 40% chance to reduce physical damage by 40? That's nearly useless in a pokefest, it's limited in value against minions since they tend to deal considerably less than 40 damage most of the time, and it's not even reliable enough to assume it will happen in the first place.

Consider a somewhat newer champion, since most of the worst ones exist back from when the game first came out. Let's look at Talon.

10% bonus auto-attack damage to any target that is slowed, suppressed, immobilized or stunned. Sounds like it makes him want to CC people, right?

Unfortunately, he only has one single slow in his entire kit, namely that of his Rake (W), which has the drawback of being a 2 second slow on a 10 second cooldown, meaning he can't permaslow people. Under ideal conditions, he can potentially get it to refresh the slow for up to 3 seconds total, but even so, that's still pretty horrible.

The fact of the matter is, he has virtually nothing to trigger his passive, and even if he did, it's still fail in that a 10% auto-attack only boost is kind of pathetic on a champion that doesn't really rely on their auto-attacks all that much. He has 4.2 AD scaling on his abilities, and deals an additional +15% damage with one of his other abilities, which affects his spells. In terms of his physical attacks though? He uses them, kind of, but honestly it's only because he has no real reason not to, rather than because he gets much out of doing so. He has no attack steroids at all, and no way to make any use of that 10% bonus auto-attack damage.

If we assume he manages to slow a target for 3 seconds, due to the fact that he honestly has no reason to build attack speed, he's probably going to get about 3 hits in total. This is a whole whopping 30% auto-attack damage across three hits, or equivalent to... well, not much of anything, honestly.

Though the passive sounds interesting and unique, in terms of practical use, you don't honestly notice it exists since it's too small of a value to make you want to build something like a Frozen Mallet to make use of it, and it's near impossible to trigger otherwise since he's really not an auto-attacker. He's an assassin who unloads abilities on someone's face to burn them into the ground from 100-0 in 3 seconds or less.

As such, his passive is excessively passive, despite that it's mechanics could have been tuned in such a way that it could have defined his character.

In the end, however, his passive ends up being little more of value to him than an empty slot. Yes, it does benefit him a tiny bit, but honestly, if you're needing the extra 50ish damage total from his passive to kill someone, you probably are splitting hairs so fine that you likely couldn't tell if it caused the kill or not in the first place.

Avoid making passives such as this, where, no matter how interesting they sound, they simply have negligible effect upon how your champion plays.
Part 3: By the glow of the pale blue night, Skeletor's **** will rise tonight. To end the reign of Old Snake Mountain, the power of Greyskull you can count on! Nothing can stop it's growing power... watch it groooow! Watch it groooooow! ~Skeletor's ****; by Bag FriesAlright, so sometimes you see passives where they level along with you, as if you'd put points into them, and sometimes you see them scale off of AP or AD, among other things. What kind of time is it a good time to do so?

Mostly, this actually comes down to determining what you actually want your ability to do. In the case of an attack damage bonus, or something which has sustain effects on it, you typically don't want these to be a flat value throughout the game.

Damage, in particular, is blatantly obvious about this. A flat +X physical damage effect, regardless of how it's applied, is not going to be as effective throughout the entire game. If it's good at level 1, it's useless at 18. If it's good at 18, it's OP at level 1.

Note that these are for flat values. Percentage based effects, such as a +X% value, will scale accordingly all game, normally. The primary exception here, is lifesteal and other sustain-based effects.

At the start of the game, when you need to stay in lane for a long time, sustain effects are very, very powerful. You won't be trading hits all that often, and the capacity to play cautiously and regain health over time is a big deal. Later on, once team fights roll around, there's typically enough firepower on the field to burst through most sustain effects, so ramping up it's power a bit isn't that big a deal.

In situations where you need your abilities to maintain value throughout the game, you typically want to increase their effectiveness.

What's the difference between scaling and leveling? Honestly, it's a matter of itemization mostly. Do you want your champion to be forced to itemize for the benefit of such, changing their item build, or do you just want to hand it to them as they progress through the game?

In Riven's case, she gets AD scaling on her passive because it's there to encourage her to build a bit more leaning to the damage side of things than the tanky side of things. Despite that, however, she also gains damage to her passive by default, as well, over the course of the game as she levels, so that it's not completely useless if she itemizes another way, leaving it pointless in it's entirety.

I'll go into more detail on scaling methods such as Bonus AD versus Total AD in the scaling article later on, but for now, keep in mind that you generally use scaling to emphasize an item build. Total AD increases with level, runes and masteries, and you don't actually need to build a single item for it to grow in power, whereas Bonus AD tends to be gained primarily from itemization. Runes/masteries may help it a bit, but not enough to have a major game-altering effect, since it's not including your level bonuses on top of that. AP is basically treated as Bonus AD, as no champion currently in the game, as of this writing, gains AP per level.

Now, that being said, you don't have to make your passives scale, necessarily. In many cases, you might actually want something to be a particular strength level overall, without much change over the course of a game. Consider something along the lines of Fiddlestick's passive; while it's a directly inversely proportional bonus to Soraka's passive, it's a little more active in that it's hard to get any kind of magic shred or reduction in the game in general, suggesting to him to build items which further enhance his capacity to cut through magic resistance than they already do.

With this, however, you don't want it to scale much during a game, as many champions don't get much for magic resistance during a game. It's rare on items, and tends to be in small amounts. The natural scaling in the game is also relatively quite weak, normally only being about +0.75 to +1.25 per level, if there's any at all. As such, the value of the ability is pretty much static throughout the game, as it won't really do enough to bother a tank with 150+ MR, and it's not going to have any change on a DPS who didn't build any MR at all. Either way, it remains about as effective at the start of the game, as it does at the end.

Consider what it is your passive does, and whether it's something which changes over the course of the game normally. As we just covered with MR, it doesn't necessarily do so very much, even if it's possible to itemize for it. Think carefully on the question of "If I increase this value over the course of the game, will it proportionally be more effective at each stage?".

Essentially, you're aiming to have your passive ability be roughly about the same value across the entire game, since you can't put points into it. There may be exceptions, such as Wukong's passive, where you actively want it weak during the laning phase, but strong during team fights, and these you have to take into account directly. In Wukong's case, it's balanced simply to be based off the number of enemies there are nearby, making it more useful in a team fight, rather than scaling it upwards heavily through the game in general.

Always think. This is a strange thing to have to say, especially with a period right after it; I'm not saying think about anything in particular, but just... think. Seriously, think about what you want to do before you do it. Think about when you want your passive to be of value before deciding whether it needs to scale or not. This should be common sense to go "Hrm... what am I actually trying to accomplish?", but for some odd reason it's not.

As such, THINK. For every single part of the champion's design, you need to intentionally be making choices. You don't slap on scaling pointlessly, just because you think it'd be neat. You put scaling on because you have a goal in mind for when and where you want your passive to be useful, and the scaling is used to ensure that it's useful at the times you want it to be.

More than anything else, you're aiming for your design to be done with purpose and intent, not just blindly mucking about. Following the concept of thinking through why you're doing anything on your design, from start to finish, is guaranteed to make it more polished of a design, and more fun to play as in the end.
Part 4: UNLIMITED POWAH! ~Senator Palpatine; Star WarsSo exactly how strong do you want your passive to be, anyway? Sure, we want a passive that has a noticeable effect on how your champion plays, but where to we draw the line between the remarkably different power levels of the passives for Twitch and Darius?

Honestly, it mostly comes down to the overall strength of the rest of the abilities on the champion's kit. If your champion has an overly potent kit which is universally effective in most situations, then you're probably going to want to cut down their passive's power, as it's a consistent benefit to everything they do.

This isn't to say that you can't balance a champion around a passive, however. It's fully possible to make a Sona-esque style passive where the abilities themselves benefit from it to the point of it controlling just how useful the abilities really are, such as is seen with Brand, where his entire kit's effectiveness is dependent upon his passive.

Where's the ideal location? Depends. Depends on what? Virtually everything. Anything from your basic stats, through to your overall kit, your individual abilities, your scaling, and so on, all plays a part in adjusting how strong your passive should be. Seriously, the list is so long that I'm not honestly sure if there's anything that wouldn't adjust how strong you want your champion's passive to be.

Personally, I'm a big fan of passives which directly affect how a champion plays, so I'd probably suggest that you'd be best off, in most situations, by making your passive a key part of the champion's kit, and balancing the whole as one large intertwined web, where adjusting one part affects the rest.

It's not the only way to do so, and some champions in game have dealt with the problem by simply making the active abilities the only thing which matter, and essentially making the passive so useless and pointless that it may as well not be present, to the point that balancing the passive is negligible to the overall effectiveness of the champion.

I don't much like doing things that way, as you're essentially throwing out something which could have been used to make your design more fun and interesting. Every time you say "I don't really need this so I'm going to get rid of it", you're only harming yourself. The more things you have to work with, the better. Yes, it's more difficult to design things that have more variables to work with, but it also gives you more directions from which to tweak and adjust their overall performance from a balance perspective, as well as also granting you more spaces to put neat stuff in.

In the end, if you rip out "optional" stuff, you're only really harming yourself, and your designs, by doing so.

Any excuse you have to make your champion design that much more fun and interesting, is a good one, so TAKE IT. Don't cut back simply because it's a bigger challenge; your goal is to make something awesome, not to settle for mediocre. If you're happy with mediocre, then why are you even designing anything in the first place? The fun is in the challenge of making something awesome itself. If you toss that part away, then you've missed the whole point, and are not just harming your champion design, but also harming yourself by depriving yourself of the best parts of champion design - the actual designing part.

As such, all I can really say more on this point, is to consider your entire champion as a single entity for balance. Each ability, including the innate passive, can be "balanced", yet have the overall design be unbalanced; it all comes down to a matter of the total, cumulative effect.

With that, I'll let you go.

Class dismissed!

Alright boys and girls, hermaphrodites and genderqueers, blah blah, whatever. This being "all inclusive" thing is a pain. I think I liked it better when we could just go with something simple.

Ah well, anyway, class is in session, so let's get started on activated abilities.

First off, we'll cover why actives are so important, and specifically, why they're generally much more important to a champion's design than their ultimate for defining what they do.

Second, we'll touch on the differences between why you'd use various cool downs.

Third, we'll be going lightly over the ideas of multi-abilities and mixed actives with passives attached. As there's an entire article, later on, devoted to this, it's going to be a pretty quick overview.

Finally, we'll discuss the idea of passive actives. Just as you can have an active passive, you can have a passive active. Who'da thunk?

So, time to get started!Part 1: Just because you're essential, doesn't mean you're important. ~Despair.comSo you're onto making your regular abilities for your champion huh? Great! Wait... wait what's all this? "Don't know, doesn't matter, fill it in with whatever later" in all slots, but you have their ultimate done?

You do realize, that it's a relatively recent concept that teachers aren't allowed to beat the **** out of students who pull this kind of thing, right? Be grateful I'm a quick learner...

Seriously though, your actives are the true backbone of your champion. An ultimate often has too long a cool down, and is usually too situational to be a defining feature. There are some exceptions, such as Akali, or Darius, but in each case, you notice that the reason that their ultimate helps to define them is it's remarkably short cool down.

The fact of the matter is, your regular Q/W/E abilities are what makes up 90% of your champion's power, most of the time. They're what you rely on in lane, and what you rely on to do the majority of your job. Your ultimate is a nice bonus on top of that, which can open up new avenues of how to perform your role, but it's your basic abilities that truly define what your champion does.

Regular abilities have low cool downs, normally about 5 to 10 seconds, though some go a bit higher, and some really awkward ones can go as high as 30 second cooldowns.

Unless you're doing something really special, you don't get to make a 30 second cooldown on a regular ability to even it out. If I see one more "regular" ability that looks like Vladimir's Sanguine Pool, and your justification is the long cool down, we are going to have some problems. Fortunately for me, these "problems" are easily solved by a call to two guys named Vinnie and Vinny to fit you out for some new cement shoes. Unfortunately for you, well... I think you see where this is going.

The fact of the matter is, you have an ultimate for a reason. The ultimate gets the big long special cool down, normally. NORMALLY. I'll explain the exceptions in depth during the ultimate section after this, but not right now.

For now, simply be aware that if all your abilities have around a 20 second cooldown, your champion is boring, because they're never doing anything, no matter how good their right clicking is. You still need to have buttons to press and things to do.

This, fortunately, segues nicely into our next section...
Part 2: The internet is where time goes to die. Cooldowns, on the other hand, are what causes your heathbar to die.Alright, so you know having tons of high end cooldowns is bad, but running with every ability on a 5 second cooldown, is a bit too much, in that you probably can't cast them fast enough, and it limits your capacity to do much of anything for stronger effects as well.

Ideally, you might want about one ability on a ~5 second or so timer, one on about a 10 second timer, and one on around 20 seconds. This gives you something to spam out whenever it's up, something for a bit more "oomph" when you need to open up or poke someone really hard, and something that can be used as an escape mechanism without being OP due to being spammable.

Obviously, there's variations on all of this, and it's fully possible to completely ignore everything I just said, but keep in mind that you'll typically want a broad range of cool downs on your abilities so that you can adapt to various situations. Even burst mages, such as Veigar and Annie, have at least something spammable to keep them from being a waste once they've blown all their big heavy hitting spells.

For a quick and dirty rough overview, here's a list of the generalized kind of stuff you'll want for various cooldowns. As per all things in this guide, this is a REFERENCE, and nothing more. There are exceptions to all rules.

3 to 5 second cooldown spells: These are pretty spammy. They're normally cheap in resource costs (such as mana or energy), and they're typically used to either proc things like a sheen effect, or to more or less replace a physical attack for poking capacity on a mage style champion.

Under 3 second cooldown spells: These are when you literally have replaced your auto-attack, or have a toggle ability that can be swapped quickly between on and off. Do not have more than one ability like this unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing, and even then, you'd better have a bloody good reason for it.

5 to 8 second cooldown spells: Useful, without being overly strong. These are generally your bread and butter spells which make up most of a champion's play time. You can use them fairly often and will probably be able to drop such on someone a few times in a team fight. They're rarely very powerful, due to being able to pound them out on a regular basis.

8 to 12 second cooldown spells: These are generally your harder hitters; typically you want some descent firepower here for burst capacity that's great for a poke tradeoff in lane, or unloading damage on someone in a team fight. Most of the effects around this area are pretty simple, something like CC, or raw damage, or some other generalized effect. Be careful in overusing this range, as although it's great for giving you something to do on occasion, you're probably only going to be able to cast it once or twice in most team fights.

12 to 15 second cooldown spells: These are almost a specialized category in and of themselves. Most of the stuff you'll find in this range is almost invariably related to locking down opponents, or escape maneuvers. It's excessively rare to find anything that doesn't fall under those categories, since they're about the only things that can be so potent that they're deserving of such a long cooldown. There's exceptions to all rules, but for the most part, you'll typically see stuff like healing, teleports and so on in this range.

16+ second cooldowns: These are huge on delay, meaning you get to use them *ONCE* in a team fight. They're designed pretty much with the intent that it's going to be a really potent effect which seriously affects how the outcome of a fight goes. A big heal like Soraka's, or a game changer like Blitzcrank's Rocket Grab or Anivia's Crystallize, will fit into this category. All it takes is one cast of something along these lines to drastically alter the balance of power in a fight.

Anyway, this is just a quick overview on such, but generally, your abilities are related directly to their cool downs. You're not going to find a 2 second stun on a 3 second cooldown, just as you're not going to find a low powered ability on a very long cooldown.

That being said, the cooldown of a spell is not the only way to control it's power level, by any means, and there are always exceptions to every rule, dependent upon the rest of the champion's kit.
Part 3: Each ability does ALL the things!Sometimes it's nice to have an ability which has two or more effects built into it, such as damage and a stun. Other times, it may be more appropriate to split those effects up in various ways.

For example, an ability where, after casting it, you can cast it a second time to cause the stun, but you might not always want to do so for some reason or another. Perhaps it's a resource limitation, perhaps you'd rather have the timing change. Maybe it's one of those things where the longer you wait, the stronger it gets.

Other times, you may want to have it split up in other ways, such as a passive boost which benefits the player in some way, but also has an activated part to go with it. Tristana's explosive shot originally was one or the other, similar to Taric's aura. Using the damage part of the ability would disable the passive explosions when she killed things. This is great for forcing a bit of decision making on the player, though in Tristy's case, she unfortunately had to choose between harassment and farming, which was a bad choice.

For some other champions, of which Lulu is the posterchild thereof, it may be that you have abilities where they have differing effects depending on the target affected. Hit an ally, they're given a buff; hit an enemy, a debuff. This concept allows you to have two abilities which both have the power of a regular ability, allowing for versatility, but making the player decide which one's more valuable at any given time.

Ideas like this can make a champion far more interesting to play as, with more options to work with than normal. Be careful about loading on "too many" things to be done at once, and if you're going to use multi-abilities in this sense, where they do lots of things, be very careful not to have "too much" available to them. It's easy to get carried away! Make sure they still have their gaps and weaknesses!

Anyway, this is a super miniaturized version of a later article, so I'll just leave things here =3
Part 4: Activate the passive! Erm... wait...There are also "active" abilities which are actually passives, yet don't play a passive role.

Often, on the forum here, I've seen people make the mistake of making true passives for their activated abilities, where they're little more than a stat boost. Seriously... don't do this.

There are actually champions in the game with passives for their active abilities, but let's look at one of the most obvious of these: Vayne.

Vayne's passive, Silver Bolts, is frustrating due to the % of max health true damage, but people seem to have gotten it into their heads that this means they're able to make just any passive.

Nuuu, check out Silver Bolts carefully. Yes, it's a "passive", but you'll also notice that it's highly active in terms of how it's used. You have to get three hits in a row on a single target, meaning you may be willing to chase after someone to land one more shot, or to not change targets when you might otherwise do so.

Despite that it's a passive boost, it completely alters how you play Vayne, and does so on a scale that many activated abilities aren't able to.

That's the reason why you can have an ability like Silver Bolts in the game. It gets treated as though it actually were an activated ability, since you have direct control over when and how it works. For something along the lines of "+X damage" or "Ignores X armour", yeah... you can't just toss that on and pretend that's a real activated ability.

When you add a passive instead of an active, it absolutely must manage to be on par with an activated ability in terms of how you play your champion. Often, it actually has to be even beyond that, because the player will be expecting more out of it than a regular activated ability would, so you really have to go out of your way to ensure it's interesting.

Overall, yes, you can make your active slots be passive abilities, so long as by "passive" you mean "it doesn't require actually pressing a button to use it". That's pretty much the limit of how passive an activated ability can go.

If you really, really want to make it so that you don't have to press a button for it at all, then so be it, but keep in mind that there's an even worse kind of passive out there... the passive where you do have to press a button.

That's right, I'm talking about steroids. They have their time and place where they're useful, but keep in mind that they're about as passive as they come. Sure, you press the button to turn it on, but really, when WOULDN'T you press the button to activate a steroid when you're in combat? If you're not in combat, don't press button, if you are in combat, press button. By all rights, this is a passive ability as you really have about as much interaction with the ability as a book is considered interactive media in that you have to turn the page to continue reading.

Are you done the page? Then... you turn the page... there's no real option in how that works. It doesn't make it an interactive experience.

So, too, does this concept apply to your abilities. Avoid steroids as much as possible, but don't be afraid to use them sometimes, either. An ability that's always active as a passive simply isn't able to be as powerful and useful to the player as one which can only be used for a short time and has a cost associated with it as limiting factors.

If you have a champion that's supposed to be DPS? Then you're going to need a steroid in there to enhance their physical attacks, or you're going to have to replace their attacks entirely with spells. No matter how you do it, though, you're going to be making their overall damage capacity be increased on a consistent basis. In most cases, this means a steroid type ability.

Alright, so you've gotten stuck with using a steroid, no big deal, some abilities really just are passive, and there's not much you can do about it. As such, just make sure that the rest of your abilities are anything but passive to compensate. It's alright to make a single ability a bit bland, if it's a necessity in order to make your champion work, just don't go beyond that point by making things passive which have no need to be, and ensure for each one bland ability, the rest are that much more awesome to make up for it.

In any case, there's a lot more stuff to cover about abilities in general, but we'll be discussing these more in detail later on, so for now, class is dismissed!

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Also good morrow if you dazed out after the first line and somehow just woke up now after being in a trance for a day.

Not that anything like that would ever happen when reading this guide! Of course not! I'm not boring or dry! Yes, clearly you listen with rapt attention and cling to every word!

At least, that's what I tell myself so I can sleep at night while you snooze through my class >=O

Anyway, class is in session. Complimentary pillows are available located behind your desks.

So today we're going to cover ultimates. Some of you may have been waiting on this, some of you may have been dreading it. Others may be snoring... regardless, let's see what we're looking at today!

First off, we're going to pretty much define not just what an ultimate is, but why it's so "ultimate". This will be "why" you make a spell an ultimate, instead of a normal ability.

Second, we'll cover the idea of the overall benefit that an ultimate should provide your champion. This is very closely related to the first section, so you may see some overlap here.

Third, we'll touch upon the differences between rapid cooldown ultimates, and long cooldown ultimates. Not only that, we'll also be discussing when and where each is appropriate for your champions!

Finally, we'll go over ways to help ensure that your ultimate maintains it's purpose, without falling into many of the problems many people's ultimates do.

So, since we've got that out of the way, let's get to it!Part 1: The Penultimate Ultimate! Something sounds... off though.An ultimate is supposed to be, as it's name implies, pretty "ultimate". This is generally a major part of what makes your champion so unique and awesome, and you really want to polish it up nicely.

On the other hand... you want to be cautious to not fall into the pitfall of just making the ultimate awesome, while leaving the rest of the champion design to rot, as far too often becomes the case.

Keep in mind that your normal abilities are what really "defines" your champion. Ahri is still Ahri without her ultimate, though she looses part of what makes her so fun to play and helps her do her job.

So... wait, if a champion still generally performs the same role without their ultimate, then what good is the ultimate if it doesn't define your champion?

Why, I'm glad you asked, self. I was hoping for one of the students to do so, but we wouldn't want to wake them, now would we? ^.~

(I'm not really being passive-aggressive or anything, just having fun with the sleep thing still in case anyone's worried at this point XD )

The answer is that your normal abilities are what defines your champion on a regular basis of what they are, because they can be used regularly; they are what you use in lane, and they are what you use on a regular basis within a team fight. The ultimate, on the other hand, is the icing on the cake; it's the final little strawberry sitting on top of a mountain of whipped cream. It's that finishing touch that just brings the champion from being "pretty cool" up to "ZOMG EPIX WIN" levels.

Without your ultimate, your champion should still be a force to be reckoned with, generally speaking. Without it, alright, maybe you'll lose a 1v1 fight against someone else who does have their own ultimate up, but you should still be able to be valuable.

If you have absolutely zero usefulness without your ultimate, then either you need to ensure that your ultimate is able to be up on a regular basis in combat, or rework the entire design so that it doesn't rely solely on the crutch of the ultimate to carry it's whole weight.

If your normal abilities define "what your champion does", such as a bunch of auto-attack steroids, then your ultimate should be that which either emphasizes their role, by emphasizing something they do great already in a more spectacular and interesting way, or by providing them new options to work with.
Part 2: You should be a politician; you put all those words down, and still didn't tell us what an ultimate's supposed to do.So I did. Keen eyes there... I'll have to kill you later when no one's looking.

Anyway, the power of an ultimate should be, as stated, enhancing your champion's role and purpose, or granting them new ways to do things. Let's take a look at a few example pieces!

Let's start with Ezreal. Without his ultimate up, he's mobile, and has a bunch of skill shot pokes available. He'll keep jabbing you in the face at medium to long range the whole fight, while being hard to hit back. This is the entire point of his design, really.

Now, if his ultimate is up, he gets a new tool at his disposal: the ability to do such a long range skillshot that he can hit anyone he feels like on the map, assuming good aim and they don't avoid it. It adds to his power, sure, but it mostly just emphasizes his skillshot specialty.

Another good example is Pantheon. His kit, sans ultimate, is dedicated to being an AD mage, essentially, where he lands on someone and unloads in their face a large amount of firepower. His ultimate, however, doesn't make or break him, it simply gives him the new option of being able to get into combat in the first place from a much longer range than usual, allowing him to perform his role that much better.

For a bad one... we see Graves. Oh Graves... why is your ultimate so fail? You see... Graves already has his Q, Buckshot, to perform most of the same role that his ultimate, Collateral Damage, does. All his ultimate provides is a second generic nuke, that behaves in a very similar way to his original; it's generally fired at short range, and spreads out from there for burst damage. Which... is almost exactly the same role as his Buckshot ability.

See... simply adding a second ability that does almost the exact same role as another one that the champion already has, isn't really that witty, nor that interesting or awesome. It's honestly kind of lame, when your "ultimate" doesn't really "add" anything to your champion. No one cares about Graves' ultimate, because all it does is make his short range burst even more bursty, without really adding anything new. If it simply made his next Buckshot do double damage, it'd be roughly about equivalent in effectiveness much of the time.

You don't just want your ultimate to be "more of the same", but rather, you want it to really stand out as interesting and unique. Something which really polishes up that design and makes it even more awesome than normal!

Let's see another good one for contrast.

Riven's ultimate first enhances her damage, boosting the effectiveness of all her abilities and suggesting to her player "build more AD", but more than that, it allows her to finish off targets with a nice ranged AoE that wipes out lots of the low health ones in one go.

Her other abilities tend to be good for short range mobility and AoE damage output, but she's not so hot at actually finishing a target if they flash away, or are at low health. As such, her Wind Slash really just stands out as a great way to further make use of her other abilities she already has.

Well then, what about Veigar? Surely he's got a good ultimate since it has a unique effect, right?

Not really, all his ultimate does is "damage". All his Q and W can do is "damage". Sure he has... actually, no, he really doesn't have much variation in the methods of damage, even. His Q and R are almost identical, except for the fact that his Q defines him as a remarkably high AP caster, whereas his R just lets him one-shot enemy mages because of bonus damage. It doesn't change how he plays at all, really, nor does it make him any more interesting or fun to use. It doesn't add more options to how he plays, or give him a combo where he has to use his abilities in a certain order. It's just a generic nuke. Sure it does lots of damage, as generic nukes go, but it doesn't really set him aside as being of particular interest otherwise.

In each of these cases, you have a defining feature of a champion which is simply given new ways to apply it, or which, equally simply, fails to add anything particularly new to the mix.

There are other options, however, besides just these. Some champions get ultimates which simply do something which is more or less unrelated to the rest of their kit at all, but gives them something really interesting they can do which can shift the balance of power.

Zilean, for example, gets the ability to keep an ally alive, which either gives them a several second lease on life when no one can be bothered to attack them, or it can let them revive again after and go back to killing again, wasting the damage that was dealt to them previously.

Both teams get to interact with the ability, and it brings something to the table that he didn't have at all, previously.

Another interesting example is Akali, who gains one of the few "super short cooldown ultimates". Her Shadow Dance is positioned where it is, as an ultimate, in that it allows her to be useful in lane, without getting overly strong, but once she has it, she now has the capacity to do her assassination style role much more effectively than before. She lacks for ways to get into range, short of summoner spells, her Twilight Shroud (Which is an obvious hint to not stand near it), or standing in bushes or out of line of sight. As such, her ultimate grants her a highly effective method of doing her job better than she could before.

It's not as flashy as some champions, and it doesn't really define her as being a high damage output assassin, but it does define her partially due to it's very low cooldown, as once she has it, she plays quite differently pretty much for the rest of the game. It's an escape to leap to enemy minions or neutral creeps, just as it is a way to get into the fight in the first place.

So this brings with it one nagging question though... why does her ultimate have so low of a cooldown?

For that, we need to slip into the next part of the article!
Part 3: Once, years ago, I used to go to a Sonic the Hedgehog forum. There was an odd dichotomy... most of the guys liked Sonic, while the girls had a thing for Knuckles. It finally made sense, when someone compared their catch phrases... Sonic is known as "The fastest thing alive", and Knuckles is "Hard as nails".So, in the sense of the Sonic vs Knuckles dealie above, we have another comparison to make. Quick cooldown ultimates, versus long cooldown ultimates.

Now, normally a champion wants a mixture of ability cooldowns, as we discussed in the previous article on activated abilities. If you focus too heavily on one side of things, it can make them very bland, either by having nothing to do while their stuff is on cooldown, or not having anything potent enough to pull in those clutch plays, when the difference between hitting or not is negligible due to spammability limiting the individual effectiveness per hit.

For an ultimate, this is your chance to truly shine, usually, by placing in a really long cooldown which can have teamfight changing properties, such as a powerful initiation, or an AoE hard CC effect.

Then again... there are exceptions to this rule...

As we covered with Akali, her ultimate is used to partially define her play style, and if you look at other champions such as Swain, or LeBlanc, you'll notice their low cooldown ultimates really heavily affect how they play on a regular basis. Even champions like Lux or Katarina, soon show traits of their ultimates becoming a key aspect of what makes them who they are, due to their capacity to reduce their ultimate's cooldown to an acceptable level for fairly frequent use.

Seriously, stack 40% CDR on Lux, and when she hits 16, she spams out a two screen long AoE nuke that HURTS, making her excellent for sieging power, as she can soften up an entire enemy team if people are indecisive about actually starting the fight or not, as is often the case if there's no clear openings for an initiation.

The point is, sometimes you want that extra little "oomph" that can really define a champion in a much more articulated manner. Their ultimate is fully capable of doing this, if it's on a low enough cooldown that it can be used more than once per fight.

In cases like Ahri and Xerath, who have begun to work within the trend of a staggered power ultimate, similar to how Akali and Teemo are, though using different mechanics to employ such, they're able to have their presence felt a little more notably, by weaving it into a spell order, but without the issue of being able to do so on a highly rapid rate all the time. Ahri can still be caught without her ultimate, whereas it's much harder to nail down Akali since she gets hers back, at least partially, much quicker.

The real question you need to ask yourself, at this point, is whether your champion needs something which defines who they are and how they play in regular combat, or if they need something really potent and powerful for those one shot bursts when they need it most.

For assassins, you'll find most of them are interested in quick kills early on in the game, such as LeBlanc, Akali, or Katarina. You may also notice that these same individuals are very good at doing very rapid use of their ultimates.

For others, such as Poppy, she's more of an anti-carry, and is a bit of a late bloomer as assassins go, because her focus is on completely demolishing a player, even if they're surrounded by their allies. As such, she is interested in making that one big entrance into a team fight as potent as possible, rather than flitting about the map and wrecking people one at a time in quick succession.

The real question comes down to "what do I want my champion to do?". If you don't know, then you can't answer the next question of "should I give them a low or high cooldown ultimate?", because you need to know what your intended purpose for the champion as a whole is before you assign defining characteristics which state what their purpose is.

The general rule of thumb, however, is that if you have a champion that's probably going to be in combat for awhile, such as a tank, you give them something that involves short term positioning; either theirs or their enemy's, as they likely don't have much else to do that with. Malphite's a pretty good example of this, and he also shows that these kinds of "big powerful positioning tools" tend to also be very long cooldown, but very potent as well.

If, however, you're interested in making a champion who darts in and out of combat quickly, or may show up for a few seconds, do their thing, then fall back, and return again... you generally want their ultimate to line up for their gameplay. You may, however, also want to give them a tool which they can use at that one precise, perfect moment when they dart back into combat and can pull off a clutch play, so this isn't a guaranteed rule, by any means.

The fact of the matter is, it's up to you. Overall, the same rules for cooldowns apply though.

Keep in mind that any cooldown that's over 60 seconds, but below 90, is kind of a waste. If someone dies endgame, it takes them around a minute to revive in most cases on Summoner's Rift. Toss in travel time back to the fight, and a 60 second cooldown ulti is already ready to smack them around again. As is a 90. There's very little difference between the two, in most situations.

Now, a 120 second cooldown is something you reserve for something that you save for major team fights only. These are pretty much always game changers that will affect how the game plays as a whole.

The only ones which tend to creep much past 120 seconds any longer, are almost always global ultimates, which have such widereaching effectiveness, due to being able to be used at a time time to affect anywhere on the map, that you have to essentially factor in the travel time it'd take to get into position to use a spell again normally, into the actual spell itself, since there is no travel or positioning time for these.

Keep in mind, that if I see another person putting an insta-kill overpowered ultimate on their champion, and simply increasing the cooldown to 10 minutes, Imma smack them inna fayse!

Seriously, a cooldown does denote power to a degree, but if it's such a long cooldown that you never use it *coughrevivecough*, it has no impact on the game, or is overpowered. Your ultimate should be there for you at the moment you need it most, so long as you didn't waste it frivolously or were forced to use it for some other reason recently.

In short, simply giving something that's overpowered through the roof a longer cooldown, does NOT compensate for it!

Anyway, short cooldowns? Consider that 40 seconds goes down to 24 with 40% CDR gear, so it may as well be labeled in with Soraka's heal as a player has to be assumed to aim for such a build, such as on Lux.

We've actually just run into a few problems, so let's see some other issues that people have with their ultimates then, shall we?
Part 4: If there's one thing I hate about bad ultimates, it's how they feel like they're unfinished. It's like bad writing, where someone doesn't finish their train of thought, or theyThere's plenty of ways to do something wrong. There's plenty of ways to do something right, as well, usually. Ultimates in particular, are a bit tricky to get used to, because it's tempting to just make them be "ZOMG BIG EXPLOSION!".

In hindsight, it rarely turns out to be all that entertaining, however (poor Graves...), and usually just feels like a cop out.

So what are some of the worst mistakes to make when doing an ultimate? Let's go over a few quickly!



More of the same: I covered this earlier in this article already, but it needs to be stressed further because it's so common of a mistake! Don't make your ultimates simply bigger versions of abilities you already have. Each ability a champion has should have a unique purpose. Yes, you can have a little bit of overlap with abilities that do multiple functions, but if every ability simply reads "damage, damage, damage, damage", you seriously aren't designing anything, you're just scribbling with crayon. This doesn't mean that your abilities can't all have damage, it just means that damage can't be the only thing they do!



Completely unnecessary: Often there are champion designs where the ultimate is tossed in simply because they thought of it as a cool idea, and... it has no benefit to the champion. At all. Look up at the passive section and read over that little rant I did about Talon's passive. Many of the designs on the forum here suffer from the same problem with their ultimate, where it sounds "neat", but it doesn't actually help their champion any. This doesn't mean that an ability can't give them new options to work with, but it does mean that if you give an AD carry an ultimate that does very low magic damage but scales with like 1.5 AP, it's kind of pointless. Tristana can do it because she has good AP ratios all around and her abilities work well together as a mage, but if you literally only have melee effects with no other AP scaling? It doesn't matter how cool your ultimate is, if it doesn't belong on that champion. Save the idea, write it down somewhere, and put it on another champion who can appreciate it better.



Leaving a hole which is required to fulfill their role, which a regular ability can't cover: Here is why Karma is never going to be a truly valid support champion. She makes for a wonderful AP bruiser, and can even be treated as an AoE Burst Mage, but despite having three "support" abilities, she lacks hardcore for her ability to turn a fight around with a well timed clutch play of her ultimate. Mostly because she doesn't really have one.



Just bland and boring compared to their normal abilities: Vladimir's Hemoplague is... well... boring. Every other ability he has is more interesting, to the point that it Hemoplague just feels lackluster, even though it's not that bad on it's own.



Using hidden power: Maokai suffers from this pretty badly... he can toss heatseeking plant grenades, go flying across the battlefield, and knock people senseless while healing himself off spell spammers! Oh and he can put a circle on the ground that his team ignores because it's benefit is more or less unnoticeable most of the time. Yes, it's technically useful in a team fight, but you really, really want to avoid anything that's "hidden power" in an ultimate. You want to FEEL the power, and know that when you blow your cooldown, **** just got real. You don't want to blow an "ultimate" and just feel like you may as well not have bothered. Make them big and flashy!



The ultimate that just keeps giving: Ever see one of those ultimates that has like 17 abilities rolled into one? Yeah, if you made one of them, stop doing that. Ultimates are meant more for clutch plays usually, that perfect moment when you use it at just the right instant, when all the stars align, and it changes the entire game. If you have an ultimate that does so much **** in such a spread out way that it's not clear if you even got all you could out of it, then it's going to feel lackluster. Especially avoid anything that has opposing functions on long cooldown ultimates! You can put choices like Lulu's on normal abilities, since you can choose when to use each one. Do NOT do this on ultimates, since you can't just wait for the cooldown and to try again! (Yes, I've made this mistake myself; I've learned my lesson the hard way! ) It sounds awesome, but it really isn't.



Anyway, that's a few of the biggest offenders that I can think of at the moment, though there's likely a great many more to be concerned about.

In short, you want your ultimate to be clear and obvious in it's purpose. If it's got contradicting concepts, such as benefits one way if enemies are closer, and benefits another way if they're farther away, it's not really doing it's job properly, and it'll feel awkward to use. Make it big and flashy, and strive to "feel" that power it has in it. Trundle's ultimate is strong (though not so much anymore due to a shift in how people build their team compositions and how they itemize in general anymore), but it does a ton of things in a small amount to two people, making it feel much weaker than it is. Avoid auras if at all possible!

In the end, your ultimate is the thing which really makes your champion stand out as unique and special. Their normal abilities are what makes them work on a mechanical level so that they're fun, but their ultimate is what really makes them truly awesome, so be careful when handling it!

I've got to go make supper, so for now, class is dismissed!