Nocturne is this guy, who picks really unfair fights, and immobilizes them in such a way that allows him to cheap shot his opponent.

Non-Fictional Story of Nocturne:

Passive — Umbra Blades: The same old passive, but with a new niche. Nocturne’s auto attacks deal no damage, instead they deal grey health damage. If a champ has nothing but grey health, they become a ghost on the map, immediately respawning after they die. I guess this reminds you of waking up from a bad dream. Balanced in Nocturne’s favor, only he can proc a ghost to spawn it immediately, or if he kills a champ that is on a dusk trail they have a respawn timer like normally. Was it a real Nocturne or just a dream? Remember, Duskbringer is the portal to see the shadow realm in which the real Nocturne exists. Q — Duskbringer: I believe to show what the real wording in “Shadow Blade” and what the name “Duskbringer” means. Shadow Blade is what procs your Umbra Blades, which have been dealing grey health damage. “Umbra Blades” meaning shadow of course in Latin, Nocturne is attacking from the world in which he exists into yours. Nocturne’s attack stats are buffed and he gains extra movement speed. Basically the Shadow Blade does no damage but throws a dark trail at the opponents and both procs all existing grey health damage and combines yours and Nocturne’s worlds together, to form some kind of amalgamation. W — Shroud of Darkness: What Nocturne means to me, is in his W, you can vision what creatures have materialized when trapped beneath this hereditary shroud. Originally I had ult send out amalgamations of his own shadow to fight enemies, granting Nocturne the skill expression to become one of those amalgamations if he wanted to. However I remove the old ultimate’s global shadow and instead put it on his W, here it is no longer global but sends a menacing looking cloud, scaling with your ultimate’s radius. Reducing any opponents vision, then for each opponent in Nocturne’s vision and caught in the cloud have an amalgamation of Nocturne sent out to them, these amalgamations are untargetable for 1.5 seconds and auto attack for several seconds applying Umbra Blade’s effects. Any Umbra Blade damage not affected by the real Nocturne disappears when the cloud disappears. E — Unspeakable Horror: There wasn’t much inspiring me to change Nocturne’s E other than the possibility of draining the life’s tank beneath the armor; so easy to attack, so defenseless. Still up for interpretation. R — Paranoia: Nocturne does the whole dash thing; instead his recast allows him to swap places with an amalgamation without an animation. When enemies are effected under Shroud of Darkness, Nocturne himself gets the invincibility for 1.5 seconds like popping his old spellshield, and is able to disguise himself as another amalgamation. I forgot to mention each amalgamation and ultimate cast will AOE strike upon landing and give life back to Nocturne no matter the passive’s cooldown. Each individual abducted to these shadows, be careful not to group too close, and when you don’t know who to trust, your own plays towards Nocturne the one who knows you most.

*Ultimate, loses darkness, darkness goes to W, ultimate only has a large dash, dash can be recast again to switch spots with an amalgamation of Nocturne, old spellshield intertwined in Nocturne’s ultimate but without the need to press an extra ability. Can only gain spellshield (invincibility to all damage) under W's duration and while/after dashing. Shroud of Darkness is his W, sending an impairing fog that quickly channels a large radius across the map, sends amalgamations of Nocturne to all enemy champions caught in the cloud of darkness but only in Nocturne’s vision. The amalgamations deal Umbra Blades in grey health, Nocturne (can) procs all Umbra Blade damage with his Q’s Shadow Blade. Nocturne loses Umbra Blades when in a dusk trail created by the Q and deals “real time” damage, basically acting as a portal and Nocturne and his enemy exist in the same space. Every time Nocturne or one of his amalgamations land on an enemy champion by a dash no matter whether Umbra Blades is on cooldown, each target is effected by the amplified auto attack damage and each target around them, and all damage is healed back to Nocturne.

0 Nocturne deals no damage, 100% of his damage comes from auto attacks and only his auto attack enhancers. Auto attacks show their damage in grey.

1 Passive is what is quickly recognizable from Nocturne’s old kit. You deal a slashed AOE auto attack every few seconds and get healed from its damage, reducing its cooldown with auto attacks.

2 I want you to remember the ghost. Let’s not forget, Mpctirme Umbra Blades only attack from his own realm in which he no longer deals real HP damage to his opponents, instead his damage shows in grey HP done over time; and Nocturne will inherently counter any champion that gains a grey HP scaling shield.

3 Champions fully effected by grey health remain on the battlefield as a ghost, if Nocturne Q’s them they immediately die, but champions which are ghosts will respawn immediately.

4 This means a ghost can remain laning and teamfighting as a means of Nocturne drawing out their death as long as possible. Nocturne being rewarded with an instant kill.

5 Any champ who never reached full ghost status will start to have their grey removed after some time, as a means to fight Nocturne off and his nightmare. Nocturne can’t do anymore damage to a ghost until he lands his next Q and kills them completely.

6 You can’t remove the ghost status as the damage has already been done, and Nocturne has defeated you, but certain champions have unique ways to heal from grey HP.

7 Q has the exact same feeling you once had. You can execute with it, chase people endlessly, move around quickly, up your dueling, cast it during ultimate dash. But this time it is completely castless.

8 The only difference with Q, is it deals no damage but consumes any grey health the opponent has from all sources. Sorry Kled.

9 IMPORTANT, when on a dusk trail all your damage is reverted back to dealing RED HP (enemies). You now get to deal real life damage.

10 Nocturne’s W scales 3 times with each range being instrumental to the Nocturne. In early game when your ultimate is shortest, due to W acting as a channel, this is the stage where the channel is shortest, and quick trades can happen sooner. When it’s mid game it’s neutral and shouldn’t be better or worse than the other two, supports a balanced consistency between both strengths and weaknesses. Late game creates a very large circle of black fog, thus balancing it the most for late game enemies to have more time to react and prepare defenses.

11 Don’t know if Nocturne will have to channel the W literally or he can move freely while the cloud begins to channel itself until total darkness.

12 Yes by spellshield I meant invincibility to all damage.

13 I think it’s important to encourage W being a high cooldown spell, which at the same time encouraging Nocturne’s to build cooldown, whilst at the same time drawing Nocturne’s to a predicament of wanting to build botrk and such attack speed items which offer no cooldown. After all most Nocturne’s can find fun in optimal build paths.

14 I have no problem with ultimate simply being a large dash that gives no warning, despite its range; as it is only an amplified auto attack thanks to his passive. Think of ultimate like a stick that pokes your enemy with your passive, and think of this times 5 because of your W, but also realize you are a diver and you sacrifice your position to dive into the enemy to apply your passive up to 5 times 5 people. (A Nocturne can get sent out to 5 individual enemy champions, if they were all theoretically grouped very close, each gets hit by 25 Nocturne’s in total, but that damage is still conditional and still needs to be procced.)

15 Lest we not forget, Nocturne never has to dive into his enemies and can strategically use his own pawns to try and test the waters before he submits himself. But the damage will never be discovered if Nocturne backs off.

16 So yes the damage from Nocturne’s passive isn’t unique and get stacked. This is fair because the damage isn’t permanent.

17 Ultimate loses its attack damage on landing, instead it always applies Umbra Blades passive proc.

18 Due to Nocturne’s nature of picking the easiest target. I think to solve the problem of not being able to control 4 other Nocturne’s and keep their ability in fooling the opponent, his spellshield ends up being gone, but instead when Nocturne ults and when his W has been activated, he comes in as a wisp of shadow, being untargetable for 1.5 seconds similar to his amalgamations. Nocturne becomes immaterial for 1.5 seconds and can’t be targeted, his champ attacks freely and applies Umbra Blades. Nocturne can’t use his Q or E if he wants to be disguised.

19 Also the ultimate is always encouraged but not mandatory for skill play to be used with his W, this awkward disparity can prove to be counter intuitive and lose to optimal trades. But this is also a great synergy with what is just a large diving ability.

20 Your opponents would have to be really close to each other, and not only that but you need to proc each damage applied onto them with your Q. While the damage potential is quite high, it will practically never reach full damage potential.

21 Remember, Q throws a dusk trail which gives Nocturne dueling statistics, and enemies consciously leave this trail behind them, which always gives Nocturne bonus movespeed. Only difference now, is it is used to proc old auto attack damage and is castless. W replaced ability, steals darkness ability from ultimate, attack speed removed but compensated with multiplicative damage, clones and disguises. E is Unspeakable Horror. Ultimate is a short, medium, then finally large dash, each 3 rank ups increase the W total darkness range, can cast Q mid ultimate dash, always proc your AOE passive upon landing, same goes with W clones, if successfully completed total darkness you’re granted total invincibility for 1.5 seconds, finally recast allows you to switch with an amalgamation at the start of potency with no delay and until they leave the battlefield. Passive originally stays the same but its damage potential can be greatly amplified up to 25 times! Healing as well, such as I think healing should scale by percentage. Now creates ghosts of enemies on the battlefield. All your damage is loaded into your passive, and it shows by the unique trait of Nocturne’s dealing grey health by auto attacks.

22 Total Darkness: The time which Nocturne activates Shroud of Darkness and waits until channel completion reaches it’s max range. After this range has been hit then total darkness sets in, which start to send amalgamations of Nocturne to enemies caught in this darkness. Nocturne has a very small time window to disguise himself as one of these amalgamations with his ultimate ability.

Minions & Monsters Reworking his AOE capability. Minions and monsters across the map are caught in an endless parallel trap over and over again they are sent to be slaughtered. If Nocturne doesn’t kill you, he is just here to meet your worst nightmares. Like anything, minions and monsters caught in Nocturne’s dusk trail are dealt real time damage again like I said, so his Q is the fair resemblance of the master worker of your nightmares. He is the shepherd of the darkness that is consuming and he gets to decide when you can see him. When minions become ghosts they no longer need to be procced by the full grey health bar, but die after a second. Everything Nocturne does to the minion is slightly delayed, besides attacking them. When they are effected by just a minimal amount of damage, they lose it after a second. When a whole wave of minions have died, they try and attack for a second longer before disappearing. Such a slight delay can stop a Nocturne full in his tracks, when he gets ahead of himself he has to stop and not roam too greatly. Minions are easy to attack, but they are our first defenses before total darkness sets in. I mean how Nocturne can full push a wave so quickly and each slight second saved can add up to being the perfect snowballer, always threatening further roams and dives without being contested and is safe for Nocturne to do so. The unannounced enemies of Nocturne at least need a fair advantage for them and this comes in the form of time. After all, its so easy to defend what you can not even see or touch, and then it’s too late. The way Nocturne Q works against minions and monsters. To follow up on Nocturne clearing a wave of minions, he can choose to use his Q while clearing, but remember: Q does no damage, minions quickly start to disperse and can’t always be fully cleared with 1 AOE ability, the only benefit to using Q on a minion wave is to either amplify your auto attack damage with a simple stat boost, or something we call real life damage here. Minions trapped under your dusktrail will die normally without delay by their worst nightmares of course. But also don’t forget you can save yourself a second and kill any minion that is a ghost by Duskbringer Q, to quickly end their suffering and move on to the next objective. Monsters behave the same way. At the start of the clear you won’t have to worry about having a 10 second ability come off cooldown to ensure you killed that red buff. Unfortunately for you enemies can always steal this buff easily if left at a sliver of HP. Combined with smite, you can fully ensure your camp by using Q or Smite and both will consume any grey health left over from your attacks not used on a dusk trail. This can also confuse enemies who might see a bar of grey health on a dragon and mistake it for its real HP. Truly a mastermind you are Nocturne! Completing a full clear, you will suffer from lack of attack speed missing from his new W and losing a second AOE spell — I hope to make back in improving his base attack speed and generosity given to his passive so meekly designed for the jungle. In a standard gank scenario, assume everyone in the game is level 6 and the enemy jungler does not exist, and all lanes are in an even state. Nocturne has two choices to immediately dash to someone with or without his W off cooldown; he would lose out on the invulnerability for 1.5 seconds and pseudo-doubled attack speed. I see a full health Nocturne more incentivized to use his W before he ults; for the free invulnerability and doubled attack speed. However if Nocturne was low on HP, he can use his W after ulting to be given a huge burst of healing, because his amalgamations automatically always proc his passive healing and AOE.

In case it wasn’t so obvious, I would consider his pre-6 ganks gutted, his Q does no damage. To make up for that you would require a second Nocturne to attack anyone you gank. What also isn’t so obvious is the reason more than one Nocturne will exist, is because I no longer attach an attack speed bonus to his W. The amalgamation of Nocturne is a 1:1 version, for balance issues it can reach 0.9:1 or 1.2:1 more or less. You can associate this false attack speed bonus to reach upwards of 500% if you attack 5 champions simultaneously. For further balance reasons I would assume the amalgamation isn’t given attack speed boosts from Ardent Censers or runes, but it is only from Nocturne’s base attack speed and base attack speed given from items.

If any things not really clear, imagine this, 100% of Nocturne’s damage only comes from his auto attacks, his Q, E and Ultimate no longer deal any damage. Instead he has an attack damage steroid still from his Q, and his passive is always being applied from an amalgamation, or his ultimate even if it is on cooldown. Also it might sound confusing a little bit here, but his ultimate will still be considered weak if it hits a solo target, but is improved upon if it hits at least 2 targets, this damage split is more crucial than putting damage onto one target.

I see this change scaling better into the late game. Nocturne’s who prioritize attack speed will have never noticed damage from his Q regardless, as well I think the majority of Nocturne’s damage in the early game, comes from the attack damage steroid he gains on his auto attacks and not the burst damage from the skill shot.

Nocturne is under tuned due to how an amalgamation works. In League it is very easy to walk away from melee champs. If an amalgamation is a 1:1 version of Nocturne, both have the same movement speed, but the other can’t run as fast as you can.

Being subsided for his early game, we now acknowledge auto attacks tend to be weaker early game and stronger later in the game. Old Nocturne works the opposite way, his Attack Damage on his ult worked better early game and weaker in later stages.

Nocturne and the amalgamations benefit from on-hit bonuses only on the dash, any future auto attacks from an amalgamation are only based off Attack Damage and Attack speed.

The major counter play I see in Nocturne, is if he is left on the battlefield he simply won’t have enough tricks left in his sleeve and has to run out and wait for his large cooldown on his R and W to come back up. It would be easier to stick around and forget about cooldowns if you were fighting only 1 opponent however. He is easy to catch out and kill, and his W and E have a significant delay, but also his Q is castless, and he can escape a little easier purely as walking away.

That unspeakable horror. Let me not surprise you by saying your dueling does come from that tether. You’re attacking the opponent where it hurts most, where it benefits our damage source and when your opponents can’t fight back. When you watch your opponents slowly sink into the depths of their dreams, ripping out their resistances. Fading through the battle those voices echoing please don’t tear me apart these grim thoughts thrown around twist me up and leave me sinking into a delirium. You’re too scared to show why don’t you take that mask off Nocturne!

What about the hidden ghost passive? It’s a risky addition to League, when Nocturne isn’t attacking someone on a dusk trail they lose their HP, but only as grey health damage. So Nocturne no longer exists in the same way to an opponent then it exists to us. When an opponent finds himself falling into a dream, they will shift to a state of non existence, no longer will they exist on the map the way they appear. They will be marked with a debuff and only be shown as a ghost, walking as they appear normal. His only option at this point is to Q the enemy to instantly kill them, if he somehow dies or never does this then that champion will just exist as a ghost on the map until Nocturne decides to kill them. What problems this creates can only be considered as strategy, its hard to tell how it would effect a regular League match without play testing. For now I call it aram syndrome, and people who turn into ghosts are more incentivized to basically int into the enemies. After all, Nocturne killed them fairly and brought their health to 0, it’s their own fault if they get greedy with it and lose an objective for their team because they die instantly on the next team fight. So, it’s risky to trust that power not only to Nocturne, but an opponent who isn’t smart enough to know what to do in that situation. On the plus side they will respawn instantly. Any champ who never reached full ghost status will start to have their grey health quickly depleted when Nocturne’s presence is gleaning. In my opinion this little niche would age well, as players overtime would start telling their allies to int as a means to end their ghost status, practically a sacrificial lamb to the darkness.

Nocturne’s not the ghost. His enemies turned into the ghost.

I'm glad I can keep you awake.

The Nocturne you were looking for hasn't left the stage.

No you can't fully submerge the world in dark.

On the plus side you can watch your friends be tortured.

Not being able to see, and slowly die while sitting on the edge of the black cloud.

And anything that kept you gleaming towards the full cloaked black mage.

It's lights out and we're all too late.

Wait, wait wait, don't leave me out in the dar-

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed the dream, look no further then a new stone unturned.