It’s that time of year when Riot highlights its plans for the future in the Champion Roadmap series. This month, the League of Legends developer provided an update on Aatrox, Akali, Nunu and a dark new support champion.
Last year, the developer combined its Champion Update and New Champions Teams in order to have more flexibility in its release schedule and to be better able to adapt to the needs of players and League over time. Throughout League’s existence, the challenge of reworking outdated champions while still keeping the game fresh and exciting with new champions and ways to play has been a big motivator for Riot.
In this month’s Roadmap, Lead Producer of Champions Ryan Mireles addressed the developer’s goals for bringing new champions to the game.
“The bar is high for new champs, and moving forward, every new champion will offer unique ways to play. As such, we will be slightly ramping down the amount of new champions we release in order to make sure every release is breaking the boundaries of the game. That said, we know it’s important to keep League modern and fresh, so we’ll be ramping up our VGU releases, which will also allow us to catch up on the amount of champions currently feeling neglected or outdated.”
Perhaps the biggest news to come out of this month’s Roadmap is that of a dark new support champion. The upcoming support seems to be aquatic-themed and will have a darker and deeper thematic than most of the game’s current support cast. According to Riot, the champion may have a terrifying twist, since it will be “an aggressive playmaker, someone who doesn’t just save a drowning ally, but who forces their enemies to drown themselves … by their own hands.”
However, if the new champion follows the same timeframe Kai’Sa did after her reveal in a Champion Roadmap post, players may have to wait a few months to see whatever sea monster Riot has in store.
The Aatrox update sounds like it’s coming up very soon though, for a few reasons. First, it’s been over a year since his update was initially announced, which is very unlike Riot. It also seems that Riot is almost done with the update’s development, thanks to details of his new voiceover, theme, abilities and even a teaser image of his new sword in today’s Roadmap.
The Roadmap also detailed an update for Akali that seemed pretty straightforward. The ninja-themed champion will keep her dual-damage scaling, her mobility, and her shroud. However, her shroud will have a different mechanic and most of these features will be heavily altered to fit in with her new design. Akali players can also look forward to some expansion of the champion’s lore very soon that will dive into what her life looks like a couple years in the future.
Finally, today’s Roadmap discussed Riot’s update plans for Nunu and his yeti, Willump. The team plans to rebuild the duo from the ground up, turning them into a whimsical fellowship with a focus on friendship. Aside from this theme, few details on the update were provided, so it will likely be a while before players see these changes.