League of Legends developer Riot Games announced today that they're going to rework four Champions. Their hope is to make each character feel unique.
Their current focus is a group of champions they call "juggernauts." The characters are melee fighters who become very hard to kill in the late game but suffer from a lack of mobility. They consider Nasus the prototypical juggernaut. While they're not changing him, they're going to change four other champions that they feel occupy the same "tactical space": Darius, Garen, Skarner and Mordekaiser.
Riot is changing how Darius plays through his Passive. He can still make enemies bleed through Hemorrhage. However, if he gets five stacks of Hemorrhage on an enemy, he'll gain a temporary bugg called Bloodrage that boosts his damage and lets him apply five stacks of Hemorrhage instantly to enemies. The idea, Riot says, is to allow him to fill the "cleanup" role they envisioned for him:
The damage amp upon fully stacking Bloodrage is huge, but he still has to work to get it. Opponents will have to be much more cautious about letting the Hand of Noxus get his passive stacks going - preventing him from gaining stacks means he won’t go into Bloodrage which, in turn, means he’ll have a much harder time chaining his executions together. But when he does… well… there will be pentakills.
Garen is also getting a Passive change. He won't be regenerating health anymore. Instead, he'll now do extra damage to the enemy player with the most recent kills, who will be clearly designated as the team's "Villain." If he casts his Ultimate on the Villain, it will cause true damage instead of magic damage. This means it will ignore magic resistance and armor.
Skarner's change is arguably the coolest of the bunch. He's not getting a new or revised ability. Instead, he brings a new minigame to the match. When there's a Skarner in a Summoner's Rift game, six crystal spires will appear on the map. If captured by Skarner's allies, these spires will give him a movement and attack speed boost in that area. The enemy team can also capture them, though, to get gold and brief vision. More importantly, capturing these spires lets them prevent Skarner from having them for a period of time.
Riot's plan for Mordekaiser is to change him from a solo laner to a bottom lane carry. Creeping Death will now only deal damage if he's near his targeted ally. Furthermore, he'll get full experience from last-hitting minions even if another teammate is nearby.
Mordekaiser players will also have a new reason to dragons. He can curse the dragon by dealing damage. If his team manages to kill it then, Mordekaiser will then summon a ghost dragon that can follow him around the battlefield. That's bound to make him a much more popular character.
While Riot only detailed their plans for these four characters, they're going to be reworking other similar champions in the future:
We’ve plans for other tanky melee carries (specifically Shyvana and Olaf), and broader plans beyond that for the entire champion roster. Again, our goal is that every champion in League has specific reasons to be picked, or brings a unique and awesome thing to each game.
Riot has been updating several characters lately in addition to adding new ones. For example, they revamped Ashe and Ryze earlier this year. Miss Fortune and Gangplank were also given makeovers in time for the current Burning Tides event
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