The new champ in League of Legends is Vex, a grumpy Yordle mage. The special thing: Her ultimate is a ‘dash’, actually a skill for melee champions. Riot Games is now explaining what the hell they were thinking with this LoL champ.
This is the new mage in LoL: It was known for a long time that a mage would come to League of Legends in 2021: LoL gave a preview of which new champs would still appear.
The mage was introduced as someone who is “always annoyed by hyperactive champs”. It was said that these guys buzzing around her were so annoying that she started to “beat the life out of them.” Nice Yordle!
Originally, Vex was planned as an artillery mage, but in the end, she became a relatively classic sorceress.
Vex is now an emo mage who appears depressed and grumpy. She is accompanied by a “shadow” that looms over her. She also looks like an emo smurf, her sweatshirt is too long, and her sleeves dangle down when she moves.
Everything about her signals: “Leave me alone. I don’t want anything to do with you. And besides, I don’t care about anything anyway.”
This is the special thing about Vex’s skill set: Vex is apparently clearly designed as an “anti-mobility” mage. One of her skills is meant to interrupt opponents’ “dashes”. She also marks anyone who jumps around in her vicinity via dash or blink. She really seems to hate “hyperactive champions”.
Her W works as a shield around her, distributing a shockwave to nearby enemies.
With her R, she throws her shadow forward and jumps to it when the shadow hits an enemy. Vex thus engages in melee combat herself as a mage. This is unusual. If the opponent dies during the action, she can reuse her ultimate.
Riot Games admits: “Definitely a bit weird”
This is how Riot Games explains the champ: A developer from Riot Games has now explained the champion and why Vex goes into melee with her “R” and can use the ultimate multiple times. The developer RiotAxes admits that it is indeed “a bit weird” (via twitter).
He explains:
- On one hand, they wanted to design Vex so that she works at close range because they found the idea of a mage in melee intriguing
- On the other hand, she can reuse the ultimate multiple times because it corresponds to her personality. Because she loves dealing damage to people, but would never admit it because it is totally lame to care about anything. But when she does hit with the shadow, there is a kind of psychological pressure to do it again immediately.
- Moreover, the ultimate is simply super cool. Even if it feels somehow wrong for a mage, they at Riot Games simply found the skill cool. To prevent it from becoming too powerful, they gave it an extra-long cooldown.
Vex is expected to arrive with patch 11.19 to League of Legends on September 23.
More about Vex’s skills and abilities can be read here:
LoL: New champ – Vex is an emo mage who attacks with shadows, who attacks with shadows
