After Mel, the next new champion for League of Legends will appear in 2025. In the style of the new season, Riot has finally revealed Yunara. MyMMO editor Nikolas Hernes was able to play her already and was impressed by how good she feels.
Who is Yunara? Yunara is a new champion in LoL, primarily designed as an ADC. She is a hyper-carry and relies on classic strengths like on-hit effects, good movement, and the late game.
- Passive ability: Her critical hits deal additional magic damage.
- Ultimate: Her most important ability is probably the ultimate, as it not only enhances Yunara for a short time, but also modifies the effects of her other abilities.
- Q ability: With every auto-attack, Yunara gains stacks of
Unleash
(if she lands a critical hit, even an extra one). When she reaches the maximum number of stacks, she can activate the Q, granting her increased attack speed, additional damage, and a small funnel-shaped AOE effect for a short time.- Enhanced Q: During the ultimate, she receives the enhancements of the Q for its duration.
- W ability: Yunara shoots a spinning projectile that deals damage to enemies and slows them down. At the end of its range, the projectile grows larger and deals additional damage.
- Enhanced W: When she activates the W during the ultimate, she shoots a beam instead of the projectile, slowing enemies and dealing damage to each foe within range.
- E ability: Yunara gains increased movement speed for a short time.
- Enhanced E: Instead of the speed boost, Yunara can dash a small distance. This also works over various walls.
Through her passive ability and her Q, Yunara primarily focuses on crit or on-hit builds, and the gameplay is also quite enjoyable, as I found out.
Great animations ensure a good gameplay feel
How does Yunara feel? At a Riot Games event, I was able to try out the new champion, and although I usually play bruisers or assassins, Yunara felt quite good, especially when given on-hit items like Guinsoo’s.
This is mainly due to the great animations for the normal attacks and abilities. Every right-click felt fluid. Together with the sound design, just farming minions was really fun. It has been a long time since I had a champion that was presented so well audiovisually.
If you also have items that produce sounds on auto-attacks, it is like music to the ears of every LoL fan. In an FAQ, Max Perlman, Lead Gameplay Designer at Riot Games, explained that they wanted to create an ADC that feels traditional
. However, they wanted to create a modern approach
for fans of this playstyle.
In my opinion, the team has succeeded in this, as although Yunara is a classic auto-attack ADC, she feels modern and, alongside all the other ADCs that focus on abilities, quite refreshing as well.
How strong will Yunara be? As an auto-attack-based champion, she is mainly dependent on raw stats. One has to see what her scalings and stats will be like on the live servers to assess this accurately.
The meta will also greatly influence how good she is. If her on-hit and crit items are strong, she will likely be strong as well. One must focus on her Q during the laning phase and time the attacks with the stacks.
Especially in uncoordinated fights, she will likely shine with her ultimate. However, if opponents time her W and ultimate well, they can effectively counter her after a short time. The last new champion was quite strong at release: The new champion in LoL is a bit too strong, will be nerfed after only 2 days
