What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Braum is a champion that has been relevant in the competitive scene ever since his release.
His defense power, combed with his crowd control come together to create an awesome support
champion with a great mix of utility, damage, and tankiness.
And to top it off, who could hate a guy with such a lovable personality like braum.
But during his development, he was a lot different to how he eventually turned out, so join me
today in taking a look back before his release on May 12th, 2014, to find out what Braum
could have been.
Here are some of my favorite comments, where I asked what you guys thought about Aurelion
sol.
Today I want to know what character, from any universe, do you guys wish was added into
League of Legends?
And if you enjoy the video hit that like button and if you don’t please hit the dislike,
and if this video hits 10,000 ratings I’m gonna buy myself some ice cream in honor of
Braum.
Anyways let’s get started.
To kick off the development process, designer Riot Wreckz came up with this concept of having
a support champion that would jump in front of his ally in order to protect them with
a shield, and making that element of gameplay as awesome as it could be.
And there’s actually a cool story behind that, which Riot wrecks talked about during
a panel at pax east 2015.
He was playtesting the early versions of Jinx with Riot Gypsylord, who was supporting him
with Leona down at the bot lane, and he was laning versus playing thresh and Graves.
And as they laned, he overextended a bit to get a cs, and was in position to get hit by
a hook.
However, Leona came to the rescue, and flashed in front of riot wreckz to tank the hook completely,
and as the fight continued they would turn it into a nice double kill for jinx and his
ally.
And that idea of blowing everything to just get in front of your ad carry and save them
was something Wreckz thought was awesome, and he wanted to expand on that idea further,
and create a new support from that gameplay which all of the rioters agreed was a really
cool aspect of the support role, that everyone kind of kid naturally as a support, but that
the champion’s kits didn’t exactly contribute to that kind of gameplay.
And so they started with that gameplay mechanic which they really liked of shielding your
teammates, and looked at a number of different characters it, and the attitude of being a
protector, might be a good fit with.
And they settled upon the concept of an engineer.
But wait?
Braum’s not an engineer.
Well, Braum's initial design was actually a character called called CeCe, the Hextech
Engineer.
She was from Piltover and instead of an ice shield she would have used a Hextech one,
that kind of resembled this big complicated workbench almost.
Riot showcased their concept art for Cece at the pax east panel, which shows off her
shield and you can see how it was kind of like a battering ram almost in the way that
she holds in, and you can also see how cece has her character art pretty fleshed out from
just this one picture.
She was going to be this spunky engineer girl from piltover, really sarcastic and energetic,
kind of like a mix between Vi and tristana in terms of personality almost.
Now the champion design team actually spent quite a bit of time working on Cece, developing
her gameplay kit, and working on her character and lore, and they messed around with a lot
of ideas here and there, but couldn’t settle on the exact idea they wanted to use to bring
CeeCee to life.
And so What ended up happening was as they started developing specifically the gameplay
for CeeCee more and more.
Her kit started becoming substantially more about the shield gameplay, and her having
this big workbench that looks and functions like a shield, and her blocking stuff with
it, and they realized that they weren't trying to make an engineer anymore they were just
trying to make the coolest shield champion that they could.
And that's when they decided to move away from the engineer concept, and officially
add CeeCee to the library of cancelled champions.
Although they thought her concepts were really cool, they didn't want to end up with a champion
that felt like it was a half shield champion and half engineer, since it just ended up
not delivering on either of the two at the end of the day.
And so they continued with that idea of creating the coolest shield champion they could, and
so they looked at a few more characters, and took a little bit of inspiration from someone
you might have heard about, Angus.
Probably one of the most popular fan-made champion concepts in existence, this art showcasing
Angus was made as like a joke about how League of Legends didn’t have any tough, manly
supports, where all the supports were girls or taric who’s kind of feminine.
And if you haven’t seen the angus concept, I mean take a look, it’s pretty funny, and
generated a lot of popularity when it was made a few years ago, and the excitement and
popularity of the Angus concept at the time demonstrated that there was a desire for a
manly support champion, and with that inspiration, they came up with the idea for Braum, but
he was still a bit different.
He was initially conceived as a Demacian character to be almost like this hardcore protector
of justice, and was super serious about protecting his team and everything, but the super serious
personality made it so that jumping in front of your allies to protect them wasn’t something
you did for fun, but rather something you did as an obligation, like you were forced
to do it, and it made him lackluster to play, so they transformed his personality to be
a lot more jovial, fearless, and a lot more light-hearted, and so he was moved to Freljord
in order for his lore to go along a lot better with the personality they wanted him to have.
Braum is one of the very few examples of a champion that had his design begin with his
gameplay concept, rather than beginning with the character concept, so unfortuneatly his
kit didn’t go through as many interesting redesigns as the other champions I’ve looked
at in the past, however Braum did go through a lot of different ultimates.
They wanted something primarily focused on disengage and making him better at peeling,
and it took a while to eventually come to the ultimate he has now.
One of his earlier ultimate designs included something that was kind of a delayed chain
knockback comboed with a knockup.
This ended up not worked out in his kit primarily because with the stun from his passive being
on delay combos with having an ultimate that lacked versatility, proved to be quite punishing.
Eventually they settled upon the existing version of Glacial Fissure from wanting something
that was a thematic fit for Braum and also had substantial gameplay and versatility,
and really feel like some amazing physical action.
And with everything said about the development process that Braum underwent throughout his
design, there’s no doubt that the pieces of his kit came together quite nicely.
Dashing to shield an ally to block that one key ability is incredibly satisfying, and
he still pulls off this feel of being a macho muscle man that packs a bunch, with an awesome
and entertaining personality to back it up.
His ultimate is incredible to cast, and his passive makes you feel like even his auto
attacks pack a strong punch since every one of them counts towards that goal of hitting
your stun, making it so much more than just a simple auto.
He’s come a long way from Ceecee, from being this engineer girl, but the changes he went
through undoubtedly turned out for the better, as we were given this awesome support champion.
And who knows, maybe we’ll see ceecee’s concepts reincarnated in the future on a different
champion.
And that’s just about it.
If you enjoyed the video subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see
you guys next time!