What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
The Hydrosoul was a champion that was being developed in the very early stages of League
of Legends, that actually had a pretty fleshed out backstory, and a lot of potential.
Unfortuneately he’s been cancelled, but after doing some research it’s honestly
so cool to see what the hydrosoul could have been.
Here are some of my favorite comments, where I asked what character from any universe you
guys wish would be added in to League of Legends.
Today I want to know, what’s your favorite thing about the hydrosoul?
And if you enjoy the video hit that like button and if you don’t please hit the dislike,
because if this video hits 10,000 ratings I’m gonna buy myself another pizza.
Anyways let’s get started.
The hydrosoul was in development around late 2009 and early 2010, and was officially announced
as cancelled on October 7th, 2010, by lead champion designer Riot Ezreal.
He was set up to be some kind of a water wizard, that used water magic in an offensive way,
similar to how annie uses fire magic.
Riot has never announced any official word on the Hydrosoul, other than when Ezreal stated
on the forums that he had been cancelled.
However, that’s more than enough, because confirmation of his cancellation confirms
that he did exist in the first place for sure.
As well, during the beta stages of league of legends, the game actually had a ridiculous
amount of extra information that was scattered throughout the game files and hidden in nooks
and crannies, so by extracting data from the game files, information on a lot of characters
surfaced, as well as some information on characters no one had heard about or thought to conceive
were true.
The Hydrosoul was one of those characters discovered by analyzing the data in the game
files, and upon this comment from Riot Ezreal, it’s proof that they had planned on him
being a champion, and had spent at least some amount of time developing him.
The full name of the hydrosoul was “Well Soterios, the Hydrosoul” Well Soterios is
technically his main name, but I think calling his the hydrosoul sounds so much cooler so
I’m probably gonna stick to doing that throughout the video.
As for why the Hydrosoul got cancelled, we can’t be too sure, but there’s some rumors
and some meaningful evidence that the reason why the hydrosoul got cancelled, was because
at the time, Riot was unable to animate the water effects properly and make it look as
awesome as it should for a champion like this, since they just didn’t have the technology
at the time, so they scrapped his idea.
Remember this was back in beta, in 2009, league of legends was a tiny tiny company with a
small team and didn’t have too much technological power, I mean they were drawing their ability
icons in Microsoft paint, they didn’t even have photoshop man!
But, it’s safe to say that now they absolutely do have the technology to bring to life, which
makes me even more excited about the potential future for the Hydrosoul.
Because despite being cancelled, he actually had progressed quite a bit in the development
process, especially when it comes to his story, his full story and lore is pretty much fleshed
out, and he even had some abilities to go along with his backstory as well.
Let’s take a look at his story, as quoted from the League of Legends Wiki.
Soterios gathered men and would toss them below the thrashing waves until water filled
the poor soul's lungs and he was rendered unconscious.
Soterios would then proceed to then Rebirth the lost man by bringing him back to shore,
and pressing his holy hands upon the victim's chest until he was brought back choking and
coughing, reborn into the world as acolytes to the High Priest.
For years Soterios conducted his Rituals of Rebirth unchallenged.
Grown fanatical in his success with the Rituals, Soterios was sure in his belief that his own
Rebirth would result in a divine transformation of his body, elevating him to an even higher
level of power.
At a command from Soterios, his acolytes lowered the High Priest into the cold, dark sea.
Unfortunately, his Rebirth did not go as planned and as water filled his lungs, the dying High
Priest made one last plea to the higher powers.
Reborn by the Immortals, he renamed himself Well, the Hydrosoul, and lives only to do
their bidding.
Now I don’t know about you guys, but to me that story seems cool as hell.
He’s like this holy water mage gone wrong that become a product of his own devices,
and had a full blown stroke of karma as he became what he had forced others to become
in the past.
And any sort of interaction with the gods in league of legends is pretty awesome, considering
the hydrosoul exists in the form that he is in because the gods made him that way, and
he is like some kind of twisted enslaved disciple that the gods use for their own purposes,
and man, what an awesome character.
And to back up his story, we actually have a decent amount of information on what his
abilities could have been.
It’s not perfect so you’ll have to bear with me and my estimates, but the information
we have about him definitely shows some potential.
The hydrosoul’s passive was called Vortex.
This is the ability that is hardest to judge as to what it did, since it’s his passive
really, but I speculate that it’s possible that had some kind of interactions with the
rest of his kit, although it’s true that back then most passives were actually just
that, passives, meaning that they just gave you stats, rather than some crazy complex
abilities, so maybe it worked along with his ap to give a boost to his other abilities
on casting them, or maybe give him attack damage based on his ability power or something.
His Q was torrent.
There’s a joke about him being a pirate somewhere in there, but I’ll spare you guys
for now.
My best guess for this ability is that is was something similar to miss fortune’s
E but was an area of effect rainstorm instead, but still dealt damage and slowed opponents
who walked through it.
His W was an ability called Typhoon.
This one is pretty interesting.
At first I thought it might be kind of like a mini nami ultimate, that was a lot smaller,
but maybe a lot faster, in that it was a skillshot that shot out a wave that knocked up anyone
hit by it, but I think a better way to describe it is maybe like a toned down Aurelion Sol
ultimate, in that it’s almost kind of instant, whereas nami’s ultimate has a really slow
missile speed.
This could be a really powerful ability, and the main strength of his kit, or his main
piece of utility.
Based on the icon it definitely had something to do with waves, and that kind of concept
likely would have been a pretty nice fit and give him some decent power in a strong ability.
His E was an ability called Soothing Aura, and this one we have a lot of information
on.
We know for sure that this was a passive ability that read, PASSIVE: Well emanates soothing
waves of energy that refresh nearby friendly units, with the effect to passively give mana
to all nearby allies, with the MANA GAINED BY NEARBY ALLIED UNITS PER SECOND scaling
at a rate of 0.5 / 0.6 / 0.7 / 0.8 / 0.9.
Now on paper that doesn’t seem very good at all, especially since back then mana costs
were much higher than they are today, so it’s possible that his E also had an active or
toggle component to go along with this passive aura, otherwise it might have not been the
best ability, or maybe his other basic abilities made up for where his Soothing Aura ability
lacked.
And lastly his ultimate was called Water Elemental.
This one’s pretty obvious, I mean if you think back to his lore about how he had all
of these acolytes working for him and such, and his ultimate almost certainly would just
summon a water elemental at a location.
I’m pretty sure about this one, because similar to how we have a really basic, underdeveloped
in-game model for the hydrosoul, we also have a basic-underdeveloped model for his water
elemental.
It looked like this, and took the form of a seahorse.
It’s possible it functioned a bit like Annie’s tibbers, but I’d wager the ability would
be a whole lot more about what you actually did with the elemental during it’s duration,
rather than just frontloading everything on the initial cast like tibbers does.
All in all, I don’t think his kit sounds like the most amazing thing ever, but it does
have some potential, and it fits in with his lore quite nicely for the most part.
Although some of the info I have is just speculation, it’s not unlikely that Riot had a completely
fleshed out kit for him, considering we have a really good idea of what at least 2 of his
5 abilities were just from extracting bits and pieces from the game files in the past.
I’ve always thought the Hydrosoul was one of the more interesting champions that has
been cancelled in the early stages of League of Legends, since unlike most cancelled champmions,
the hydrosoul has not had any major parts of his kit or character concepts reincarnated
into another champion.
While some of the more well known cancelled champions like Seth and Omen, have been very
much brought to life in the forms of Azir and Rek’Sai, well Soterious even to this
day still has potential to be fleshed out a bit more and released without any redesigns
or major changed, which is awesome to consider that it’s not impossible that he will become
a champion, and even if he won’t, his character could still be brought to life in a new form.
Although he shares a vaguely similar theme to name in terms of the water magic thing
going on, there’s no doubt that he’s a completely different character, and I highly
doubt Nami took much inspiration from the Hydrosoul at all.
As well, the hydrosoul’s backstory is something that I think is super interesting and cool,
and could make for a really awesome character.
The fact that he might have been cancelled simply because at the time, Riot didn’t
have the technology to due the hydrosoul justice, not because his story didn’t fit, or because
they couldn’t piece together a gameplay kit, and you really can’t help but hope
for the potential of the Hydrosoul being added into the game in the future.
No matter what happened in the past, there’s no doubt that Riot definitely does have the
technology to make the Hydrosoul nowadays, and I for one, am hoping that day will eventually
come.
So either way, here’s to the future, and my hope that Well soterious the hydrosoul,
can be made into something awesome eventually.
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!