What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Riot design a crap ton of different abilities for champions in the game, but sometimes they
just don’t end up suiting the champion or are just too awkward to be used properly by
players.
It’s always interesting for me to research different champions and how they were developed,
and this leads to finding a lot of really cool parts of champions that never saw the
light of day.
It’s pretty fun to think about how different a champion would be if a particular ability
never was scrapped, so we’ve compiled some really interesting ones to share with you.
As always if you like the video hit that like button, and if you don’t hit the dislike.
The first ability I wanna talk about is an ability that was scrapped while Riot were
developing Sion’s rework.
One of the versions of his Q would actually create new terrain, kinda like a little section
of Jarvan’s curved wall, and he could use it to lock people into getting hit.
The problem with it was that when you could position it properly it felt really good to
use, but if you were inexperienced with Sion then it was really difficult to use and ended
up feeling the opposite.
It had a really high skill cap to use it properly, and Riot really want to make sure that most
champions feel really accessible to most players, so the idea was scrapped.
One thing Riot did learn from the development of it though was that Sion really wanted some
way to keep an enemy close by while he bashes them - this is actually what led to Sion getting
a slow on his E. Depending on how long the terrain remained on the ground, this could
have led to some really cool playmaking ability, like stopping an enemy being able to get near
your teammates by using it like an Anivia wall, which would have been pretty cool to
see in Sion’s kit, although it probably doesn’t fit him from a background standpoint
compared to how his Q is now.
Still, we’d like to see more terrain-based abilities in the game at some point because
they allow for some awesome combos, like Vayne condemns into it.
This next one is more like a scrapped version of a current ability, but it has changed a
lot - Diana’s Ultimate.
This actually used to be basically the same as her E, but with a slight difference..
It did absolutely insane AoE damage rather than just pulling enemies in.
She’d channel and pull people in, and then deal true damage to everyone hit.
IronStylus worked on the VFX for the ability before it became Moonfall, and he described
it as a channel that darkened the surrounding area where a projection of crescent moon would
turn into a full moon if channeled fully.
When the channel was finished, Diana would shatter the area for a ton of true damage
along with a resource she had at the time called Scorn.
This was one of the most powerful Ultimate abilities in the game, and it was so difficult
to counter that Riot didn’t even try and balance it.
They just reworked it completely and made sure it didn’t have any damage attached
at all.
IronStylus also attached his early Moonfall mockups, so it’s super cool to see how the
animation probably would have worked, and you can definitely tell they kept it the same
visually for her E.
This would probably have been one of the biggest playstyle altering abilities out of our list.
Rather than being a single target assassin, this version of Moonfall would have turned
her into a crazy engage machine that would destroy entire teams if she was given the
chance.
Next up we have Orianna, and it’s kind of a weird one - her Ultimate was the last part
of her kit to be designed.
The rest of her kit was all sorted and ready to go, but Riot couldn’t really find an
Ultimate that felt right for her.
One of the abilities they tried was to cause Orianna to actually spawn a second orb that
you could control for a short time, in addition to her primary one.
Riot Xypherous stated that this ability made her way too complicated, especially when you
think how difficult she can be already, so the ability ended up being scrapped.
Orianna is challenging to play while you are getting used to the weird ways her abilities
interact, and having a second ball would have just made thing way too crazy.
Honestly I can barely wrap my head around how this would work.
It might be that you could choose between controlling your Ultimate ball or normal ball
by toggling R on and off after it was cast, and then your other abilities could be used
on one ball at a time, or maybe it just literally moved both at the same time and doubled up
the effectiveness of all your abilities.
Either way we can definitely see how much of a headache it would be, so it’s probably
a good thing that Orianna received her Shockwave instead.
It’s been a huge part of competitive League of Legends especially for years, so it seems
like Riot made the right decision.
Third on our list is an ability for an unknown champion - but it might have been designed
for Jayce’s cancelled rework.
Xypherous described the ability to be like a submachine gun, where he had ammo and could
hold down his Q to spam shots out rapid fire.
The idea was that the more bullets you shot, the more erratic the firing arc became, so
you could either use it in short accurate bursts or save up a ton of ammo and then just
unleash hell.
The bullets were about the same size as an Ezreal Q, and it’d root you while you fired.
Pretty interesting ability, but would probably be pretty hard to balance and end up being
only used one way most of the time.
We don’t know whether this was actually for Jayce or not, and if it was we don’t
know what the rest of his rework looked like, so it’s kinda hard to figure out how it
would work with his other abilities.
It would definitely seem weird to rework him from a mobile bruiser to someone that needs
to stand still and fire shots off, so if we ever see this in game it’ll probably be
on a brand new champion where it really makes sense.
Next is a scrapped ability that was actually the core design for a cancelled champion,
the Shapeshifter.
It’s kinda like Empath’s signature skill in Heroes of Newerth - using this ability
would cause Shapeshifter to latch onto an ally champion, protecting them with your health
bar.
The rest of your abilities would revolve around this mechanic.
You wouldn’t move around yourself, you’d just cling to an ally and send out a swarm
of beetles that you could control around the map and attack with.
You basically work like a shield, giving your health bar to an ally and once they took a
certain amount of damage you’d fall off.
The design was actually pretty insane, and led to some awesome plays like latching on
to a friendly Shen and teleporting across the map together to turn a 2v2 into a 4v2
in seconds, letting you destroy everything in a fight.
This champion design gets me really excited personally and we’re well overdue for a
champion that completely alters the way a game would be played.
A release like this would probably break a meta wide open, but it offers a really interesting
take on how you could play League so we’d definitely be happy to see Riot try something
crazy like this in the future.
Abathur from Heroes of the Storm is another example of a really crazy hero design that
could bring a lot of cool new strategies to League, but so far either Riot hasn’t been
able to make it work, or they just deemed it not a healthy play style for the game.
At one point during the Alistar rework around Beta and Season 1, his ultimate was going
to be made to be an AoE cleanse ability, but it was scrapped as Riot decided it would fit
better on a different champion.
It was actually considering for use during the Soraka rework, but they wanted to keep
her global heal as it was a huge part of her identity, so it ended up being scrapped.
Honestly, we’re pretty glad Alistar got his trademark damage reduction Ultimate instead.
He is a big tanky bull after all, and it definitely way better suits his character than randomly
cleansing allies.
The rest of his kit is made to initiate fights and peel, so being able to tower dive with
his combo and survive with his Ultimate
is a great synergy that makes Alistar pretty unique as a support.
Still, with the power of wombo combos through big AoE crowd control effects in the game,
it would be really cool to see a direct counter in the form of an AoE cleanse in the future,
so hopefully Riot will find a good spot for an ability like this one day on a new champion.
Riot Jayway gave us the original concept for Nami’s E, and it would have been easily
the most broken ability on this list - a targeted spell shield.
It worked pretty much the same as Sivir’s Spell shield, but could be put on a target
like Morgana’s Black Shield.
So instead of just stopping CC and some magic damage like Morgana, Nami could basically
completely negate an ability on any member of her team.
Pretty insane, and not hard to see why it was scrapped.
Morgana’s Black Shield is an insanely powerful ability because stopping CC effects can single
handedly decide whether a teammate can escape or will be stuck and killed, but a targeted
spellshield would be able to prevent damage too.
Skills like a Jinx Ult that wouldn’t be blocked by Black Shield could be totally nullified
by placing Nami’s original E on whatever ally is about to tank the shot, and for a
non-ultimate ability it would probably have quite a low cooldown.
Timing would be a huge part of using an ability like this effectively, but honestly it would
just be too strong in the hands of an experienced player.
Last up we have Yorick, and we talked a lot about him and his future rework in the past,
but one ability I didn’t mention was his old scrapped Ultimate.
Riot Xelnath stated that Yorick had one Ultimate where he would summon a line of creeping hands
out of the ground, rooting everyone in his path.
This is pretty much Zyra’s E, especially in her Haunted skin, but considering it was
an Ultimate we can imagine it was like her E on steroids - probably way more damage,
range or an insane root duration.
From a flavor perspective this is pretty awesome for Yorick, he is the gravedigger of League
of Legends after all so summoning corpses of the dead to lock down his enemies is a
pretty cool way to go about it.
Zyra does kinda have a monopoly on the ‘root all targets in a line’ design now, but some
kind of decent lockdown would go a long way into making Yorick a bit more viable.
Hopefully we’ll see at least some form of hard CC in Yorick’s future rework.
That wraps up our list of scrapped abilities for today, make sure you let us know which
one is your favorite in the comment section.
There’s quite a lot of interesting design space in some of these abilities, so keep
your eyes peeled in case they show up in a future champion or rework!
It looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like, subscribe
if you want, thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!