What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
So this is gonna be the first Scrapped Abilities episode we’ve made in a while, and based
on feedback from you guys we’re actually gonna spend a little less time on each ability
so we can cover even more abilities than usual, so hopefully you guys like the change.
And if you enjoy the video leave a like on it, or let us know in the comments below.
And be sure to subscribe for more videos!
The first scrapped ability for today is an old version of Kayn’s Ultimate called Army
of Me.
At this point, Riot wanted Kayn to have a seperate Ultimate for each transformation.
This was one of the first ideas for his Slayer Ultimate, and it allowed you to target an
enemy champion to create clones of yourself.
The first clone would appear near the primary target, and then more clones would spawn near
enemy champions in a cone behind the main target, so you could potentially spawn a whole
bunch of clones if you lined it up just right.
The clones would all attack their targets, dealing 30% of Kayn’s damage, and healing
him for 100% of that damage.
It seems like champion designer Daniel Z Klein already knew at this point that the Ultimate
needed more work, but it’s an interesting concept that kinda builds into Kayn’s backstory
as one of Zed’s shadow clan members.
Another scrapped Ultimate was an early Rek’Sai concept shared by Riot Beat Punchbeef.
Originally, Riot had the idea that through her Ultimate, Rek’Sai’s team would be
able to use the same tunnel with her, working kinda like a team-wide Thresh lantern.
Although it was cool in theory, there were a few problems.
To start with, you’d use the Ultimate to get into the middle of the fight, which is
rarely where your squishy teammates want to be.
Another problem was that Rek’Sai’s gameplay at the time was really all about flanking
into fights, and those routes didn’t allow your team to follow you in since you’d be
coming from a different part of the map.
In a Rek’Sai Q&A, Riot Beat Punchbeef actually noted that it could be a really cool ability
for a tank or support in the future as a team-wide map mobility skill.
That makes it super likely that it’s the source of Tahm Kench’s Ultimate Abyssal
Voyage, since it’s essentially the same ability but without a lot of the drawbacks
that it had for Rek’Sai.
Our next two abilities are actually two iterations of Vel'koz kit.
Apparently he was a really tricky champion to nail down, and the only thing that really
stuck around was his Ultimate.
The first scrapped iteration of Vel’s kit had these auto attacks that would tether between
him and his target, slowly increasing in damage and lasting until the target moved out of
range.
Riot Subninja mentioned that he once played this version of Vel against a Vladimir in
a playtest, attacked him once, then they both ran towards Vlad’s tower where he died from
the tether.
That version was instantly scrapped for obvious reasons.
Apparently he also had an ability on his E called ‘Boring Dash’ around this time
too, which as you might have guessed was just a really short range boring dash.
For the second iteration of his kit, Vel’Koz could create a void portal that he’d shoot
his abilities through to amp up the damage, kinda like Jayce’s Acceleration Gate.
His W at the time created another void portal, but this one would shoot little laser beams
that could also be affected by the Void Gate.
Apparently it wasn’t amazing, but it did create tons of super lasers that would fly
all over the place which is pretty funny to imagine in game.
Our next scrapped ability came from Riot Ezreal answering a question about Amumu.
Ezreal had the idea of turning Amumu’s Bandage Toss into League’s own version of Spiderman’s
web swinging.
As well as using Bandage Toss to catch up to enemies, this version of Amumu’s Q would
let him hit terrain at a reduced cooldown, so he could use it to kinda swing around the
map and quickly move from A to B. It was removed for unconfirmed reasons, but it probably had
something to do with the fact that Amumu kinda needs to be a bit slower to balance the rest
of his kit out a bit.
Although it would have been pretty funny to see a hyper-mobile Amumu, the ability was
later recreated for Nautilus as Dredge Line, although it’s not quite spammable enough
to make you feel quite like Spiderman.
Rumble was a champion created on an insane timeline, to the point where Riot FeralPony
had to create and scrap abilities in less than a day each.
A few examples of these abilities were a chainsaw melee ability, a grenade launcher for some
ranged AoE damage, mini-rockets and a tether for his E’s taser.
After eventually coming up with Rumble’s E and deciding to turn it into a double shot,
FeralPony had it set to work as a slow for the first shot, then a root if you landed
the second.
Riot Ezreal got pretty mad about it because the counterplay sucked, after all it’s kinda
hard to avoid the root if you are already slowed.
As a result of the sleep deprivation that FeralPony was suffering from while trying
to get Rumble finished in time, he had the idea to change the first harpoon to a root,
and the second would apply a slow.
As you can probably guess, this didn’t fix the problem and Ezreal was furious!
Our next ability is from Illaoi.
The most notable part of her gameplay is definitely the tentacles, which first showed up on her
Q, Tentacle Smash.
This ability pretty much remained the same the whole time.
As development moved forward and Riot started to figure out who Illaoi really was and what
her god meant to her, they had the idea of giving Illaoi an Ultimate that showed her
enemies the truth of the world around them.
What that actually manifested as was a change to the whole map, revealing more of these
tentacles snaking over all the walls and structures.
It apparently looked awesome, but the tentacles didn’t really do anything in game.
Although this version of Illaoi’s ult was scrapped, it did give way to her independant
tentacles that spawn and attack for themselves, which in turn paved the way for Riot to finish
Illaoi’s development by basing more of her kit on these new independant tentacles.
We’ve talked a tiny bit about this next scrapped ability before, but we’ve got a
bit more information now.
According to Riot Ezreal, Ahri’s original Ultimate had unlimited range.
She’d basically trade mana for the ability to move insane distances, but passing through
an enemy did crazy damage, basically turning her into a living Ezreal Ultimate.
This Ultimate
was eventually scrapped because it had weird interactions on Dominion, which Riot Ezreal
said was his biggest regret for the character.
Later on, Ahri gained a three-part dash similar to her live Ultimate, but it worked on an
ammo system like Akali’s.
That meant she’d always have access to her mobility, but in-game Ahri players would always
hold on to one charge in case they got ganked.
That made her too hard to lock down and really annoying to play against, so the ammo system
was scrapped.
Next up is a Stealth variation from Evelynn’s rework.
Riot Stashu mentioned that one of the biggest problems with permastealth is that you obviously
can’t track the jungler’s location, so early versions of Evelynn’s stealth had
some way of giving information to her enemies.
One iteration of this was a cloud that covered a quarter of the map, moving on a predetermined
path through the game that everyone could see on their minimaps.
If Evelynn was moving inside that cloud, she’d be invisible, but if she wasn’t in the cloud,
she’s lose the invisibility.
Despite being a good solution, it felt really annoying for the Evelynn player since they
essentially had to follow the cloud around, and it didn’t have a very satisfying payoff
because people would be constantly made aware of when they could be ganked.
A player named Monado suggested a new Ultimate ability for Aatrox on the League boards—the
idea was that he could link with teammates and provide them with lifesteal, as a way
to kinda tie in with his theme of a demon commander that turns around losing battles.
Riot August mentioned he tried something kinda similar during development, a version of his
W that granted health to both Aatrox and a nearby low health ally on the third hit.
It worked pretty well for Aatrox because he could basically support an ally by dealing
damage, but it felt really shitty for enemies to play against.
It’s less of a scrapped ability and more of a tweaked ability, but according to Riot
Daemon, Maokai’s Twisted Advance once moved at half the current speed and gave Maokai
a massive armor buff when he hit someone.
On the plus side, it would mean players had a better chance to avoid being locked down
in a bad position by Maokai, but the huge armor buff would definitely have been frustrating
to deal with since you’d have few choices but to fight him once rooted, and he’d have
too much armor for you to deal with.
Our last ability for today is actually Yorick’s original Ultimate, shared through a pretty
interesting story from Riot Daemon.
The Ult functioned like a combination of Amumu’s Curse of the Sad Mummy, and the Karthus wall.
That likely means it was probably a wall that would entangle enemies that passed through
it, making it pretty hard to deal with since it could be casted from a distance.
It was actually changed only 4 days before Yorick was due to be released, with the designer
combining a zombie mode and clone functionality; both very difficult systems to make work properly
and without any bugs.
Riot probably spent those 4 days doing some intense troubleshooting to get it ready, and
even then it didn’t release without issues.