[Champion Concept] Effrem, the Legendary Forgemaster

Rubitonabuilding·5/5/2014, 7:34:04 PM·2 votes·1,059 views

So I wasn't sure if there was any lore for Doran. As it turns out, there is indeed an entry in the Journal of Justice, and it happens to (sort of) match my idea of what Doran could be. When I first created the concept and his kit, I pictured him as a courageous, intelligent, highly skilled blade-wielding blacksmith, but after reading Effrem E. Doran's (tragic) story, I suppose that vision of him would have to be altered slightly.

###Brainstorming (you can skip this, it's not super-important)

I think from now on I'll post a little blurb about where my idea for each champion concept and kit came from. Feel free to skip it if you're not interested in that sort of stuff.

My key concept for Doran started off as his ultimate being an extra item slot that he could put any item in to boost its effects. I figured that could get wildly complex, so I overhauled the concept and limited the items he could put there to the three Doran's items, and depending which item he chose at the start, he would have a completely different set of abilities locked in for the rest of the game (mage/warrier/defender, based on Doran's ring/blade/shield). Unfortunately this was sort of a lame concept, his kits weren't very exciting, and it turned out the defender kit I had come up with looked almost identical to Braum's kit (and no, I didn't copy it from Braum, I had come up with this kit before Braum was even publicly announced). So, back to the drawing board.

I opened up the ultimate as a general item slot again, and decided that Doran would be a blacksmith. I limited the items usable in his ultimate slot to AD-based items (as I will explain in detail in the abilities section), and gave him a forge-based kit. I decided to give him a sword instead of a hammer, because for one I already have another blacksmith champ concept: Erik, the Blacksmith of Lokfar (who wields a hammer, and yes, heavily inspired Doran), and two, the ultimate concept is entitled Forgemaster's Blade, so it would be silly to give him a hammer.

And finally, I was working through this concept with the name Doran in mind, but once I read the story in the Journal of Justice, I liked the name Effrem better. His last name is still Doran though.

###Abilities

Passive: Doran's Discount

Effrem and his allies save 70 gold on Doran's items (Ring/Blade/Shield)
(This hardly has anything to do with the rest of his kit and could be easily changed, I just thought it would be fun to have a discount on some items in the store for an early-game advantage.)

Q: Into the Fire (dash)

Effrem dashes fearlessly into the fray, dealing (25/30/35/40/45 + 0.3AD) bonus physical damage and critically striking on his next basic attack.

W: Ring of Fire (targeted AOE/debuff)

Effrem encircles an area (about the size of Anivia's ult or Veigar's Event Horizon) with molten steel, creating a fiery ring.
Enemies who pass through this fire are set ablaze, taking (5/7.5/10/12.5/15 + 0.05AP) magic damage per second and losing (1/1.5/2/2.5/3)% of their armor and magic resist per second for (4/4.5/5/5.5/6) seconds.
Enemies within the ring of fire are slowed by (6/7/8/9/10 + 0.1AP)% (to a maximum of 80%, but that would be silly building 700 AP on Effrem) for as long as they are within the Ring of Fire.
Enemies who stay within the ring are not set ablaze by the fire. Passing through the fire twice in rapid succession will not refresh the blaze (i.e. if you're already on fire, you can't be set on fire again), but if the blaze has worn off, you can be set ablaze again if you walk through the fire again.
Ring of Fire lasts a flat 10 seconds.

E: Tempered Steel (damage buff)

For the next (1/2/3/4/5) basic attacks, Effrem's sword glows red-hot, dealing bonus physical damage to the target and sending sparks flying that deal low magic damage to surrounding enemies.
This bonus physical damage (to the target, not the splash magic damage) is (10/15/20/25/30 + 0.2AD + 0.5/0.75/1/1.25/1.5X) where X increases by 1 if Effrem kills an enemy champion, large or siege minion or neutral large/epic monster with a Tempered Steel strike. In this way, Tempered Steel gains stacks like Nasus' Siphoning Strike, but is fairly limited by the type of target that will give it a stack.
Every strike of Tempered Steel cools Effrem's sword, reducing the bonus damage by 1/5 of the full amount on each strike (e.g. if the bonus damage on the first strike (at the 5th level of Tempered Steel) is 100, the second strike will be 80, third will be 60, fourth will be 40, and last will be 20)
Tempered Steel can critically strike (but is not guaranteed to), and stacks with Effrem's Into the Fire bonus damage.

R: Forgemaster's Blade (extra item slot)

This is the focal point of Effrem's kit. Originally I was going to let it be a no-cooldown (unless the item had a CD) item slot that permanently buffed the item's passive or active, but I figured that would be completely broken, so I limited it with a cooldown.
Effrem's ultimate ability is an extra item slot that can be filled with any damage or critical strike based item, as follows:

Obviously these are just a couple of examples, but you get the idea. Anything that's a blade (i.e. anything that can be built from the first 7 items in the above chart) can be put in Effrem's ultimate slot.
When he activates his ultimate, the item is automatically activated and its passive or active effect is increased by (5/10/15 + 0.01AP)% for 25 seconds.
If the item has a cooldown shorter than 25 seconds (e.g. Ravenous Hydra), Effrem can activate the item multiple times within his ultimate (by pressing R again). If the item's active effect is longer than 25 seconds, the effect ends as soon as Forgemaster's Blade ends, and the item cannot be activated unless Forgemaster's Blade is activated.
Unless Forgemaster's Blade is active, the item in that slot has no active or passive effects besides the stats (e.g. Atma's Impaler would give him the 45 armor and 15% crit chance, but not the bonus AD based on health).
Effrem can swap which item is in this slot, but only while he is in the spawn pool.
I'll just provide a couple of examples (at 3rd level ult, 15% buff for simplicity):

###Additional Notes:

Effrem is awesome.
Please let me know what you think of Effrem E. Doran in the comments. I always welcome positive/constructive criticism and feedback.
If you liked Effrem, please upvote this thread and check out some of my other concepts here.