[Character Concept] Cayman, The Living Shadow *UPDATED*

Update: After analysing feedback from PenguinSebs, I made a few changes to the numbers and adjusted the ultimate to be less overpowering. Reduced range of Shadowstep and missile speed of Night's Touch, and slightly modified range of Conceal. Pathfinder now limited to a 6000 unit range, however casting on an enemy will afflict them with Ebon Mark.

Cayman, The Living Shadow

With the ever-growing pool of champions serving The Institute of War, one fact was becoming harder to ignore. A growing number of champions were attending the Fields of Justice out of obligation, not choice. While many Champions were volunteers with agendas of their own, others were monsters, imprisoned for their crimes to serve the League until rehabilitation, if ever possible, could be achieved. With this in mind, The League Justicars were born. Their role was to spread through Runeterra, liaising with authorities, delving into myth and rumour, to seek out any evidence of champion-level ability or power, and assess its threat to the world before major damage could be done by its presence. 

It was in this capacity the Shadow of Piltover was first encountered. Dismissed by many as an urban legend, having appeared some years before, the Justicars were nonetheless obliged to investigate. It was not long before the Shadow was more than a myth to the Justicars, and, fearing another Eternal Nightmare in a public city, summoners were dispatched to contain it. 

Cornered in a brightly-lit alley, bound to the area by the summoners, the shadow was finally revealed, in the slender, flickering form of a man. The binding ritual gave the shadow enough presence to utter two words, mere whispers that gained him immediate access to the Institute of War. 'Xavier…Rath…'

Abilities

Passive - Ebon Mark (auto-attack range 480) Cayman’s basic attacks and enemy Pathfinder casts mark the target for 3/4/5 seconds. If a marked player disappears from Cayman’s vision, he gains 150% movement speed, decaying over 3 seconds. This effect ends when Cayman takes any form of damage.

Q - Night’s Touch (12/11/10/9/8 seconds) 1300 range Cayman launches a spike of concentrated shadow, slowing the target. If the target is already slowed, Night’s Touch will replace this slow, and also lower their armour for 3 seconds.

• Slow - 24/28/30/32/34 (+8% per 100 AP)
• Damage - 60 / 120 / 180 / 240 / 300 (+55% AP)
• Armour reduction - 20 / 22 / 24 / 26 / 28%
• projectile speed - 1100 (down from 1300)

W - Conceal (24 second flat) - 900 range (down from 950) Cayman channels for 0.5 seconds to conceal an area from sight. Anything within this area is concealed from vision from outside the area for the effected time and becomes un-targetable from outside the area. All players except Cayman are slowed whilst within the area. Those within the area retain vision, and can target players outside the zone. Players in the area when it is shrouded take damage.

• Damage - 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 / 260 (+70% AP)
• Area radius - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 550-radius
• Persists for - 2 / 2.5 / 3 / 3.5 / 4 seconds (+0.5 seconds per 100 AP)
• Slow applied - 15/17/19/21/23% (+4% per 100 AP)

E - Shadowstep (18/16/14/12/10 seconds) 700 range (down from 1100) Cayman shadowsteps to his target, dealing magic damage. If the target is suffering movement-impairing effects, they are stunned and take bonus magic damage. Stunning a target reduces this cool down by 3 seconds.

• Stun - 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 / 2.25 / 2.5 seconds
• Damage - 85/ 130 / 175 / 220 / 265 (+80%AP)
• Bonus damage - 35/40/45/50/55% AP

R - Pathfinder (180/150/120 cooldown) 6000 range

• On enemy cast - A dark void appears at the enemy’s current position. after two seconds, Cayman teleports to this location and gains a 50% speed boost decaying over 1.5 seconds.

• On allied cast - A dark void immediately appears 400 units ahead of target ally’s current direction. The first player-controlled character to step onto that mark will be immediately teleported to Cayman’s location upon cast, and receive a 50% speed reduction decaying over 1.5 seconds.

Design Ethos

I had a couple of main aims in designing Cayman. I wanted someone who was designed to stick to a target, providing enough utility to slow and pin down an individual long enough for Cayman’s team-mates to finish them off. While I haven’t specified the damage and armour scaling, the basic tenets of Cayman can be seen in other AP-focused supports. He is not meant to be an assassin; his damage is more of a token than a threat, provided each player is of a similar level. He’s not meant to be a tanky bruiser or a burst damage dealer. He puts himself in harms way, with the risk of death, in order to increase the kill-potential of others. On low-health or squishy targets he has outleveled, he should have the potential to be a problem for them. but not a one-shot threat.

One of my biggest inspirations for the play-style was seeing people play Le Blanc in a support role. I realised there was a potential for an assassin-level support, whose lack of damage is balanced by his utility, which had the potential to provide amazing play opportunity, as well as fantastic counter play from confident or well-organised teams. This is most obvious in his W and R abilities.

Design core;

• A character that provides the mobility of an assassin, with the utility of a support, while denying them the independence of a single-lamer.
• A risk for reward design surrounding his overall mechanical play; his kit gives him major utility, but also opens him to major risk.
• A focus on utility support oriented around vision control, not only what you can see, but what you can't, being an important aspect of his kit.

Ability Rundown

Ebon Mark - My design here was inspired by the use of Jinx’s passive as both an offensive and defensive measure; being able to both chase down a whole team bouncing from kill to kill, and using it to quickly take a turret and have plenty of escape potential. I wanted to give Cayman a reason to auto-attack, but I also want his auto-attack range to be low enough that he cannot do so constantly and safely. This passive gives him both chase potential and escape potential outside of his safe areas. In his own lane, turret and minion vision of the enemy could kill him, whereas flashing into enemy jungle from high in their lane he can suddenly have a major turn of speed. It also can be triggered by placing his W to hide the enemy, at the risk of a stun/root/slow skillshot being fired in that window.

Night’s Touch - I wanted Cayman’s stun potential to be a little different from other champions, rather than giving him a flat root or stun that many characters have, I wanted his to reflect the risky nature of his design. As such, he has his skillshot slow, that can then be followed up by his targeted stun. To prevent Cayman from being able to combine item-effects or ability combos into a heavy or constant slow, Night’s Touch will apply a decent armour de-buff for the duration on already-movement impaired targets. (I’m in two minds about armour vs mr with regards to how much it may impact his kill potential vs improving his support role). This would allow Cayman to W a target, then Q to reduce their armour and give his ADC an edge.

Conceal - Having Cayman bring something new to the table was important to me, and vision was a core part of my design concept. Vision is a key aspect of the game, and vision denial has been limited to only two or three abilities, and ward/tower control. With Conceal, I wanted something that offered that utility for play, without being too overpowering, especially at early levels. To this end, I wanted something that wasn’t going to be viable to max first, but could still have a single-target impact, until later-game when a 24-second static cool down will give the ability a high impact utility without being too spammable. Likewise, the length of the spell is designed to balance around its increasing radius and slow effect, to provide prolonged cover at high levels, and brief interruptions at key periods earlier on (for instance, being able to hide your own team-mate to prevent Ace in the Hole, giving them an escape chance, or to shroud an enemy player to prevent a clutch heal from landing.) With a 0.5 second cast time that would highlight the shrouded area, it gives players the chance to avoid or escape the area if they are careful, but this chance diminishes as the radius increases.

Pathfinder - Given their history, Pathfinder shares a thematic similarity with Twisted Fate, but with differences geared towards utility, vision and risk. Without control over the location of the teleport, hiding the approach location is much harder (but still possible if choosing the right target at the right moment). As a global but subtle ability, it gives amazing potential for a mobile support, as well as two-man back doors and allied saves, while introducing the inherent risks, both of chasing down an enemy who knows where you’re going to arrive, and of providing the potential for an enemy to teleport to you if they outpace your ally. By denying Cayman the vision bonus Twisted Fate receives, Cayman cannot use Pathfinder to locate enemy players, but he also fails to alert the enemy of his incoming teleport; it relies on team communication, and good vision control of the map to catch out other players, while also risking his inability to escape.

Character Background

Cayman’s background comes from a desire to bring out the history of Twisted Fate a bit more, as well as introduce a new element to Support gameplay.

Little is known of Cayman’s past, even by himself. Raised as much by the streets as on them, his earliest memory is of a gold pocket-watch foisted from the pocket of a Demacian gentleman. The gleam and shine of its fine filigree, but more then that, the thrill of the theft. Cayman was a ghost in the crowd, and by time anyone noticed the theft, he was long gone.

What started as a means to an end, became an obsession, and a profession. His skills were legendary, among those discerning gentlemen who could afford such skill, and were of a calibre to make the right connections to engage his effective services. The payment itself was a nicety of the profession; an expected demand, and a useful tool to allow his free and unhindered movement between city-states. A greased palm here and there was always his preference, as opposed to some of his more direct Noxian competitors. Cayman’s goal wasn’t to steal. It was to be a sight unseen, to take without ever being detected.

With all of his prowess in the art of appropriation, he still desired more. To enter a building without a whisper, to hide in plain sight, to truly become a shadow on the wall.

The first of Rath’s subjects, Cayman’s experiment took a very different turn. The experiment gave him the magic he had strived for, but at an unexpected cost; the loss of his corporeal form. Evaporating into a dark mist, Rath deemed Cayman’s trial a failure and continued to perfect his formula. Meanwhile, Cayman struggled to maintain his consciousness as an ethereal entity. Able to drift through the world, Cayman resigned himself to his predicament, and strove to complete his final goal before allowing himself to drift apart; to maintain physical form long enough to steal his biggest prize; The prized rifle of Caitlyn, the Sheriff of Piltover. It was while training to focus himself into a corporeal form that the League Justicars first got wind of Cayman, and it was their attempts to capture him that allowed him to finally pull himself together; the binding ritual of the League Summoners prevented his dispersal, and allowed him to re-gain a physical form.

For this reason, Cayman has become something of an uneasy resident of the Institute of War. A prisoner of his own volition, bound at his own request to the Institute and the Fields of Justice until such time its summoners are able to devise a means of permanently reforming his physical body, whilst serving dutifully on the Fields of Justice in the hopes that, should his past catch up to him, he’ll be given time served, if he doesn’t slip away into the shadows first.

So that's it for Cayman guys! I've given a few numbers here for spell size, damage scaling etc, and many of them are based on numbers for similar existing skills on other champions, with some adjustments made to compensate for things such as his comparable squishiness to the reference champion, his position as a support and so on. Any feedback you guys have got is great!