No one asked for this, however it makes for a neat story. So ill tell it anyway ;P
A sound designer's job is to create a wide enough sonic thematic palette that conveys each of the champion skills in a unique way. This helps with game-play clarity, adds to the uniqueness of the champion, keeps it from becoming repetitive or boring, etc etc.
That said, rocks are rocks. Rocks sound like other rocks - for the most part. However, such elements like size, density, shape, and other characteristics of rocks can create a different feel when hit or thrown or destroyed or used to suppress giant panicked wildebeests... a story for another time...
But that wasnt enough for Taliyah - Taliyah had a more refined version of rock. "Woven" rock was her deal, and the task at hand was to try and figure out what that really sounded like.
Here is the cool part (commence nerd out):
A few of us took a trip up to UCLA's Anecoic Chamber. If you dont know what an anechoic chamber is, read up on it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber
Its basically a "dead" room - one with "no" reflections or reverberations. It's crazy stuff. Stay in there too long and you can hear your blood rushing through your arteries.
What better place to record really detailed stuff.
Recording really small sounds and capturing them in a way that sounds big is a challenge. One basic technique is to crank your microphone pre-amp so you can record a really small sound at a really high volume - recording all of the detail at a hotter level - making the sound "bigger" initially to work with. However, a lot of crap happens when you do this - when you raise the initial recording level you also raise the noise floor of the room which usually ends up with a nasty hum/hiss/buzz in your recording.
This is why a dead room _rocks _ for this kind of recording...
So I packed up a bunch of tile for bathroom walls that I bought at home depot, showed up with these other Riot sound design cats at UCLA, and recorded all of Taliyah's more detailed building blocks inside of an almost completely dead room.
The recordings turned out awesome - and you can hear some of these sounds sprinkled in and throughout her kit (Q - on her casts of the shards, W - on the directional input sound, E - as the 4 waves fall out into place, R - its somewhere in there buried beneath the madness)
Here are a couple pics from the recording:
http://c3sound.com/wp-content/uploads/DevPics/AnechoicChamber_2016/rec2.jpg
http://c3sound.com/wp-content/uploads/DevPics/AnechoicChamber_2016/rec1.jpg
being able to control her fire magic despite her age?
she wants to learn and Illaoi likes to teach..., would 
be a good teacher for her?
