[Champion Concept] League's first Saiyan
I've noticed that there are champions with distinctive "stack centered" gameplay in the top, mid, and bot lanes, but (apart from Feral Flare) there is no such champion in the jungle. I also enjoyed DragonBallZ when I was younger and am taking some ideas from there to create this champion.
Name: Feel free to offer suggestions, names were never my strong suit. I'll refer to him as Saiyan (for obvious reasons).
Lore: I envision this champion being allied with Lux, as will become obvious upon reading how his skills work. He may have attended the College of Magic with her, or even been one of her superiors there. He could be given credit for discovering her, and her ability to reverse engineer spells based on seeing them cast once could explain her ultimate by taking his e and improving upon it.
Note that unlike most other concepts, I'll ignore all base stats, scaling, and specific damage amounts. I see little purpose in putting in precise figures when League is constantly rebalancing, not to mention I'm only level 21 and thus unlikely able to balance a champion. Note however that Saiyan is meant to scale off of his passive, his base stats should either scale poorly or not at all while he levels.
Gameplay: Saiyan's passive and skillset clearly makes him a Jungling champion. He scales similarly to Nasus, Veigar, Thresh and to a lesser extent Draven in that it is more important for him to gain some sort of "stacks" than it is for him to scale through levels. Saiyan gets stronger each team he exits combat at low health, which is best taken advantage of in the jungle where neutral monsters behave much more predictably than players. His play-style would be high risk - high reward, as gaining excess stacks will make him very powerful but doing so puts him in constant danger as he will die easily upon discovery by the enemy. Add in bonus stacks for exiting combat with another champion at low health to make him even more thrilling to play. His skillset allows for ganking via movement speed buffs, and his e is very effective at initiating a jungle camp (and incredible in teamfights when teammates offer heavy CC). Saiyan would be a high-skill cap player, where the entire team needs to make effective use of vision in order for him to scale early on without giving up an easy first blood.
Passive: Survivor’s Blood Saiyan's defining trait, whenever he gets close to death (but doesn't die) he comes back stronger. Permanently increases AD, AP, Armor, and MR each time you survive an encounter with extremely (<5 or 10%) health. Effect takes place after X (say 5) consecutive seconds out of combat after previously reaching low health and not dying. Saiyan gains bonus stacks when his passive is activated after combat with an enemy champion.
After enough practice, players would know exactly when to use health potions while jungling to allow the passive to repeatedly activate early on in the jungle. Enemies would seek to counter jungle (in order to get an easy kill since he stays at low health), which would allow a team with proper vision control to bait the enemy in to their jungle instead.
Q: Chi-Blast Shoots a blast of energy dealing base magic damage (+ % AP) in a line, exploding on the first target hit and damaging nearby targets for % of the damage. Suggested cool-down: 10/9/8/7/6 seconds. An AP version of Jinx's W, without the slow and reveal but that can hit multiple targets. This is Saiyan's core damage skill, with the multi-target damage helping him clean up Wraiths and Wolves easily.
W: Fighter’s will Passively provides a temporary MS buff whenever an ability is cast Active: Temporarily increases AS and MS Suggested cool-down: 22 seconds This is another skill that's great for a jungler. The movement speed boost after each spell allows Saiyan to quickly move from camp to camp, while the active MS boost is effective in ganking lanes. I expect it to be considerably slower than Hecarim's E, but fast enough to allow Saiyan to effectively stick to a target once he initiates the gank. The bonus AS is also useful for clearing the jungle. The effect should last for about 5 seconds.
E: Charge-Bomb Saiyan gathers energy for 1.5+ seconds before shooting in a line dealing damage to and stunning all enemies hit. (Think of a weaker Lux ult with considerably less range and a stun). Suggested cool-down: 19/18/17/16/15 seconds. This ability is almost useless against freely mobile champions as the charging time is plenty for champions to escape its radius. It's most useful for getting a huge head-start on jungle camps as neutral monsters won't retaliate until after they are hit (and stunned if possible) by the ability. When properly coordinated with a CC heavy team, this ability can help lock down multiple enemies in a team fight, practically ensuring an easy win. This could however also leave Saiyan out of position at a key moment and cost his team dearly.
R: Super Charged While active, Saiyan has greatly increased AS, AD, AP, Armor, MR, and MS. May be activated up to 3 times while this buff is active to blink (smaller range Flash, like Ahri's movement during her ultimate). The ultimate's buff is removed at the earlier of the end of its duration or after the third blink. When the buff is removed Saiyan receives a temporary debuff to MS, Armor, and MR. Suggested cool-down: 110/100/90 seconds. Saiyan's ultimate provides bonus stats that help Saiyan pump out high damage while being able to tank a lot himself. The extra mobility is extremely useful for Saiyan to escape fights at low health to activate his passive and gain bonus stacks. The debuff serves to balance the ultimate, as an enemy team that's able to CC and wait it out will inevitably have the upper hand when they choose to initiate afterwards.
Saiyan's gameplay would be incredibly satisfying for both him and his enemies. Each fight can have a huge effect on the match, as the difference between "Saiyan securing a kill and gaining bonus stacks for surviving with low health" and "Saiyan being killed" is much larger than a normal kill in game. Further, as opposed to someone like Nasus who is countered by preventing him from farming, Saiyan is best countered by finding and killing him (which is what players seek to do anyways). The knowledge for enemies that Saiyan could be nearby at low health for an easy kill, and the knowledge for a low-health Saiyan that he could be discovered at any moment, adds even more thrill. Vision control becomes even more vital as Saiyan needs to jungle outside of enemy vision if he wishes to activate his passive to gain enough stacks to be relevant late game.
For balancing purposes, Saiyan could lose stacks of his passive on death (possibly dependent on how many stacks he has built relative to his level). His W could be changed to a different ganking ability, although I'm hesitant to give him a second CC ability as combo'ing with his own E could be VERY OP. His ultimate may be overly strong against Baron and Dragon, when he can let a teammate tank when the debuff takes over, and may require some balancing there.
As this is my first champion concept, please feel free to provide any feedback on how I can improve! I hope you enjoyed reading and that you'd enjoy this champion as much as I would!