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Champion Concept: Auralee - Phantasm of the Isles

ChaosReyn·6/7/2019, 8:49:11 PM·4 votes·2,095 views

TL;DR -

A ghost among ghosts, Auralee is a survivor of the blight of the Shadow Isles. Once known as the best of an elite squad of Rangers that helped protect the Blessed Isles, Auralee's existence remains linked to her land and her mission - protect the land from those who would misshape it.

#Lore - During the height of the Blessed Isles, there was rarely need for a military presence. The Enchanted Mists were more than enough to deter all but the most persistent of visitors. Instead, most of those trained in weaponry were hunters or peacekeepers. In many cases, these people were one and the same - true rangers who upheld the complete circle of life. And for all the rangers in the Blessed Isles, there was no one more versed than one.

A master archer, tracker, hunter and the deputy commander of the peacekeepers, she thrived upon the bridge between the land and its life. Until the day of darkness took her.

From within the vault, a furious torrent of malevolence polluted the very ground. The air. The sea. The beloved Mists. Though she did not know the cause of this malevolence, she knew it was caused by her people, and it polluted the land she loved. The corruption twisted people and creatures alike, turning them feral and volatile. It took awhile before The lass was able to determine that the reason it didn't turn her like the rest was due to the heartwater she kept locked inside her amulet. Its power, like the Mists, enveloping and protecting her. Still, the torture of the land ravaged her mind.

The heartwaters...that has to be the way...

Most of the research of her people on the heartwaters was all but lost, the downfall of their civilization and the catastrophe that took them burying that knowledge far underground in the vaults. But with her deep connection to the land, and her fury towards her people for what she perceived as something akin to mankind's betrayal of nature itself, she carries on, to this day, with her mission to reclaim the land from its curse, and leave peacefully among it...unaware of how timeless her quest has truly been.

The heartwaters...I need to reclaim...the waters...

Unbeknownst to her, as time stopped having meaning to her long ago, it's been those very waters sustaining her existence for quite some time. Not immortal, but not quite undead, her consumption of the ancient wellsprings gave her centuries of longevity. The lass's amulet - possessing some of the last pure heartwater, along with her willpower is what kept her mind intact. Mostly intact. There was still one thing she simply couldn't stand anymore.

WRETCHED TRESPASSER! LEAVE THIS PLACE!

The few mortal beings who've dared to venture to the Shadow Isles, the first carriers of these tales, mentioned living trees that brought forth death. Twisted creatures neither human nor beast. Maddened spirits determined to claim their very soul... I never heard such a tale as I have seen. A pale lady. With hair the color of a dense morning fog. Her armor made of scale and hide. Her aura, of one who wears a thousand lives around her. When I returned to the mainland and told my tale, the people laughed. "There's no way!" they all said. "No one can live in that desolate place!"

But I saw her. With my own eyes, I saw the pale lady. And her arrow saw my knee. Her words echoed through that darkness clearly. "Wretched Trespasser! Leave this place!"

She stalked me as I dragged myself back to my boat. her presence that of a savage beast. I still think I was meant to die upon that soil. I set full sail, half my crew still missing. There were two score of us when our exploration began...only three of us made it to Bilgewater. And one died upon the docks from his wounds.

It wasn't until long after my return to Noxus that the Grand General himself descended upon my home. He humbled me with his audience. And when I spoke of our journey, he said only three words to my entire tale.

"The lineage lives."

He's told me more since, as you can see. He tasked me with keeping the records of the Isles and I've learned much. I've yet to know what he sees there, but this lady is the key. So I hope that you'll reconsider your offer. I cannot offer more there. When this reaches you...

blood splatters occupy the rest of the parchment too much to make out more. Even the writings underneath the lines were partially illegible. In fact, it seemed like the dried, embedded blood had somehow grown darker as the ship approached its destination. The man reading them paused for a moment, before setting the traitor's notes upon his desk and making for the deck.

#Stats -

HP: 485 (+76) HP5: 6.9 (+1.5) MP: 320 (+64) MP5: 5.1 (+.8) AD: 56 (+5.3) AS: .506 (+.042) AR: 29 (+1.7) MR: 33 (+0.8) MS: 345 RN: 595

#Kit -

Passive: Shadow Shot - Each time Auralee enters stealth/camouflage (including brush), she gains 20% movement speed for 1.5s and her next attack within 2s deals (30% bonus AD) more damage. This cannot trigger from the same source of stealth twice within 10s. (so you can't use the same bush over and over to Rengar your damage output)

Q: Night Arrow - Auralee fires an arrow to a target location. After a 0.75s delay, it explodes into shrapnel that deals (45/55/65/75/85[+50%AD]) damage to enemies within a 200 unit radius and smoke that covers the area for 3s. The smoke functions as a bush - hiding units inside of it from outside view - and grants Auralee improved stealth upon first entering it for 1s (meaning, until she fires, those inside can't see her either, and she can leave the smokescreen and stay stealthed for the 1s duration). 60 mana all ranks - 16/15/14/13/12s cd

W: Mist Arrows - passive: Auralee's basic attacks apply a Mist Curse debuff. the Mist Curse deals (5/10/15/20/25[+5/7/9/12/15%bonusAD]) damage on hit, and reveals afflicted enemies. Last 1.5s, and refreshes on each basic attack. Afflicted enemies hit by Auralee's Night Arrow, or those who enter the persisting smokescreen, lose 10% of their armor for as long as they're afflicted.

E: Chain Arrow - Auralee Shoots an arrow with an attached chain in a target direction. If the arrow hits a wall, Auralee will pull herself to it. By reactivating the ability before the pull ends, she will vault over the wall as well. If the arrow hits an enemy, They'll take 35/45/55/65/75(+35%AD) damage and be slowed by 20% for 1.5s. Auralee can reactivate the ability within 1.5s to instead fire another arrow through her end of the chain, preventing the enemy from moving farther than the current distance between her and them for 1.5s. 70/65/60/55/50 mana - 22/21/20/19/18s cd

R: Shadow Fall - Auralee gains 15/20/25%(+1%/100AD) bonus attack speed for the next 7s, and for the duration, her Night Arrow has a flat 1s cooldown. This will instantly set the cooldown of her Q to 1s if she used it just before her ult (just like with Kindred). (can make about 7-8 stealth zones for her passive, and with the added bonuses, this means you've got plenty of room to outplay things.) 100 mana - 120/100/80s cd

UPDATES:

1.2

  • Took out sedative arrows, so players will need to rely more on proper usage of the stealth zones they create. Mist Arrows are the new name for the Cursed Arrows, but function in the same manner.
  • Chain Arrow no longer makes a wall - Auralee can choose to vault the wall she pulls to instead. Tethering an enemy still works as normal.

1.3

  • QoL wording changes to Explosive Arrow - Auralee will gain a 1s stealth upon entering the smokescreen that will persist for the duration even if she leaves it. This allows her to make some flashy outplays. :P
  • E now must be reactivated to chain an enemy. Without a reactivation, it will simply briefly slow the target.
  • E now has a damage ratio of 35/45/55/65/75(+35%AD) - changed from simply 70%AD. This nerfs its overall damage output...but since I added a brief slow, and I'm quite worried about the potency of W+R already, I think making it have its own numbers is fair.
  • added mana cost and cooldowns to abilities.
  • changed Mist Arrows. Instead of a toggle effect, Mist Arrows now slowly power creeps the longer you can focus your target passively for no cost.

1.4

  • Renamed Q to "Night Arrow" from "Explosive Arrow" (felt bland to me...)
  • Buffed slow duration and recast duration of E to 1.5s from 0.5s. (gives time to gapclose a bit more before chaining them down.)
  • Buffed Attack Speed stat and growth to .506 (+.042) from .456 (+.04)
  • Nerfed Attack Damage stat and growth to 56 (+5.3) from 58 (+5.5)

1.5

  • Big W changes!
  • No longer a stacking effect. Just a single debuff refreshed by repetitive basic attacks.
  • Enemies Afflicted with the Mist Curse are revealed in bushes (but not other forms of stealth) so that Auralee isn't punished when her original target just waits in her smokescreens.
  • The Mist Curse now lowers the armor of the afflicted enemy whenever they are hit by Night Arrow, or walk through one of its smokescreens, until the debuff is dropped. Auralee can continually refresh the debuff to keep this loss of armor, though the duration of the debuff itself is still very short (at 1.5s). This also further deters her target from sitting in her smokescreens.
  • Removed Herobrine. :P
  • Lowered duration of empowered basic attack on passive from 3s to 2s. (Shoot fast!)

1.6

  • added lore, finally. (The lore is a letter, that never made it to its intended recipient. Just in case it confuses you)

13 Comments

Gilgayu6/8/2019, 9:53:36 PM2 votes

Hi Reyn~

This concept seems really good: an adc playing around camouflage/invisibility like an assassin (and let's keep teemo out of the conversation xP)

I think one of the core things to an adc is their consistant damage output, and also the fact that it "ignores" many hard cc's (meaning they can still aa if snared and silenced, while for mages...) For Auralee, I think her damage's consistency/ play style is, and should be, a bit different from both traditional adc and assassins, and in a good way.

I personally noticed that most champions with invisibility (again, ignore teemo) actually remain invisibly to wait for their cd (think kha waiting for q and vayne waiting for q if she is 1v1'ing). So what is Auralee waiting for? And if she is waiting for something, where should she be waiting?

Before going into numbers, I think a potential problem with Auralee is her smoke bomb is a very controversial way of hiding herself. If it is too small, there is little room to outplay due to the fact that she is an adc (the old akali can be styling on everyone in her smoke because she is melee, and she can get to enemies whom she couldn't get to before because they don't know she is already there). Auralee however, can probably cover the entire smoke if she stands in the center because she's ranged (Idk the range of the smoke, but I suppose it isn't all that big?) Another problem with the smoke is that it is very obvious that Auralee is in it. I know it sounds dumb, but what I mean is that teamfights might turn into turf wars if Auralee is super strong in her smokes, or both teams will just ignore the smoke because it is so insignificant.

So back to the damage consistancy/ waiting-for-something topic. I think something like empowered w when Auralee is in smoke might boost her dmg output, and like Seoshi said, "award her for superior positioning" as well as smoke placement during her ult's duration.

It's been months since I'm like active active, so if I'm talking about random stuff, sryyy

As for numbers... Overall I think it's pretty good, but perhaps raise her base ad and ad growth? After all her AS is... far from impressive. I suppose you did this so she won't waste much dps by trying to hide in bushes? Considering her passive can be on pretty much the whole time during her ult if played right, the ms is a bit on the high side. (Personal suggestion, how about lowering the numbers but make them stackable if she enters multiple sources of invisbility, like smoke --> bush --> nocturne ult or something like that).

but that's about it for the numbers.

Really nice concept. I can imagine this as a strong pick when you have ivern (rengar things? ;) or even just any tank that can keep enemies back (ali, sion, naut, etc.)

Edit: that ms nerf to her passive is suggested from my person dislike toward mobile adcs (jinx, kai'sa, vayne, lucian... I don't wanna talk about it). Adcs are supposed to be protected, and the fact that no one can be fast enough to actually reach them.... just.... no.

Zahtar6/9/2019, 12:03:02 AM2 votes

Hey :)

I like the fact she's from the Shadow Isles, but is she alive ? She looks undead from what you said. I think making her a human surviving among ghosts could also be a good idea (every champion from the Shadow Isles is undead atm).

Concerning the kit, I think you have really good ideas. Overall the gameplay of the champion seems interesting and new. The passive is nice and totally fits the discrete ranger theme. The interaction with the Q is cool and somewhat new (we already have Ivern's brushes and Akali's shroud but that's kind of in-between).

For the W, I don't really see the point of making it a toggle. It costs mana, sure, but you would probably always turn it on when fighting. Then it would probably be hard to balance the ability between useless/forgettable and overpowered. Plus it means you have to hit an enemy five times to reach your full potential, which I feel does not necessary feel in line with the rest of the kit (I might be wrong on that). What I would do is reduce it to 3 stacks, adding a flat amount of damage and a cooldown that can somehow be refreshed by the kit. You keep the curse on ennemies, but you have to earn the fact of damaging cursed enemies with new Mist Arrows. I don't know if it's clear and it might be completely undoable, just a random idea !

I like the R a lot. It feels like the champion is tracking a prey in the night. Having several stealth zones opens up a lot of possibilities. The only problem that I have is that you wouldn't need to create a new stealth zone every 1 sec, right ? The time for you to attack an enemy from it, then replace / chase them.... So the idea I'm having is that the R could reduce all of her cooldowns when she attacks enemy champions. Maybe, then, in order for it not to be overpowered, you should take away from the E that it can hit a champion (though I really liked that interaction so idk). With that iteration of the R, she would create a shroud, hit a few times an enemy - cursing them, reposition with the E, create a new stealth zone and do that again until they die.

Nice job !! I'm so happy to see that other people feel inspired by that archetype.

J Eevo6/12/2019, 1:20:14 AM2 votes

I'm a fan of the E, but the rest of the kit seems like a more varied spin on Vayne, with the playstyle not being much different, so i'd be curious if you wouldn't run into the problem of people just picking one or the other depending on which one's stronger.

The smoke functions as a bush

Does this apply to more than just her? This could end up being very messy and clunky if applied to more targets.

You have a weird choice in the Q of lobbing it towards your opponent for the damage component while simultaneously wanting to target as closely to yourself as possible for the cover it provides - this actually could work quite well if she's chasing the target down, you'd naturally walk over the shroud and would end up with a buff to the dps from the passive, but in vanilla fights you run into a problem, Have you considered having her E work on the shrouds as well as walls? This could give you the option of using the Q offensively as well as closing the distance to the shroud AND the target, while still not being the definitive best choice since that also ends up placing you in de facto melee range exposing you to a risk if not used correctly.

I could run the math on W but I'm pretty sure you end up overkilling your target long before you really get to stack the passive up, so the biggest deal here is really just the ease of doing objectives at any point of the game. The scaling on it is also fairly weird, the difference between level ups is ridiculous (you have the passive stacking additively with no cap, the difference between different ranks of W in dps is ridiculous, 3 stacks of rank1W deal 3% but 3 stacks of rank 5W deal 15%, and so on.

I like the tether on E(though there doesn't seem to be much reason NOT to fire off the second E if the first already hit? You could just place the tether arrow onto the W with the passive still intact I guess, but it's fine)

The R I don't like though that's personal opinion, I'm not a fan of statbuff ults in general(I hate the arbitrary AD gain of vayne R and the I WIN BUTTON nature of it though I know many people like it) though the part of it I can I think comment on is - you have a really big disparity between her Q cd off R and with R. This could prove unhealthy if her Q is a big enough part of her kit to warrant it though less than a similar champ would because Auralee retains the option of Eing out, being safer than normal champs with this mechanic.

Honestly remembering back to when Riot first announced rune changes I'm reminded of the keystone they first proposed that had the infinite stacking mechanic, and it ultimately ended up not being put in the game, likely because of the reason you're now struggling with - it's hard nail down the breakpoint of 'useless' and 'op' to make it still satisfying while being powerful. They did however have to balance it as a rune choice instead of a champion kit part, so it may still be possible if narrowed down more.

lCantPauseltMom6/12/2019, 6:27:54 AM2 votes

I like the kit! It's very imaginative, and the abilities individually are very creative. If you don't mind, this was my little piece about your kit:

Passive: I like it and how it potentially interacts with the Q and R. It gives a very interesting hit-and-run aspect to the champion that can be maximised upon.

Q: I know this has been mentioned before, but it does feel hard to get the most out of this ability as possible. I like how it makes a smoke cloud for Auralee, and that she can use it to combo with her passive. However, there would be this decision between "Do I fire this at the enemy for damage?" and "Do I fire this to where I can maximise my passive?". This can be achieved on both marks by firing at the enemy then running into the smoke cloud, but that would be dangerous for an ADC.

W: I would be careful around infinitely stacking passives like this. If you build enough attack speed, and (for example) took Lethal Tempo, that damage would very quickly stack out of control, even against tanks.

E: An awesome ability all around! I like the semi-Hookshot of it while having the option alive for running someone down. Makes her feel like a huntress!

R: Theoretically I like how it enables you and your Q, but it comes down to how the Q plays out. It also allows for permanent invisibility for the duration if you kept firing your Q, which does seem very unbalanced. Again, once you've taken a bit of time to look into how it plays out and with a little work, this will clear up easily!

If you want, I do have some suggestions for Auralee's kit. If you have a discord, I could DM them to you and you could do with them what you'd like! Otherwise I understand if you don't, I know you've got this! Auralee is looking good, keep it up!

PS: I just noticed you still have "Explosive Arrow" on your ultimate, although I'm pretty sure you mean Night Arrow? Just a heads up :)

Seoshi6/7/2019, 9:40:25 PM1 votes

I like the abilities, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how her kit comes together as a whole. Can you explain how you see her playing in a lane phase, and how you see her playing in a team-fight phase? I just don't really see much Synergy with her W and E as compared to her Passive, Q, and Ultimate.