Dev Blog: Shade, Guardian of Souls [CCC]

Dev Blog Shade, Guardian of Souls

Hi, there! HavinAGiggle here (duh)! In this dev blog, I’ll be explaining how I came up with Shade and how I created his kit, lore and whatever else there may be. If you are new to champion conception and creation, I’d suggest you’d give this a read so that you can understand some tips and tricks to creating your own champ. Any who, let’s dive into this!

First of all, I wanted to find a unique identity for my champion. If you’ve been reading the official dev blogs you would know that when it comes to champion design, identity is a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG factor. It’s arguably THE factor. So, what identity could I give Shade?

Well, first off, he’s from the Shadow Isles. No when we think of Shadow Isles we think of people like Thresh and Karthus and Elise. None of these people are entirely friendly and I highly recommend you skip their names on your party invitations. Knowing this, I wanted to show a nicer side of the Shadow Isles. So, I added “being nice” to Shade’s identity.

Now what about gameplay? “Being nice” won’t come in handy when you’re fighting for Baron. I needed to find a role of the game that Shade could fill. Not like tank or support. Think of Nautilus for example. He fulfills the role of being the absolute lockdown/CC king. Another example is Xerath. He’s the AP sniper that’ll slam a arcanopulse full of AP down your throat from half way across the map. So, what roll could I give Shade. Well… pause for effect

We’ve all had THOSE games. You know, the games where you lose the early game and everyone on your team loses hope and either quits or surrenders before the late game even arrives. Those games rely on your team catching up and working together. However, there are no real champions that help get your team back from a horrible early game. So, that’s where Shade comes in! I wanted him to be able to help a team catch up when behind. So I added that to my list. Now, this is where the fun begins.

Whenever I start creating abilities for a champ, I always start with the passive and the ultimate. Why? Well those two abilities are what define the champion. They both represent your champion story and gameplay wise. So, I started with the passive since it’s first in line. What would be a nice passive? Well, I wanted to portray his “come back from behind aspect” through his passive. So what works? Well, since Shade is a guardian of the souls of the dead, what if he did something when someone died? That would be beneficial if your teammates are dying constantly. I’ll skip through the whole creation process but I’ll share an older version of his passive. The first part, Guardian’s Might always stayed the same. The second part, Resurrection, used to be called Spirit’s Protection. How it worked was that Shade would store the souls of allies that died and grant them a shield upon their respawn. This shield would scale with Shade’s HP and last for 80 seconds, refreshing every 10 seconds. I figured it was a good idea but I didn’t feel it portrayed Shade enough nor did I feel it would have as much impact in a game as someone like Braum or more recently, Azir. So I switched it up. Remember that even if you like an ability after it’s first concept, it may not always be the best one for who you are designing. Always try different ideas.

So, I changed Shade’s passive to where it would instead revive an ally if they die in quick succession. This would help portray Shade’s role and was more in line with his whole “keeper of the dead” theme.

Next is his ultimate, Deliverance. Like most champions I create, they all stem from a neat ultimate idea I have. I’ll usually take the ultimate and sculpt a champion around it. Now that’s not to say that I won’t fiddle with the ultimate once or twice, Shade being a perfect example of me doing so. Originally, Shade’s ult was sort of like Nami’s Tidal Wave. He would release his souls and they would travel in a line, damaging and rooting all enemies they hit. However, I found it too similar to Nami’s. So I tried changing it. I went through a few different ideas before I came up with the current one. Due to the fact that Shade uses Souls as a resource, I didn’t want him to consume all of his souls with his ult and leave him with no means of casting his other abilities. Originally, his ultimate did consume all of his souls so I changed it up. I made it to where he can cast his ult more than once, giving him the option to either spam Deliverance or sneak other abilities in between casts, giving him more options for play style. That’s where Deliverance’s current state came into fruition.

Disclaimer: When creating champions, especially if you’re new at it, be EXTRA careful when using unique resources. Ask yourself about 100 times if you think your champion REALLY needs it. Unique resources are hard to balance. Now, when it came to Shade, I wanted more ways to portray his whole theme of the guardian of souls. SPOILER! Since he’s brothers with Thresh, wanted to show similarities between them but also show differences. Thresh is more of the “rip your soul from your heart by force” kind of guy where Shade is more the “oh? You’re dead? Come to daddy. I’ll protect you from the meanie-weenie ghosties”. With that in mind, I tried a variation of Thresh’s Damnation. Shade relies more on the souls of the dead than Thresh since it’s his job, so I turned it into a resource where Shade would get souls whenever someone, be it friend or foe, dies around him. I felt that this is very unique, which is always good and it fit Shade as a whole. Since he’s a tank, he’s going to be in the middle of fights where the majority of death occurs. With all of this set, I finally felt that I had created a unique and interesting enough champion.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this short little dev blog of my thought process behind making Shade. Hope this may have helped some of you newer champion designers with how to do certain things. Now this is where things get awkward because I don’t know how to end written projects like this… so, I’ll just wait for you to go… anytime now… … … I’m not kidding, this is it. There is nothing left for you… you are free to go... … … okay well since you’re still here, I’LL leave. See this? This is me leaving. Bye!