Boards›Concepts & Creations

[Champion Concept] Cyrus, the Peacekeeper

Serpexnessie·11/14/2017, 5:00:42 AM·5 votes·1,475 views

#Cyrus, the Peacekeeper

##Splash Art https://pre00.deviantart.net/2061/th/pre/f/2017/317/9/e/9e26c4918c0347ca8c2af4261a762d5a-dbtp0gh.png (Art by me.) Deviantart link ⁣

# ⁣ > ⁣ Music Theme⁣ ⁣

######My CCOS Outreach bonus: Click here for the review!

⁣

##Basic Information

https://orig00.deviantart.net/b049/f/2017/317/c/d/cd979723aafdec3ae27c135f80083647-dbtp0od.png

Faction: Piltover

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Weapon: Hextech Drones - Atlas and Pulse ⁣

##Lore

Cyrus is the guard of the border between Piltover and Zaun. However, due to his terrible proficiency with using traditional weapons, he instead employs the assistance of two custom-made, spherical Hextech drones. His duty extends both ways: he is responsible for shielding curious Pilties away from the dark depths of Zaun… and responsible for preventing ill-intentioned Zaunites from entering into Piltover, by force or otherwise.

##"Halt. You are not permitted to pass."

The largest passageway between Piltover and Zaun is a giant tunnel leading into a wide, and terrifyingly long climb of stairs, dimly lit by a few hextech lamps hanging from the ceiling. It is here that Cyrus’s extended family have guarded for generations, hired by Piltover’s officials to keep the balance between the two cities, in exchange for food and sundries. People deemed as law-abiding citizens are let through the passageway, while people deemed as troublemakers by the guards are turned away.

As the next in line to become the passage’s guards and wishing to uphold the family’s legacy, Cyrus and his siblings were trained from a young age to become proficient in all the tasks related to the career; including combat, first aid, and diplomacy. However, despite the constant training, Cyrus could never keep up with his siblings- or anyone, for that matter, in any aspect related to combat or first aid. He could not land a single strike with a melee weapon, he could not accurately fire any ranged weapon, and struggled in hand-to-hand combat, as he suffered defeat after defeat during training. Additionally, he lacked the ability to tend to any injury or wound, no matter how minor or severe it was.

Despite his terrible lack of proficiency in combat, Cyrus was still honorbound in becoming a guard of the passageway, believing it to be his duty. However, where he lacked in combat or medical skills, Cyrus compensated in his ability to strategize and deploy orders, and also a natural talent for tinkering with machines, despite everyone else viewing it as an essentially wasted talent. With what skills he possessed, Cyrus was determined to use them in whatever way he could to uphold his honorbound duty.

Due to his exceptional leadership and management skills, Cyrus eventually went on to become a manager for the passage guards. However, he still longed to contribute in as much work as the other guards, and to become a full guard someday. Using his engineering skills, Cyrus attempted day after day to create machines that would help him fulfill the same tasks as the other guards, such as installing automatic targeting systems in the ranged weapons. Even still, his inventions were better suited in the hands of more experienced guards, rather than Cyrus himself.

One day, on the same day Cyrus had finally made a major breakthrough in his designs, a large Zaunite gang appeared at the base steps of the stairs, demanding entry into Piltover. As their reputation throughout Zaun was notoriously negative, they were naturally prevented access through the passage. In a fit of protest and rage, the gang unsheathed weapons, and battled their way through the passage. Combined, their sheer power was too much for the guards, resulting in injuries for most, and death for some.

Before the gang members made it through to the end of the passage, Cyrus appeared from his office with his latest invention: Two fully automated, spherical drones, both fully equipped with weapons and first aid materials. Cyrus spoke multiple commands at the drones, and the machines automatically darted out, gunning down the now terrified gangsters with deadly accuracy, and protecting the incapacitated and injured guards.

Cyrus’s two drones worked together in perfect harmony, as if they were two full-on passage guards that Cyrus personally commanded. The drone Atlas gunned down enemies with a volley of deadly laser fire, while the drone Pulse incapacitated fast-fleeing enemies for Atlas to later gun down; all the while both drones darted from one wounded soldier to another, providing aid for them all.

Cyrus was applauded for his valiant work, and was rapidly promoted to become a full passage guard. With his two hextech drones at his side, Cyrus could do all the work of the rest of the passage guards combined; all without lifting a finger.

⁣

⁣

##Gameplay Information

##Primary Role: Marksman (hybrid Enchanter)

  • Damage Type: Physical
  • Primary Resource: Mana
  • Attack Range: Ranged (550 Units, from Atlas Drone's location)
  • Intended Role: ADC
  • Playstyle: Drone-commanding utility ADC

Style:
[⚔️] ----○---------------- [🔮]

---- Power Scale -----
Damage
Toughness
Control
Mobility
Utility
Difficulty
⁣

⁣⁣

#Abilities

⁣ ##Passive - Hextech Drones

Cyrus’s two Hextech drones, Atlas and Pulse circle around close to him, and can be controlled using abilities.

Cyrus cannot perform basic attacks on his own. Instead, he commands basic attacks to be shot from the Atlas Drone.

Offensive Repair - Whenever the Pulse Drone applies any crowd control effects to an enemy champion, it gains a recovery charge. Whenever an allied champion other than yourself touches the Pulse Drone, all of the recovery charges are consumed to heal the ally by a small amount. (Maximum 3 charges stored at once) Allies will not be healed if they are extremely close to, or at full health.

If the Pulse Drone has recovery charges stored up, you can right-click a target allied champion within 450 units of Cyrus to send the Pulse Drone to them. This action has a moderate cooldown. The Pulse Drone will then return to Cyrus after 1.25 seconds.

⁣

##Q - Tracking Shot

The Pulse Drone shoots a long-ranged tracking shot in a target direction, latching onto the first enemy unit struck: slowing, dealing magic damage to, revealing, and marking them for a few seconds.

Atlas Drone’s next basic attack against a marked target will consume the mark to deal bonus magic damage, and gain bonus attack speed for a few seconds.

⁣

##W - Redeploy

Shield a target allied champion, and send the Atlas Drone to follow them instead of Cyrus for a few seconds.

After the time limit, or after reactivating the ability, the Atlas Drone returns to Cyrus, additionally granting you half of the original shield.

⁣

##E - Quasar

Send the Pulse Drone to a target location.

After a second, the Pulse Drone releases a shockwave in a small radius around it, dealing magic damage to and stunning all enemies caught in the shockwave for 1 second.

After a few more seconds, the Pulse Drone returns to Cyrus.

⁣

##R - Maelstrom

Both Drones begin firing a large, wide cone of bullets towards a target direction for 4 seconds total, dealing physical damage every half-second to all enemies within the bullet fire.

While this ability is active, the time it takes for Drones to automatically return to you is paused.

An enemy can only take damage from one drone’s hail of bullets at once.

⁣

#Playing As Cyrus

Cyrus is a botlane utility ADC. However, Cyrus himself does nothing- it's his drones that do all the work.

All of Cyrus's basic abilities and passive scale off of AP, so his utility isn't too overwhelming as an ADC. With that said, this champion has two distinct playstyles - ADC and Support, with ADC being Cyrus's primary playstyle, and support being a somewhat viable, but otherwise off-meta choice.

By building standard ADC items (AD, Attack Speed, Crit), Cyrus plays as a high-utility ADC. As an ADC, Cyrus pairs well with high-damage and tank supports. When paired with a high-damage support, Cyrus can provide for the lost utility, by being able to provide his own. While paired with a tank support, Cyrus can send Atlas to them while they soak up damage on the front lines, and act as a range extender for Atlas, or a vessel to send Pulse to using Cyrus's passive, to help land Pulse's crowd control effects from his Q or E.

By building AP and support items, Cyrus can instead be played as a enchanter support, with a bit of damage mixed in. However, Cyrus does not have the same amount of utility as a traditional utility support, as he lacks a utility ultimate or more reliable crowd control effects. But hey, if Ardent Censer's ever broken again, he has two ways to apply it.

Cyrus features quite a few different combos, here's a few simple examples:

[Q] -> [E]

  • Tracking Shot's slow sets up the use of Quasar, so that it's less guaranteed to miss.

[W] <--> [Q] -> [Auto]

  • By moving Atlas Drone to an ally closer to marked enemies, you're set up to proc longer-ranged marks.

[E] or [Passive] -> [Q] -> [Auto]

  • If you really need the attack speed boost, you can send Pulse Drone to a different location to fire Tracking Shot from. ⁣

⁣ ##Core Items:

item 3508 - More cooldown reduction helps to provide more uptime on Cyrus's utility-heavy abilities.

item 3094 - Helps Atlas to gain more range to proc [Q]'s mark

item 3085 - More waveclear can't hurt. ⁣

#Changelist:

  • 11/22/2017 - Finally expanded the lore
  • 11/14/2017 - Expanded "Playing As Cyrus" Section
  • 11/13/2017 - Concept Posted

#My other work! (Archives)

17 Comments

Bobo11311/15/2017, 5:20:23 PM5 votes

Just be aware that a lot of these mechanics (not just visually) have quite a lot in common with Orianna's kit. However, there are still several ways to help block out this character’s identity to forge a path of your own. Keep in mind that, without base stats, ability-specific data, or scaling, it will be rather tough to give strong feedback on anything other than basic kid details, but alas.

*Throughout the review, I've included a few blocks of suggestions that I like to call "Bobo's Idea Corner." These are just some little ways that you might look at your kit from a different angle to help push it a bit further. Use them if you will; they are there to set you on a course if you want them to, or could lead you to completely new ideas.

**Passive: Hextech Drones **

This is some pretty interesting stuff. I like this utility – especially that clicking on an enemy means the Atlas Drone will target them for you, and clicking on an ally means the Pulse Drone will target them. It’s pretty straight forward and unique.

*For an ADC to have this kind of healing utility is a little dangerous, but because you don’t present any specific scaling stats, it might not be such a glaring issue. It’s just something to keep on the back burner. . .

Q: Tracking Shot

Hmmmm – this is a particularly interesting ability – a linear poke with a slow that then amplifies the next basic attack. It’s simple, but effective. Not much to take note of here.

Bobo’s Idea Corner #1: I would make this ability stem from Cyrus himself. Currently, your kit leaves Cyrus totally open every waking moment, and with a series of drones that are somewhat hard to operate, if you get confused as to where your abilities would come from at any given moment, a simple ability like this one would give you some better options. That way, one aility stems from Cyrus, the passive stems from both drones, one ability comes from Pulse, another one comes from Atlas, and the ult comes from both. It creates a harmonic balance within your kit, and gives your character’s positioning a little more importance as well.

Pulse drone, thematically speaking, sounds more like your shield, and Atlas drone is more like your sword. To make things less confusing for the player, it might be best to assign one drone with offensive capabilities and the other with defense.

*Re-tweaking this might mean that you would need to find another way to build healing stacks with your passive (since you currently need the Pulse Drone’s CC outlets to do so), but that might be a necessary sacrifice for the sake of clarity.

Totally just an idea.

W: Redeploy

This is the part that really screamed Orianna for me. This ability, in a nutshell, already exists – without the part of it returning to you. It might use some tweaking to get it to be a bit more original, and it’s not like that’s 100% necessary, but I strongly recommend it.

Bobo’s Idea Corner #2: Lets say, for instance, that this ability used the Pulse Drone instead. Like I mentioned back in “Bobo’s Idea Corner #1,” Atlas drone is more like your sword, and Pulse drone sounds more like your shield.

With this in mind, let’s focus on this particular ability on hand; this is a great chance to send out the Pulse Drone instead to deploy the shield. Meaning, THIS could be your way of providing heal stacks for your passive – if a shielded player receives damage from enemy abilities, each instance of damage could add a heal token to your passive reserve.

Again, totally just an idea.

E: Quasar

It sounds a lot like a ranged Lissandra W (or, more accurately, a significantly better version of Orianna’s Q). I might not use a ranged stun, but maybe a fear away from the Atlas Drone – like some kind of riot control device. It might make this a little more fair (considering your ADC character also has a ranged slow as well).

Bobo’s Idea Corner #3: If you apply my mechanic from Bobo’s Idea Corner #1, where your Q (Tracking Shot) stems from Cyrus himself, then you can more easily use Cyrus's aim to mark targets for your amplified basic attack. If the Alpha Drone is deployed, and if Q were still starting from the Atlas Drone, it would be much harder to hit targets, versus the much easier, cone-like view Cyrus would have of the Atlas Drone’s range from afar.

*The one below is just another idea, unrelated to the last one, that you could use for this ability as well in case you wanted to differentiate it EVEN further; I just included a couple of different ways in which you could go about doing that . . .

Bobo’s Idea Conrer #4: If you made the atlas drone targeting a little bit like OG Yoric (IE: if you press E, it empowers an auto attack that tells the atlas drone where to go, and then the drone would zoom behind a target), that might be a way to differentiate your abilities a little more (plus that sort of spellcasting might flow well with basic attack targeting as well)

Suppose this ability didn’t send-out a circular AoE burst that stunned, but rather made a chain of electricity between the two drones that damaged and stunned targets in a line. In theory, you could send out the Atlas Drone to a target, and if you re-activated the ability, you could damage and stunt targets between you and the Atlas Drone Also, if an ally is fleeing from an enemy, and if you used your passive to send the pulse drone to them, and then cast this E behind the enemy, this ability would strike between the Atlas and Pulse drones. Then, activating ult to taget the space between the drones would be devastating as well.

Typically, you could also get away with better scaling abilities (both in damage and utility) if they have a linear hitbox influence versus a traditional, circular AoE (and it further separates you from Ori).

R: Maelstrom

This is pretty nice, through and through. It has some great comboability – especially with E (Quasar) where you can effectively pin enemies between you and the Atlas drone, CC them, and then blast away. It’s pretty nice, and probably my favorite thing about the kit. Nicely done.

Art/Appearance:

Art is not a judge-worthy thing for the CCOS, since it is coined as a game design competition (and since making your own art is a rare time investment – serious props for that). Know that I’m more than willing to give you a couple art of tips going forward if you need them, and for now, I’ll do just that:

Now I’m not here to comment on art ability – there’s a time and place for that of course – this is just a couple of notes on the appearance and concept work in general. I think a big portion of the concern comes from the drones being balls, and the silhouette that makes. Your character’s humanoid look doesn’t have any truly discernible features other than the helm shape and the ankle pieces, and those kinds of details could be exaggerated to make your character really stand out.

You could also make the shape of the drones something other than balls - IE: Octahedrons, Boomerang-like things, etc., etc. Their shape seems to have little impact on their functionality. Keeping them as balls is probably your biggest visual grievance, and it's what most people would likely call you on. I personally don't mind it as much, but it's definitely something to be aware of.

A humanoid with a hovering ball is, most definitely, Orianna. A very similar humanoid figure with two of them would likely be confusing to a lot of people. Part of what makes League champs so recognizable is that they can be easily recognized by a mere silhouette – they have very discernable, physical features that are unique to their character, and can usually be seen across all of their skins and splash art. These details could even be somewhat subtle, but they still go a long way; like the circular handles around Draven’s axes, or Nidalee’s leg warmer things.

Then there's the brass and silver colors of the metal. That might be a little concerning – given that directly ties to Orianna’s pre-existing embroidery palette. Granted, you do have some color coding going on with the drone pair, as well as the brown (leather?) chestpiece and thighs, which certainly helps, but your character still comes off looking strikingly similar to Ori.

I’m not saying you should go and change these things, especially because you’ve already worked hard on this one, but these tips just some general things to pay attention to when formulating the look of future champions.

Lore:

I figure there is definitely more of this coming when you say the expanded lore will be here soon, and I gave you a couple of tips on Discord a little while ago. I’d say that you could further solidify this character’s role as a guardian, by demonstrating just how fearsome these drones can be at apprehending people. You’re already on a pretty decent track as far as narrative and themes are concerned – keep at it!

Overall:

The thing is, this kit is about a 60/40 split in borrowed/original content - 40% seems to be drawn from a few pre-existing control mage kits (ironically including Orianna). The other 60% is a little more on the original side. It has enough flare of its own within the kit to be different, but it’s teetering on the edge here. . .

Cyrus may be an ADC, but he comes across as more of an AD castor at times. He has a frightening amount of CC for a traditional ADC, along with the ability to heal allies. Now, because this concept does not have specific range, cooldowns, or damage statistics, a lot of the nuts and bolts of this kit cannot be put under laborious scrutiny, it seems to stand well enough on its own without those figures present.

Cyrus is a pretty solid idea in general, it might be a bit on the Ori side of things, and its ADC identity might be bogged down a bit by your kit mechanics and utility, but you’ve got some content in here that is pretty solid and likable. Well done - definitely keep up the good work!

Arakadia11/14/2017, 6:37:28 AM3 votes

While you do nail the whole drone theme and fantasy, I would really suggest that you capitalize on his fantasy as a sort of gatekeeper/median/or middle man for passage between the two cities.

Maybe once his complete lore comes out his kit will fit his border patrol theme better, but right now his kit only tells me he has two high tech drones and a penchant for protecting areas and people.

THE RlVER KlNG11/14/2017, 10:57:32 PM3 votes

Skylarke is this you

TyrantMonkey11/17/2017, 11:58:21 AM1 votes

Like it. Clever concept! Has riot ever create a fan's concept?