Champion concept: Ruga, Demacia's Bloodhound

So, here I'll write the lore and concept stuff, the mechanical ideas are all in the link. If you have any comments or suggestions (especially regarding balance, I'm probably lacking in that field)

Ruga's name is based on the Esperanto word for red, I was messing around with google translate and liked how it sounded, and it fit the original image of her, Ruga is a Wolf-Vastaya (like Xayah or Rakan, not like Rengar) who wears a red cloak, which she generally uses to obscure her Vastayan features. She is a member of the Demacian mage-seekers, who is able to 'smell' magic. A big theme I had planned for Ruga's personality was her attitude, she feels a form of self-loathing that was instilled in her by those around her, considering her magic something that makes her less than others.

Back onto appearance and visuals though (sorry I couldn't draw anything, I'm a terrible artist), Ruga wears a large red cloak which hides her ears and tail, although they would probably be seen at times in her animations, she uses a shortsword in her left hand, which is her main weapon, her attacks are general slashes and stabs, with nothing too special to the animations. Ruga's passive would create a blue Demacian symbol over the hunted champion's head, like Warwick and Garen's visual effects, meanwhile the path towards the target would look exactly like a blue version of Warwick's path. Ruga's Q would look like a simple dash, with no particle effects, although enemies who are yet to take their bonus damage have a blue version of the dark harvest visual effect highlighting them. The shield from Ruga's W would have no visual effect, although the triggering radius would be highlighted in light blue. Ruga's E would make something of a sonic wave visual effect before the enemy is frightened normally, with little special visual effect. Ruga's ultimate would create a chain at the point where she collided with the champion, which would then have a little chain leading to the champion, and on the champion's screen a chain may wrap along their screen for every chain attached to them.

Now onto the (very basic) lore, Ruga is a bastard whose Vastayan father left before she was born, causing her to grow up as an outcast from her community, the mage seekers were initially very skeptical of her due to her nature as a Vastaya, but she managed to gain the respect of a high ranking mage seeker when she helped him track down a thief who was using illusion magic to escape crime scenes. When the mage seekers discovered that Ruga could smell magic their attitude towards her outwardly changed, she was offered a stable job, a position of power, and an important role in the kingdom, Ruga agreed without hesitation, eager to finally have a place in the world she'd grown up in, and among the mage seekers she grew, she learned to protect herself with a sword, how to swiftly disengage from a fight, break an opponent's guard, protect key individuals, and even to use her quick reflexes to disarm large opponents before harm could be caused. In her new position Ruga was satisfied, she had money to support herself and her mother, she felt loyalty to the mage seekers around her, and she even befriended a young mage named Sylas, who could also detect magic. However, through the next year her loyalty became a burden, more and more often her job was not to simply arrest her targets, but to kill them in a show of brutality, eventually she even heard that her friend, Sylas, had been killed (she was lied to, just wanted to clarify), and as much as Ruga wanted to stop killing, she couldn't, she was loyal to the crown, and she hated the thought of returning to being a commoner, to just being another mage walking free in Demacia, she hated the thought of being the enemy. Through years of work Ruga became more complacent, her killings no longer felt unnecessary, her sword no longer felt heavy in its scabbard, and the red cloak she wore out of shame no longer reminded her of blood. She was a good Demacian, loyal, unquestioning, the good mage.

Onto gameplay, I imagined Ruga being a hybrid support, using crowd control and the shield from guard dog to help her ADC kill the opponents, the reason I chose to make her and AD/AP hybrid is because I viewed her power as being not only from her martial prowess, but also empowered by her magical nature, and conveniently, this isn't a full role, meaning she'd have a niche for herself. Mage Hunter would be useful in a few ways, firstly it could potentially warn Ruga of an oncoming gank if the ability was triggered by a nearby jungler, or it could be used to punish a support for spamming their abilities, or just to keep the enemy on their toes. Opportunity is a useful gap-closer that's useful for damaging the target of a hunt, or just to close the gap on a vulnerable enemy, with the slow and damage being a useful add-on. Guard Dog is one of my favourite abilities for Ruga, allowing her to protect her ADC, as well as pressure the enemy to stay away at the same time. Fear tactics provides a useful method of pushing crowd control, although due to the range scaling it is only best at punishing enemies who come too close, and its cooldown means that a clever enemy can bait Ruga into wasting it. Ruga's ultimate is a fun ability conceptually, it can be used on a single enemy to allow Ruga and her allies to wail on the champion, or Ruga can try to spread it among multiple champions to allow her ADC to spray them down while their mobility is limited, although I tried to keep possibility of executions low by making the threshold low and giving a small window of time where the execution can even occur.

Now onto interactions, firstly I imagine that Ruga would be very much despised by Xayah, even more so than Ahri, meanwhile Sylas would probably tell her something like "Your chains are wrought of the finest red silk, but they are chains nonetheless". Ruga would also show delight at working with high-ranking Demacians like Garen, Jarvan, and Lux, while possibly being slightly intimidated by Noxians like Darius, Swain, and Sion, as she's never fought an enemy outside of Demacia's walls and forests. Many of the demons would show interest in her, with Nocturne finding the fear that surrounds her delectable, Evelynn commenting that the girl is practically her own torture chamber, and an allied Tahm Kench would offer to ferry her somewhere she could start all over.

This is my champion concept, I hope you appreciate it and I'd like to know what you think of the concept