Lusak, the Bog Lord
If you were from Demacia, and, feeling a bit of wanderlust, you travelled up the coast about a hundred leagues - over a hill there, through a forest there - you'd find yourself looking at a bog. Yep; a bog. Goes on as far as the eye can see, and farther. And in this bog, they say the insects are so numerous that they could drag a man through a cornfield. No other animals even live there; can't blame 'em, really. Smells like 'eck, too. You'd be so disoriented trying not to black out from the stench, that you can hardly even defend yourself from the insects. Well, it's not like you could anyways, but you get the point. It stinks. Besides that, you've always got the sound of those eerie bubbles popping in the background. The same sound o'er and o'er again, for hour upon hour. Some of 'em are worse than eerie; they grow to the size of a house, then they blow up. Louder than one o' those Bilgewater cannons when they go off. Eh? Oh ho ho, mate, if you were on top of one of those giant bubbles when it went off, ya'd probably die. Go flying off into some acrid, bubbling pool a few miles away, you would. Aye, those things are probably why they call it 'The Bubbling Bog'.
They say that they're the air bubbles of those the bog has claimed, though I don't believe that. There could still be some dead loners under the mud, though. Maybe some evil magic has the souls trapped under the surface - not the best fate. Demacia used to exile many of their worst criminals to the Bubbling Bog, so I suppose it could be true. They'd get eaten by insects, or, if they were lucky, die of starvation. If they just wanted to end it, they could climb one of the giant bubbles and wait for it to blow 'em to kingdom come. Course... there's the other way, I suppose. You see, in the Bubbling Bog, there's a few areas where the mud is like quicksand. Take a step in it, and you get dragged down like there's something pulling at your foot. 'eck, maybe there is - nobody knows much about it anyway. Some of the poor saps probably didn't know the difference between the safe areas (well, as safe as it gets in that bog) and the unsafe ones, and wound up at the bottom. Maybe that's where that myth comes from, bout the 'air bubbles of the dead'.
As you can see, there's a few rumors attached to the Bog. Course, the most eerie one of all is that there's someone behind it all - someone in charge, so to speak. There's a few odd folk that wander the edge of the Bog, but one madcap went deep into it and came out alive - only one I recall that managed it. Stupid fellow, he was. Anyway, he swore he saw a man made of mud, with dead grass growing out of his shoulder and insects clustering around him. He got laughed out of town by the locals, of course, but, well... it's disturbing, to say the least. Every year in the spring, when the bog floods over, it gets a little bigger - even happens on the dry years. It's unnatural, and I don't like it - after all, there's a lot of magic in this world; to say all of it is good is far from the truth. It's not out of the question that someone wants to see Valoran rot.
KIT And that 'someone who wants to see Valoran rot' happens to be Lusak, the Bog Lord. Visually he is a humanoid bog elemental, made of mud with dead plants growing out of his body. In gameplay, he is an immobile mage with strong crowd control and zoning. Here is his passive:
Passive - Harbinger of Mud Wherever Lusak goes, the earth around him festers and turns to mud. Enemies travelling through the mud move more slowly.
- Radius: 250 units
- Slow: 8/9/10% at levels 1/7/13
Lusak's passive is meant to patch over his lack of mobility. It has a small radius, meaning it's only useful when someone all-ins your squishy self. Assassins will most likely still delete you, but sustained melee damage dealers that need time to do their work will fall behind as you make your escape. It is most useful early game, when getting caught out doesn't necessarily mean instant death.
Q - Insect Swarm Lusak calls forth a swarm of biting insects to attack everything they encounter, dealing damage, plus bonus damage based on enemies' current health. All enemies hit take increased damage from Lusak's abilities for a few seconds. The insects travel in a line before dispersing at max range.
- Range: ~1000 units
- Damage: 80/120/160/200/240 (50% AP) (10% of their Current Health)
- Damage Amp: 7/9/11/13/15%
- Mana Cost: 70/80/90/100/110
- Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 seconds
- Projectile speed: 550 units/second
- Projectile width: 200 units
Call in the bugs! Insect Swarm is Lusak's main poking tool, dealing good damage to all enemies it encounters (especially to higher health targets). As far as gameplay is concerned, it is an extremely fat, extremely slow skillshot that passes through all enemies it hits. Its' damage amp and %current health damage make hitting enemies with Insect Swarm first a good tactic, as your other spells will hit harder.
(I'd like input as to whether or not this should become a moving DoT field rather than a nuke)
W - Stagnant Pool Lusak pours all the stench and decay of the Bubbling Bog into an area, reducing it to an acrid pool. Enemies in the pool are overcome with the stench, moving and attacking more slowly while taking damage each second. The pool lasts for several seconds before it dries up and becomes normal ground again.
- Range: 800 units
- Radius: ~200 units
- MS/AS slow: 30/36/42/48/54%
- Damage/second: 12/18/24/30/36 (+20% AP)
- Mana cost: 80/90/100/110/120
- Cooldown: 15 seconds
A crippling ability, though, in an age of dashes and blinks, escaping it may not be as much of an issue as it seems. Stagnant Pool's slow is vital for making effective use of Lusak's E, and can also help with his Q. It has defensive uses as well; it can either keep enemies from reaching you or reduce the number of attacks they get off. If Stagnant Pool is on cooldown, Lusak becomes more vulnerable to ganks due to a lack of reliable cc.
E - Rupturing Bubble Lusak summons a bubble from the ground that rapidly expands before rupturing, damaging enemies in its radius. The ability can be reactivated to explode ahead of time, but has reduced damage and area of effect. If the bubble is allowed to reach max charge before exploding, all enemies hit are knocked airborne.
- Max charge reached after 4 seconds
- Range: 700 units
- Radius: 80 - 240, expands as it charges
- Damage: 60/90/120/150/180 (+40% AP) - 120/180/240/300/360 (+80% AP)
- Knockup duration: 1 second (max charge only)
- Mana cost: 80/85/90/95/100
- Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 seconds
Rupturing Bubble is where Lusak gets his (pun incoming) burst, and it can, potentially, deal a lot of damage. However, insta-casting it only inflicts a small amount of damage. You can do better than that by simply using the ability intelligently, but its true potential can only be unlocked by a bit of setup - whether by Stagnant Pool or your teammates. (If your target isn't rooted, stunned, suppressed, or silenced, than he can just Flash/dash out of you W and your E - which is just sad)
R - Belly of the Bog Lusak calls upon the power within the Bubbling Bog, transforming an entire area into a bog of its own. Enemies in the bog move more slowly; over time, they sink in the mud, moving more and more slowly. If they do not leave the area in time, they are sucked under the surface, becoming suppressed, untargetable, and unable to see while they take damage over time for a few seconds. If they survive this, they are then spit to the surface (enemies cannot be suppressed more than once). If they do not survive, they remain under, never to be seen again.
- 6 seconds before they go under
- Range: 750
- Radius: 550
- Slow: 10/15/20% - ramps up to 60/80/99% over 6 seconds
- Damage: 125/200/275 (+50% AP) over 3 seconds
- Suppress: 3 seconds
- Mana cost: 150
- Cooldown: 210/180/150 seconds
This synergizes so well with so many things; Singed's Mega Adhesive, Azir's Emperor's Divide, Jarvan's Cataclysm (oh boy that's a doozy), Nasus' Wither, the list goes on. The duration before enemies get suppressed has to be long, or else the ability would be oppressive. If nothing else, it's great for zoning. It kicks butt in a teamfight; it can help your team escape the enemy. It can help your team catch the enemy. It can trap the enemy tank under a layer of mud while you shred his backline. It's great. It still, however, bears Lusak's trademark weakness against enemies with dashes; some dashes can even get you out of the radius in one go.
Lusak is a strong, albeit entirely immobile, cc mage. He zones like a boss, but is very vulnerable to ganks. Against enemies with tons of mobility, his best option is to just grit his teeth and wait til they blow their dash/blink(s), then try to blow them up. His ult synergizes very well with a lot of other champions' abilities, and a cc heavy team allows him to charge his Rupturing Bubbles for longer before releasing the explosion. Stagnant Pool's slow is crucial to make good use of Rupturing Bubble, but besides that it also reduces enemy damage. Insect Swarm can hit enemies from afar, or he can integrate it into his spell rotation to amp his damage. His passive helps him a bit when he gets dived.
Alright, so that's that. Leave your comments below, be they good or bad, or a bit of both.
Edit: Slightly edited the lore for readability.
Edit: A couple kit changes, including the removal of AD/AP shred on Stagnant Pool and Insect Swarm's damage amp becoming specific to Lusak only. Added numbers from my reply to The Djinn's comment. Removed blockquotes. I'll take any help I can get with the numbers.
(On a non-gameplay note, any notes on making the lore as good as possible are more than welcome. Things such as the narrative style, length, focus on the actual character, etc. are things I'd like to hear about.)
Thanks to The Djinn for helping with the numbers!
passive problem.