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Champion Concept #2: Innez, The Engine Of Inferno

HopefulAndGay·10/23/2019, 7:31:22 PM·1 votes·1,229 views

Welcome to the League of Legends Champion Concept Spotlight, featuring Innez, the Engine Of Inferno.

Role: Vanguard

BACKSTORY

The youngest of the Vermillion family, a Zaunite clan well known for their love and heavy use of fire (as shown in their technology), Valarie Innez Vermillion fashioned herself, through much of her young life, to be a bit of a pyromaniac. Oftentimes she would be found lighting something on fire in the backyard, giving no thought to her own safety.

Innez’ pyromania would bite her in the rear one fateful day, where the fireworks she was experimenting with detonated in her workshop, engulfing the structure in flame and leaving the girl unconscious and trapped in the raging blaze. As she awoke hours later, she found herself in a hospital bed, with a searing pain in her chest and no feeling in her limbs. The fire had burned her limbs past usability, and the smoke damaged her lungs heavily. Innez was on the brink of death, but she was offered salvation in the form of Hextech augmentation.

In the surgery room, weeks later, Innez was fitted with a lung filter and well as new mechanical arms and legs. However, Innez, unsatisfied with simply being ‘fixed’, saw the true potential of augmenting herself, and found her satisfaction on the black market. A flamethrower in her arm, a stock of thermite missiles, and thrusters on her back have transformed Innez into a blazing war machine, burning a swathe through wherever she goes.

PLAYSTYLE AND SKINS

A top lane Vanguard with exceptional mobility, Innez lives for big pushes and engages, often starting team fights in a fiery flash. Her array of blazing weaponry will assure that any enemy who goes up against Innez is thoroughly... roasted.

Skins: -Firefighter Innez -Dragonfire Innez -Battlecast Innez

ABILITIES

Passive: Combustion Drive Innez gains a stack of KABOOM! with every ability she lands. Upon basic attacking an enemy with stacks, Innez consumes all the stacks to deal bonus damage and gain a short burst of movement speed.

Q: Ka-Bang Bomb 60/65/70 Mana Innez fires a thermite bomb to a target location, which then bursts into a puddle of flame that persists for a few moments.

W: Engage Thrusters! 50 Mana Innez spins, dealing damage around her. Upon finishing her spin, she looses a blast of flame in the direction she targeted when casting initially.

E: Full Throttle/Burning Blast 65/75/90 Mana First Cast: Innez dashes in a direction while coating herself in fire, granting a shield and dealing burn damage to anyone hit. After reaching the end of the dash, the second cast is unlocked.

Second Cast: Innez fires her shield as a projectile in a target direction, functioning as a short-range skillshot that damages and slows the first enemy champion hit. The shield is retained.

R: Hextech Immolation Strike 100 Mana Innez targets an area on the map within a medium range of her. After a few seconds, a gigantic bomb drops on that location, dealing magic damage and knocking up anyone in the area. The bomb persists for some time, and if Innez strikes it with an ability while it persists, it detonates, coating a gigantic, star-burst-shaped area in fire.

And that’s champ concept number two! No direct inspiration for this one. I just thought a fire-based Vanguard would be cool, and making them a hextech-enhanced pyromaniac would be fitting.

Edit Log: 10/23/19: Posted initially, reworked abilities slightly (credit to TheDjinn for their ideas!), other clarifications.

5 Comments

ModThe Djinn10/23/2019, 7:48:36 PM1 votes

Cool stuff! Let's dig in.

In the surgery room, weeks later, Innez was fitted with a lung filter and well as new mechanical arms and legs. However, Innez, unsatisfied with simply being ‘fixed’, saw the true potential of augmenting herself, and found her satisfaction on the black market. A flamethrower in her arm, a stock of thermite missiles, and thrusters on her back have transformed Innez into a blazing war machine, burning a swathe through wherever she goes.

Minor point -- this feels so much more Zaun than Piltover. The reckless self-endangerment, the hextech augmentation, becoming a weapon...

Passive: Combustion Drive Innez gains a stack of KABOOM! with every ability she lands. Upon basic attacking an enemy with stacks, Innez consumes all the stacks to deal bonus damage and gain a short burst of movement speed.

This is a little odd to me. It's not a super Vanguard-y move, although I like it in theory. It also needs to have a stack limit, or you'll just Q up over and over until your Vanguard one-shots an enemy.

Ultimately, I'm a little upset that it's best used by a simple attack-spell-attack-spell pattern, because it feels like something I'd want to stack up but I don't really get a benefit for doing so save on my first attack.

I might actually consider turning this into a stacking effect that unlocks something big like a stun + explosion on an attack or a powerful knock-back, so that it feels like something you really build up to and then unleash as a big KABOOM!

Q: Ka-Bang Bomb 60/65/70 Mana Innez fires a thermite bomb to a target location, which then bursts into a puddle of flame that persists for a few moments. Adds a stack of Combustion.

Fairly generic ability here. No real complains, but also nothing revolutionary. I might consider adding a small slow (either on impact or in the AoE) to help you fill the Vanguard role.

W: Engage Thrusters! 50 Mana Innez spins, dealing damage around her while knocking back nearby enemies. At the end of the spin, Innez fires a cone of thermite out in front of her, creating a fire zone.

A fun ability, but not really a Vanguard ability, and especially not an ability for a melee-range Vanguard who wants to auto-attack people. You actually end up knocking people out of your passive range, and this means you'll have three zones of fire (counting the ultimate) which will get confusing fast. I'd consider redesigning this one, although I like it as an ability on its own merits (i.e. not on this kit).

E: Full Throttle/Burning Blast 65/75/90 Mana First Cast: Innez dashes in a direction while coating herself in fire, granting a shield and dealing burn damage to anyone hit. After reaching the end of the dash, the second cast is unlocked.

Second Cast: Innez fires her shield as a projectile in a target direction, functioning as a short-range skillshot that damages and slows the first enemy champion hit.

This one is fun. Do you lose the shield on the recast? I'm hoping not, because it's a fun ability but I wouldn't want to lose the shield in most circumstances. Probably my favorite ability so far, although I'd consider making the skillshot deal bonus damage to burning enemies so you get a nice reward if you manage to dash through your target and can thus reduce the cooldown a bit and use this as a fight opener and a mid-fight tool.

R: Hextech Immolation Strike 100 Mana Innez targets an area on the map within a medium range of her. After a few seconds, a gigantic bomb drops on that location, dealing magic damage and knocking back anyone in the area. The bomb persists for some time, and if Innez strikes it with an ability while it persists, it detonates, coating a gigantic, star-burst-shaped area in fire.

I feel like you have enough abilities you could just make this a recast effect, but knocking people out of the area that the bomb will explode in feels a bit bad to me. The enemy's already out of the area! Sure, it's solid zone denial, but you're a Vanguard and want to be in the fight.

You have some really cool stuff here. I don't think it comes together super cleanly as a unified kit though, and I'm not sure it fills the Vanguard role well. It feels much more about zone denial and knockbacks than aggressively diving into a fight with big engage effects and lock-downs, and it lacks the explosive initiation I've come to expect from Vanguards because it tends to scatter enemies fairly unreliably.

I think you can tweak this a bit to be really cool though!