NOTES:
Nocturne from the client view is one of the coolest looking champions. Unfortunately his gameplay doesn’t live up to that expectation, at least not for me. He was my second champion purchase when I first started the game back in 2011. In my experience playing him, he lacks the ability to really instill fear in his opponents EXCEPT for when he uses ultimate. That’s not enough. Nocturne should make his opponents scared every time they see him on the rift, and that’s exactly what this kit can and will do.
First I would like to talk about my thoughts behind his W change to Imminent Terror. His W now is absolutely nothing like this, but you can see that it stemmed from his fear in his current E ability. I wanted this to be his W, because it is an auto attack reset ability, which in my opinion feels the best on the W key. I also wasn’t concerned with getting rid of his spell shield because although useful at times on his current kit, it doesn’t spook anyone, and is incredibly underwhelming (again in my opinion).
Imminent Terror combined with Phantom Blades creates new opportunities for Nocturne’s staple ability Paranoia. Currently, Paranoia is used to engage and really only to engage, and in my opinion it shouldn’t be this one directional. While he can execute targets with this ability currently, if it’s not used for engage; the cooldown is too long, and Nocturne doesn’t offer anything else if a fight breaks out after you’ve used Paranoia to secure a kill. Right now, he needs Paranoia for every late game team fight. While creating new options for Paranoia, Imminent Terror and Phantom Blades give Nocturne tools to use throughout the course of a team fight, so in the case you used Paranoia to pick an enemy before the fight, you can still be relevant in the fight to come thereafter.
Imagine a fight breaks loose, abilities flying everywhere, no one dies, but the enemy ADC gets away with half health and you see him retreat into fog of war. Now Imagine that enemy ADC retreats into fog of war with the mark of Imminent Terror. In a few seconds when that enemy champion is “out of combat”, a living shadow of Nocturne will be released from that mark damaging and, if enough damage is dealt, fearing that ADC. From the included passive of Paranoia, any feared enemy is revealed to Nocturne. So even though the enemy ADC is in fog of war and retreated behind enemy lines, Nocturne can now see them from the fear, and they just received a heavy amount of execution damage, with a simple activation of Paranoia, Nocturne can secure the kill and leave the already spooked enemy ADC, absolutely terrified. The enemy now has to consider their positing in extended fights, making sure that they do not let themselves go out of combat without an escort.
Imminent Terror lives up to his current E fear, in my opinion. When I play him now, I use his E with intent to aid the chase. Hit them with the Q speed along the dusk trail and just as that enemy Garen’s Q comes off cooldown… FEARED. I love the delayed fear/CC aspect of that ability, and it was my goal of Imminent Terror to uphold it. With my design of Imminent Terror, the delayed fear/CC is still achievable. You’re chasing down that Garen as the new and improved Nocturne, you close the gap with Haunter, use W and mark him with Imminent Terror and just as he thinks he gained enough separation from you, his champion leaves combat, he’s gets smacked for a tasty amount of execution damage and FEARED! The living shadow Nocturne spins give you just the amount cooldown reduction you need to use Haunter once more, the Garen is feared and helpless for just long enough for you to close that gap, you re-activate Haunter just in time, you’re on top of the Garen and this time, you finish the job and the Garen is spooked.
You’re still thinking about the spell shield aren’t you? Have no fear (ayy lmao), the get out of jail free from mitigating a heavy CC ability from his spell shield is achievable through the new E, Dread Dance.
Dread Dance was made with the intent to be a rather shot cooldown/spammable ability. Dread Dance underneath all the fancy language is a flash ability, however limited to only be used as a flash into a shadow circle. And shadow circles come from Nocturne’s Phantom Blades, which means he can only flash onto/around an enemy that he very recently damaged. Without a poking ability, that’s not going to be easy. Playing this new improved version of Nocturne, you’ll have to carefully plan out your course of attack. Because of this necessity of careful planning, high risk, I decided to give it bonus damage and an avenue of cooldown reduction, high reward. The more enemies you Dread Dance into the better. Late game team fights, you’ll literally look like you’re dancing around the enemies. And back to the spell shield comment, you have the ability to dodge enemy skill shots with Dread Dance.
Dread Dance combined with Phantom Blades will create really exciting team fight scenarios where multiple enemies will be marked with Phantom Blades’s shadow circles just waiting to be feared. With Dread Dance Nocturne has the potential to move from target to target, confusing the enemy with erratic but planned movement and with a focus of damaging a marked target to proc the fear. The best part, it could be any one of them. Of course the focus should be the carries, but Phantom Blades’s shadow circles give Nocturne the opportunity to peel as well, focusing on the tank diving his allies and proc-ing that fear instead. Then after that bully is gone he can head right back in with Haunter, Dread Dance, or Paranoia, and even if that seemingly lucky enemy gets away, it’s only a matter of time until Imminent Terror takes effect…
Now to address the crux of the new and improved kit, Haunter. Getting rid of his ranged damage mechanic with his current Q was a big decision, but in my opinion necessary. Nocturne is an auto attacking champion with abilities that help him stick to his opponents… until late game. As a player you want the abilities to help you stick to your enemies throughout the entire game. Yes, his current Q gives allows him to chase his enemies… BUT, in my experience, chase is useless late game (unless 1v1). If I’m not already on top of the ADC with a [INSERT ENHANCER SUPPORT NAME HERE] supporting them, and a half decent rest of the team, there’s absolutely no way I hit the with a current Q and run up to them without dying before I get there. Your best and really only choice late game is to ULT onto the ADC (or and squishy) hit them with the Q, and try to use the trail to be able to stick to them. BUT even then there’s a long enough cast time on Q for any decent player to flash or dodge, and a long enough cast time on Q to delay one auto attack, which is the difference between a kill or not. Even if the enemy [INSERT ENHANCER SUPPORT NAME HERE] has a brain aneurism, you might kill the ADC, but then what? The only way you killed that ADC was because you built full lethality, which means THEN you die. That’s it, you killed one enemy and then you die. You already used your Q to kill the ADC, and you already mashed your W and blocked some ability, and you used E already to secure the kill in case the ADC had healed or flashed. This is why it’s unhealthy for Paranoia to be used as an engage tool to begin with. You should have some type of survivability/reward for having a large set of stones between your legs. Haunter gives you all of that and some. You can use Paranoia to engage, diving onto the enemy ADC, and even if you didn’t manage to get the kill because of [INSERT ENHANCER SUPPORT NAME HERE], you can use Haunter, go un-targetable for 1.5 seconds, which in my experience is more than enough time for your team to follow up and give you an opportunity to counter the shit storm that’s about to be upon you once you re-appear. On top of that, you have Dread Dance at your disposal and at least one enemy champion left with a shadow circle around them to Dread Dance into, and the dance begins.
Haunter can also be a very powerful gank tool. It’s a targeted ability, meaning you need to select a target upon re-activating in order to get onto them. Otherwise you’ll just re-appear where you left off. Anyways, Haunter has a short dash before the blink onto the enemy, similar to Ekko E, allowing you to break the safe zone between your target and you. Once onto the target, the shadow circles applied, you can follow up with auto-attacks and Dread Dance damage and movement to stick onto them, all the while leaving an Imminent Terror mark. Surely enough, if your laners are decent, ganks should be a piece of cake.
I sit back and think about champion kits all of the time. This one specifically was for a whole new champion, until after I started playing Nocturne a bunch again. I realized that Nocturnes kit was outdated, and clunky, and thinking about this kit I realized that all of this spinning would be way to fitting to his appearance. He’s a floating demon looking creature with arm blades each the size of the rest of his body. His Umbra Blades passive already shows you how fitting spinning looks for him. I fine-tuned many aspects of the design and came up with what you’ve just read and I haven’t felt better about any other design I’ve ever come up with. Hope you enjoyed reading.
