[Champion Concept] The Stone Knight

Introduction This is pretty much a concept I just thought of while I was at work and being bored and lazy. At the moment I thought it was an interesting champion concept, but I wanted to know what other people thought about this idea. The initial idea came from a game I play called 'Dark Souls', and to those familiar with the game, you probably already know who this is based off; Havel the Rock.

Lore, Concept, and Passive The Stone Knight is both blessed and cursed by Gaea itself. His armor becomes heavier and sturdier as he travels. This means the Stone Knight must make careful decisions when he engages. The blessing grants him natural tankiness , but also burdens him because of the sheer weight of his armor. When the Stone Knight takes damage, his armor will shed, lightening his burden and giving him increased mobility. Additionally, the Stone Knight can empower his abilities by using a portion of his burden.

The Stone Knight is generally HEAVILY armored; to the point where you can't even see any flesh from the outside. I want him to look almost like a moving boulder when he is fully burdened. However, when he sheds his stone exoskeleton, he would almost look like your general 'knight in shining armor' with some shards of rock still on him. His weapon is a two-handed sword with large rocks attached on the blade, kinda like Excalibur with the boulder still stuck on the sword. It is a pretty common cliche done in fantasy games, where the ancient sword couldn't be released so it is just swung with the boulder like a hammer.

General Mechanics The Stone Knight has a unique resource bar called 'Burden'. It is similar to Yasuo's flow, but not only does he gain it from moving, but also by attacking. 'Burden' is consumed when the Stone Knight either takes a certain amount of damage or uses his abilities. 'Burden' grants increasing armor and magic resist (and maybe tenacity), but decreases the Stone Knight's mobility such as basic movement speed or dash distances. His abilities are technically free, but will always uses a certain percentage of 'Burden', and the more 'Burden' consumed will increase the burst damage and crowd control effect of his abilities.

Abilities Majestic Swing(Q) - Stone Knight swings his weapon with incredible force, briefly knocking up enemies in a line. With more burden, Majestic swing will deal increased damage, and will also slow the affected enemies after being knocked up.

Fortify/Shed(W) - Stone Knight will buff his armor. When not fully burdened, he will gain full Burden immediately and gain a shield. The shield strength increases with the amount of initial burden the Stone Knight already had, reaching max shield strength when already fully burdened. Stone Knight can re-cast this ability as Shed, to immediately shed his armor and burden, gaining a movement speed buff.

Grand Charge(E) - Stone Knight dashes toward the cursor, and stops when he makes contact to enemies. When burdened, the charge distance will be short, but will deal increased damage and stun the enemy for a longer period of time. When less burdened, the damage and stun will be minimal, but will charge distance is dramatically increased. While charging, the Stone Knight will accumulate burden depending on the distance.

The Sword of Gaea(R) - The Stone Knight's blade is unleashed from its stone sheath, gaining increased attack speed, and movement speed. While the blade in unleashed, the Stone Knight will have a higher burden cap, increased accumulation of burden, and increased amount of burden used from his basic abilities, making the burden bonuses much higher.

Overview The idea of Stone Knight's abilities is that they have clear advantages and disadvantages when he has burden or not. More burden would make him closer to a tank, while less burden makes him closer to a fighter. When the Stone Knight is burdened, he is very tanky, but will have problem moving around in a fight because he is slow in tank form. This makes him better suited as a pealer since he can crowd control effectively with his increased burden bonuses. On the other hand, when the Stone Knight is less burdened, he acts more like a fighter or assassin that tracks down enemy squishies. He become much more mobile, while having just enough crowd control to help him take down his foes. However, this does mean that the Stone Knight is taking higher risk since he too becomes squishy in his mobile form.

Personally, I think his true strength comes with shifting between heavily burdened and lightly burdened. The Fortify/Shed ability, and even the Grand Charge are designed for that purpose. Fortify/Shed is much more straightforward, where he immediately becomes fully armored, and then can freely shed it off. This makes it so you can do combos such as using Grand Charge while unburdened for the range, Fortify up and land a Majestic Swing for the full crowd control bonus on out of positioned enemies. On the other hand you can use Fortify while heavily burdened for maximum shield to soak up damage, and shed it off either to run away or to start hunting enemy squishies in your mobile form.

His ultimate is to intensify the difference in between being burdened or not. He gains a movement speed buff which increases the accumulation of burden, which can translate to even more heavily empowered abilities. However you do have to be careful in his ultimate form, because as much as it intensifies the burden bonuses, the fast shift in not being burden and being burden can confuse the pilot. Generally I want it that the higher burden cap will almost negate the initial bonus speed that it provides, so it doesn't become a simple fighter steroid.

So this is my champion concept. I'd really appreciate any feedback or comments. Let me know what you think of it.