Anti-Mage Champion Idea

ZanderShadowbane·May 4, 2015·1 votes·1,284 views

I think it would be interesting to have an anti-mage champion. His story might be that he was good friends with someone like Syndra but he saw what magic did to her and wanted to turn her back or if that was impossible to stop her.

In his quest he found an ancient legendary sword designed to in times past by warriors to fight mages. Upon the blade was etched "The Arcane will be destroyed by their own power." It was created to use mana; not it's wielders mana but rather his opponents. It could strike harder, siphon it off, and even reforge itself stronger. He drew this sapphire hue rapier and felt a great power in the weapon. He had a weapon and a goal but lacked the skill to achieve it so he went to join the League of Legends to learn how to wield it for his upcoming fight. In the preliminaries everyone took one look at him and though it was a joke but the sword showed it's power impressing those in charge. The real legend is the sword, he is here to learn from it.

He's a support class who is able to incapacitate opponents. He has very low offensive stats and usually requires someone else to get the killing blow in but is able to weaken them, but possibly an above average attack growth stat.

Passive: Mana Strike, Grants basic attacks a damage boost based off your opponents max MP. Your mana pool is drained when you attack an enemy champion for bonus damage. Q: Siphon Rune, your next basic attack will place a rune on your enemy so there abilities do % less damage and % the mana they use is added to your energy pool. % increases with points put in skill. W: Shut it, single target ranged skill that if it hits slows and silences an enemy, can miss and can be intercepted. Cooldown reduced and slow increased for points put into skill. E: Mage Guard, Active: Create a shield that blocks magic damage and a % of the damage blocked is added to your energy pool. Passive: Increase Magic Resist. Magic resist, shield duration increase with points put in skill. R: Mana Forge, mana attack bonus becomes a temporary buff so you do the extra damage each hit against any enemy. Increases attack permanently by n (should be a low number) as long you have a minimum amount of mana. Cooldown reduced and buff duration increased with points put in skill.

 This is a more Support Assassin style.  Shut it, Siphon Rune, Mage guard is a good combo I think.  Mana Forge also allows him to overcome his poor attack stat over the course of the game, but he has to earn this attack boost because of the minimum mana requirement, not just spam his ult.  He's a late game champion who is only good at support in the beginning but can be powerful late game, like a weaker version of Nasus.  He can also help in team fights by weakening the more dangerous fighters, a bit like using exhaust.

Strategy for playing is to get Mana Siphon and Mage Guard to fill your Mana bar and then use Mana Forge to start attacking. Shut it is used for escaping or getting close.

Strategy for playing against him is to avoid shut it, don't let him get close and avoid him when he does mana forge until the buff wears off. Also shift your focus while Mage Guard is to someone else until the barrier fades (like Kayle's ult), unless you do physical damage. Basic attacks are still effective. A build if you're fighting him a lot is to focus more on mana regeneration rather than max MP, and blind's are extremely effective on him (Just like Udyr).

22 Comments

GroundRuleDoubleMay 4, 20153 votes

Kassadin exists. Galio exists. Veigar exists.

Those could all be considered anti-mages...especially Kassadin.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 4, 20151 votes

True, but the idea of this champion is that he is physical base, but can use enemies power against them, a bit like thorn-mail. He's a support assassin rather than a mage class. So while they might be considered anti-mages, this character works a bit differently.

5000000000000000May 4, 20152 votes

That was Kassadin once. His Nether Blade could not only restore his own mana, but also burn enemy mana. Also,

[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=A8FQeEA8,discussion-id=w3r6EO8i,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-05-04T18:44:43.377+0000) It was changed because mana drain is about as unenjoyable as a mechanic can be, and Riot pretty clearly stated that they weren't thinking of ever adding it back into the game in any way.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 4, 20151 votes

But Kassadin is an Assasin Mage, and not a support. Kassadin works just as well without his mana burn because it's not his base.

NeameanMay 4, 20151 votes

In Game he is classified as a mage but he does not necessarily use magic he uses power from the void

ModThe DjinnMay 4, 20152 votes

We had mana drain in previous seasons: it used to exist on an old version of Wit's End.

It was changed because mana drain is about as unenjoyable as a mechanic can be, and Riot pretty clearly stated that they weren't thinking of ever adding it back into the game in any way.

Further, Riot does try to avoid hard counters. A champion who is entirely based around completely shutting down AP mages is...well, a hard counter.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 4, 20151 votes

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ModThe DjinnMay 4, 20151 votes

{quoted}> True, a mana drain item would be rather unbalanced as it makes mages able to easily fight other mages. As a champion who can do it though would be rather strategic. It gives an interesting strategy to help fight enemies with high ability power especially in team fights.

You say that, but mana drain is actually most punishing to fighters, marksman, and tanks. Mages have better mana itemization, and thus tend to suffer less, whereas it's very easy to drain a fighter's pool down to 0.

Regardless, Riot has voiced their dislike of any mana drain mechanic, not just item-based ones.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 4, 20151 votes

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ModThe DjinnMay 4, 20151 votes

While punishing to those others, they can do decent damage without their abilities where an ability base character would have problems because they would have to rely on their basic attack.

Well, yes.

But the argument isn't that they can't do damage without mana. The argument is that denying your opponent the ability to use their abilities is horrendously unenjoyable. It's worse than hard CC -- hard CC at least ends. Being drained to 0 mana means you pretty much have to back or be useless, and any level of mana drain that's not utterly useless is overly punishing to a large champion pool.

Seriously: this is one of the topics we've seen a lot of Riot posts on. It's not something I can see them changing their minds on, ever.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 25, 20151 votes

No MP Burn anymore, I do it a different way.

QazgirMay 5, 20152 votes

What happens if someone uses a resource that is not mana?

ZanderShadowbaneMay 5, 20151 votes

Shut it still silences, Mage Guard still blocks magic damage, Siphon Rune still lowers ability damage. It just gets a little harder to use Mana Forge because you can't get mana from Siphon Rune. You still can get some with Mage Guard though so it's just a drawback. As for Mana Strike, you won't do any bonus damage. Either that or you then do bonus damage based on AP. So in short, it's harder to fight them but not impossible.

junglerboy16May 4, 20151 votes

So you want to literally copy-paste Anti-mage from DotA 2 and stick him in League? Yeah, no.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 5, 20151 votes

never heard of Anti-mage form DotA 2

Also, after looking it up there are some key differences, like Anti-Mage can teleport, does magic type damage, and spell shield boosts resistance, except for his passive. This character idea has to get close manually, has no ranged skills except for his shield, does melee damage with magic damage bonus. Also spell shield has a resistance passive but is more like Kayle's Shield.

ModThe DjinnMay 5, 20151 votes

{quoted}Passive: Mana Strike, Grants basic attacks a damage boost based off your opponents max MP.

What sort of numbers are we looking at here?

Q: Mana Burn, Your next basic attack will make your enemy for 5-10 seconds so their mana cost doubles. If your opponent isn't mana base it stops their cool-down timer instead. All mana your enemy burns while it's on is stored in your blade so your next basic attack does it as bonus damage.

Timer is important. Ratio of stored mana to damage is also really important.

That said, this ability (while slightly better than actual mana drain) still hits exactly the same bad notes. We have a mechanic for interfering with spells: Silence. This is harder to convey than silence (many players won't even notice the doubled mana cost unless they're paying close attention), and achieves roughly the same benefit. Also, 5-10 seconds is a HUGE time to double mana costs or stop cooldowns (another really awkward mechanic).

W: Shut it, single target ranged shout that slows and reduces enemies ability power. If they're charging an ability when hit by it they're silenced.

So a slow + AP reduction + silence. Sure. I'd recommend either just putting a silence on it or making it a channel-break rather than a silence though -- the former is more powerful but more useful against more characters, while the latter is a mechanic that does what I think you intended this to,

E: Mage Guard, Active: creates a shield for a few seconds that blocks all magic damage, but only magic damage. Passive: Increase magic resist.

So a slightly worse Black Shield. No real issues there.

R: Mana Elemental, create an elemental to fight for you. You have to strike your enemy from a melee attack and you'll create it. The stats of the elemental is based off your enemies current mana. It will persist even if you die, but will only go after the enemy you made it from. If that enemy dies then the elemental will do damage to all enemies around it based on the health it has remaining.

Eh. This ability seems really odd, and the scaling is all wonky, being current mana based.

[b]OVERALL[/b]

This is...better. Not good, but better. It's a bit too much of a 1-trick pony -- it's only good against AP mana-stackers. That's super niche for a game like League. I also would still recommend against your mana-stealing and cooldown-blocking mechanics: both are hard to convey visually, mechanically awkward, and not fun. Stick with silences -- it has roughly the same effect when the person on the receiving end is aware of the effect (since they'll likely avoid using spells unless they can just kill you).

ZanderShadowbaneMay 25, 20151 votes

You also might like this new build a bit more.

CenturosMay 25, 20151 votes

The problem is, most champions use mana... but several do not, so mana mechanics are entirely useless against them.

ZanderShadowbaneMay 25, 20151 votes

No, like I said Shut it, Siphon Rune, mage guard, and Mana Forge still work, just a little harder to get them to work. Yes, Mana Strike won't work right (Unless you have it default to AP if they don't have mana) but he can still use his ult with he help of Mage Guard, silence and slow with shut it, and lower abilities with Siphon Rune. It's harder but not impossible and his mechanics still work, just more of a support that an assassin.