Balam, The Jungle Warrior

Balam, the Jungle Warrior

It really struck me as odd that the closest thing League of Legends has to representing the South American native cultures was Nidalee (and she's more generic 'native'), so I set out to try to fill this gap. The champ is a pastiche of common tropes found among the Aztec, Maya, and (to some extent) Olmec civilizations before their alteration by the Spanish invasion. I figured that, since only two champs currently come from the Plague Jungles, maybe I would just combine some real-world stuff into a single tribe and take it from there. For those interested in the source material, I provided a history section after the moveset description with links to Wikipedia (and one presentation). Not the best sources, but we're not diving too deep here.

Moveset The names of all of these abilities are completely up for discussion, as I am terrible with naming things.

Passive - Jungle Warrior Getting a kill in the jungle or with your ult adds a stack of Honor. These stacks >increase auto-Attack damage and damage from E's active.

Notes: Should jungle kills be extended to Large Monsters? This would fit the character, since he would need to train up by hunting large game before tackling enemy champs. It would also allow the scaling to be smaller numbers and happen more smoothly, as opposed to the big jumps that would happen if it were only champion kills. I'm also completely open to calling the stacks something else; Honor was just the best thing I could think of.

Q - Macuahuitl/Atlatl Stance change between auto-attack weapons. The macuahuitl is a club/bat-like >melee weapon that causes bleeding damage, while the atlatl is a ranged auto-attack that >applies a slow.

Notes: Each of the effects (bleeding, slow) should be tuned so that they only occur roughly once per enemy in a fight. Basically, the debuff cannot be reapplied until it has worn off (or even for a few seconds after). The atlatl might also need a minimum engagement range? Ex: If the enemy is too close while the atlatl is active, Balam will back up to the minimum range before aut-attacking again. An alternate name I thought of was “Jaguar’s Claw/Coatl’s Strike”, but I stuck with the more native name for now.

W - Ulama Pass Balam kicks a solid rubber ball in a line. It deals huge damage (AD scale) and a knock->back to the first enemy hit, but the ball remains on the ground roughly equal distance >between Balam and the enemy it struck. If an enemy champ can intercept it, the ability >has an extensive cooldown. However, if Balam can get to the ball first, the cooldown is >significantly decreased. If the ability misses, the ball simply flies off into the brush and >gets the full cooldown.

    Notes: Other possible names I toyed with were “Hip Check” and “Balls’ in Your Court” before settling on the more native name.

E - Way of the Jungle Passive: Balam coats his feet in rubber, resulting in increased movement speed. This >bonus is further increased when not in vision range of enemy champions. This passive >turns off when the ability is on cooldown. Active: Auto-attacks apply a poison that stacks similar to potions, IE each stack >extends how long the poison lasts.

    Notes: For the passive, how much of a bonus should Balam get when outside enemy champ vision? Should it be doubled, or is that too much? For the active, I really like how using several potions in a row extends the duration of the heal-over-time effect instead of applying all of the stacks at once. Since every other poison in the game either applies them all at once or relies on continued hits to keep the poison going, I felt like this was an interesting alternative.

R - Blood Sacrifice Balam sacrifices a portion his total HP to deal a significant amount of damage to an >enemy champion.

    Notes: I think it would be cool for to percentage of HP sacrificed and the ratio of damage to increase with each ability level. For example, at level 1, Balam sacrifices 25% of his total HP to deal 2x that number to an enemy champ. At level 2, it becomes 50% and 3x, and at level 3 it becomes 75% and 4x. Obviously numbers are subject to change, but you get the idea. This would need to be gated by how much HP Balam currently has, so that you wouldn’t get Balam with 1HP sacrificing himself right before getting killed to absolutely nuke the enemy champ. I like the idea of him being able to use himself as a sacrifice, though, so maybe the numbers could be “up to 25%”, etc?

History Section The champ's name is based off the purported author of a group of manuscripts that form one of the main points of study of Maya culture, one chilam (meaning ‘priest’ or ‘prophet’) Balam. Though the books are somewhat dubious, since most surviving materials are copies of copies made after the Spanish conquest, I still felt that the name was a nice thematic tie-in. For those interested, I'll also give some historical context on where I got the idea for each move in the set.

Passive: In many of these civilizations, hunting big game was the day-to-day task which trained warriors to fight in the inevitable wars which would occur between the city-states that were competing over resources. Obviously, not everyone in these civilizations was a warrior (despite what mass media would tell you), but the champ wouldn’t be as fun if it were Ichik the Rainbow Merchant.

Q: Both of these weapons are wonderfully unique to South American natives. While the Pacific Islanders also had saw-bats, theirs occurred naturally on some predatory fish, whereas the some brilliant Aztec figured out that if he lashed sharpened obsidian to his war club, he could flay his enemies much more efficiently. The atlatl on the other hand shows up in SA and Australia, and is a dart/spear-thrower that allows smaller weapons to travel longer distances with a greater impact.

W: The name is based on the name of the modern descendant of the original Mesoamerican ballgame, which was played as far South as Nicaragua and as far North as Arizona.

E: The Mesoamericans had rubber pretty well figured out. Not only did they make game balls out of it, but they also figure out how to make rubber-soled sandals to protect their feet while moving through the jungle. Some evidence even suggests that they skipped making shoes in favor of just dipping their feet in what was essentially liquid latex before a hunt. In addition to added protection, this meant they could move much more quickly through the underbrush. As for the active, the Aztec in particular had a habit of coating their weapons (usually darts) in natural poisons for warfare.

R: Human sacrifice is a huge part of the public image of Mesoamerican cultures, but didn’t actually play that big of a role in reality. It definitely happened, but to nowhere near the extent that the Spaniards made it out to. More often, there would be blood sacrifices, which involved cutting or pushing fish bone or obsidian hooks through the skin to garner favor with a particular god. I won’t link this one, but be warned that the locations of such bloodletting was usually rather...personal.

So that's Balam, the Jungle Warrior. Thanks for reading this all the way through, and I hope to get some good notes, as well as provide some inspiration to some Rioter down the line.

-EDIT- Cleaned up some formatting and tried to make some things clearer.

-EDIT 2- More formatting and reorganization