Champion Concept - Kalinth: The Spellsworn Blademaster

I've always thought the way Udyr handles his skills - with the almost aura style of play - was really cool and underutilized. So I've been thinking for a while of a good way to use that without just copying his kit. Here's my idea:

Kalinth, as a child, was trained by his father as a swordsman but he always dreamed of magic and what he could do with it. As he grew up, he began to sense power within himself and strange things happened around him. He sought training, excited with the prospect but everyone he approached told him his gift wasn't worth training - that it was too small to be useful.

Outraged by this, he sought knowledge and trained himself to use it. Using his father's teachings and scraps of knowledge he gleaned from whatever sources he could find, he taught himself to use what magic he had in tandem with his swordsmanship to create a style based off of enchanting himself with what powers he could call on and alter his weapon. He then sought to make a name for himself to show those who had spurned his gifts how wrong they were. Guided by that, he seeks opportunities to show off his talents, regardless of what the cause may be.

And thus begins the legend of the mercenary Kalinth.

Abilities: Spellsword (Passive) Attacking an enemy while Kalinth's weapon is enchanted marks them with energy based off of the enchantment active. If a marked enemy is hit by a large monster, Kalinth's discharge ability, or an allied champion, the mark is consumed causing a secondary effect. Enemies can only be marked once per enchantment, and can only be affected by one mark at a time. Gustblade - Significantly slows the enemy's movement speed for a very short duration.(I was thinking like 75% for 0.5 seconds) Shadowstrike - Deals instant damage in an area to all nearby enemies. Earthshield - Deals instant damage to the target. Enchantment - Gustblade (Q) Kalinth's attacks become ranged (300 range) and he gains a stacking attack and movement speed bonus(5 second duration - refreshes on stack). First attack bonus: Range is doubled(600) and attack hits all targets in a line and provides a stack for each target hit(if it only hits one target, provides two stacks). Enchantment - Shadowstrike (W) Kalinth's attacks cause the target to take damage over time. First attack bonus: Slows target's movement speed. Enchantment - Earthshield (E) Kalinth's attacks grant him a shield that absorbs a percentage of damage dealt. First attack bonus: Provides triple the shield. Discharge (R) Kalinth discharges all energy within his blade, causing a different effect based off of which enchantment he has active. Discharge puts all of Kalinth's Enchantments on half their normal cooldown and removes his current Enchantment. Gustblade - Sends a blast of wind in a direction, knocking the target back a short distance and slowing all enemies near where he lands. Kalinth becomes invisible for 3 seconds and gains max stacks of the Gustblade passive. Shadowstrike - Shrouds an enemy in shadow, pulling all nearby enemies towards them slightly(less than Diana's pull ability) and causes the shrouded enemy to deal damage to all nearby enemies for 5 seconds. Earthshield - Stuns all enemies in a cone towards the targeted enemy, and provides the Earthshield shield to Kalinth and one random nearby allied Champion for each enemy hit - shields can stack.

Role: Kalinth is primarily a skirmishing fighter - typically best splitpushing due to the disengage offered by his Q-R combo. He makes a great jungler thanks to the shielding of his E and the DoT Damage applied by his W, and can use Q-R or E-R to make ganks effective. He lacks an immediate gap closer, though, so you'll have to be creative about gank paths. In lane he'd likely be best in top lane, since Q would allow him to farm even against the short range champs that are currently primarily present in top lane, with E+W allowing him to trade effectively against Bruisers. In teamfights, he's best off either engaging with W-R or using E-R later in a fight to cleanup. As Kalinth, it's always important to be aware of your brief weak period after your Ult since you will have no active abilities for ~5 seconds - so if you start a fight with it, be aware that it'll be a few seconds(depending on cdr) before you can do anything other than attack.

Itemization:

I think his abilities are pretty inherently scaling. The damage on his ult should be AD based, except for his W and WR which would have a hybrid ratio, but that his build would most likely be a fighter-style build with one or two offensive items(tri force + bork or tf + jungle item) and then mostly tanky.

Any thoughts? I'd like to refine this over time, so if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, I'd love to hear them.

I was initially debating whether to go the 'standard' elemental route and do like wind/water/fire or wind/fire/earth but I thought that having him touch on shadows would fit better with his pride/revenge oriented backstory so I went with wind/shadow/fire. It also leads into the possibility of maybe him being used as a dupe by some greater power - maybe a void mage or something - and being granted control of shadows unwittingly for that purpose.

I'm not sure if he'd work without a gap closer but I wanted to avoid giving him one since every champ nowadays seems to get one, so one thought I had was maybe having his first attack on 'w' pull him halfway towards the first Champion it hits, but I figured that might be too close to the actual ability Udyr has right now on his kit(and it might kind of suck if you're trying to run away). All effects on his kit are lingering, so switching enchantments doesn't clear his q stacks or remove the shield from his 'e'. Just stops him from reapplying these effects.

I was thinking Demacia might be a good country of origin for him, although Zaun could work too. He'd probably, at this point, be affiliated with Bilgewater given his core. I would imagine he'd know(and respect) Sivir, while having antagonistic relationships with a lot of the Mages in the world, some of them may have been among those who spurned him.

So there you have it... Kalinth, the Spellsworn Blademaster. Hope you like :)

Changelist - replaced old passive. Still not 100% confident it fits, but atm have no better idea. Will think further on this.

• replaced passive again based off of suggestion by Jygallag. Decided to include Kalinth's discharge ability as well as large monsters to help encourage Kalinth in a solo position, but without making it horribly abusable.