A Step-by-Step Guide On How To Make a Quality Champion

Reading through this board is a tad depressing at times. The vast majority of champions:

A: Have lore that is a mockery of the original lore, littered with contradictions and inconsistencies B: Possess a ridiculously clunky and overcomplicated resource system that may or may not be an excuse to pile on free stats C: Overestimate the power of their abilities, and end up completely useless against the types of champions they should be fighting D: Go on a power trip and overload their abilities with tons of stuff that makes the whole thing ridiculous E: Take D a step further and make a champion with 6+ abilities F: Always want their champion to be viable and introduce a way to make permanent decisions after the game starts that radically alters your role, thereby making you uncounterable in draft G: Fail to take note of champions with similar roles and use them as comparisons for what they should and shouldn't be able to do H: Combine any or all of the above

Which is a shame, really, because pretty much every champion here has at least one unique idea that makes them really cool, but end up brought down by a combination of those flaws. I'm not naming any names because that doesn't really do anything productive. Instead, I'm going to create a guide to avoid all of those aforementioned pitfalls while creating a quality champion that is still unique and viable.

You can totally ignore this if you wanted to make some sort of crazy fanfiction character that's overpowered in every way and dominates everyone. Just please don't ask for criticism.

Step 1: Basic Idea

Before I even begin, I need to figure out what the core concept for my champion is going to be. This is REALLY important as it ties everything together. There's no real easy way to go about this part - it's all based on your own personal creativity. In general, though, you want to avoid:

-Overlapping concept/identity with another champion (e.g. Graves already hits the cowboy archetype, much like Yasuo, Fiora, and Master Yi already cover the master swordsman archetype from three different angles) -A completely ordinary concept with nothing truly spectacular (e.g. Bob from Accounting, overglorified minion) -A concept that distorts or retcons lore by existing (e.g. Anivia's inexplicably evil twin, King of the Shadow Isles)

It's not that these are inherently unworkable (Bob from Accounting sounds pretty funny if you know what you're doing), it's that they either create a challenge in differentiating your champions from other champions or cause the champion to exist in a strange spot in the overall lore, which is pretty upsetting to those of us that actually care about the lore (like me).

I'm thinking that there's not enough champions that use missiles in this game, especially of the lock-on variety. I want my champion to use missiles somehow. This means there's a need for machinery somehow. Thinking of vehicles, there's planes, boats, tanks, and walkers. Corki already flies a plane, while Rumble pilots a walker, leaving boats and tanks. One of these is a little silly. The other is a mother****ing tank. Let's make a tank!

Step 2: Role

This is perhaps the second most important step. Seems pretty obvious, but it gets overlooked a lot. I need to settle on a role for my literal tank. Before beginning, the qualities of the six roles should be considered.

Marksman: These champions have high ranged autoattack damage, and their kit is often loaded with ways to boost that damage or unload a nice chunk of damage. Usually, their damage is focused on one enemy at a time. Their crowd control is usually poor, and some are lucky to have any mobility skills. Their overall durability is pretty low. Mage: Often seen exploding faces with high-powered spells and ruining people's days with potent crowd control. Mages usually have long range in exchange for low health and mobility, but mages are perhaps the most versatile role since the only thing that ties them together is their ability to unload a huge chunk of damage on someone. Fighter: Somewhat of a cross between Marksman and Tank. Fighters pack a well-rounded suite of damage, crowd-control, and survivability, offset by their melee range. Contentious as a role due to their limited options in battle, despite the tools in their kit. Also highly variable like mages - the general thread here is the focus on melee range and melee damage. Tank: Leading the charge, tanks possess lots of crowd control and survivability, trading off a good chunk of damage and range in exchange. Tanks usually have one way to make enemies regret not killing them, such as Shen's passive, Nautilus's shield, Rammus's Tremors and powerful autoattacks, etc., but they're not overwhelmingly powerful in terms of damage. Assassin: For when someone absolutely has to die. Assassin kits are loaded with tons of damage meant to completely vaporize a champion within seconds. Assassins are usually melee, but the extreme burst can overlap with other roles. Assassins don't take hits well, and oftentimes don't have a way to get out after a kill. Support: Usually mandatory to victory. Supports have kits that primarily benefit allies and lay down crowd control to set up kills. Their damage output, if it exists, is heavily item-reliant. The main characteristic of a support is the ease at which they can help their allies either survive longer or kill faster.

Oftentimes, champions happen to have a secondary role. Aatrox, for instance, is a Fighter, but also has Tank as a secondary role. This doesn't mean he's super tanky, it means that his kit is well-suited for substituting as a tank in a pinch. In his case, he has two forms of CC and potent lifesteal that let him set up kills and keep himself well-sustained.

Some roles really don't mix well with others. For instance:

Assassin/Tank or Support: The defining characteristic of an Assassin is to explode faces at the cost of everything else. Tanking or supporting requires useful crowd control and/or helpful buffs. A kit that tries to do both will fail at both. Marksman/Tank: Marksmen tend to avoid damage. Tanks try to charge into damage so allies don't die. A kit combining the two is at war with itself and will get the champion killed without doing anything useful.

While my champion is a literal tank, the kind of firepower imagined in the concept would be ill-suited to tanking. Missiles don't really lend themselves well to crowd-control, and ranged champions generally do not want to be in melee range anyways. I decide to make my tank a Marksman instead.

Step 3: Lore and Appearance

It's possible to skip this step. I'm of the camp that values what a champion does over what they look like, and I can always come back to justify anything I do. That said, you might do things differently. In that case, I heartily recommend you do this step to help focus you on what this champion is supposed to do and how they're supposed to do it.

As an experienced writer, there's a good many pitfalls to avoid if you don't want to sound like a bad fanfictionist. If you're not interested in making something look professional, ignore me. For the rest of you:

-PROOFREAD. If you can't proofread your own lore, it gives off the impression that you really didn't put a lot of work into your champion. -Research the lore relevant to what you're going to do. Introducing a champion with an impossible winning streak, for instance, ignores Jax's existence. Doing anything involving summoners needs to be kept in mind that you, the player, are a summoner. -Avoid extensive connections with already-established champions. I define extensive here as in blood relations, lovers, archenemies, etc., stuff that would have been mentioned in their lore. Most attempts end up as painfully bad fanfiction. If you were making a champion based on something in their lore (C, for Caitlyn, for instance), disregard. -Keep it brief. While it's not a huge deal, you probably don't need five paragraphs to explain your champion. Not only is longer lore a bit harder to read, it also distracts from the mechanics of the champion.

While I don't want to fill out my tank's lore right now, I do want to come up with a basic idea. There are a lot of different types of tanks, after all. Since the tank minions have the land-based variety down pat, I decide to opt for a much-cooler hovertank. Given this technology, my champion is going to end up originating from Piltover or Zaun, the only nations with the hextech to make that happen. Zaun is underrepresented and lets me get away with a more crazed prototype approach, so I pick Zaun.

This means I need to have a pilot...right? Well, not really. It's Zaun. Why not go the full nine yards? This is not just a crazed prototype hovertank. It's an AUTONOMOUS crazed prototype hovertank. With an AI controlling the thing and Zaun being Zaun, it's easy to rationalize how this champion got away - first trial going horribly right. Coming up with a long-term goal and overall personality is a bit trickier. Because it's Zaun, I'm tending more towards genocidal, but that just dubs it a danger on its own. Thinking a bit more carefully, I figure it would want to upgrade itself to be the most efficient killing machine possible. This gives my champion a clear goal that also lets it ally with other champions to further its self-interest.

It's worth noting that at this point, I've radically changed the core idea of my own champion as I write this guide.

Step 4: Base Stats

I only include this for the sake of completion. Unless you're entering in a contest, you can get away with no base stats. For those of you that want to include base stats, I advise you look at the League of Legends wiki and consult the base stats for similar champions to your own to establish acceptable parameters. Do keep a few rules in mind:

-On average, melee champions have higher move speeds than ranged champions. Generally, melee champions with lots of crowd control (like Alistar and Nautilus) have lower move speeds. -AP never, ever grows with level. Ever. If you have AP growth, you're doing it wrong. If you have base AP, you're doing it wrong. If you're arguing that Viktor has both, you're doing it so very wrong - he gives up a passive and item slot for that. -MR grows only on melee champions to help mitigate some of the damage that heads their way while closing in. Ranged champions do not have MR growth.

Not much else to say, otherwise. Since I'm not really concerned with base stats at this time, I elect to skip this step.

Step 5: First Draft Abilities

The cool part, and the part I focus on more above anything else because I'm a stickler for mechanics. The first draft should be just that - a draft. You want to lay out what's important to your champion to perform their role, but you don't want to get too in detail because some stuff just doesn't work out that great.

For the first draft, you really don't need precise values. The core idea is more than enough to get you through. Focusing too much on values gives you tunnel vision and then you try to balance around those values and you lose the entire importance of the draft and my oh my I've gone crosseyed.

My hovertank, being a marksman, is a mobile weapons system, more or less. I want to have a lot of firepower, but also a nice chunk of mobility, as befitting a hovertank. As such, I figure these abilities would be a cool starting point:

Passive: Reduced effectiveness of slows. Q: Locks on, then fires multiple missiles. W: Aims a piercing laser at one point. Can move while firing. E: Dash to target location, gain attack speed. R: Channeled barrage of various ammunition on target location.

With this done, I move on to the next step...

Step 6: Reflect and Refine

It's a vague title, but it's also significant to quality abilities. The stuff that first comes to your mind is generally not always your best work. You want to go back and check out what you've made, then compare and contrast to other champions. In general, champions don't usually duplicate abilities, and unless it's an ultimate, champions don't obsolete abilities. Light Binding hits two targets, but the snare and damage is different in timing than Dark Binding, for instance. Grand Skyfall, being an ultimate, is leaps and bounds better than most other gap-closer options.

If you're having a friend help you with this, be VERY careful. If your friend tells you absolutely nothing is wrong with your champion, he's either not trying hard enough or clueless. There's always something wrong with your first draft of a champion.

Keep these things in mind while you do this:

-It should be obvious what the best-case use of each of your abilities is. If you have two abilities that require you to be under the effect of a third ability, and you lose the third ability upon using either of those two abilities, your best-case use is ambiguous. This creates a negative effect where the player doesn't really feel like they used their abilities to their best extent. -At the same time, it does not necessarily mean all your abilities should be able to be fired at once. If your champion's play pattern looks like Veigar's, you have made a grave error - Veigar simply walks up to you, stuns you, and drops all spells on you at once. This is not a healthy play pattern. -You want to have some counterplay to your abilities. This gets covered in the next step too, but if you have an ability which is, for instance, a global taunt, there's no counterplay there - you press it, and win the teamfight. No fun for the other team, no satisfying play, guaranteed ban.

In this case, while I note that the passive, Q, and W are pretty cool and derivative, the E is simply Graves' Quick Draw, and the R is a horrible idea - not only does it give up the mobility I wanted to emphasize, but a channeled attack on a marksman means I need to increase the damage and range to large amounts to avoid missing out on the damage I would be dealing with autoattacks. Given that balancing that would be immensely difficult and add unnecessary difficulty to the champion, I resolve to rework the E and R.

The E proves tricky. I want to include a damage boosting ability, but I also want a mobility ability. Trying to swap attack speed for attack damage just yields Vayne's Tumble, more or less, which is not favorable. Armor penetration is an option, but as a boost to a dash, I don't find it particularly characteristic with my hovertank. Added crit rate would be highly unbalancing early in the game, and negligible later in the game, in addition to being hard to justify. With my creative resources stretched thin, I decide to put any mobility on the R, and use the E for a boost. This opens my options since I no longer have to balance out a dash with added stats. Without the dash, armor penetration sounds much more appealing. To better fit the idea of a marksman having high single-target damage, I decide to have it be a debuff placed on an enemy that grants my hovertank bonus armor penetration.

Since I decided to have the R be a mobility ability, and since I imagine the Q, W, and E provide plenty of damage, I rack my brain for ways to provide high, impactful mobility. As an Armored Core fan, I recall the Over Boost feature and the extreme speeds that hit. Importing that into my hovertank is a simple task.

My new ability loadout now looks like:

Passive: Reduced effectiveness of slows. Q: Locks on, then fires multiple missiles. W: Aims a piercing laser at one point. Can move while firing. E: Marks a target, granting bonus armor penetration against that target. R: After a 1 second delay, grants massive move speed.

While the old ultimate would have been functional (Miss Fortune does a similar thing with Bullet Time, for instance), I determined it was not terribly characteristic and difficult to balance. I much rather prefer the crazy speed boost.

While I could theoretically have multiple weapons due to the concept being a mobile weapons platform, and therefore having more than four abilities, I reject this idea, as it would detract from being a marksman, cause too much problems with balancing, and add too much versatility and/or burst. I'm aiming for a viable, balanced champion, not one that's meant to be uncounterable and game-breaking.

Step 7: Precise Values and Mechanics

You can skip this step if you're not trying for a contest. I recommend it if you don't have a head for numbers - it's easy to detract from your champion's unique qualities with horrible numbers. For those of you trying for a contest, keep these helpful tips in mind:

-Check values on other champions that have similar skills if you don't know what to do. If you have an on-hit, look at Noxian Diplomacy, Decisive Strike, and Omen of War. If you have a line nuke, look at Grasping Roots, Piercing Arrow, and Arcanopulse. If you have a trap, look at Yordle Snap Trap, Bushwhack, and Jack-in-the-Box (but not Noxious Mushroom. >:( ). -Not everything needs to scale. You want to have some parts consistent. A slow, for instance, generally does not go up both in duration and effectiveness. It either scales in duration (Glitterlance) or effectiveness (Frost Shot), not both. Having too many things scaling creates an uneven power curve where it's bad at first, then becomes overpowered at max level. Being underpowered and being overpowered do not even out - it's not a numerical scale where the average is balanced. Some abilities barely have any scaling - Acid Hunter and Poison Trail only gain damage with each level, with no increase in mana cost or lower cooldowns. Keep in mind what your ability is supposed to do. -Be very careful with total AD and bonus AD scaling. The former is generally used for low-power spells that are substitutes for autoattacks, like Acid Hunter, Volley, and Piltover Peacemaker. The latter is generally used for spells with good bases that are meant to scale much like a mage would with AP, such as Broken Wings and Rake.

After doing a good chunk of research and thinking of creative names, I come up with the following:

Passive: Hextech Hover System 1.2: Reduces effectiveness of enemy slows by 25%.

Q: Javelin Missile Rack: When held down, a targeting laser is pointed at the cursor. Having the laser on the same target for 0.5 seconds locks on, up to a maximum of four total locks. When released, fires a homing missile per lock on each target, dealing physical damage. Mana Cost: 70/75/80/85/90 Missile Damage: 40/60/80/100/120 (+1.0 Total AD) Targeting Laser Range: 800 Missile Range: 1000 Cooldown: 12/11.5/11/10.5/10 after firing.

W: Zaunite Flesh Borer: Fires a piercing laser at a target location for 2.5 seconds. Enemies between the champion and the laser's point of impact take continual physical damage. Can move and attack freely while the laser is firing. Mana Cost: 70/80/90/100/110 Damage per Second: 50/75/100/125/150 (+0.8 Bonus AD) Range: 600 Laser Width: 175 Cooldown: 11

E: Target Acquisition Databank: Locks on to a target, granting bonus armor penetration against that target for 5 seconds. Mana Cost: 50 Armor Penetration Bonus: 20%/30%/40%/50%/60% Range: 800 Cooldown: 14/13/12/11/10

R: Propulsion System Overload: Gathers energy for 1 second, then gains 100% movement speed. (Not a channel or cast - the bonus goes into effect 1 second after use.) Mana Cost: 100 Movement Speed Duration: 6/8/10 seconds Cooldown: 80/70/60

With these values done, I enter the next step...

Step 8: Reflect and Refine

If this looks familiar, good. You REALLY want to double-check those values. Buy some items for your champion and see how your abilities compare now. It's more or less the same deal as Step 6, with all the caveats thereof.

In this case, I note two major problems: the Javelin Missile Rack has a 1.0 Total AD scaling. As a veteran marksman, I know that a good farming session is enough to get a B.F.Sword on the first back. Adding 50 damage, on top of a hypothetical 64 base damage, on top of the level 2 value of the Q, gets me a total of 60 + 50 + 64 = 174 damage per missile. If all four missiles hit the same target, that's 174 * 4 = 696 damage, enough to nearly oneshot any champion I should be fighting. Whoops. The second major problem is that the E's scaling isn't particularly useful early on - 20% of ~30 armor is only 6 - but its scaling at the end is completely out of hand - 60% of 120 is 72, enough to deal nearly true damage after factoring in Last Whisper.

To solve this, I convert the Q to bonus AD, slightly increase lock-on time to allow for more counterplay by leaving the missile range, and cause successive missiles to do less damage. This reduces the easy power while making it less oppressive for someone hit by all four missiles. The E is a trickier solution, and I consider using a base value. I instead opt for a smaller scaling after bringing up the level 1 value, as base values fall off in the face of more armor.

My new values now look like:

Passive: Hextech Hover System 1.2: Reduces effectiveness of enemy slows by 25%.

Q: Javelin Missile Rack: When held down, a targeting laser is pointed at the cursor. Having the laser on the same target for 0.6 seconds locks on, up to a maximum of four total locks. When released, fires a homing missile per lock on each target, dealing physical damage. Each missile past the first that hits the same target deals 10% less damage. Mana Cost: 70/75/80/85/90 Missile Damage: 40/60/80/100/120 (+0.6 Bonus AD) Targeting Laser Range: 800 Missile Range: 1000 Cooldown: 12/11.5/11/10.5/10 after firing.

W: Zaunite Flesh Borer: Fires a piercing laser at a target location for 2.5 seconds. Enemies between the champion and the laser's point of impact take continual physical damage. Can move and attack freely while the laser is firing. Mana Cost: 70/80/90/100/110 Damage per Second: 50/75/100/125/150 (+0.8 Bonus AD) Range: 600 Laser Width: 175 Cooldown: 11

E: Target Acquisition Databank: Locks on to a target, granting bonus armor penetration against that target for 5 seconds. Mana Cost: 50 Armor Penetration Bonus: 30%/32.5%/35%/37.5%/40% Range: 800 Cooldown: 14/13/12/11/10

R: Propulsion System Overload: Gathers energy for 1 second, then gains 100% movement speed. (Not a channel or cast - the bonus goes into effect 1 second after use.) Mana Cost: 100 Movement Speed Duration: 6/8/10 seconds Cooldown: 80/70/60

Satisfied, I move on to my last step...

Step 9: Final Details

This is where you include all sorts of interactions with champions, recommended items, skins, quotes, etc. There's nothing I can say to you about how to do that. Go nuts.

If you're following this guide precisely, though, you'll note I didn't name my champion. You may want to name your champion first. I had no idea what the name was going to be until after I finished the kit. You want your name to sound badass - a champion with a wimpy title doesn't sound nearly as awesome or fun as a champion with a more intimidating title.

I'm now stuck on three names: Bob, the Accountant; Hoverant, the Weapons Platform; and ZWP-01, the Rogue Prototype. The first is just plain silly. The second is accurate, but Hoverant sounds dopey, and Weapons Platform doesn't really say a lot. The third indicates a personality and establishes the champion as something truly dangerous - a Rogue Prototype sounds a lot more menacing to your well-being than a weapons platform, wouldn't you say?

That concludes the guide. I hope this helped you in some way, shape, or form. Comments and criticism are welcome.