Riot Overdid It Again? LoL's New Hero Can Resurrect All Allies

Riot Games adds new characters to League of Legends' hero pool every few months, and it often comes with player concerns about gameplay balance. Sometimes, in an attempt to create an interesting and unique champion, developers go too far, resulting in players getting a character that is too strong. This was the case with Yone last year, among others. Now the group of characters that are difficult to balance may be joined by Akshan, whose skill set is, to put it mildly, very strong. He's got, camouflage, explosive damage, and also resurrecting allies (sic!)

So let's take a look at what Akshan can do:

• Passive Skill - Dirty Combat: Every three hits from Akshan’s attacks and damaging abilities deal a burst of physical damage. If the target was a champion, Akshan also gains a shield. After attacking, Akshan fires a second attack that deals reduced physical damage. The second shot can be canceled like a regular basic attack. If Akshan cancels the second shot he gains a burst of move speed.

• Q - Avengerang: Akshan throws a boomerang that deals physical damage and reveals enemies hit, extending its range each time it hits an enemy. Enemies can be hit once as the boomerang goes out and once as it returns.
• W - Going Rogue: Passive: When enemy champions kill one of Akshan’s allies, they are marked as Scoundrels. When Akshan gets a takedown on a Scoundrel he gains bonus gold, all allies killed by the Scoundrel are resurrected at their base, and Scoundrel status is removed from all other enemies. Active: Akshan becomes camouflaged for a short duration, or indefinitely while near terrain. During this time, Akshan can see trails leading toward Scoundrels and gains move speed and mana regeneration while moving toward them.
• E - Heroic Swing: Akshan fires a hookshot that embeds in the first terrain hit. While embedded, he can recast to swing around the terrain in the cast direction, firing physical damage bullets at the nearest enemy while swinging. While swinging, he can recast again to jump off in the direction of the cursor and fire a final shot. Heroic Swing's cooldown resets when Akshan earns a takedown on an enemy champion.
• R (Ultimate Skill) - Comeuppance: Akshan locks onto an enemy champion and begins channeling power into his gun to store bullets. At the end of the duration or after recasting Akshan unleashes the stored bullets, each dealing physical damage based on missing health to the first minion, champion, or structure hit. Akshan can move normally and cast Heroic Swing while channeling and firing Comeuppance.

The most controversial is the Going Rogue ability. Using camouflage is one thing, many characters have this ability, but resurrecting allies seems to be overkill.. Some characters can be revived after losing all their HP, such as Anivia and Zac, but Akshan will be the first champion to be able to bring back multiple allies from the grave and still get extra gold for it. So far, the only character with a similar skill was Zilean, who had the ability to resurrect himself or one ally on the battlefield.

Additionally, the so-called "passive" of Akshan raises controversy because of the wide range of bonuses it provides. Players on the subreddit League of Legends have their concerns and thoughts.

And this is just one of many similar opinions. It's hard to resist the impression that in order to maintain interest, Riot Games resorts to the introduction of such unbalanced characters, which become popular because of the reluctance of players. As for now, Akshan has not yet appeared - he will be available with patch 11.15. Then we'll see whether his skills actually need to be adjusted.

• League of Legends - official website
• League of Legends - game guide

League of Legends

October 6, 2009

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