FAQ about the 101st New Hero: Plant Mage

The significance of the 100th hero

Morello: While I maintain that Jayce's whole weapon-transforming thing is really fun, it's really not about some big mega-release milestone. It's a nice round number, sure, but I think it'd be kind of ****ty of us if we were holding something back for this that we'd had been capable of doing previously.

I kind of see it as every champion needs to be a milestone of some kind - just trying to do something we hadn't done before in regards to gameplay, art, lore, or any mixture of them. I'll talk more about a couple of the big issues (monsters, why 3 masculine-style males so close) in a future post, but for this I wanna focus on the specific "champ 100 thing." I feel if there was something more special we could have done here, why aren't we doing that for every champion? 

I actually did a quick interview for a cool little video that takes a look back at our first 100 champions...it shows some of the process we use and a bit of revealing the man behind the curtain. I think that goes live next week.

So, I probably shouldn't do this, but what the Hell. I'm really stoked about champion 101 too because I got to work much much more directly on it than I usually do and it's an archetype I think we've needed. I'll....plant a little teaser for you.

LOL next hero: Plant Mage Zyra

Player: Tell me Morello anything unique about her kit that would make us super excited for? 

Morello: Something you've never seen before in MOBA, but I won't tell

Player: I hope this time it’s really unique.

Morello: The spells are basic, but this interaction and the results are really unique. I'm not worried about her feeling the same at all. In a lot of ways, I worked more on this one to give an example of, specifically, what I think a good champion can be.

Player: when you mentioned she had something that nobody has ever seen in any MOBA was that about her comboing mechanic or something else? 

Morello: Comboing mechanic.

Player: Her Q summons a targetable object like a bud or a young plant, and then casting her other abilities upon that static object impact an AOE effect. 

/wild guess 

Morello: Not on the money, but closest guess.

Player: Will Phreak be jungling in Zyra's Spotlight? 

Morello: Oddly, she might be able to jangle.

Player: will she have any source of companion just like Orianna? 

Morello: Unless you count the entirety of nature, no.

Player: Will she have any gameplay revolving around using the map/jungle/trees as a source of damage? 

Morello: No

Zyra’s Skill Mechanism

Morello: The manner in which you execute abilities is at least completely unique. There's some overlap in what the things do once you do the unique part though

She has a comboing mechanic that's unique and very thematically tight. She doesn't draw on the ground or anything like that. It's unique, not crazy!

A little less than Orianna, but more than Anivia.