Not long ago, the official skill set of the new champion Aurora was announced, causing a stir in the League of Legends community. The reason for this is that Aurora’s skill set possesses very high mobility with 3 abilities providing dash capabilities. In fact, Aurora’s W ability even allows this rabbit to become invisible, making her very hard to “catch” in team fights.
Therefore, right after Aurora was officially introduced, this character was deemed too strong. Even former LEC caster Caedrel couldn’t believe his eyes when he first witnessed this character’s skill set. He also candidly stated on air that he didn’t believe Riot would be able to balance this rabbit from Freljord upon her release.
However, recently, Riot Games surprised the community by revealing that Aurora once had a version that was stronger than the current one. According to Riot Reav3, this rabbit was originally designed as a Top Lane champion. However, after some development time, Riot realized that this version was too powerful and there was no way to balance it. Therefore, they made necessary adjustments to move Aurora to the Mid Lane.
“She (Aurora) was initially designed as a Top Lane champion. Although this character is very fun to play, you would feel extremely frustrated if you were using a melee champion against Aurora. At that time, this character had less burst damage but was much tankier compared to the current time. She was simply too “overpowered” with both damage, high mobility, good survivability, and was a ranged champion as well.
After that, we had to reduce Aurora’s tankiness and move her to the Mid Lane. This was not the initial intent of the design team but it had to be done to ensure Aurora wouldn’t become a disaster,” Riot Reav3 shared.
In the past, Riot Games faced numerous “balancing disasters” with ranged champions in the Top Lane. A prime example is Karma’s tank build with the Spirit Visage – Frostfire Gauntlet combo during seasons 7-8. In fact, this playstyle has haunted many developers at Riot even to this day.
With her extremely high mobility, Aurora was already a very strong champion in League of Legends. She could easily kite other melee champions in the Top Lane and dominate opponents during lane phase. Aurora almost extended Riot’s nightmare if they had kept her tankiness. In fact, the experimental version of Aurora could have disrupted the meta in the Top Lane, proving to be superior to other melee champions.
Therefore, it is understandable why Riot had to make significant changes to Aurora and turn her into a Mid Lane champion. Fortunately, they made the “turnaround” in time, and she is no longer as unbalanced as during the development phase. If not, this rabbit could have become the “200-Year new generation champion” and completely overturned the meta of League of Legends.