After many days of anticipation, the next champion in League of Legends – Vex: The Annoying Mage, has finally been announced. Currently, fans can only admire Vex’s full character design, along with some simulated information about the abilities of this new Yordle champion through the trailer recently released by Riot Games.
The most impressive highlights about Vex are that she possesses a rather gloomy theme, with a grumpy yet… cute face. Additionally, Vex will be a champion who has 2 forms, appearing alongside her magical shadow. In fact, this shadow is the creator of the skill set that Vex possesses, as every ability she unleashes seems to utilize its power.
In terms of design, Vex seems to have won the hearts of the League of Legends community, but what about her skills? We still don’t have much information about her ability kit, however, one thing is for sure: Vex is not a traditional mage as Riot has “advertised,” and the power of this new champion already hints at “200 years of game development experience” right from the information in the trailer.
Through the clip, we can see Vex’s skill mechanics include:
– A linear damage skill, with a fairly wide range.
– A skill that increases speed or buffs movement ability.
– A target marking skill, which seems to help Vex enhance effects or damage on the marked enemy.
– A wide-area skill carrying a Fear effect to disperse crowds.
– And finally, likely the Ultimate: Vex casts a skill towards the target, triggering a second activation to charge in and latch onto this target. It even seems that if this skill finishes off an enemy, the cooldown will reset, allowing Vex to activate it continuously after each time she sends an enemy champion to the fountain.
Clearly, with a (hypothetical) skill set like that, Vex does not fit the criteria of a traditional mage as proclaimed by Riot Games. She seems to align more with the style of a mage-assassin like Ahri or LeBlanc, given that there are too many skills requiring her to operate at short and medium range, as well as demanding Vex to charge directly into the enemy formation.
Furthermore, the reset mechanism for the ultimate ability (hypothetical) is also predicted to bring many signs of imbalance for Vex. The story here is nothing new; Riot still has a habit of introducing champions with too many effects and interactions, so it would not be surprising if Vex ends up on the list of champions that need balancing adjustments by the creators of League of Legends upon her release.
