If you have noticed, Riot Games employees are still working from home and have not been able to return to the office yet. A clear example of this is in the video “Development Diary: Arcane Animated Series,” where both co-founders of this project filmed the video from home instead of the usual studio setup.
For the Lead Champion Designer of League of Legends – Riot August, working from home seems to be quite boring. Therefore, Riot August thought of a way to entertain himself while interacting with gamers by discussing the champion development process on stream. In his latest stream, Riot August shared with gamers about the first passive ability that the champion Senna possesses. What astonished the audience was that it has up to 3 distinct passives with numerous powerful features.
Senna’s first passive according to Riot August
Passive 1 – Weakend Soul: Senna’s basic attacks and abilities on enemy champions apply a Mist effect for 4 seconds. This duration increases by 0.75 seconds each time Senna begins attacking the target. If Senna applies the Mist effect twice to the same champion, she will collect it and deal additional physical damage based on the target’s maximum health (1-16%). Senna cannot collect Mist from the same champion within a few seconds. Lifesteal applies 100% to this additional damage.
When an enemy dies near Senna, their soul will be trapped by the Black Mist. The Mist will last for 8 seconds. Senna can attack that soul with basic attacks, her Q – Piercing Shadow, and her R – Dark Revelation. Major monsters like Dragon and Baron will drop 2 Mists.
Passive 2 – Absolution: Each stack of Mist grants Senna an additional 0.75 Attack Damage. Every 20 stacks will increase Senna’s attack range by 20 and critical strike chance by 10%. If Senna’s critical strike chance reaches 100%, then 35% of the excess critical strike chance will convert to lifesteal.
Passive 3 – Relic Cannon: Senna’s basic attacks deal an additional 20% physical damage and steal the movement speed of enemy champions for 0.5 seconds. Lifesteal applies 100% to this additional damage.
The overpowered point of the passive that Riot August shared is that Senna can deal damage based on the target’s maximum health percentage. Even without the Mist stacks, Senna already has strong damage thanks to the additional 20% physical damage from her attacks. Additionally, Senna can also steal the movement speed of enemy champions and become a character with extremely strong kiting capabilities.
Perhaps even Riot August himself felt that this passive had too much versatility and damage, so he decided to reduce its stats. Otherwise, Senna would become an extremely overpowered champion, making it very difficult to balance when officially appearing in League of Legends.