After the release of the new champion trailer for Vex – The Irritable Mage, Riot Games has received a lot of positive feedback from the community, with the unique and adorable design of this Yordle character. Vex’s grumpy face immediately reminds many gamers of the singer Billie Eilish, and despite her gloomy and irritable demeanor, Vex has garnered a lot of love from the community.
In terms of design (excluding the Divine Skin), it can be said to be perfect, but what about her skills? Just a few minutes ago, Riot Games officially unveiled detailed information about the new champion’s skill set:
Basically, this skill set is not much different from the previous predictions made by the League of Legends community. The biggest highlight that Vex brings is the new mechanism that helps counter champions with dashing skills.
Vex’s passive, Frustration, consists of two parts: Frustrating interrupts dashes, and Sorrow increases damage to champions who are dashing or using Teleport. Additionally, Vex’s other skills can activate the Sorrow mark, which in turn shortens the cooldown of Frustration.
This means that by continuously (and accurately) using skills on enemy champions with dashing abilities, Vex can both interrupt their mobility skills and deal consistent additional damage to them.
This mechanism will make Vex almost a hard counter against champions with high mobility and continuous dashing skills, such as Yasuo, Irelia, or Akali. In fact, according to the previously released trailer, even a champion with a “special” dashing ability like Fizz is affected by this passive.
Among the champions with dashing abilities that are “plentiful” in League of Legends, Yasuo and Irelia are predicted to be the most severely impacted by Vex’s release, especially Yasuo. To master the “national champion,” players often rely heavily on the E – Sweeping Blade skill, both to maintain a favorable distance from opponents, as well as to clear minions and to approach and launch surprise attacks with the E + Q combo “ensuring no knock-up misses,” as well as chasing down targets effectively.
However, all those advantages will almost be completely nullified by Vex – a champion born to counter dashing skills. Besides the passive, Vex is also an extremely annoying champion with poke potential from Q and E, not to mention the fear effect that can be activated by Frustration.
No matter how you look at it, Vex doesn’t resemble a traditional mage much, with her ultimate being nothing short of an assassin’s combo. But indeed, in theory and practice, Vex shows potential to become an excellent mage counter against fighters and assassins with strong engagement capabilities, currently dominating the mid lane.