Drake, the Gale Knight

First off, sorry I'm using the same name as another champion -- I already had the name before knowing of these forums. This concept is also already on the official LoL forums.



Drake, the Gale Knight [I may want to change this title...]

Don't have lore for this. Probably needs number adjustments.

One thing I don't like is that I can't really find any reason NOT to pick and max W first. That may mean I need to nerf the W.

Suggested Roles:

Assassin jungler
Top lane melee carry
Top lane assassin

Stats:

Health: 440 (+85)
Health regen: 6.4 (+0.8)
Mana: 210 (+45)
Mana regen: 6.25 (+0.5)
Range: 125 (melee)
Attack damage: 53.2 (+3.1)
Attack speed: 0.661 (+3%)
Armor: 15 (+3.4)
Magic Resist: 30 (+1.25)
Movespeed: 345


Difficulty: Low / Low-Mid

Innate: Abrade

With each of Drake's attacks, the wind forms cutting edges which deal minor physical damage in a small area. The number of edges is based on Drake's attack speed.

Area: 180 in front of Drake
Damage: 6/8/10 (at levels 1, 7 and 13)
Edges: 1.6/2/2.4 x Drakes Attack speed, rounded to nearest whole (at levels 1, 7, and 13)


Q: Puncture

Cost: 60
Cooldown: 9 seconds after attacking

[Autoattack reset on-hit ability]

Drake begins charging his sword over 4 seconds. If Drake attacks within this time, his attack dashes forward, dealing bonus physical damage. The lunge distance and damage bonus are based on charge time. Charging has no cast time and does not interrupt Drake's actions.

Initial dash distance: 220
Dash distance bonus/second charged: 110 [charges half this amount every half-second]

Initial damage bonus: 12/24/36/48/60
Damage bonus/second charged: 12/24/36/48/60 [charges half this amount every half-second]

W: Updraft

Cost: 85/95/105/115/125
Cooldown: 12/11.5/11/10.5/10

Drake summons a blast of air to knock up all enemies in an area, dealing damage when they land. The initial damage is physical and bonus damage is magic. Will not deal damage to targets that are not knocked up.

AoE: 320 (diameter)
Cast range: 595
Knockup duration: 1

Damage: 80/140/200/260/320 (+0.9 AP)

E: Soothing Breeze

Cost: 35/40/45/50/55
Cooldown: 18

Calming winds heal Drake. The cooldown of Soothing Breeze is reduced whenever Drake deals physical damage to a unit.

Cooldown reduction: .75

Heal amount: 60/75/90/105/120 (+0.9 AP)


R: Wind Dance

Cost: 150
Cooldown: 210/180/150

Drake summons two windborn clones of himself which dash together with him to a target enemy. He and his copies each slash twice, dealing physical damage and applying on-hit effects on each hit. Cannot critically strike.

Range: 700

Drake damage per hit: 40/80/120 (+0.5 total AD)
Clone damage per hit: 25/50/75 (+0.3125 total AD)

[Total damage: 180/360/540 (+2.25 total AD)]


Strategy:

Puncture itself deals much less damage if you don't charge it up, but charging it for too long mid-fight means you're missing out on autoattacks. Charging Puncture does have two main uses: It's a good gap closer when fully charged and letting it charge up can zone out your lane opponent or force an engage.

Because Drake can deal physical damage multiple times in a short period with Abrade and the autoattack reset from Puncture, or with Wind Dance, Black Cleaver stacks very quickly.

The same applies to the cooldown reduction of Drake's Soothing Breeze, which also takes into account how many units are hit, meaning Abrade and Updraft can reduce the cooldown quickly. Wind Dance, because it deals physical damage six times and applies Abrade each time, is also guaranteed to reduce it by at least 9 seconds.

Wind Dance applies on-hit effects, like that of Muramana's toggle and Drake's Abrade, six times. Tear of the Goddess and Manamune can be stacked quickly with Soothing Breeze as long as Drake is dealing physical damage.

At level 18 without items, Wind Dance deals 540 (base total at rank 3) + 120 (6 instances of Abrade from 6 on-hit procs with Drake's Attack Speed at level 18) + 245.25 (2.25 times Drake's total AD at level 18) = 905.25 damage. This, combined with the autoattack reset from Puncture and the relatively high base damage of Updraft, means even an underfed Drake can deal surprising burst damage with his ultimate ready.

In most situations, Drake's best escape tool is Updraft. Try to save it for when you need to get out.

Overview
Like the concept; Assassins have always been my favorite. However, he does have some issues I could see happening, mostly in sustain department and his ult's damage being too strong. As per usual, I'll address each skill in segments.

Q
Firstly, can his Q target anything within the dash range, or does it just dash the indicated distance forward once you have attacked a target? It'd be a good thing to specify.

The cooldown is really, really short of a dash ability, especially if he truly can dash to anything in the dash range. It would practically be a targeted Kassadin ult and gives a bit too much maneuverability, not even considering with Cooldown Reduction. I would suggest increasing it to at least 12 seconds; 14-16 if it can target anything within the dash range.

Because the damage goes up rather steeply, it really should have at least a small amount of scaling. I would suggest giving it between +5-7 mana scaling each rank, keeping it relatively low, since it requires charging, but not completely cheap.

W
The mana scaling really shouldn't be going down with rank, and it honestly does need to be going up with rank, because of the damage potential. If it's that high at first rank, it's going to be practically impossible to use, because he'll be out of mana in no-time-flat. Changing it to ascending scaling from descending scaling would also help with your problem of leveling it first, because with descending, you're incentivizing leveling it or being punished for its high mana. It's also breaking the rule of mana-to-damage ratio. Having the mana that high puts the mana cost ratio into the negatives at early ranks, and then makes it a bit too efficient at later levels. You usually don't want descending costs unless the skill isn't a damage skill, like Lucian's E.
What I would suggest doing with it is starting it around 60-70 Mana, and the increasing it by at least 10 a rank, but preferably around 15.

I would also increase the cooldown a bit at all ranks, as with it that low, he has a very large amount of AoE CC potential for an assassin that can be used very frequently. I suppose you could reduce the radius of it, but that would make it a lot less reliable when you do use it.

E
Needs a mana scaling. Not much, probably only about 5 a rank, but something. Otherwise he'll get a lot more health back than he puts mana in, and that'll give him too much sustain during laning phase, if he were in a lane.

Definitely needs a higher cooldown if you're going to give it a cooldown reducing function, particularly one that procs off of any physical, and not just his autos. It would practically be a spammable heal at that low of a cooldown. I might even go so far as to reduce the reduction mechanic as well, down to .5 from .75. Alternately, I'd say remove the cooldown reduction mechanic, but that would severely degrade the uniqueness of the ability.

R
Might wanna change the ratio from Total AD to Bonus AD. It already does a fair amount of damage from the base and could easily be abused by building straight AD. On top of the burst of his other abilities, (which have great bases regardless what you build,) his potential to completely nuke down an enemy is just a bit too high.

Troll Scenario: 6 Bloodthirsters at max stacks = 600 AD, + 109 from base AD. That's 1595.25 damage without the base, (increasing it to 2015.25 with it,) and applying the 108% lifesteal. Not including the damage from his Abrade, that's enough to fully heal him, and blow up a squishy without even using another ability. His base attack speed is enough to make him attack once a second, hitting for another 709 each second, and healing for more. On top of this, he could use his Q to deal a straight 1000 damage, and pop his E for another 300. This would put his whole combo at a net of 3315, not including the auto-attacks that would be made between them due to resets. Even with armor, (which squishies don't usually build much or any of,) that'll still be a heft amount of damage and the armor can be negated by any team mate using armor shred. Thornmail also wouldn't do much good, considering he's already healing for more than he deals.

While I don't expect anyone to actually build those 6 Bloodthirsters, the potential is still there, and it's too great a potential to risk the possibility. Even with a normal Assassin/ADC build, his kit comes out with quite an exceptional amount of damage.

Summary
He's just a bit too good at what he has, and what he has is just about everything. The only things he's really missing is innate tankiness, armor penetration and harass, although he'll be able to harass fairly if you follow my suggestions for his W. Aside from that one aspect though, his other areas need a bit of downgrading for the sake of balance, in my opinion.

Overall, I do really like the idea, especially his Q. Makes me think of Eastern martial arts while using swords, (specifically Japanese and katanas.) I'm guessing that's not his actual theme, but it's a cool thought nonetheless. Hope this helped in some way and feel free to ignite a controversy with my suggestions if you disagree. :P

I wanted him to have spammable abilities because of the immense synergy with Muramana. But I guess I could just make it more difficult to stack Muramana, since that would just make it more risky but equally rewarding.

Q:

His Q basically extends the range at which he can initiate an attack, and once he does, it dashes to that target to attack it. As a gap closer, it has an effective cooldown higher than the base 6, since you'll want to charge it up at least halfway in order to dash a reasonable distance... but yeah, I can see people using it primarily as a short cooldown dash without any intent to deal damage. I'll increase the cooldown and I think I'll just increase the flat mana cost instead of scaling it.


W:

Ah, that's a good way to disincentivize maxing the W without making it a bad idea. I think the CD at rank 1 is fine. Maybe just reduce the scaling to 12/11.5/11/10.5/10? Or just a flat 12?

E:

So something more like 35/40/45/50/55 mana cost and maybe 18 second cd?

R:

I like the instant burst potential of his ultimate, but looking at it again now I think it's just on much too short of a cooldown. He's not supposed to be able to use it basically whenever he wants.

Q
Problem I see with flat cost instead of scaling it is that it'll be problematic early game if it's too high, but won't have enough trade off in ratio during late game if it's too low. I guess I'd the numbers would have to be run to really find out.

W
I would personally set it at just flat 12, but I can't really make a solid argument at the moment for a reason not to reduce it by so little.

E
Yeah, sounds good.

R
Regardless how high the cooldown is on it, it's still gonna have the problem of super-high burst when it is up. Giving it a longer cooldown kinda just makes it binary, in that he has a super power when it's up, but it's down for so long that he's then missing a huge part of his kit for a really long time.

Outro
Just the way I'm seeing things, could be wrong.

Meherok wrote:
R
Regardless how high the cooldown is on it, it's still gonna have the problem of super-high burst when it is up. Giving it a longer cooldown kinda just makes it binary, in that he has a super power when it's up, but it's down for so long that he's then missing a huge part of his kit for a really long time.

That was the intent, actually.

Isn't that kind of counter-intuitive? Binary functions hamper the gameplay for both the player and those they're playing against, due to the lack of counter function and inability to compensate on both sides.

Well, I still want him to be useful but not OP without his ultimate, but at the same time far more powerful with it.

As all champs should be. I guess I just feel he's got a little bit too much riding on it, but if you feel it's in a good spot, I won't press further.

I think the ultimate is in a good spot right now. But is he too weak without it? Or too strong, or neither?

He should be fine without it in terms of remaining a significant presence on the battlefield, but he probably won't be able to perform his role very well while it's down during the mid-latter portions of the game.

So basically his role shifts from burst assassin to secondary DPS with his ultimate down? I feel that's fine.


Edit: Actually... my math is totally wrong on his ultimate. I'm going to recheck that and see if it does need to be changed.


Edit 2: Yeah, the scaling does need to be toned down quite a bit.