Would like to say that I appreciate how civil people are being in the comments lol. I understand I have an unpopular opinion on Hwei but I was expecting a lot more hostility. Everyone disagreeing with me is being… surprisingly cool about it. So used to people telling me I’m scum of the earth or that I should kill myself on Vars II 😂

I fell bad for all of the casters that will have to learn hes abilitys name

Hes not the worst in terms of damage, hes more of an abusive utility knife.

After watching pekin play a bit of hwei, u can definitely find usages for pretty much all of his abilities. They can all serve a purpose in niche scenarios and that will separate a good vs bad hwei

His EE is useful for poking through minions, comboing in teamfights, and assisting your waveclear :)

Missed opportunity to make his abilities be coloured red blue and yellow and combining abilities can result in green purple and orange abilities. Thus having 7 instead of 9 but more interesting comboing

Crushing Maw is easy to land, hits multiple targets, and can combo into his Qs and Ult. It's a good part of his toolkit, especially in teamfights

Those sett e and senna w transitions are too smooth it's insane.

Ngl hwei isnt as complicated as many see him to be. U just have to understand how his abilities mix and match and thats like 90% of his difficulty gone.

I played him on pbe and you’re severely underrating his potential. For example shuffling your abilities can keep the enemy lane on their toes, and prevent them abusing the match up knowledge since your play patterns can be wildly different from another hwei. That alone makes him very effective. He also is incentivized to shuffle for the different benefits. He is fun and versatile. His moves are useful even if one pulls ahead of another.

I really don't think he's a 200 years champion. Each of his abilities are super simple and do one to three things, which doesn't make his kit all that more stacked than, say, Udyr who has less abilities that do a lot more things each. Besides, let's not pretend that a lot of us wouldn't have wanted to see a kit like Hwei's on a Ryze VGU. We'll have to see, but I think Hwei has the potential to be a fan favorite, which would be fitting given his connection to Jhin.

There were basically two points you made in this video. I can almost entirely agree with the second one (he's a jack of all traits, and by extent he doesn't excel at anything so you're just better off playing a specialized champion that does that one thing better), with an exception that I think the flexibility might actually be valuable enough sometimes to justify picking him. But the second point (the one that you probably will just end up using the same three abilities over and over again) on the other hand... After watching enough Hwei gameplay on pbe I can confidently say that's not the case at all and that while you may end up using some abilities more often then other, it's gonna be because some situations in the game are more common than other. You will use the fireball as your default damage source f.e. for trades and single target burst. Your lightning, as you said, for follow up, especialy from afar (you can think something like Jhin w), but also for finishing off, or even just cutting off, fleeing enemies. Also your e-w is a better follow up, so if you are in range you should probably do that first. Rift is mainly your wave clear, but also your aoe. If you are fighting in a tight spot in the jungle or of you need to hit multiple targets at once and are sure you can keep them in it (f.e. with the help of your teammates or your e-e, it's one of the few uses this ability has) you should choose that. While the movement speed rectangle is the ability you are probably gonna be using the least, it still has a few uses: chasing down enemies and rotating between fights either with or without your team. Remember, you can basically give your whole team a Nocturne q. Your shield pool is probably the only one you will be using in direct combat and in teamfights, that's your go-to no-brainer if you are ever in doubt. Orbs, like you said, mana sustain, basically Nami e + tf blue card. It's the one you want to use in the neutral game, exception for your w-q if you are rotating. The rift procs them so you usually wanna use q-e + w-e when waveclearing. You might wanna use it for fighting sometimes, namely when you are too far away for your shields to matter, so might as well get the extra damage (again, your abilities proc it), or when you feel very safe and/or need the extra dmg more than shield. Your fear ball is your safety tool, use it for a quick "get off me". This + your w-w might often fully counter and punish a cocky engage from an enemy who got too overconfident. Eye of Sauron, like I mentioned earlier is a great follow up, but it's primarily for zone controll (one does not simply walk into Mordor). It's your strongest cc and creates a zone your enemy "can't" go through (think Victor w), but also the least reliable as it's the hardest to land because of the delay, that's why you should reserve it for those two things. The claw is the exact opposite - his weakest cc, but the easiest one to land and therefore the most reliable. Like I already said, it can be used to pull people back into your rift, keeping them in a little longer, or if your ally has some aoe constructs you want to keep people in (Victor w, Morgana w, Anivia r). The displacement might be useful form time to time, you could try to pull someone into Veigar cage for example. It's also your only aoe cc so it can be useful for teamfights if there is nobody else to hold them down or they are stacking and just asking for a wombo-combo. You can also use it when you need the extra aoe dmg. And finally, since it's your most reliable one, this is your panick button. If you don't know what to do, just press e twice and it will do something. So remember, when you are panicking on Hwei: if somebody jums on you - e-q, if nobody jumps on you - e-e. That's all I could think of so far. Thank you for your time.

I like how hwei's kit isn't really hard, he has 10 abilities but players aren't force to master all of them like aphelios. They can just choose to spam the same 3 abilities and he'd still be functional

The main difference between Aphe and Hwei is that I understand Hwei's entire kit first try with no problem, but I still struggle to understand Aphe's kit to this very day

10 skills should be easy enough to balance for this non-indie game dev team

As an aphelios main I must say, Hwei looks SOO fun to play. I love it when champ have multiple different ways of playing them and finding the style that fits you best. Ive b een waiting for a mage champion who would be similar to aphelios. Most other mages just have straightforward abilities that u just need to hit and done. With hwei however you can actually put some thought process into what youre doing

I really like Hwei. Its really nice getting another artilery mage after so long that still feels new and fun to play. personaly, i really enjoy when riot makes not overcomplicated champs, and like you perfectly described, him having 10 abilities doesn't make him very complicated because the abilites on their own are pretty simple.

dude i don’t care how much of a balance nightmare this man ends up being i fucking love hwei’s gameplay so much, obviously numbers are a bit high rn but god he’s so much fun as someone who loves artillery mages edit: after watching the video i think it’s almost antithetical to say he won’t have a niche because the thing that separates him from so many other artillery mages is his ability to choose what he wants to do, when you fight a xerath you always know the second you dive him he has no escape, but in hwei’s case he can use wq to run, ww to shield himself and stand his ground, eq to fear you easily at point blank, etc etc. league isn’t a fighting game so options don’t mean as much here but the fact that you constantly have the freedom of choice in what you want from his spells (in addition to your enemy knowing that you have options) is what keeps his gameplay rewarding by learning when to use what and mastering his combos. i think if he was just mage qiyana he wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or enjoyable in terms of gameplay, the “novelty” of his gameplay is what makes him so enjoyable after all, having so many options, learning to perfect your inputs and fight back where some champs just crumple to due thier lack of flexibility is something that’s gonna keep me around for a while as a final note, ee’s use case is that it’s EASILY the fastest of his disruption spells (bar eq at point blank, but at that point you shouldn’t be using ee if someone’s directly in front of you) and can’t be blocked my minions AND synergizes decently with his passive and qe, keeping enemies within your damage zones also unrelated, if you use qe and then we you can have the bonus damage go off on everyone inside the fissure, very minor but neat tech, and i get the feeling that’s something people will find a lot of with such a diverse kit!

PekinWoof has taught me in his videos that all hwei skills are useful in various scenarios, the problem you say about only the same 3 or 5 skills being used is not the case at all.

me and my duo are gonna play aphelios hwei bot to confuse the hell out of everyone

Personaly i would say that Huaweis kit is just a better execution of Viegos kit fantasy. Like you basicly get kit made out of many already existing mage abilities and can combain them into intresting combos.

In short what Vars says Riot should do to make Hwei a good champion is "Remove 75% of all his abilities and just take all the creativity of an artist motif away." Even if he's bad I'll play him. I like him and I feel represented by him. I'm just happy he's releasing!

watching pekinwoof play him a lot I think I kind of see that hwei's qs really well balanced. Lighting bolt is for max range and execute, missile is for direct fast damage burst damage and the rift is really good aoe, especially if you get a cc chain going with ult and maw pull e. They all are great damage dealers with distinct situations.

I know this is weird, but there’s a similar character like this in Pokémon Unite (Mew). At release, that Mon used to be purely an artillery mage with Solar Beam + Light Screen, but I think the Mon (although currently top tier) finds itself using all six moves. I kind of trust Riot can handle Hwei correctly.

I honeslty love the design of pressing the ability buttons twice to choose the version of the spell. They should use it on more champs on at least one ability.

Props to your editor(s)! Seem to be getting better with each vid. Nice job as usual

Aphelios bot and Hwei support will be known as the 400 years lane.

I am really hyped for Hwey. He is pretty much a stance character from fighting games. Each stance has its use and, while he may feel bland some times, i must admit that its quite a healthy champion. Think of him as an introduction to Aphelios, playing Hwey may be a way to be incentivised to use more complex champions

Invoker has separate cooldown on all his abilities with 5 sec cooldown to switch between them. So just give Hwei 5 sec cooldown on the stance and separate cooldown for the actual abilities. That way he can throw out 3 mediocre abilities every 5 sec in stead of 3 mediocre abilities with long cooldown when other characters have 3 good abilities with long cooldown

“Can’t believe we are closer to season twenty than season four” That fucked me up

12:17 That's honstly how I thought they were gonna handle Hwei and was so bewildered with what they did. Although I have to admit that while what the did may be less practical, it is kinda cooler.

You should note that Hwei's QW not only has execute damage, but also has its conditional damage amp applied [ EITHER ] if the target is CC'd [OR ] if the target is completely alone inside the large AoE (Basically, Karthus skittles). So all of his Q's will outpace each other in their specific contexts. Same goes for every one of his other abilities. The only Ability I see being disproportionately better than his other skills is his WE with the bonus damage and mana regen seeming to be his bread and butter W.

The biggest fun of playing Invoker is comboing skill while your keyboard prays for mercy, he is also kinda viable with every build so in the late game or when heavily ahead, he maxes all builds therefore being powerhouse. Riot didn't want to turn Hwei to late game powerhouse like that so they restricted him to 3 spells with colour shared cooldowns thus forcing player to go QWE roatation. I wish Hwei had an ability to cast 3 spells but any of the 3, so if player wanted he could go QQQ for busrt, EEE to chain cc them or WEE to save.

I feel like there was actually 3 ideas One of the abilities having to be a circle One of the abilities having to be a forward line. One of them having to be different for the ability , while keeping the idea that first is forward area damage , second supporting with shield heal speed buff or slow cc , third being cc detailed Its like making three similar play styles. First plays like velkoz , poke them until they dies. Second being like sona , third being ziggz

Really nice cuts on the overlapping ability's! The Braum and the Senna one were sooo clean!

I think he will fit in as a less volatile alternative to the other artillery mages, tradeing raw potential for reliability

QQ - skirmish and mid range poke QW - long range poke QE - clear wave, poke through the wave and zoning WQ - roaming WW - teamfight/skirmish peel WE - spam EQ - 1v1, avoid assassins, setup to R and QQ EW - hard zoning, cc follow-up EE - mid range poke, setup to R and QQ R - use after landing cc or slow. Combo: WE, then use AA between Qs and Es and R for maximum damage.

I do think the concept of a “Jack of all trades” champ can actually be valuable within the Mage class since it is a role where many champs feel too specialized. Like it’s been a long time since we’ve had a mage like Ori or Azir who just 1v9s regardless of team comp and situation.

What makes Invoker so powerful in Dota 2 is his utility. He can go down many different build paths depending on the game. Obviously, itemization is much more different and more impact full in Dota, but I feel that's what will make Hwei so powerful. His ability to adapt to the game around him and each unique situation. Like a Swiss army knife Also, references to Invoker Qq- Cold Snap Qw- Sunstrike Qe- Meteor Wq- Ghost walk Ww- Alacrity We- Forged Spirits Eq- Deafening Blast Ew- EMP Ee- Ice Wall His ult is the one unique thing he has that invoker doesnt

from what I've seen from videos of people playing him mid there doesn't seem to be an ability from each group that out class the others. Maybe his w which can give mana back but it's mainly because it's the only really useful ability for a midlaner. His 3 Qs have a clear purpose and you'll almost never hesitate to use one or the other unlike what was said in the video his red trail ability is really good for clearing waves and pocking through minions but lack the raw damage of his QQ (the projectile) so trail for wave clear and pocking and QQ for killing or trading, the execute is just that a finisher it's not meant to be used when the enemy isn't low or stuned. It's the same for his E abilities, the fear is a great get off me tool, the eye is a long root that works really well with your execute and the last one is the easiest to land and can hit several targets and it isn't blocked by minions either.

That clicking sound in the back of the video threw me off so hard because I listened while driving and thought it was my blinker for so long 💀

His ability opportunity cost could be solved by giving all 10 abilities their own cooldowns, and just making them really long. Force the player to vary up their strategy on a macro level, and allow for skills of the same color to potentially combo together.

Look what they did to my boy Invoker ;-;

I have to say, im a bit worryied Hwei will have old Udyr's syndrome, where, each "stance" will get buffed/nerfed separately, thus, making only one playstyle at a time viable.

I love playing Aphelios, learning what he does and combos to make came pretty quick for me. I’ve play him in the mid lane sometimes because he plays more like an AD mage as much as a bot lane marksman. Seeing Hwei basically being an AP Aphelios is going to be awesome to try out

“It’s Ironic isn’t it, when granted everything, you can’t do anything”. -Gojo Satoru

I wish people in ffxiv had a similar mentality to league players on reading abilities.

For me, hwei doesn't seem nearly as complex or hard to learn as aphelios, because while he has 10 abilities, the abilities itself are pretty simple and because his q w and e all have distinct purposes that apply to all three of their versions, hes easy to understand

Hwei is overcooked to be mega complicated because people think a lot more is "harder". As opposed to how it plays in gameplay. Somebody like Fiora/Riven are much more complicated/complex to play with "simpler" abilities or somebody like Akali/Katarina with actual multiple fast combo. Or having choose variants of your abilities like qiyana + decisions making in teamfights. Hwei is more similar to someone like udyr were technically he has "A lot" of abilities but they are just variations were you should "choose" the better one for the situations. With the situation being clearly obvious and even if you are wrong you still get a min floor of effectiveness. Like the video said you would just choose the most obvious/strongest ability most of the time. A lot of the abilities have a lot of overlap. For example if the xerath W clone is super powerful, you should just choose the CC ability most reliable in stunning them in place for landing it yourself. If it's hard to land the xerath W, then you would just throw up the fireball. If you need to clear the wave or it's even hard to land the fireball. Then you would just use the fissure to clear the wave and tick enemy for some part of the damage like vel'koz. The hard part of remembering button pushes combos and not playing the character. Invoker is a skin deep comparison because all of invoker spells work completely different with wildly different usage and scenarios. Using some abilities over other is a true opportunity cost.

interesting perspective, congrats on 200k!

In response to use case of the abilities: QE is your teamfight spell, It has the largest AEO of all of his Qs and slows, I can see support Hwei using this ability almost every time. EE is part of Hwei's wave clear combo it can hit every minion, and then pulls them close enough that QQ can hit all of them. Additionally, the EE gains more value if you cased QE as you can pull champs into the center of the slow zone.

Your suggestion in the end is already kind of how it works, except the first key press is the effect and the second is the shape. QQ, WQ and EQ are all in a straight line although WQ resembles WE more. QW, WW and EW are all circles on the ground. and E second cast is a wild card.

Honestly I really love his design. I'd much rather have a champ with 10 abilities where one ability is a line or two of text. Then to have a champion where one ability is like a whole kit of another champion and you gotta read an essay just to figure out what q does.

I'm so glad that you came to the same conclusions as I did about him. In my vid on hwei vs invoker, I was saying just how bland hwei felt to play because of how you get locked out of abilities when using some, like... it's like if you play Nidalee and if you use cat q you lose human q... it would feel really trash to play! I absolutely agree that he might devolve into a "optimal 5-6" ability champion in a team fight, where he just seems to lose a third of his kit due to it being sub-optimal. I wish it was like Invoker, where the sub-abilities have the cooldowns, and not the paints. That would reward choosing the right spell for the situation, but then when the situation changes you don't feel like shit for now not having access to the right spell anymore. Invoker has very long cooldowns on all his spells, but a near instant access to each spell independently in the lategame. The spells are ALSO weaker than other heroes, since he has 10... but HE HAS ACCESS TO ALL 10. Hwei is weaker due to having 10, but only has access to 3+ult at any time. It's weird, and feels bad.

he feels like Ahri with the jack of all trades master of none which I really love, i'm super excited to add him to my roster

I like the simplicity of the abilities. I think that very refreshing after all these 200 year releases recently

I really agree with this(as first impressions go at least). Both my friend and I have been trying him out and both of us basically came to the conclusion that the amount of stuff he can do necessitates the underwhelming individual power of his abilities. There are some neat things like figuring out which 2 abilities would work best to proc the passive. I really like the triple orb thing into the claw grab move because it's an auto into a really fast ability. But yeah he SEEMS surprisingly balanced.

In my experience, QE is far better for fast pushing than QQ. The hitbox is large enough to reliably hit the entire wave, especially if you also toss an EE on it to suck the minions in, while QQ requires you to be standing directly in the middle of all the minions to hit them all, which is not at all feasible in a normal laning scenario.

good points, i do agree it would make more sense to have his kit setup to do one thing. e.g(all dmg in one rotation or all cc in one rotation) but i dont think hes gonna be weak... feel like hes gonna be rewarding to someone who masters him. he will probably be weak for new ppl so hopefully they dont buff him prematurely

I do agree that he is "Jack of all trades, master of none". But personally, i think of him like "Jack of all trades, master of none, but better than one"

"Hwei is a jack of all trades and master of none." Meanwhile Invoker in DotA 2 when played by a pro player "I AM A GOD!"

Honestly, his kit reminds me of the mechanics of ffxiv Ninja class. Where you combo different ninjutsu/buttons for different ability results.

I was surprised about how easy he was to pick up, like his skill floor is low but idk about the skill ceiling

amazing editing, god job!

The way you talk about Hwei in theory seems very similar to the *What Happened to Orianna* video. You criticized Orianna’s Jack-of-all-trades nature and how it detracts from her capability in individual circumstances, but I think that’s one of her (and by extension Hwei’s) bigger selling points: they have answers for any game state. They have protective capabilities that allow them to peel for (other) carries when necessary, whether via defense or disabling. They also have the ability to deal great damage at good range when they’re the carries. That versatility often makes for a good champ to play when your comp is already balance or when you want to focus on mastering one champion in particular to climb.

i think that his abilities are quite simple and monodimensional, but i think it's a good thing, i also would like to point out that his abilities have more sinergy than you consider, for example QW with EW, or EE can be used to keep enemies on your QE or R. the example you made about always using QQ is a bit shaky to me because QE is actually a great tool for dealing a lot of damage in an area, for zoning or to create distance while damaging. I personally do not think he has a low skill ceiling, and he is more useful than other artillery mages in teamfights. These are my impression right now but i guess we should just wait and see how he performs.

The big thing with Hwei is that it feels like while they are trying to make Invoker, they made his spells have a bit too much overlap as to cause the reason why you think many people will just use 2 spells in each grouping at most. Comparing it to Invoker then, where if a situation occurs depending on your chosen desire to engage (attack or run away or support or etc.) with it you have only a single *correct* choice, even if the spells are also fundamentally pretty simple, whereas Hwei often has situations where 2 or 3 spells within the same category would achieve the same result.

I think any criticism can only be proven right after hes been on live and in ranked for a few weeks. He could very well have number buffs and nerfs and conditions added and removed. At this time All I think is hes pretty cool, his late game aoe dmg is nutty, and it adds a new type of depth to players that like that high range mage playstyle. However I agree that most likely certain combos will be better than others 70% or more of the time. Certain combos will be better for wave clear , better for kiting and better for team fights. Thats ok, because it gives the champ clear reference points which feels super rewarding when you figure it out.

Shoutout to Healsnshields for the insanely clean editing on the ability comparisons.

I think they gave him 9 abilities cuz of who he is. He is supposed to weave in spells, mix them which somehow forces you to be creative, which is kinda in line with who he is as a champion in Lore. But yes, the only way to tone him down is to make his skill deal either low or high conditional damage. To me he is more of a....Lore champion, a champion which is heavily defined by his lore and identity. And yes, I think Aphelios is a bit more complicated than Hwei? But not really. Aphelios cannot choose his weapons, u have to make use of what u currently have and be creative about it, whilst Hwei, as Vars said, has access to all of his abilities, meaning at any given moment, u can think of which spell you can weave, whether you're going for poke, sustain, 1v1 dance, team damage, or execution. He is indeed an interesting champ which might have a difficult time fitting in. ALSO if you notice the wheel behind him, it changes color depending on your current spellbook, but then u have wash brush, which maybe some can make use of to somehow take advantage of how your opponent will react to the color you have:) .Nice analysis on him 😀

I think he will be similar to karma and Oriana. you have to choose between damage or support at any given moment

for all the memes aphelios Is actually an amazing champion. they pulled off something great with him. he literally broke the mold and the game tbh… but they found a way to fit into him the game seamlessly today.

Huh. Some time ago, I had a similar idea. It came from a thought how a minion feels surrounded by all those superpowered entities. It evolved to an idea of a veteran mercenery who, instead of overwhelming power, adapts to the situation. He'd had 3 forms: spear (diver), axe and shield (tank/bruiser), and 3rd one I couldn't decide on (crossbow for adc, hammer for cc and area control and few other ideas based on the idea of experienced medieval combatant). The way he'd changed abilities would function similar to Corki package. Every X minutes 2 weapon racks would appear with weapons you are currently not using, and you could change your class. Each form would have separate equipment and separate gold spending (you've used spear earned 1000g and spent it on spear, then you switch to axe and have that 1000g back to spend on different set of items so you wouldn't lag behind). So basically, a champion who could change a role if the situation required it, but unlike Hwei, he would be fully dedicated until his armoury respawned.

The best part of his kit is his R is based for some reason on tenacity. So with ornn and anathema's chains it gets arbitrarily large and has the old mord ult burn trolling with liandrys.

I think the "incentive" of playing Hwei over a typical champion is that while his answers to most situations might be weaker than a champion of a different archetype (Spells for mages, support capabilities for enchanters, cc for tanks), he HAS those answers where other champions might lack them. Sure, there are champions who can do part of what he does, but no one can do ALL of what he does, which means he brings a layer of adaptability to open up gameplay choices other champions just couldn't make. Leona might out cc him, but Leona is never going to be hitting that ranged spell damage like he can. Zyra might bring both the damage and cc to the table, but she has no ally affecting support to speak of. His different sub abilities all following the same theme also gives him an extra layer of mixup most champions don't get. For example, Xerath's W slows, but his only hard cc is his E. If you know this, you know what you have to avoid in order to successfully approach him. You know how it can come out, how you should react to dodge it, ect. But with Hwei, you don't know which E is coming out until it hits your screen. Granted, I refuse to play the PBE so all of this is pure hypothetical, I just wanted to look at the other side of the coin from your take. Great video tho, keep it up :D

Does anyone know the channel Vars mentioned at the beginning? The "brazilian morris?" help please ^^

Havent watched the video yet so maybe im just repeating information but I was skeptical about his kit at first, it seemed like they were being overly ambitious but after playing agianst him and as him i've come to think he is actually pretty amazingly designed. From my experience he is definetley oppresive in lane but falls off unless you can play him really good so he doesn't feel broken at all. And I think the abilities are pretty cool, its a lot to remember but they're simple and you can tell visually what the effects of the abilities might be, it fits the thematic of a painter super well I think hes going to paint these spells and you have to interpret what the effect might be.

Really feels like the ult should've been built around multi-dipping the same stances - like a set attack per stance that wipes the brush clean & resets any stances on CD, or picks up colours present in the environment to force enter that stance again? Feels like that would actually bring in depth to his combo game?

11:05 you know you watch a youtuber a lot when you can recognize their gameplay clip in another youtuber's video i watched that video already

i would like if they sotra- reversed the order of his ability mixing. so if you for example want to play him as an enchanter, Q + W would make the speed up W+W sheild pool and E+W mana restore. that way he can focus fully on being en enchanter when the need comes up.

Invoker: hold my beer

I really like hweis kit, 100% saving my motes for him

there are so manny situations were I was a nami or a seraphine and I was like if I has a karma Q I would get the kill or if I has a trail of speed we would have escaped that I think he will be good. If you are in a preemaite teep he will shine to his fullest because you can prepare together and you can think about what abilety will be usefull with what champ. like imagine him pulling all of the enemys together in to a sion Q and than making a speed trail for the irelia to finish everyone that survived

His main strength is that he has answers to many different situations. Unlike many other champions, he doesn't have to do with second best option, he can choose one that fits his current need the most. And tbh he only lacks a blink/dash and invisibility.

This is what happens when Hwei refused to listen to Jhins advise of only having 4 skills.

I wish his abilities mix with each other like how paint mixes. Like the fire fissure thing could be mixed with the speed up water thing to create a mist allies can walk in that provides a shroud like a supportive akali. Or like his fear could be mixed with his Q+Q spell for a ℅ burn and a black fiery trail that has a small % health damage to enemies that walk on it

HELL YEA LET'S GO HEALSNSHIELDS!! Great video vars. But I think he's gonna be decent in pick rate consistently especially as a mid laner but he might get the pro play treatment. He can do a little bit of everything and fit in well without being super commital it seems which would be right up pro plays alley. We'll see how he pans out though onces he hits live servers

I think comparing to Invoker is a good way for Riot to identify issues for Hwei's design. My main issue is that Hwei suffers from the cd on each of his "color prep skills". Not in the sense that he can't cast all 9 spells back to back, since Invoker is limited by his Invoke cooldown as well, but it's very limiting that he can't cast multiple spells under each color. Depending on the situation, let's say if there is someone locking down your target, ie. WW ult. You would want to be able to cast multiple Q color spells to capitalize on the enemy already being locked down. There's no reason for Hwei to want to cast any W color spells in that situation. Maybe Riot can give Hwei casting charges on his passive, and each spell he casts costs 1 charge. The max number of charges, or the charging time can scale with Hwei's level. The 2nd step spells are the ones with the cooldowns. So he can't cast 3 QQs together, but it's possible to throw QQ + QW + QE.

His EE is probably the E ability i use the most, as combo'd with his QE you can keep them in there for a long period of time and guaranteed proc your passive in lane from a long distance.

Molten fissure just being rumble's ult is wild to me

I think the better example is ironically, invoker from dota2 lol. So invoker also have 9 different skills, but they are focused on offensive capabilites, with different usage : pure damage (exort based spells), cc (quas based spells), and utility (wex based spells) Here's a breakdown of his skills : - sun strike : a global aoe skill shot that deals true damage in a small aoe after a delay, damage will be divided between the numbers of enemies struck. So if the damage is 500 and it hits 2 emenies, it will be 250 damage instead. This is an execution type of offense - forged spirit : summon a spirit of lava that can be controlled and reduce enemy armor everytime they attack. This is a pushing/ damage booster type of offense - chaos meter : summon a meteor from sky that will deal damage and move slowly, dealing more damage as it travel. This is pure damage type of offense - alacrity : boost a selected ally, including yourself's attack speed and damage. This is a buffing type of offense - ice wall : create an ice wall that will damage and slow enemies that passes through it. This is a utility type of offense and is usually comboed with his other spells or to slow down enemies chasing him - cold snap : place a debuff that cause the target enemy to be stunned everytime they take damage for a short duration. This is a cc type of offense - tornado : summon a tornado that will travel quickly (about twice as janna's tornado) and cycole the enemies struck (this is a debuff that cause the enemies strucked to be knocked up in air, stunned, silenced, can't use purify type of spells, can't be targetted by any allies or enemy and can't be distruped in any ways) before damaging them when they land. This is an initiation/cc type of offense - emp : create a field of electromagnetic field that will drain mana from enemy after a shot delay while damage them and restoring mp to invoker based on mana drained. This is basically used to make his mana full again so he can cast more offense and also drain enemy's mana up do they can't cast spell - ghost walk : becomes invisible, gains movement speed buff and slows every enemies around him. This is his only escape tool and the only one in his kit that doesn't dirrectly correlate to offensive power (altough u can argue that he can use it offensively to start a gank or something) - deafening blas : sends out a shock wave that deal damage and disarm the enemies struck while pushing them backward. This is a utility type of offense So as u can see all of his skills, except one deals damage and is correlated to offensive powers in one way or another The only differences between them is some of them are used for pure damage (chaos meteor), some for execution (sun strike), some from cc (cold snap, tornado) and some for utility and buffing (emp, deafening blast, ice wall, alacrity, forge spirit etc) so invoker players need to choose carefully what spells to cast at what time

I feel like abilities having dofferent applications and uses throughout the game is already interesting. Even if the mana-W is best in lane, the speed might be useful when roaming and the shield in a teamfight. Same and similar goes for the other spells. I don't think depth only comes from having to chose from all 3 in every situation but also from going into a fight with a rotation thought out (stuff like using QQ for a one on one, QW in a teamfight with a Morgana and QE for a wave - they all have a place, the places don't necessarily need to be equal).

I've been wanting a champion like him and I personally think that you have to think outside of the box for usage on his kit

I gotta say, I also appreciate the fact that the Q (second) is always a straight skillshot and W is always a Circle, probably makes it a lot easier to learn (dont see a pattern with the e tho)

Once we go to the next SDS story I’m curious on how Fairies and Giants are going to survive

i think if they needed to change him due to being potentially hard to balance they could invert how you pick abilities so that you could access all abilities of the same type but locking you out of the others so you could spam cc but then you are unable to do significant damage however this may result in him having to be nerfed further due to his high burst damage and cc

I love having so many options in a character, feels like a fighting game

I had much the same opinions about generalist characters in League in the past. But I realized I only ever saw being a generalist as a weakness when the specific champ in question is either not in meta or their stats were bad. For example, when Thresh was in rough patches in his history, I remember a few credited sources citing his Jack of all trades kit (decent engage, decent peel, decent damage) as a reason for his inadequacy at that moment. On the flip side, when the same champion is overtuned or highly favored in meta. The fact that they can do a little bit of everything crowds out specialists who are only good at one or two gameplay elements. I personally label Rakan as a generalist character who is overtuned at the moment. When he was bad in the past, it was because he didn’t heal enough, couldn’t tank enough damage, and also output relatively low damage with his damaging abilities. Nowadays there lots of folks in elite play who see Rakan as a no brainer top 5 in the support role because he does it all so well. Not to mention his uniquely strong team fighting capabilities. People will different definitions of generalist will likely have things to say about my examples but my main point is that being a generalist is only perceived as bad when the overall champion is weak numerically and the same generalist will seem broken beyond belief if the numbers favor them.

I like that he has a broader kit. The once in a blue moon that I play support, I like to play Lux. Why? Because I don't like to only be able to support. I like combining supporting my teammates with shooting big lasers. Similarly, while he may fit the artillery mage niche best, he has a lot more defense against being dove on than a specialized artillery mage by comboing E1, Q3, W1 and R.

I'm really excited to play him support. I love him.