User:Lesdin/Beta Development

With the release of the newest trailer for Dark Souls III, I was reminded of my time exploring the streets of Yharnam as a hunter of beats, a bloodied cleaver and blunderbuss in my hands (yes, I am an unoriginal person who played through the game with the flagship weapons). A highlight, as one might say, of my experience playing Bloodborne would definitely be my encounter with Lady Maria; a challenging boss for sure, not only was I entranced by her visuals, but her theme music and fighting style, one which employed both fire and blood magic, were things I would never hope to forget.
 * Double Catalyst

But then to my avail, it suddenly struck me how there have been no true gunmancer-esque champions in League of Legends until this date. Preliminarily inspired by the aforementioned boss of the incredible game, I set out on creating a custom champion who would excel at the usage of guns and mobility; someone who could truly express what an agile gunmancer would be, with all the fashion and style of my model.

Unfortunately, the results were that of a rather queer character with no real individual personality, tied into a kit which was too good at what it was doing, without being notable nor unique. There were already champions who used guns in the League of Legends already, and to have someone who dual-wields pistols while dashing constantly to reposition felt like I was just really badly ripping off of. But no way was I about to forfeit this idea of a gunmancer, nor simply let pass the unoriginal muck that was Tylane preliminarily.

I was in desperate need of some new catalyst, an idea which could serve as the base for something that is yet to be present in League of Legends. Proceeding what was about a day of brainstorming, I'd managed to list down what could be potentially used as critical themes for Tylane, including, but not limited to the following: fire bending, wielding of classical firearms such as arquebuses or blunderbusses, a flippant personality, and some sort of visual androgyny.

In a surprising converse wave of fortune, I was finally able to think of the character whom I could adopt as a newer mould for Tylane, in order for her him to be a truly unique addition to the League of Legends. I delightfully introduce you to Demon Archer from the Fate franchise, created by Type-Moon; she is a character whom assumes the superior position in every fight through the employing of her magical arquebuses, with her noble phantasm Three Thousand Worlds unleashing her full arsenal of three thousand arquebuses in every direction. Unlike my previous custom champion however, the true identity of Tylane's model is Oda Nobunaga, and the name was hence not used. Thereafter, with the visuals and themes of Tylane roughly decided upon, it was time to get onto redesigning a kit for Tylane which would match the feel of his new model. The process was not easy of course, with the preliminary stages being the most difficult. To encapture the genuine feel of a brash gunmancer in but just four abilities and a passive wholly challenged my somewhat already limited capacity at design.
 * Triple the Bang

But as people say, a step taken with intent is getting a step closer to the ultimate goal. I began slowly, but steadily nearing Tylane's final kit by first attempting to come up with some drafts of what the passive could be. Now you may say that I'm just being bombastic at this point, but I personally view the passive of a champion as its most key facet, for the passive is, in essence, an ability which is permanently active; the passive should be unique, inspiring, but most of all, definite (with both and  being very good examples of what an ideal passive should be). In the case of Tylane's passive, it's most probable that the number of iterations the article went through to become what it is today, actually exceeded the combined number of iterations the rest of the kit went through, which I don't personally see as a bad thing per se, but it was indeed worthy of both noting and raising an eyebrow at.

With a passable draft of the passive finally completed, the rest of the kit was conversely the hardest cakewalk one may ever do in their lives. Seriously not to boast, but with such a functional passive which doesn't fail either at lining up parallel with Tylane's themes, the rest of the kit just flew through with only several mere minor setbacks, as per them being based on each other, and in some cases not even functional without the other. The passive of course was changed several times with the conceiving of the rest of the kit, as to accommodate for the constant shift in Tylane's strengths and weaknesses. At one point during development, Tylane's kit was more about being agile while firing a flurry of varied arquebus shots, rather than setting up conquered boundaries of soul fire, at which point the passive just outright lacked the secondary component to limit Tylane's power. Ultimately however, the idea of Tylane being agile was wholly scrapped, as it just made him feel more cowardly than agile, with the harm being done to his character way too greater than the good. The coming of the boundary mechanics though, set a milestone for Tylane's kit, as the new lack of mobility meant that I could compensate by adding in more damage to the kit (which also indirectly caused for Tylane's unique resource) and general control, both of which directly empowered Tylane's facet of a brash young man. And thus eventually, through sheer experimentation and crafting, Tylane's kit became to be what it is today.