Champions in Season 2021[]
| “ | So Viego's release is just the start of The Ruined King's story, and the next three champions we will be releasing this year will also tie into  Viego's return.
Now the third champion that will be part of the Ruined King's Return is a marksman, but much like |
| — Ryan 'Reav3' Mireles[1] | |
 |
Champion Roadmap: April 2021[]
- From Street Rat to Sentinel
During the Season 2021 roadmap, I talked briefly about a charming new Sentinel of Light that will swing onto the Rift this summer. Now that there’s a lot more to grapple with, let’s talk in more detail.
Our goal with this champ was to create a marksman that would primarily be played mid lane. While champions like 
Lucian, 
Corki, and 
Tristana have seen play mid, none of them feel like they were made specifically for that position, with the traits you often see from champions in that lane—like intentionally-designed roaming patterns and a dueling focus. We felt a marksman designed for mid would both add a unique champion to the roster and could also be pretty appealing to a lot of mid lane assassin and skirmisher players.
Things are looking pretty bleak for Senna and Lucian right now, but maybe some new Sentinels can revive their hope.
Sentinels of Light ARG[]
Solving the Sentinels of Light ARG before the event and inspecting the code would yield this message:[3]
| “ | To the Sentinels—
In the event of my death, I appoint Akshan as my successor, to inherit my weapon and keep Shurima protected from the forces of undeath. |
|
Champion Insights: Akshan[]
By Riot Cashmiir[4]
Akshan’s got a lot going on. He’s a Sentinel of Light who swings into battle wielding an ancient weapon of tremendous power. He’s a man who believes in doing the right thing, no matter the cost. And he’s got a nice smile to boot.
Oh, did we mention he’s a midlane marksman with a grappling gun, stealth, and a revive? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that later.
- A New Kind of Assassin
Before we get lost in his dreamy eyes, let’s start with his origins. Akshan’s gameplay development goal was to create a roguish assassin. Someone who fits the “let’s-make-this-
Lux-playing-fool’s-life-miserable” playstyle. Someone sneaky.
One of the things that make assassins effective is their ability to attack you before you can strike back. In League, that looks like untargetability in the form of 
Akali's shroud, crowd control like 
Pyke's stun, and invisibility like 
Talon's ult. They’re all slippery, and they all promote guerrilla-style attacks where you burst down an enemy before disappearing into nothingness. Since the team was making a roguish assassin kit, stealth seemed like the obvious choice. But stealth isn’t exactly a new concept for a League assassin, so our next question was, “How do we make him feel different?”
The answer came not from thinking about game design, but from watching players define the meta.
“We’ve been watching marksmen go mid in pro and regular play for a while, but none of them feel like they belong there,” recalls game design lead Jeevun “Jag” Sidhu. “They don’t provide the things that champs designed for mid should, like crowd control or target access. So we wanted to craft an experience that would feel like a distinct assassin style, but also clearly feel like a marksman... and put those two worlds together in mid lane.”
Positioning is an incredibly important part of playing both assassins and marksmen. As an assassin, you want to flank and annihilate squishy carries, not awkwardly poke beefcake frontliners with an inflatable dagger. And as a marksman, you are the squishy carry with a big target on your back, so one wrong misstep can mean insta-death. Akshan is both of these things, so the team wanted to give him more control over his positioning in fights. That line of thinking led the team to some high-flying, super cool, suave gameplay.
“I wanted to represent some part of South Asian culture in Akshan, as that’s something I grew up with—my mom would watch a ton of Bollywood movies when we were young. And one signature element of Bollywood movies is that they’re dramatic, with over-the-top action style that’s all about spectacle and fun,” Jag says. “League’s signature movement spells are often the coolest part of the game, and I have a light design goal to try to make a unique movement style for each champ I work on. Akshan’s original narrative writer David “Interlocutioner” Slagle and I talked about ropes as a power source for a long time at the start of the process—we talked about things like tripwires and traps. Those didn’t work but a grappling hook sure did.”
And while all this was happening, the team also needed to think about the man behind the moves. What kind of person is Akshan? Why would he use stealth and a grappling hook to fight enemies head-on? And how did he get this way?
- Rules Are Meant to Be Broken
When you think about assassins, the champs who come to mind are a lot of xXshad0wslayrXx 2edgy4me assassins, a very friendly succubus, a 
demonic clown, and a stupid 
fish thing. But none of that really felt right for Akshan. He swings into combat on a grappling hook, for pete’s sake. Certainly he should be more... cool.
“As we started to really flesh out Akshan’s gameplay, it became clear that he was very much a charming rogue,” says game designer Glenn “Riot Twin Enso” Anderson. “And what do charming rogues do? They break through a glass window on a grappling hook, do a parkour move, and then shoot the bad guys in the face. That personality just fits his gameplay so well! But he’s not cocky like 
Ezreal. He won’t boast about all of his good deeds for attention, he’ll quietly do them and maybe just throw a wink at you.”
Beyond being the kind of guy who’d make you weak in the knees, Akshan doesn’t play by the rules. He’s firmly a “f$%^ the establishment” kind of guy. Even if that establishment is the revered ancient order, the Sentinels of Light.
“We’d always intended for Akshan to become a member of the Sentinels,” shares senior concept artist Justin “Riot Earp” Albers. “But it was important that we capture his rule-breaking personality even when it came to the Sentinels. He has his own style of clothing—he’s not defined by anything other than who he is. Even his weapon, which is an ancient and extremely powerful Sentinel weapon, is something he has modified to fit the combat style he wants. It doesn’t matter that it’s revered and feared by other Sentinels—Akshan has MacGyvered it by slapping a grappling hook on.”
But no one’s as simple as that, and there’s pain behind that smolder. A lifetime of hardship. A loss so great it nearly broke the man he’d worked so hard to become.
Akshan grew up a street urchin in a Shuriman village. Even at a young age he struggled to turn a blind eye to the injustices around him, and would stand up to even the most frightening warlord if he viewed their actions as wrong. Until one day he pissed off the wrong man.
He was beaten and left to die in the street, and even succumbed to death’s sweet embrace. He was saved by a kind woman Shadya, who used a weapon both terrifying and powerful to resurrect the boy. She eventually became his mentor, training him to join the Sentinels and to put his convictions to good use.
Together the two traveled across Shurima to stockpile ancient Sentinel weapons. You know, to help against Viego’s eventual return and the final battle between good and evil, light and dark. The usual stuff. And then everything came to a crashing halt when Shadya was murdered. Akshan took the weapon that once saved him and forgot all of Shadya’s talk of stopping the oncoming Ruination. He wanted one thing and one thing only: vengeance.
“We had a hard time finding the right balance between revenge and hero,” says principal narrative writer John “JohnODyin” O’Bryan. “There were points during development where we made a slight adjustment to who he was, and he swayed too far into evil, and lost the good part about him. There was a span of time where he wasn’t the type of man you’d want to root for. I think he’s landed in a place that’s morally grey. He has strong morals and a good motivation, and that’s what keeps him from being the type of man he hunts.”
Finding a balance between spite and justice was key to finding Akshan’s personality, which is especially important when you consider who he could’ve easily become...
- Two Men, Not a Shirt Between Them
Akshan and Viego are two sides to the same coin. They’re two men who’ve lost people they loved. Two men who are driven by the need to get them back. The thing that separates them is the choices they made throughout their lives.
Viego was a spoiled prince who viewed a woman as his. Akshan was a street kid beaten to death—literally—for standing up for what was right. Viego murdered thousands when he refused to put his grief and selfishness aside. Akshan trained as a Sentinel of Light to defend those who can’t defend themselves. Viego wants to destroy the world, and Akshan must save it.
This is all well and good, but League’s a MOBA, not a visual novel. So no matter how much goes into the differences and similarities between these two men, none of it matters unless it’s captured in game.
“When thinking about Akshan as a midlane marksman, I couldn’t help but think about how much I hate playing with them,” admits Jag. “Top lane, too! Either they kill their opponent at level two, snowball, and just carry the game and get all the credit... Or they fall behind and are totally nonfunctional. They don’t provide the CC a mage can, and they take longer to scale. Basically, solo lane marksmen can be terrible game experiences for teammates. I didn’t want that to be the case with Akshan. I love creating champions that remind players that working together is fun and has rewards... And it makes sense for who Akshan is as a person.”
Akshan has unparalleled target access—and that became an answer to a question that the team hadn’t asked yet: Who does he target?
The answer seems easy. Akshan goes after bad guys. Killers. Scoundrels. But there has to be a reward for hunting down individual people. A reward that expresses that he cares about his allies. What if he... brought them back to life?
“A lot of Akshan’s power comes from his weapon... and the modifications he has made to it,” explains Riot Earp. “I kept his grappling hook and boomerang as part of his gun to simplify his read and prevent him from coming across as ‘gadget guy,’ but it also serves to show the importance of his weapon.”
Resurrection is a pretty difficult mechanic to get right in League. Especially when considering a champion needs to forfeit power elsewhere in their kit to have such a game-changing mechanic. When a champion has crowd control, mobility, or some other tool, they need to relinquish power in other ways. So the tradeoff for Akshan’s ability to revive his fallen teammates was to give up some of his actual combat power.
What this means in-game is that Akshan’s power is truly limited to burst—not the sustained front-to-back teamfight style of a traditional marksman—and unlike many assassins, he has no forms of slow or crowd control. But what he brings to a teamfight is equally powerful. And besides, who doesn’t love getting bailed out of a bad situation by a charming lad with a nice smile?
Akshan’s at his strongest when his allies are dying around him to an incredibly dominating opponent—like an enemy Viego who’s just gotten a quadra. It’s in those moments that the rest fades away, and Akshan gets to be who he was destined to become: a hero.
“Akshan’s resurrection mechanic doesn’t just speak to who he is, but his personal growth as well,” says JohnODyin. “He took his weapon—the thing he uses to revive his teammates—against Shadya’s wishes. Because he didn’t care about Sentinel rules. But when he’s confronted with the reality of his decisions, he realizes that he should be honoring her life instead of avenging her death. He knows he has to move on from his vengeance.”
Quick Gameplay Thoughts 7/23[]
Hi everyone, I’m Jag. Before I became the Lead Game Designer on Summoner’s Rift Team, I was a Champion Designer, and the last project I worked on there was Akshan (with Riot Twin Enso). I’m here to talk about him a bit.
Akshan is a mid lane marksman assassin, built to play aggressive early on in the game by roaming and skirmishing. His intended strengths include:
- Strategic flanking and target access due to stealth and mobility from grappling hook.
- Long range kill pressure with ultimate.
- Unique utility by reviving slain allies.
- Highly self-sufficient due to built-in shield and ability to choose engagements.
- Strong burst damage, particularly when snowballing.
- Windows of top tier roaming from increased movement speed when hunting Scoundrels.
His intended weaknesses include:
- Access to revive requires killing an enemy (often the most dangerous one)
- Weak reactive defenses, particularly against aggressive melees that can bodyblock his grappling hook.
- Worst-in-Marksman-class sustained DPS.
- Worst-in-Marksman-class attack range.
- Damage falls off significantly with game time.
- Extremely unreliable damage in teamfights.
- No crowd control, and very low value to the team when behind.
But that’s not what you’re here for; you’re here to ask “do you have any idea exactly how powerful this revive is?”
To which I’d answer—of course not.
And that’s the point.
Our job as champion designers is to make new champions that excite players in unique and novel ways. You, the players, decide through your champion picks whether we succeeded when making a new champion: Whether they're worthy of pouring hours into discovering and optimizing. To go a step further, I feel our best champions are ones who can only be optimized by the community. If our teams can perfectly optimize a champion through internal playtests alone, there's not enough substance. Watching the community finally get to play a new champion is the most exciting part of the project for me, when players discover the ins and outs and the new mains show us something new.
So, no, we're not exactly sure how powerful this revive is. Sometimes Akshan will resurrect a single ally who will proceed to instantly run it down again. Sometimes he'll solo turn a game by killing a Scoundrel that just got a Quadra Kill, reviving his entire team to march forward and take the Nexus. We know just how much potential this mechanic could have, and that drove us to put constraints on this effect (like clearing all Scoundrel marks after taking down the first one), but we won’t know exactly how much power it affords until we get to see live data.
The follow-up question here is “Why would you do something so risky?” And our answer is because every new champion design owes you something unique, exciting, and new. Even when the new unknown factor isn't as loud as a revive, you deserve more than 1-to-1 repeats of champions in the same role with the same patterns and builds. Without taking risks, we wouldn’t have a support with a resetting execution ultimate, or a marksman that has to stop to reload, or a wind samurai that deflects bullets. Beyond that, one of League’s core identities is change, and that applies to how we design, not just what we design. We put stuff out there and sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. When we fail, we’ll make changes to keep trying and keep iterating until we get there.
The last question we heard a lot is “Why should Akshan have this revive instead of someone more support-y? I’d rather have more combat power.” The first answer, in terms of what led our exploration into the team utility space, is that it matches who Akshan is as a person. He’s a complex hero on a journey to find a way to be a part of the world. He’s lived his whole life on his own, but now wants to live in a way that lets him connect with people and help them, even if doing that could severely cost him.
Of course, it has to go beyond that—the revive has to make sense in terms of gameplay. Players talk a lot about champions that are not just fun to play as, but also fun to play against. We summarized those in the two lists up top and expect a lot of followup conversation will focus there, but I also want to talk about designing Akshan as a champion who's fun to play with.
League is a cooperative game. Winning requires teamwork. When designing an exceptionally selfish character archetype (the overlap of Assassin AND Marksman), finding a way to let them contribute to the team that aligns with the exact way they want to play was an incredible challenge. It's really important that when you see Akshan deep in enemy territory looking to hunt down the enemy Scoundrel instead of grouping with everyone else, you know he's still part of the team, and you can root for him to succeed because you know he's there for the team.
Tying it all back, that idea of hunting scoundrels to help your team rather than just padding your KDA is one of the key ways Akshan offers something unique. To riff on that one Henry Ford quote, "if I had asked [assassins] what they wanted, they would have said [kill squishies better]." No champion appeals to everyone, but I truly believe some of you are going to love playing this marksman-assassin who wants to help his team. That's a new experience for League. And that's why it's worth it.Trivia[]
- Akshan is voiced by Sunil Malhotra.[6]
- Akshan was heavily inspired by Bollywood action films and the classic showmanship and flair exhibited by many characters in them.
- Akshan is inspired by South Asian culture, specifically India.[7]
- Akshan's placeholder model in development was a recolored
Jhin.[9] - Akshan's codename in development was Sentinel.[9]
- Akshan's gameplay hook was his Heroic Swing.[10]
- Heroic Swing is based on a scrapped direction of Camille's Hookshot.[11]
- Other thematics considered for Akshan's release skin include High Noon and Infernal.
Media[]
- Related Videos
- Main article: Summoner icon
- Main article: Emotes
References
- ↑ Champions in Season 2021
- ↑ Champion Roadmap: April 2021
- ↑ Sentinels of Light Event
- ↑ Champion Insights: Akshan
- ↑ Quick Gameplay Thoughts 7/23
- ↑ Akshan VA
- ↑ Reav3 on Akshan's Influence
- ↑ akṣan and akṣi
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Jag on Akshan's Placeholders
- ↑ Jag on Akshan's Gameplay Hook
- ↑ Camille's scrapped spell on Akshan