RiotEmizery

Currently we're happy with the choice of Torment spells being focused on their control outputs rather than their damage outputs. When their damage outputs vary, then you have to consider "This spell is the best for damage so when I maximize damage I should use this one." There's already a lot to think about when comboing, so simplifying it to "I need to hit multiple targets right now" or "I need to control this area" or "I need you to get off me" helps to clarify why one should be chosen over the others. With Hwei there's always a bit of a conflict between adding complexity for depth and keeping things simple to focus on execution perfection. This is an area we've chosen to lower complexity on in order to focus mastery on execution and use cases over damage optimization.

There's a lot of reasons to organize spell hotkey assignments that were considered.

One is familiarity, as you mentioned, making sure that buttons sit on champions of similar playstyles. For example, many champions have their line skillshot on Q, so we wanted Q to be his "line" spells. Some champions use W for shields, others use E for shields, so there wasn't a clear winner for that one other than enchanters preferring shields on E compared to mages.

That leads to the next consideration, which is mechanical feel. Generally you want to spam Q the most out of all of your abilities, so that was another reason to put his low cooldown damage spells on Q. It feels a little awkward to constantly spam Q + W or W + Q, so his wave clear and poke spells were put on Q and E so you can double tap or dance between them using your point and ring finger. Your middle finger is then used less frequently and with more intention, preventing too many "fat finger" inputs due to spamming...

Internally, we nicknamed Hwei's mage class as a "versatillery mage" as a bit of a joke that he doesn't fit neatly into any category. That said, he functions both as a control mage and an artillery mage, but his reliability as either is lower relative to his more focused mage competitors. We didn't want Hwei to be a "jack of all trades, master of none" and make his tools weaker than competitors so we decided to focus his weakness on reliability of hitting spells or controlling areas over raw outputs being much lower to compensate his versatility.

You know why.

Hwei is intended for all skill levels, not only for high level players. That said, getting good at Hwei likely means you're able to answer more problems in the game will help you climb.

A few places are intended to help new or low skill players, namely his spam spells (QQ, WW, EE) all being pretty good buttons. QQ is also the most generic damage spell on his kit and good for poking while not terrible for wave clear, EE being in a similar space. EW can also guarantee a QW hit, so if you aren't good at landing QW but your opponents don't position well then an EW can secure you kills. If there's one spell I think a new player who's scared of the champion's complexity should learn to use early, it's WE to manage your mana pool. Everything else comes with time.

Not sure what we can share just any clips of old stuff, but there was this amazing and horrible bug where QE and R didn't have the "One passive proc per cast" rule yet and would insta-kill anyone caught in them together. In these old VFX explorations, QE was a blizzard spell.

https://imgur.com/DNIbCGB

Answered the scrapped spells question in another reply!

Was it hard to make 10 spells gel into a single kit? Absolutely, it was an insane challenge. Every spell needs to be thematically obvious individually, thematically cohesive for its subject, mechanically cohesive for its subject, have a niche use case making it clear when to use it, have reasons not to use it, and on top of that Hwei is still a mage that can't have just any mechanic he wants. Additionally because he does comboing no spell should be a targeted spell - he needs to cast on the ground or cast a missile. This was why early on I pushed for the "Cast at Max Range" option to be added, which I hope will be improved in quality over time as well.

We played around a lot with the numbers 3 and 4, having between 9-16 spells in different versions of his kit. I knew early on that giving him a similar obsession to Jhin would be a nice parallel, and that the Rule of Thirds from the art world would make sense for a painter to have a preference for.

Hwei is intended to be midlane primarily, but viable as a support. We don't intend to purposefully support APC Hwei, but assuming that its winrate and playrate aren't negatively impacting midlane Hwei we won't act to remove it either.

Mana costs are meant to relate to WE mana refund. For a new Hwei player, they might find his mana pool is severely punishing and limiting. But one of the aspects of mastering Hwei is knowing how to use your W cooldown wisely, spending it for damage and mana greedily, early and often but also recognizing when it's time to hold the cooldown for a defensive or movement cast. In testing we found Hwei was nearly ungankable when he didn't have a reason to use his W outside of WQ and WW; asking him to use WE helped give enemies opportunities to aggress on him.

Very early on I pitched the 1-3 1-3 concept of casting primarily as a concept of mixing a color with a shape (red circle, blue line, etc), there was even a version of 1-4 1-4 with multiple ultimates! We found the color concept was too restricting and not exciting enough, so we went with complete subjects and final paintings instead of just a paint stroke. We tried many, many times to create fluid casting while also preventing bad inputs from user error, but in the end the solution we came to was not to protect players from themselves and let their own skill govern how fast they can cast back to back.

We were very concerned about the "burden of knowledge" issue from the start and aimed to create simple spells with recognizable themes and strong tells for opponents. This both helps players use colloquial names like "Fireball" to call out spells they saw as well as understand usage based off theme alone. We also avoided making too many super novel spells to avoid this kind of ...

Hwei's kit does use the number 3 quite a lot intentionally, most specifically in the 3 x 3 composition of his spells (3 subjects with 3 spells each). This reflects Hwei's interest in the Rule of Thirds t...

The goal is to never replace a spell although tweaks to make things more usable, niche, or broad may happen as a result of low spell prioritization. It is expected that some spells may be used more or less moment to moment and game to game, but if something is universally underutilized or overutilized we'll act on that spell. You'll see this later today in buffs for WW - Pool of Reflection and EW - Gaze of the Abyss focused on reliability.

E-misery, although it's a play on words. Emizery is both like emissary and e misery (z for flavor and so it's not taken on most platforms). It's also short for Endless Mizery since most platforms don't support spaces.

Most are born into misery, and most die in misery. Endless misery encapsulates that concept, and reminds me to look for the non miserable things life brings between the end points.

Anything that casts at max range by default will still cast at max range without the setting on. This doesn't change any existing behavior. I hear you about your desire to walk to cast some abilities setup to cast at max range currently.

It casts without walking even with non-quick cast with this setting on. You can still right click to cancel casting with cast on release or non-quick cast with this setting on. With the setting off, ability work no differently than they do now. This setting is defaulted off.

Basically, when the setting is on you won't walk when confirming a cast that targets a location. Unit targeting still needs to walk if you're outside the range because the target itself is not in range of the spell.

I just want to make the game better.

Each subject has its own shared cooldown.

If you use QQ, QW, or QE, it puts Q on cooldown locking out QQ, QW, and QE. W and E are not put on cooldown by using QW or QE.

Glad you're excited!

Regarding WW, it has many uses. Sometimes you want to tank minion hits to hold the wave for a freeze. Sometimes it saves you from an ignite all in. Sometimes you use it when taking objectives to mitigate damage from pit monsters. Sometimes keeping someone else alive is more important than move speed or mana/damage.

Yes that's right, QQ, QW, and QE share the cooldown of base Q.