RiotEmizery

Hwei has 4 cooldowns (Q/W/E/R) but each base ability can select from 1 of 3 options, so he has a normal mage kit's shape of cooldowns just with more options.

Each of the basic abilities is themed for art and gameplay, so Q is damage, W is utility and E is control. Each time you cast, you're picking the best tool for the job of that type of output.

Every ability was designed with a niche that it's best at when compared against its two share counterparts. Some games you might find more reliance on some abilities and less on others, and that's okay. Other games it might flip and you're using the reprioritized ones from last game most often.

If we need to balance cadence or sustain, we can touch base cooldowns and mana costs. If we need to address specific problem spells we can do that on the particular spell by buffing or nerfing its outputs without touching the others. But because they all have a niche use case, no single spell should ever become worthless.

Thanks I'll pass thing along to the team!

He's viable as a support, but is best with gold and experience.

If for some reason his support role becomes too strong we'll adjust it to prioritize mid lane but would prefer to keep it viable.

I hope you really enjoy playing him! Message back and let me know how your games go.

1 point in Q unlocks QQ/QW/QE. All 3 abilities mirror Q's rank, so a second point in Q will increase QQ/QW/QE to rank 2 alongside it.

That said, QQ/QW/QE all share Q's base cooldown and mana cost, so you aren't getting 3 abilities worth of cooldowns, just 3 abilities to choose from.

He has 9 base spells and an ultimate, but he has normal cooldowns for a mage allowing him to cast up to 4 spells including his ultimate back to back. No 10 spell chains.

That's because he's not invoker. Hwei is about micro decision making. He has 4 cooldowns like a normal mage in League of Legends, his base Q/W/E/R.

What makes Hwei different than other mages is he has more options at the cost of mobility, durability, and reliability. For that he gains versatility, utility, range and zoning.

Thank you!

He's more of a mid-late champion since his W spells are utility focused. That means he's at his individual agency peak when Q is maxed and E is about maxed, so 12-14ish.

That said, he scales great with gold and experience, just transitions more into a team fighter that controls the flow of battle in late game rather than hyper scaling like Kass, Veigar, or ASol.

He's much more about decision making than mechanical execution. That said, he has no point and click abilities so you'll need to land your skillshots to succeed.

So excited for you all to see our team's hard work on Hwei!

You can blame me for his gameplay, I look forward to your rage.

But for real, I'm really eager to see players get their hands on Hwei and others to learn to turn him into paint stains as an opponent.

Not sure how to answer this. You'll have to see for yourself.

I'm leading Hwei right now, no spoilers for what I do in the future.

My favorite class archetype is mages so I'm quite excited about Hwei. That said, outside of mages I like long range champions with poke options like Varus, Ashe, Kog'Maw and Miss Fortune or high durability high control champions like Leona, Sejuani and Braum.

My favorite champions though are pretty much all mages or enchanters; Veigar, Lux, Brand, Lulu, and Nami.

Missed the mark on including some additional changes coming to enchanters in 13.21, these should be updated in the patch notes before 13.21 ships to live but have been on the PBE:

13.21 Enchanter Proc Damage Changes

We're looking to bring enchanters into parity with the recent Milio passive changes by letting their proc damage sources count as their own damage but attribute kills to their buffed ally. This means that a select number of items and runes will proc off the enchanter's damage enchantments. Proc damage now also provides an additional Spellthief's Edge proc on hit. Paired with this is a change to the Summon Aery major rune to prevent Aery from kill stealing when procced through an ally.

Affected Abilities:

• Ivern - (W) Brushmaker
• Leona - (P) Sunlight
• Lulu - (E) Help, Pix! + (P) Pix, Faerie Companion
• Milio - (P) Fired Up! [Changed in 13.20]
• Nami - (...

Well I have a gameplay background so I really love making new abilities. For every spell that reaches players there's tons that we've tried which weren't fair but were hilarious, or didn't fit with that character's kit or theme, or that trashed framerate or internal test servers, or a million other reasons it wasn't chosen.

Making so much gameplay and trimming it down to the best parts is tons of fun and hard work. Even still we won't always get it right, but if it's a fun experience players want to keep playing then I'm happy. And if it's not, I want to change it.

First champion that I've led the direction of.

I worked with Squad5 on Milio, but by the time I came on he was already a fire boy with range extension and a cleanse. I made the Q, and worked with him to flesh out and polish the rest of the kit.

Before I came to work on champs I worked on Wild Rift where I did the tutorials and Guilds, plus a couple other things.

Prior to that I've worked on a number of titles in the industry as a tech designer or gameplay programmer like Bioshock, Borderlands, XCOM, Disney Infinity, and a bunch of titles you've likely never heard of.

EndlessPillows and Maxw3ll did early explorations of Hwei last year, but I've been the lead designer on the project and designed his kit under August's team leadership.

Squad5 has been a terrific colleague and sounding board on the champion. Hoboboy helped a tremendous amount with implementation and some later exploration, and Maxw3ll and August contributed some to implementation themselves as well. Champion development is a team effort.

Direct your hate to me, I'm powered by it! Can't wait!

Having worked with both Squad5 and August, I'll just say that I'm excited for both of their new roles. August isn't leaving League and his passion and creativity will be seen, no doubt.

Squad5 deserves this position and is a trustworthy leader, designer, and person. He has a proven track record of high quality champions and is constantly pushing for better work from his team.

Good luck man, you earned it!

Hey Spideraxe

We're watching Milio's data carefully. In 13.7 we fixed a bug that was causing his recommended build order to suggest Q max which was impacting winrate reads. It's going to take some time before we see the full impact of players changing their max order as well as enemies learning how to play against him.

Generally we predicted that Milio players would have a decent advantage playing as him compared to enemies learning how to play against because of his accessible skill floor. The community is anticipated to learn how to play around him and pick counters at a slower pace than Milio players pick up the champion.

We're prepared to make more changes as we see data come in as needed, or leave him be if he's in a state Milio players are happy with that isn't causing problems. Balance is always relative and changing!

Sorry, no sneak peaks at possible changes :)

Sorry, can't share that at this time, but know that we have one and are ready to react if we aren't happy with his balance state :)

It can proc Aery multiple times in one cast!

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into adding the charges information in the tooltip.