Riot Games has released a champion trailer and a complex kit primer for upcoming League of Legends champion Aphelios.
Aphelios will be joining the game as the MOBA’s newest marksman this December. His abilities are far from those of a traditional marksman, though, as he has five different weapons that he uses in both main-hand and off-hand positions.
Not only do the different weapons make for different abilities, but they also give different passives and different follow-up attacks to the new hero’s ultimate.
Besides Moonlight Vigil, Aphelios’ ultimate, he only really has an ability on Q that changes its name based on the weapon used.
While E won’t be there at all, while his W will switch his off-hand weapon which does follow-up attacks and gives different boosts to the Q ability. Aphelios can’t choose which weapon he’ll use at a time, however, as the weapons will switch automatically once all the ammo is used. A special ability HUD which indicates those changes has been designed for the new champion.
The five weapons Aphelios uses are Calibrum, Severum, Gravitum, Infernum, and Crescendum.
Calibrum is a rifle with an extra range that marks enemies hit. With the off-hand attack, it marks explode and deal damage. Moonshot (Q) is a damaging skill shot. This weapon focuses on poke and harass, and follow-up attacks to Moonlight Vigil will give it extra damage on marks.
Severum, the scythe pistol, is a weapon used for sustain. It heals Aphelios based on the damage dealt, and Onslaught (Q) fires shots at the closest enemy from both weapons. Using Moonlight Vigil will follow-up with a flat heal.
Gravitum is a utility cannon. Attacking enemies will apply slow, which can then be turned into a damaging, global root by using Eclipse (Q). The ultimate will increase the slow even more.
Athelios’ flamethrower is Infernum, and is used for AoE damage and waveclear. It deals more damage and creates a damaging cone behind those hit, allowing it to potentially affect the enemy team or an oncoming minion wave. Duskwave (Q) fires a flame, and is followed by the off-hand attacks. Moonlight Vigil will change the damaging cones to circles.
Last but not least is Crescendum. Crescendum is a chakram, a boomerang-like DPS weapon. When Crescendum’s abilities or follow-up attacks damage an enemy, and it creates copies, increasing the basic attack with each enemy hit. After the ultimate, the damage will be increased to a maximum of three champions hit.
Before triggering any of the five possible boosted attacks, Moonlight Vigil always fires a bomb that will stick to the first champion hit, and deal damage around them when it detonates.
With the ability set that’s significantly different than anything else League players are used to, even needing its own HUD, it’s no wonder Riot has presented Aphelios as the champion with the highest skill ceiling players have witnessed thus far.
Players will be able to start mastering him with patch 9.24, which is scheduled to go live on December 11. This will be the last patch for this year.
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