League of Legends next hero is a vengeful ghostpirate
Avast behind!
Best lag your timbers, as the next character/hero/champion/wizard coming to League Of Legends is Pyke, the Bloodharbor Ripper, a drowned pirate who's returned from the dead for revenge. He's a moody boy, and a stabby one at that. he's lobbing bone harpoons, swimming into the ghostly ocean apparently unseen around us at all times, dropping drowned spirits, and growling things like "I remember the day I died... and those who betrayed me." Mate, give over, you could be swimming in your ghostsea instead of doing all this sulky posturing.
First, the moody backstory:
Ooh, hark at you. Riot Games released that trailer on Thursday to announce Pyke, but at the time they didn't have much to say about how he played. Now they've opened up with a deetblast.
Pyke's a murderer/support sorta fella with an array of slows and stabs. He can hurl a Bone Skewer to either slow a line of enemies (by tapping Q) or harpoon one and pull them towards him (by holding it). He can Ghostwater Dive to drop into stealth and swim quickly. His Phantom Undertow is a dash which leaves a spirit at his starting point, which then damages and stuns enemies it passes through on its way back to Pyke. And his ultimate, Death From Below, sees him blink to a spot marked with an X and execute all enemies below a certain amount of health (but it's not for killstealing, as the last ally to hit him gets full good and credit too). When he's out of sight, his passive ability quickly heals a portion of damage recently taken from enemy champions. And Pyke leans so hard on murder that all bonus health he receives is instead converted to damage.
"Pyke cannot get bonus health from any source," the wizard's lead designer Jonathan Fuller explained to The Rift Herald. "From runes he can't get bonus health, from items he can't get bonus health, and even abilities that grant bonus health instead grant him damage. So Lulu's ultimate is actually a damage steroid for Pyke. He is intended to be very squishy. That is one of the core weaknesses of the character, is that he has a lot of tools, agency, and mobility, but if he gets caught out, he dies quickly."
Lots of murder.
No firm word yet on when Pyke while launch in LoL.
Riot's Pyke page has several short videos of teamfights, if you want to see straight fisticuffs, but this here fancy one wraps action up in extra drama:
