Yesterday was a big day for League of Legends fans. Riot revealed a handful of updates, VGUs, and even two new champions all at once. Among the long list of reveals was our favorite Prodigal Explorer.
On top of a total visual redesign, Ezreal’s going to get a brand new W, and, as always, we have some opinions on the matter. We’re sure Riot already has his new W locked in and ready to roll, but that’s not going to stop us from dreaming of the possibilities. At this point, though, anything would be an improvement, because his W is one of the most unsatisfying abilities in the game.
Here are three ideas we have to replace Ezreal’s Essence Flux.
1) Rapid fire
Our personal favorite is a rapid-fire boost to his Q, similar to Hanzo’s ability in Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch. Riot’s goal with his new W is to really capture what it means to be an ace spellslinger, firing magical projectiles with accuracy and precision to feel more like a marksman than a mage. We feel this idea for his W best encapsulates that.
For this, the ability could either be a skillshot or just an activation. If you land the skillshot or activate the ability, the next three shots of Ezreal’s Q can be fired with no delay or cooldown as rapid-fire shots. This would emphasize his strengths, and force the player to land more skill-shots to actually get anything out of it. As that ace spellslinger, skill-shots feel really important and impactful to land, and this would only bolster that identity.
2) Mark
Oh, hi Mark. This version of the ability would essentially leave the animation as it is now. A low-damage skill-shot that travels through enemy units. In this case, though, you’d aim for an enemy champion rather than also using it to boost your allies’ attack speed.
The first enemy champion hit would become “marked,” boosting the damage of your Q and basic attacks against that target for a short duration. It could also cause bonus effects, like maybe applying a burn to his Q on that target, or something else. This would also reinforce Ezreal’s marksman-style identity and force the player to land those skill-shots to still be effective, while remaining a satisfying and impactful spell to use.
3) Detonation
This one is our least favorite, but not necessarily because it’s a bad idea. After landing enough Qs on an enemy over a certain period of time and racking up enough stacks, Ezreal could detonate the magic he sticks to enemies with his W, causing some cool effect or just dealing damage.
The reason we’re not super-interested in this one, compared to the others at least, is because there’s already a lot of detonation-style abilities in the game. For instance, there’s Twitch’s Contaminate and Kalista’s Rend. It would still help our his identity and feel nice to use, though, so that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
