You read that right. Hwei, League of Legends’ newly announced champion, will be the first on the roster to have an arsenal that includes 10 different spells. 11 if you include his passive, but who’s counting?
It’s safe to say that Hwei works differently from any other champion in the game. With three different “forms” available to him, Hwei can swap what’s on his ability bar at will by dipping his paintbrush into his palette and gaining access to abilities that are categorized under three different subjects: Disaster (Q), Serenity (W), and Torment (E).
Whenever Hwei selects one of these three subjects, he gains access to three new abilities, with Disaster being focused on damage spells, Serenity dealing with supportive abilities, and Torment granting him access to CC-based moves.
When you see Hwei’s abilities come up in discussions or in patch notes, you’re likely going to see them labeled with two buttons used as a descriptor: QQ, EW, WQ, etc. This is because each of Hwei’s “forms” gives him access to an expanded ability set that can be changed depending on which subject he’s focusing on at a given point in the game. Essentially, Hwei players will always be pressing Q, W, or E to first select what type of ability they’re going to be casting. Then they’re going to press one of those buttons again to dedicate themselves to a specific ability from that subject.
For example, Hwei can press Q, then Q again to cast Devastating Fire, which is a fireball that gets cast in a straight line. Hwei can press Q and then W to cast Severing Bolt, which is an entirely different AoE spell. After he casts a spell, his form gets reset to a neutral state, and the process goes on and on nine times for each of Hwei’s subjects, as well as his individual abilities.
When two damaging abilities from Hwei’s kit interact, they’ll trigger his passive, Signature of the Visionary, which causes an explosion around the champion that’s hit. His ultimate, Spiraling Despair, does not change based on which subject Hwei is currently dipped into.
It’s not hard to look at Hwei as a three-in-one champion. With abilities that range across several of the game’s roles and classes, you can easily take Hwei and build him as a fully damage-focused AP Mage, but you’ll also have the option to use his skill set to keep your team alive and CC enemy players.
With so many abilities and interactions, it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and call Hwei overloaded, but we’re willing to hold our breath and see how the champion is balanced before we call him broken. With 10 different abilities, he surely can’t be good at everything, right, Riot?
Hwei will be released on live League servers during the Patch 13.24 patch cycle later this year.
