Hello Redditors and aspiring Hwei mains!

We’re some of the dev team members that brought you League’s most recent champion, Hwei, and we’re here to answer your questions! Hwei’s been leaving his mark on the Rift for about a week now, so we figured this would be a good time to say hi and see if you have any burning questions you’re looking to ask.

This AMA will run from 10am-12pm PT, but a few Rioters will likely stick around to keep answering questions afterwards.

Rioters joining the AMA will include:

Riot_Riru (Community Manager) | RiotEmizery (Game Design) | orkidian (Narrative Writer) | NeoLexical (Team Lead) | ProfRincewind (VO Producer) | RiotComrade (Researcher) | Etlios (QA Engineer) | Riot_Wubs (Sound Design)

Let’s kick it off!!

EDIT: And we're at time! Thank you so much to everyone that dropped by and asked questions about our broody painter boy, Hwei. A few of us will be staying around to keep answering questions, but until next time looking forward to seeing all of you (and Hwei) on the Rift!

Guij2

Given the unique nature of Hwei's kit, with a total of 9 spells that perform simple effects, would you ever consider buffing him by replacing a spell that proved to be underwhelming with a different spell? Or even the othet way around if he's too strong? Or do you think number adjustments should be enough to balance him properly.

The goal is to never replace a spell although tweaks to make things more usable, niche, or broad may happen as a result of low spell prioritization. It is expected that some spells may be used more or less moment to moment and game to game, but if something is universally underutilized or overutilized we'll act on that spell. You'll see this later today in buffs for WW - Pool of Reflection and EW - Gaze of the Abyss focused on reliability.

QwwwwwwwwwQ

Does Hwei’s kit revolve around the number 3, similar to how Jhin revolves around 4. To me it the number seems to occur a lot not only in his kit but in the lore as well ie (3 teachers.) Was this done on purpose and if so can you explain is their a deeper meaning to it?

Hwei's kit does use the number 3 quite a lot intentionally, most specifically in the 3 x 3 composition of his spells (3 subjects with 3 spells each). This reflects Hwei's interest in the Rule of Thirds that governs composition. There's a secondary aspect to this related to lore, as 3 is just shy of 4.

finiteessence

How long has he been in development? Because it was mentioned that three different Routers worked on him. If it happens as Seraphine, that she is played more on support and APC, would you allow it or would you make the changes needed for him to be a midlaner? Hwei can be support, and there are no high skill support champions, maybe Pyke, will you design a high complexity support (enchanter, for instance)?

Not too long compared to other champions! We started on Hwei around a year and half ago. Though having an art mage is a pitch that has been around a while. Every denewb (new employee training) we would get Rioters to pitch a champion. This is one that I hear the most. We also hosted a team pitch session in 2022 that had several pitches that eventually influenced Hwei. While I'm not opposed to Hwei supporting, he should be Mage carry as primary. We already have a higher complexity enchanter with Renata, so it is unlikely we will make another so soon.

The_onion_pope

Aside from colour, what clarity integrations were made to make the characters abilities readable? Surely having over ten abilities that are just 'magic paint' would be challenging.

We were excited about the potential of a paint mage because we can let Hwei paint abilities that can telegraph what he is about to do. Learning from Aphelios, we want to make sure the complexity burden is mostly on the person that decides to pick up Hwei. Thus, having the ability to make art of "something" really helps! While an opponent might not know exactly what a giant lightning bolt does, they can very quickly tell to get out of the way. The palette is another hint to what spellbook he has queued up.

Caenen_

I'm curious if you can share a little bit of the (design) approach that lead to Hwei in the first place:

• I know a "Paint Mage" has been floating about in development for a long time. Was this prototype what eventually became Hwei or did Hwei just take up their theme after being thought up as "hey lets make a control mage with spell options for days"?

• How did you land with the "cast an ability 1-3 then cast an ability 1-3 again" cast paradigm? Did you try any other approaches to make the champion "feel" good when casting, did you try any that failed (and why)?

• How did you decide to conceptually avoid the "burden of knowledge" anti-pattern that a kit with over twice the usual number of spells might fall into?

I answered some of this in other posts, but can add some more color (haha) and if others want to jump in feel free! I think this version of Hwei did mostly take inspirations from the pitch session where three pitches stood out:

1. A Paint Mage by Truexy
2. A narrative pitch for a champion that is a bit more somber/not your average happy male lead
3. A goal pitch for a humanoid midlane male champion that isn’t blue/purple. I’m serious: Asol, Veigar, Ryze, Vel’Koz, Malzahar..what is going on?

We toyed with an idea that is a variation of this for Milio in the really early stages where he was a chef and collected ingredients to mix in his pot for spells. However, during Milio’s development, we wanted a more back to basics enchanter. Since our roadmap in 2020 and 2021 were on the high complexity side.

We did try other approaches, u/RiotEmizery can maybe speak to it.

Caenen_

I'm curious if you can share a little bit of the (design) approach that lead to Hwei in the first place:

• I know a "Paint Mage" has been floating about in development for a long time. Was this prototype what eventually became Hwei or did Hwei just take up their theme after being thought up as "hey lets make a control mage with spell options for days"?

• How did you land with the "cast an ability 1-3 then cast an ability 1-3 again" cast paradigm? Did you try any other approaches to make the champion "feel" good when casting, did you try any that failed (and why)?

• How did you decide to conceptually avoid the "burden of knowledge" anti-pattern that a kit with over twice the usual number of spells might fall into?

Very early on I pitched the 1-3 1-3 concept of casting primarily as a concept of mixing a color with a shape (red circle, blue line, etc), there was even a version of 1-4 1-4 with multiple ultimates! We found the color concept was too restricting and not exciting enough, so we went with complete subjects and final paintings instead of just a paint stroke. We tried many, many times to create fluid casting while also preventing bad inputs from user error, but in the end the solution we came to was not to protect players from themselves and let their own skill govern how fast they can cast back to back.

We were very concerned about the "burden of knowledge" issue from the start and aimed to create simple spells with recognizable themes and strong tells for opponents. This both helps players use colloquial names like "Fireball" to call out spells they saw as well as understand usage based off theme alone. We also avoided making too many super novel spells to avoid this kind of confusion - imagine playing against Hwei your first time and he does 10 new things you can't even understand.

SilentShadowss

Was Hwei problematic with a lower mana cost, I feel like at the moment he cost too much but that might make up as a intentional weakness for him, I was wondering.

Great champ design and feel, he feels so well to play and very smooth. Thanks Riot.

Mana costs are meant to relate to WE mana refund. For a new Hwei player, they might find his mana pool is severely punishing and limiting. But one of the aspects of mastering Hwei is knowing how to use your W cooldown wisely, spending it for damage and mana greedily, early and often but also recognizing when it's time to hold the cooldown for a defensive or movement cast. In testing we found Hwei was nearly ungankable when he didn't have a reason to use his W outside of WQ and WW; asking him to use WE helped give enemies opportunities to aggress on him.

Spideraxe30

For Emizery, can you share any cool scrapped Hwei spells tested in development and was it hard to make 10 different spells gel into a single kit

For any art folks, what were the art goals with Hwei and how did you guys determine his color palette, since Ionia doesnt really have any unifying colors among champs

For Riru, with Hwei having 10 different spells, shall I look for 10x more typos when he shows up in the patch notes

As it turns out, number of abilities doesn't correlate to typos otherwise champions would have 0 abilities because I've nevr made a typo.

OtherAyachi

Do you have any plans to make Hwei viable as an APC bot carry like Swain, Karthus, Ziggs and Seraphine? I don't play mid lane, but I love the character and his gameplay. Currently however, it is difficult to play him bot as he tends to get bullied by anyone pretty much. I don't mind lowering his scaling to compensate for some early game buffs.

Hwei is intended to be midlane primarily, but viable as a support. We don't intend to purposefully support APC Hwei, but assuming that its winrate and playrate aren't negatively impacting midlane Hwei we won't act to remove it either.

LeagueAltAccount

How did Hwei’s design change from when he was originally conceived to now? Were there any major changes that were found necessary after some testing, such as decreasing the amount of spells he has, or was his original design similar to his current state? Additionally, was he conceived around the idea of 3, or did that come about when developing his background with Jhin?

Design and Research can maybe talk about the actual iterations...I for one am glad that his ult was not the earlier iteration hahahaha.... That grounding effect on an earlier one was really scary.
I think we toyed with the idea of 3 pretty early on.

kerthard

Is it a coincidence that Hwei's name sounds like the old Mordekaiser Brazil memes from S3/4?

Unfortunately...or fortunately yes... it was a coincidence.

Kurayam

What do you think about Hwei‘s inofficial nickname Huawei. Everyone I know calls him that

Hwei's name is a variation to Hui. We wanted to have some parallels to Jhin (Jin). Unfortunately, brain does funny things sometimes. Fortunately, it's an English thing and we operate in many many different languages.

maiden_des_mondes

Did you have a particular playerbase in mind when you designed Hwei? Since he not only has a very particular playstyle but also seems to be a rather fragile character he obviously is a 10/10 on every level for a female artist like myself.

Were you aiming for him to become a rather niche champion like Lillia and Ivern or looking at a broader audience?

Thanks for making an appealing vulnerable male character :)

he champion like Lillia and Ivern or looking at a broader audience?

In terms of the player base I was targeting:

1. Traditional Mid Mage Players - I think the last true mage was Syndra
2. A broader audience in terms of appeal - Originally what we had in mind was the average second male lead in anime. Usually, the trope has him be better in every way compared to the protagonist aside from the fact something in his tragic past holds him back (there were soooo many of these)With us releasing a limited number of champions per year, we are less likely to release true niche champions like Ivern. Mostly because I want every player to have a champion that they are excited about just around the corner. While not every champion will be for everyone, the more niche we go, the less likely we can cover all the players around the world in a given 2-3 year period.

Organic_Squirrel7998

Can you please tell balance team to not buff him since he is fine and people are just now realizing he’s ok?

After careful review of this pitch the team gas agreed that Hwei will be getting more nerfs instead

LeagueAltAccount

How did Hwei’s design change from when he was originally conceived to now? Were there any major changes that were found necessary after some testing, such as decreasing the amount of spells he has, or was his original design similar to his current state? Additionally, was he conceived around the idea of 3, or did that come about when developing his background with Jhin?

We played around a lot with the numbers 3 and 4, having between 9-16 spells in different versions of his kit. I knew early on that giving him a similar obsession to Jhin would be a nice parallel, and that the Rule of Thirds from the art world would make sense for a painter to have a preference for.

Plantarbre

I have heard some doubts that he would get more skins, since he has so many different spells.

How did it go for his base and first skin ? Can we expect to see more beautiful skins soon ?

I cannot speak for the skins team on who gets skins etc. But very early on we wanted to make sure we are not putting the Skins team in a rough spot. We reviewed with them on what is difficult to do versus not. I’m hoping this is a practice that we will continue with all champs because I want my champ babies to get all of the cool skins they can :D

Spideraxe30

For Emizery, can you share any cool scrapped Hwei spells tested in development and was it hard to make 10 different spells gel into a single kit

For any art folks, what were the art goals with Hwei and how did you guys determine his color palette, since Ionia doesnt really have any unifying colors among champs

For Riru, with Hwei having 10 different spells, shall I look for 10x more typos when he shows up in the patch notes

Answered the scrapped spells question in another reply!

Was it hard to make 10 spells gel into a single kit? Absolutely, it was an insane challenge. Every spell needs to be thematically obvious individually, thematically cohesive for its subject, mechanically cohesive for its subject, have a niche use case making it clear when to use it, have reasons not to use it, and on top of that Hwei is still a mage that can't have just any mechanic he wants. Additionally because he does comboing no spell should be a targeted spell - he needs to cast on the ground or cast a missile. This was why early on I pushed for the "Cast at Max Range" option to be added, which I hope will be improved in quality over time as well.

RazorNemesis

What's the funniest bug Hwei produced during playtesting?

My fav was the one where he becomes bald every time he walks into a bush.

OHydroxide

3) A goal pitch for a humanoid midlane male champion that isn’t blue. I’m serious: Asol, Veigar, Ryze, Vel’Koz, Malzahar..what is going on?

This is kinda funny since his release skin is extra blue. You guys couldn't resist?

Hehehehe
>w>

Jragon713

I always like seeing the test clips of old/scrapped spell ideas; anything like that for Hwei?

Not sure what we can share just any clips of old stuff, but there was this amazing and horrible bug where QE and R didn't have the "One passive proc per cast" rule yet and would insta-kill anyone caught in them together. In these old VFX explorations, QE was a blizzard spell.

https://imgur.com/DNIbCGB

FriendlyGhostLady

Any chance of a new tank support or a support filling a unique role like pyke and senna?

Roadmap incoming in the dev update coming at the beginning of the new year.

winwill

does he lay egg?

MenAt

How is Hwei balanced to be played by lower skill players while keeping him not broken for the super good players? Or should he not be played by low skill players? I’m not very good at the game but still would like to play him some day…

Hwei is intended for all skill levels, not only for high level players. That said, getting good at Hwei likely means you're able to answer more problems in the game will help you climb.

A few places are intended to help new or low skill players, namely his spam spells (QQ, WW, EE) all being pretty good buttons. QQ is also the most generic damage spell on his kit and good for poking while not terrible for wave clear, EE being in a similar space. EW can also guarantee a QW hit, so if you aren't good at landing QW but your opponents don't position well then an EW can secure you kills. If there's one spell I think a new player who's scared of the champion's complexity should learn to use early, it's WE to manage your mana pool. Everything else comes with time.

Xyrazk

I don't have any questions, but just wanted to say Hwei is one of the thematically coolest champions we've gotten! :)

(>^^)>(::)

DogbrainedGoat

Why did you do it?

You know why.

shotare

Why is Hwei?

Everyone asks why is Hwei, but no one ever asks how is Hwei

Ten_Ketsu

It was a really good decision not to name him Hui, or he would get a much less pleasant nickname in most Slavic-language speaking countries

We go through a pretty rigorous vetting process in all languages we operate in, which sometimes means the space we have to work with is very narrow. We got back all kinds of ....er interesting meanings for some of the ideas we had TT^TT

a_brick_canvas

Does the Dev team think he skews more like a control mage or artillery? I know that the suggested champs were more control, but after playing him, it really felt like his play pattern felt very artillery-like, where a large percentage of kills came from off-screen. Is that intended?

Internally, we nicknamed Hwei's mage class as a "versatillery mage" as a bit of a joke that he doesn't fit neatly into any category. That said, he functions both as a control mage and an artillery mage, but his reliability as either is lower relative to his more focused mage competitors. We didn't want Hwei to be a "jack of all trades, master of none" and make his tools weaker than competitors so we decided to focus his weakness on reliability of hitting spells or controlling areas over raw outputs being much lower to compensate his versatility.

FeelPureLust

Can we have a hidden passive, where his pings become "On the Hwei"?

Where were you when we started development?

AobaSona

What was the idea behind Hwei's basic appearance? He is obviously a bit more small and skinny than most male champions, but he's also visibly older than most of League's "pretty boys" like Ezreal or Aphelios.

Honestly, in the first couple of iterations on Hwei I asked art: “Doesn’t he look a bit too…hungry?”

Art: “When you are an artist, you dive into your work and forget to eat.”

What can I say to that besides okay XD?

More seriously, we do usually decide on an age range we are targeting for the champion’s SR rift appearance. Early 30s is what we were aiming for.

hole_in_tooth

Not a diss but his sound effects make me sleepy. Would prefer if they were crisper. Art doesn't need to sound like someone spilled a bucket of paint.

Hwei was an interesting challenge for SFX— while we wanted to highlight his paint being the main source of his magic, we also aimed to create a unique sound palette per spellbook, which would represent his different sub-themes (Disaster / Serenity / Torment). Disaster has distorted synthetic layers, serenity tonal / melodic elements, and torment with the screamy and resonant spooky layers. There was a lot of back and forth between "too much goop" and "not wet enough." Additionally, we wanted to make sure his kit felt different sonically than other existing skin thematics with overlap (such as Inkshadow).

AobaSona

Did you know from that that Milio sounds exactly like "Milho" aka corn in portuguese? Not really an issue though, it's kinda cute.

Did you see his emote ;D

NeoLexical

Did you see his emote ;D

What happens when you have fire and corn? :D

outoftheshowerahri

Buff to 333 move speed when?

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Churnsbutter

This is a question for Hwei, but also just for champ design specifically- how do you decide what skill goes on what button? It’s not max order because not all champs max Q -> W -> E. It’s not certain types of spells go in the same slot across champs (Morgana E is her shield, Karma E is her shield, but Lux has her shield on W and so do Seraphine and Sona). For Hwei especially, I would expect there to be some sort of deeper logic behind why his QE isn’t his QW for example. Thanks!

There's a lot of reasons to organize spell hotkey assignments that were considered.

One is familiarity, as you mentioned, making sure that buttons sit on champions of similar playstyles. For example, many champions have their line skillshot on Q, so we wanted Q to be his "line" spells. Some champions use W for shields, others use E for shields, so there wasn't a clear winner for that one other than enchanters preferring shields on E compared to mages.

That leads to the next consideration, which is mechanical feel. Generally you want to spam Q the most out of all of your abilities, so that was another reason to put his low cooldown damage spells on Q. It feels a little awkward to constantly spam Q + W or W + Q, so his wave clear and poke spells were put on Q and E so you can double tap or dance between them using your point and ring finger. Your middle finger is then used less frequently and with more intention, preventing too many "fat finger" inputs due to spamming two buttons next to each other. This also let the spells with more setup time live on W, namely QW and EW, so you had time to recover your hand position after awkward combos.

Next is shape consistency. QQ is a line cast, WQ is a line cast, and EQ is a line cast. QW is an area circle, WW is an area circle, and EW is an area circle. We tried to do the same for the QE, WE and EE spells but found the constraint too much to make useful and interesting spells and chose to let that be the wildcard slot. Shape consistency helps to ensure your last press in a spell sequence is predictable in targeting so you don't get confused on how position yourself due to a weird swap.

Then we have spam presses, namely QQ/WW/EE. We wanted QQ and EE to be the best generic spells for new players learning how to play Hwei, and both generally need to be used proactively to capitalize off enemy mistakes. Conversely, WW was chosen not just for the circle area shape but also to make reactive shielding a fast button press so you don't lose time when trying to block damage.

Finally, we have combo flows. WE -> EE -> QQ is a frequent combo to deal a ton of damage at mid range and because of the button layout prevents most bad inputs (W to start, spam E, then spam Q). Another example here is WQ -> QE -> EQ/EW for disengage which has each last button be the next button. We also have EW -> QW that has your fingers dance between the sides and centers.

Sigmadelta8

As is stands, all of Hwei's E (Torment) spells do that same amount of damage despite some being far easier to hit than others. Would the team ever consider changing up the damage on the different spells? It seems strange to me that a more or less point and click EE does the same amount of damage as EQ which is far more difficult to land.
Of course the argument is that a fear is much more potent than a Displace and slow, but I'm curious if those numbers are set in stone or are subject (: torment) to change.

Loving the champion though, great work!

Currently we're happy with the choice of Torment spells being focused on their control outputs rather than their damage outputs. When their damage outputs vary, then you have to consider "This spell is the best for damage so when I maximize damage I should use this one." There's already a lot to think about when comboing, so simplifying it to "I need to hit multiple targets right now" or "I need to control this area" or "I need you to get off me" helps to clarify why one should be chosen over the others. With Hwei there's always a bit of a conflict between adding complexity for depth and keeping things simple to focus on execution perfection. This is an area we've chosen to lower complexity on in order to focus mastery on execution and use cases over damage optimization.

Mathemuse

I know this isn't fully Hwei-focused, but I'm curious. I remember hearing before how the game modes team was moved out of "PIE" (or something with a similar name), and since then I've wondered how the dev teams are organized and how they might need to interact (like if champion design is in contact with game balance a lot or something). Would y'all possibly be able to share anything about that?

For something more Hwei oriented, I noticed his highest WR at the moment is as an APC, sitting at nearly 39% (u.gg, Emerald+). As someone who plays Seraphine, good luck with balancing that lol is that something that anyone expected, and will that be considered a viable role in the future?

Champion’s team is pretty cross-disciplinary, meaning we have people in Art (Animation, Concept, 3D, VFX etc), Design, Engineering, Tech Art, Narrative etc. all working together. They usually work with their disciplines for support but also we have one person representing their discipline in the Core Pod (in this case, Hwei Pod). We tend to change up the pod folks champion to champion to get fresh ideas going and to give more opportunities for individuals to learn from each other.

We work pretty closely with partner teams, like GAT (Game Analysis Team), Insights (Research and Analytics) and SRT (Summoner’s Rift Team) to ensure balance and game health. As well as with teams like Localization, Voices (VO), Publishing, Marketing etc. There are tons of folks involved for a champion to take shape that are across countries, time zones and languages!

ArshanGamer

Is Hwei intended to use all his spells equally? I understand that certain spells might be weaker than others, but would there ever be a time where you might intentionally keep an ability weaker than the rest? Not just situational, but weak even in its ideal scenario?

Hwei's spells need to have a niche reason to cast one compared to the others, otherwise only the strongest output or most reliable output will matter every time the cooldown is used. That means there will be cases where a spell's niche comes up way more often in a short period or over the course of a game, or a spell's niche doesn't show up frequently or at all in a specific match. That's totally fine as long when that spell's niche appears players are using it and recognize it was the right choice.

When a spell isn't being used even for its niche case, there's a good chance that specific spell needs to be buffed. The opposite can also be true, with a specific spell being too strong and crowding out its competitors forcing them not to be used in favor of the "best spell". Funnily enough with all of the community feedback about EW being low priority for the E spells, for the longest time it was the highest priority E spell due to it having too much reliability. We seemed to have overnerfed its reliability during internal balancing, and will be making it more reliable in today's hotfix buffs.

Spideraxe30

Are you also able to share what you're looking at for his second round of hotfix buffs?

Just for you Spideraxe!

Base Stats:

• [BUFF] Base Health :: 550 >>> 580
• [BUFF] Base Mana :: 445 >>> 480
• [BUFF] Base Movement Speed :: 325 >>> 330

WW:

• [BUFF] Shields arrive instantly instead of on cast finish
• [BUFF] Shields :: 90/110/130/150/170 >>> 100/125/150/175/200

EW:

• [BUFF] Setup Delay :: 0.7s >>> 0.65s
• [BUFF] Fire Delay :: 0.35s >>> 0.3s
• [BUFF] Chase Range :: 500 >>> 600
• [BUFF] Linger Duration :: 1.35-3s based on travel distance >>> 3s

DavidHopp

Did you make this only so you could say HweiMA?

TheReversedGuy

I haven't seen any other questions about this: Why the name Hwei? To me it's always super exciting to get to know the names of new champions, and we know that we will be repeating them thousands of time, and these even influence us outside the realm of League of Legends (before 2021 I thought Renata was a dull name, now it's the name of a strong and powerful woman.)

So I'm curious why you people decided to go for Hwei (interesting that it's a four letter name like Jhin) and pretty please maybe tell us some others you had in mind???

Thank you so much!! ^{^}

Maybe u/orkidian can chime in here. With names we go through a very rigorous process to make sure that they don't mean something bad in one of the languages we operate in (there is so many of them). We generally start out with a pretty large list that gets filtered down very quickly. With Hwei, we wanted a name to have as many layers as Hwei himself. u/orkidian did so much work on the hidden meanings and cool name interactions with Jhin. So yes ....alot of it was very intentional. Some of my personal fav meanings to Hwei (Hui) were: To draw, grey, ashes, to destroy, brilliant/dazzling or even combined with Jhin's name to mean: To burn brightly and leave only ashes.

iLordzz

First off, Hwei is really fun conceptually and so actual statistical performance aside I'd say you guys did a great job. The buffer system Hwei plays with in order to chain 2-3 spell combos together + R is really smooth and adds to fluidity, but my only gripe is that the buffer window feels too large in a way? There was another post not too long ago about how Hwei punishes double pressing, but my understanding after playing him is more so that he shouldn't be the type of champ that can buffer out 3 other things during the animation for 1. It again adds to fluidity, but for a champ that is intended to reward situational awareness and variability, I think there's less benefit to him being able to do this rather than other champs capable of it as well.

Qiyana is another champ that can hit-buffer entire full combos, but in her case it works better because she has routine/standard openers and engage combos that are effectively universal(E>Q>W>R>AA>Q/R>F>Q>W>E>Q). Hwei doesn't really feel the same in that regard, especially for a control mage.

I think it's neat that Hwei is able to kitdump like he can in certain situations, but accidentally queuing up Q/W/E accidentally after something else just leads to unnecessary APM, ironically, just to cancel it and readjust. How does the team feel about this? Additionally on his cast times as well(which I now realize are supposed to be offset somewhat by his ability to buffer like this)?

We experimented with many different versions of spell queuing and cast times trying to be sensitive of both Hwei's mechanical fluidity and opponent reaction times to someone that could be casting many different things. In the end we found that blocking spell queuing hurt fluidity far too much and made Hwei less exciting to master. We decided to just turn off all kinds of special input blocking and let players fix their own inputs when overpressing rather than providing a system to help prevent players from hurting themselves but getting in the way of players who are pushing him to his limits. It was a real challenge to solve this problem, but in the end Hwei offers skilled players wanting to main him a path to mastery and skill expression and we felt the answer was to give those players the freedom to flourish.

Zoeando

I am very curious about the this , As the champion is a Artist , and was done by multiple artists , Did people on the team leave their own "marks" on the champion? like on any story , design , vfx , kit etc...?

Oh gosh! This is a big one. Instead of going through every single one, because there were lots of hands and each had a profound impact to his development, I just want to say the Hwei pod and partners really came together to make this possible. It was really ambitious and the team really KILLED IT! Hwei to go.

iFizzySoda

Was Hwei designed with the Season 2024 items in mind? If so, do you expect him to feel smoother or stronger when the new season starts?

Also, is it a coincidence that his name matches the word for gray in Mandarin Chinese (as to represent a blank canvas)?

In general we do not design champions for specific items as items could change at any time in the future. In Hwei's case we did have a goal of giving him versatility in itemization, but that should extend to any mage item system not just the current or new ones. All of that said, he was primarily tested in the new item system prior to launch and that did make balance tuning very challenging for his release patch.

JailsinhoHue

So... We will never get a true niche champion anymore? Really?

Well never say never. But next couple of years I don't think we will actively try.

nova8808

These look like solid changes. Only two other things I can think of that feel weird/weak on him is his base armor and early ult CD. Any reasoning behind keeping armor so low and his early ult cd so high?

If more adjustments are necessary we will make them; we don't want to over-adjust prior to the 14.1 item system and map changes.

That said, we also want to preserve his weakness to being aggressed without retaliation options ready and properly aimed. That's not to say he will never receive buffs to lower his weakness in these areas, but we also don't want to shave off his weaknesses so much that he offers no opportunities for opponents.

KnightsWhoNi

I assume he was very much made with the new item system in mind? How much do you tailor champs that release near major changes to fit into that ecosystem vs fitting into league in general across any meta?

This is more of a balance question than a gameplay design question. Our goal was to balance him for 13.24 items because that's the system he would launch in. That was difficult because 14.1 items are different and what we primarily tested on.

When 14.1 drops, many items and champions will need changes because the overall game state will change so much. Hwei might be included in those.

gamercatmatt

Not sure if this has been asked yet, but I'm curious how his ability sounds were created. We've all heard how Zac's were... lovingly invented, and Hwei's are also so splooshy. Would be cool to see some kind of breakdown.

Hwei's SFX are a blend of synthesized elements and samples that we recorded in Riot's Foley room. Most of the liquid goop elements you hear are actually recorded from a gluggle jug (the fish shaped jug that make gurgling noises when you pour water out), which was then processed multiple times to give it a unique magical feeling. We also recorded several different "splats" using liquids of various viscosity (you can hear these in the AAs and tails of abilities). I then took all those recordings and re-processed them multiple times using a large array of VST plugins, which gave a wide range of content to work with. When doing this exploration and creating processing chains, there really isn't any rhyme or reason— it's mostly experimentation and iterating based off of what I'm feeling / whatever emotion is evoked based on what I hear. My main goal was to define Hwei's paint / ink magic, as well as give each spellbook a unique sub-identity to differentiate them.

For the synthesized elements, usually I'll start with a patch that evokes a certain feeling or mood, and then process from there. For the disaster book, I relied on processing with distortion and delay plugins to give the feeling of power and destruction. For serenity, I recorded many different pads (just me riffing on a MIDI keyboard), trying to play progressions that felt more "out there" and ethereal. Terror was mostly human screams, metallic resonances, and anything that elicited a "spooky" feeling. The E-W warning SFX (when the trap is alert and about to activate) is actually a sample of a creaky door hinge that was processed with FX! All of the different book specific sounds were then layered in with the liquid stuff, and thus, Hwei's SFX were born!

If you haven't seen it, we actually have a Youtube series called "League Frequencies," which goes over many of the different techniques that we use for creating SFX (also covers VO, Music techniques, etc). For anyone interested in sound design, I definitely recommend giving it a watch!

KnightsWhoNi

Ya I suppose it is a little bit of a balance question, but I assume when you're designing him you are thinking about what builds he would like to do and items that would synergize with his design, like say if Brand were made today it would almost be impossible I would think to create Brand without immediately thinking you're going to build Liandry's on him 99% of the time.

This goes into system design versus mechanics design.

Champion gameplay design is focused on mechanics - what does the character do? A champion should have self contained cohesive mechanics first and foremost, usually ones that compliment themselves or shore up a weakness contextually thus requiring skill.

Systems design like items and runes are focused on choice and problem solving. They look at the things champions can do and give them exciting ways to improve their mechanical output or shore up key weaknesses at the expense of other opportunities.

What this means is when making a champion with a DoT mechanic like Brand, you may say "He will be good with on-damage applications in the system" as a consequence of the design, but you do not add a DoT simply because "I want this champion to be good with on-damage applications in the system." Someday that system may change in a way that doesn't support your champion, and if that happens suddenly your champion doesn't have a satisfying kit that's self reliant and fluid to execute.

So, with Hwei one of the goals was to make him versatile. Item versatility was a neat "If we can" goal because it reflects his kit's versatility, but would be dropped if we found it impossible to create while still giving him a satisfying kit. We never once added a DoT to make him more versatile with items, but we did do things like extend DoT durations or add/change individual spell AP scalings to ensure that different stats could be valuable as items change over time.

KnightsWhoNi

Interesting okay so if I’m understanding this correctly, you(meaning designers in general not specifically you or champion designers) design champions to be system agnostic and if they work well in a certain/current system that’s a side effect rather than an intent. Then once you’ve got that design in a moldable form you see what type of things you can do to allow him to fit in as many systems as possible?

Yes! That's correct. Sometimes we do consider systems though, when we don't want a champion to access certain systems because it would normally be optimal for them and create degenerative or uninteresting play. This was done for example with Pyke to ensure that he stays an assassin and doesn't just build bruiser items and become "Thresh with more damage and mobility". It keeps that cutthroat, high risk high reward, in-and-out gameplay that he was built around present regardless of system changes. Usually this stuff is done after defining the kit and finding that a system is damaging their unique play.

KnightsWhoNi

Ah interesting so say for instance Hwei tank emerged as something that was way too strong kinda like Tank Ekko did for a while you’d look to somehow put a restraint on his kit to make sure it can’t happen in any system rather than nerf his numbers particularly

It depends on the severity and if the item is just an outlier, but that's generally the idea! This is often why certain champs have "Damage Resistance" or "Damage Immunity" instead of bonus health/shielding/healing baked into their kits. If you don't want a champion to like building durable, don't give them raw health pool because those scale together.

mkangsy

the hwei movement speed buffs are live but the W Shield Base stats are still 90/110/130/150/170

It's only a tooltip bug. Going directly to the WW tooltip (opening the book first) shows the right values, and casting it gives the buffed values.

Spideraxe30

Hey Emizery, would you know how the team feels about Hwei now that you guys are back from break (hope it was nice) since Auberaun mentioned he was getting a small armor buff

Hey Spideraxe, right now we're observing Hwei's performance and cautious about making drastic changes before 14.1 introduces so many changes to the map and item system.

We have seen his overall winrate steadily grow at a slow rate and an intense mastery curve showing almost linear correlation between games played and winrate growth (normally we see a taper off of winrate growth over ~20 games; we're actually working on a special internal data report to get even more information).

That said, players are still learning him right now and it's a bit unfair to his allies if most Hwei players are feeding into assassins. The armor buff coming in 14.1 seeks to lower his and allies frustration with sharp matchups without creating much thrash in terms of output power.

recable

When you said “normally we see a taper off of win rate growth over ~20 games”, is this about Hwei or about champions in general? Just need clarification as it can be read as it being “other champs usually but with Hwei it’s different past 20 games”.

Normally, champions have a winrate curve you can see starts its steepest and tapers off (you gain more winrate games 1-5 than games 10-15 playing the same champion).

Hwei's winrate doesn't taper off in the first 20 games. His first 1-3 games are abyssmally low winrate and then you just keep winning more the more you play. From the data slice we usually use (first 20 games) it looks like you just linearly get better game over game indefinitely. That's why we've requested a special data report.

recable

So does that mean Hwei has the longest learning curve? What I mean is that, does he require the most games out of all the other champions before his winrate starts to stop increasing?

That seems to be an implication from our reports but is unconfirmed, hence asking for a more detailed report.

recable

Gotcha, and consequently if it comes back confirmed, would that make him the highest skill ceiling champion in the game? Or what would that specifically mean?

It would confirm that he is the champion with the most games required on average to hit a steady state of winrate when playing more games.

That doesn't mean he requires the most skill, but probably implies he takes the most games to understand and access his optimizations. The distinction is that Hwei tends to be optimized more from decision making than from raw input precision (though he still does have input precision requirements).