I couldn’t really have planned this worse. An opportunity arose for my girlfriend and I to get out of town and go see family and it’s about the only chance we’ll have this summer so instead of playing Season One tomorrow during the day, I’ll be driving from North Carolina to Ohio.
As you can imagine, that’s going to delay my Season One coverage by a few hours. We’re leaving pretty early, so hopefully I’ll be up and running at my parents’ house by mid-evening and blogging as I go. Just so you guys know, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet or fallen so in love with Xin Zhao that I can’t even spare the time to write.
If anyone wants to celebrate the launch of Season One in style, check in around 9:30 PM EST. I’ll be there, ready to play with anyone that wants to. You can add me at “The Wiggin Boy.” Hope to see you guys there!
Riot posted the Xin Zhao Spotlight early this go round, giving you time to think about whether or not you’ll be picking him up at the Season One launch this Tuesday. The video gives some much needed clarification on his skillset, though I don’t think it does a good job displaying Xin Zhao’s specific skillset.
Did anyone else feel like this was more of a tutorial on the basics than a display of the potential behind Xin Zhao. That first kill on Guinsoo looked like a damn bot (I’m guessing Guinsoo was typing?) and most of the teamfights played out such that I didn’t see Xin Zhao doing a whole lot – it was mostly his fed teammates dishing out the damage and pulling down triple kills. It’s kinda tough to get a good look at any champion when you have a power combo like Alistar/Annie for teamfights. The one helpful tip was the Malzahar kill top for which Phreak used Audacious Charge. That’s about all I learned. Use it like Kat/Akali to get close to people but with a bonus AOE slow.
Shortly after Xin Zhao was announced at PC Gamer, Leaguecraft had a list of his abilities up that sounded fairly official. In my experience, those lists are usually right, but for Xin Zhao things are a little different than we first thought.
Three Talon Strike: Xin Zhao’s next 3 standard attacks deal increased damage, with the third attack knocking an opponent into the air.
Battle Cry: Xin Zhao passively increases his attack speed and can activate this ability to further increase attack speed and lower his ability cooldowns with each attack.
Audacious Charge: Xin Zhao charges an enemy, dealing damage and slowing it and all other enemies in the area. Audacious Charge increases Xin’Zhao’s armor temporarily and lowers the cooldowns of all of his abilities.
Crescent Sweep (Ultimate): Xin Zhao fiercely sweeps his spear around him, dealing damage to nearby enemies based on their current health.
Tireless Warrior (Passive): Xin Zhao is healed for every 3 attacks that he lands. This amount increases every 2 levels.
As spazticmonk mentioned on the original post, the charge would probably have had too long a cooldown as his ultimate. It looks like that will just be his E skill, giving him the mobility Riot wanted. You’ll also notice that the “reverse skillshot” is gone from Crescent Sweep, though I wonder what “based on current health” means – more damage if they’re healthy or more damage if they’re hurt? As I mentioned before, Xin Zhao seems like he has the ability set that makes a successful melee champion. I’m looking forward to trying him out with the launch of Season One.
I’m going to keep this short and sweet in honor of the holiday weekend. As spazticmonk pointed out in the Xin Zhao preview post, his full ability list is up over at Leaguecraft. Here’s what they’re saying:
Tireless Warrior (Passive): Xen’Zhao is healed for 30-70 hit points for every 3 attacks that he lands. This amount increases by 5 every 2 levels.
Battle Cry: Xen’Zhao passively increases his attack speed and can activate this ability to further increase attack speed and lower his ability cooldowns with each attack.
Three Talon Strike: Xen’Zhao’s next 3 standard attacks deal increased damage, with the third attack knocking an opponent into the air. Deals double damage to minions.
Crescent Sweep: Xen’Zhao rapidly spins his halberd around him, nullifying incoming missile attacks targetted on him and dealing damage to all enemy units near him.
Audacious Charge (Ultimate): Xen’Zhao charges an enemy, dealing damage and slowing it and all other enemies in the area. Audacious Charge increases Xen’Zhao’s armor temporarily and lowers the cooldowns of all of his abilities.
From the sound of things his playstyle will be pretty close to Akali with a little more focus on survivability. More on this later. Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.
Riot’s announced the newest hero by way of a Dev Diary at PC Gamer and it looks like we’re getting yet another melee character. Despite that little setback, Xin Zhao sounds pretty interesting and has the thing that, in my mind, sets good melee apart from the bad: a way to close the gap.
The actual information about Xin Zhao is pretty limited. He’s a martial-arts-inspired spear wielding fighter with some kind of initiation power and a slow. Zileas put it this way:
We came up with this design build because we wanted to capture the spirit of the free-moving fighters you might see in martial arts films. Xin can move freely about the battlefield, drawing power from attacking his enemies, so he can act as an initiator and maybe even as a tank, while still able to deal lots of damage very quickly. One problem we struggled with was how to make Xin Zhao able to initiate but not be a full tank. We tried a number of iterations on this, trying out different defensive components to his Audacious Charge and ultimate. In the end, I think we came up with a really strong build that our players are really going to enjoy.
As for his abilities, this is all we know so far: Three Talon Strike: (cornerstone ability) A series of attacks that culminate in a powerful move that inflicts considerable damage to his opponent. Unnamed ability: Increases his attack speed and causes all of his attacks to cool down his other abilities much faster than they normally would. Audacious Charge: Quickly charge an opponent and slow them down.
Not the best descriptions in the world, but it is nice to see that he’ll be able to jump into a fight from a distance, a key component to keeping melee from going the way of Olaf. With a gap closer and a slow, he pretty much fits my criteria for a solid melee champion. He also has built-in attack speed increase, which gives some item flexibility for damage or survivability.
Perhaps the biggest news of the article is that Xin Zhao will launch with Season One. A lot of people are speculating that S1 is close, but I think it could be as late as the second half of July, if only because I don’t want to get my hopes up. From the sound of this article, Xin Zhao is pretty much done, but then why not list his other two abilities? Then there’s the holiday weekend to consider, though development schedules often ignore that kind of time off and offer comp time after major features launch. It really could go either way. I’ll err on the side of caution and cast my vote for the week of the 18th. Prove me wrong, Riot. Prove me wrong.
