From the get-go, Max Perlman, Lead Gameplay Designer for Yunara, was quick to establish that she is meant to feel “traditional.”
Looking at the recent marksman releases in League of Legends, many of them are ability-based casters like Smolder and Kai’Sa, while others have “very unique properties that pose new demands on the player,” such as Zeri, Samira, Nilah, and Aphelios.
Yunara is intended to serve the player that embraces the core skill tests of the role — spacing, orb walking, positioning, and high damage uptime — but with a slightly more modern take.
During the Spirit Blossom Summit, ONE Esports playtested her briefly and found out more about what makes Yunara unique.
Yunara is a high-skill champion that’s not for everyone
To understand Yunara is to understand how her abilities enhance her auto-attacks and repositioning.
For a start, her passive, Vow to the First Lands, lets her deal extra magic damage during critical strikes, which gives her a chance against armor-stacking enemies.
Q, Cultivation of Spirit, is her bread and butter: Yunara gains a stack of Unleash with every attack, plus an extra one when she hits a champion or lands a crit. This is similar to Ezreal’s stacking Q.
At max stacks, Yunara can activate her Q to gain attack speed, bonus damage on hit, and will deal splash damage in a small area with each attack. It draws a parallel to Ryze’s Spell Flux and Aphelios’ Duskwave.
“Yunara’s kit is all about the ebb and flow of power. Her Q has her build up energy which she can then tap into for brief moments of being particularly powerful. She also has the ability to short circuit the downtime of her gameplay using her ult — this takes the empowerment of her Q spell and gives it not only a longer window of being empowered, but the rest of her kit also becomes more powerful,” explained Max.
Arc of Judgment, Yunara’s W, sends a swirling prayer bead out, which damages and slows enemies as it travels. At its endpoint, it lingers and expands for a moment, continuing to damage enemies who don’t get out of the way.
The prayer bead doesn’t return to you. The projectile isn’t that fast and it’s actually hard to land in a 1v1 or when there are few enemies around. It’s easier to hit during teamfights or when your teammates provide crowd control.
Kanmei’s Steps is her only movement ability where she gains a quick burst of move speed. While Transcended, she instead dashes.
As Max mentioned, Yunara power-spikes during her ultimate. It feels similar Zeri except that her abilities do change, like Elise. This Transcended state turns her E into an actual dash while her W grows into a projectile beam.
Most significantly, her Q remains at max stats for the duration of the ultimate, giving her bonus damage on hit and letting her deal splash damage in a small area with each attack.
Combined with her other enhanced abilities, you’re set up to deal tons of damage during fights. However, you’re not a long-ranged marksman, so there are risks and tradeoffs involved.
“She has a pretty strong ability to ‘flip the switch’ and aggressively engage enemies when she sees her opportunity, which massively increases in potency when she has her ultimate available. Yunara thrives in smaller scrappier fights rather than massive, highly organized teamfights,” said Max.
Overall, it’s important to note that her design was meant to cater to a very specific marksman audience. For players who enjoy the fundamentals of ADC champions, they would enjoy using her to improve these skills.
“Worse players, relatively speaking, will better at her, and better players will only be so good at her because she doesn’t have some crazy novelty that only the best players in the world can do,” Max explained. “And I think that she also has like a nice growth curve which is the better you get at League, the more functional Yunara will be for you.”
Yunara release date
Yunara releases on LoL patch 25.14 on July 16, 2025.
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