I started playing League of Legends just after it came out of beta and haven’t stopped, so I like to think that I’m a good rep for the community.
I got the chance to play Ambessa before she hit PBE servers in a media preview at Riot HQ, and on behalf of everyone, I preemptively gave my feedback to the game devs in person. You’re welcome.
Let me put this in context: League of Legends was just fine before Yasuo came out. Sure, Rengar and Kha’Xiz were a pain, but Yasuo is built different.
He has many dashes, puts up a wall that blocks game-changing projectiles, and can even knock us up and kill us in the backline (I’m a support main so this is my safe space). That was a huge changing point for the League of Legends community.
He paved the way for way more mobile champions to make their way into the roster. Conveniently, he also has a brother.
League of Legends champions with dashes — why do they even exist?
These “champions with dashes,” as the LoL community likes to call them, are very much on our minds when we play the game. In the last few years, we’ve had a few that made highlight reels — Gwen, Viego, Samira, Yone, Qiyana, and Pyke to name a few. Ignoring Viego’s original release, none were terribly meta breaking until 2022.
What happened in 2022? K’Sante happened, alongside Lil Nas and the Worlds 2022 finals opening ceremony.
Glittering in gold, shimmering sparkles, and Star Walkin’ are forever etched into our minds, put together to welcome a fabulously dressed LGBTQ+ member to the LoL roster. Never before has a champion’s release been such a spectacle.
Riot Games went All Out on K’Sante, not just in his grand entrance, but also his base stats because he scales on practically everything.
“This is K’Sante, a champion with 4,700 HP, 329 Armor, and 201 MR, has Unstoppable, a Shield, and goes over walls. Has Airborne, and the cooldown is only one second too. It costs 15 Mana. The W CD is even refreshed when he transforms. He has true damage on his passive. Then, when he stacks Armor and MR, he gets Ability Haste too, Ability Haste to his Q, and his spell casting speeds up. Then, he has an AD ratio, so his W…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA,” Heo “ShowMaker” Su commented on stream, which has since become a staple LoL meme.
Because of this, K’Sante has never quite left the meta since. In Season 13, he was picked by top lane pros in major leagues 401 times and banned 175 times, which comes up to a 60.4% presence according to gol.gg. The LPL and LCS were the top regions to play him.
In Season 14, his popularity grew even more. Shocker. He was picked 856 times and banned 378 times (64.7% presence), and his win rate improved from 48.6% to 50.9%. He was especially popular during MSI, posting a 81% presence.
One pro player is associated with him more than others — Kim “Kiin” Gi-in currently holds a 80.6% win rate on the champion. Kiin’Sante, we call him.
Fast forward two years in 2024, while the League community is still dealing with the aftermath of K’Sante, we not only have a new champion with dashes, we have a champion who is allowed to dash after each ability cast without the constraints of mana.
Who wants to bet she’s going to be another top lane staple that never leaves?
I raised our concerns about Ambessa’s dashes to Riot — this was their response
I flew 15 hours to Los Angeles to visit Riot HQ for the Arcane Summit only to discover that Ambessa has way too many dashes. Her design, attitude, and character are super badass and cool, but her mobility? Maybe not so.
Skills aside, her movement is rooted in her passive, Drakehound’s Step:
Entering an attack or movement command while casting an ability will cause Ambessa to dash a
short distance once the ability is cast. Casting an ability grants her next attack bonus range, damage, and attack speed, and refunds energy.
In other words, she’s constantly on the move. Unlike all other champions in the game, Ambessa is all about dash, attack, dash, attack, dash, attack, rinse and repeat.
“We’re aware of what we’re doing,” replied Games Designer Max “Riot Yelough” Perlman to ONE Esports. “We are aware that we gave her a very powerful tool that we know is going to draw a lot of attention.”
He believes that the community will feel positive about it because she genuinely feels good to play. On the other side of the Rift on the opposing team, players are likely to express, “Why is she dashing at me forever? Please stop.”
Riot Yelough acknowledges that K’Sante taught them some lessons too. “We’re aware of when a character has more tools than they’re supposed to have or has tools configured in such a way that causes high frustration and it leads to those types of memes.”
“We’re generally pretty good about making sure that characters have the tools to do the thing that the experience we’re trying to deliver needs, and we don’t want to give them more tools than they need,” Riot Yelough explained. “I think Ambessa’s dashes are sort of the marquee of her kit. Everything is built
around them.”
He hopes that through her kit, League of Legends players will feel “relentless,” like “tyrant in your face,” when you play her, which is delivered through her dashes. After all, she is designed for the hardcore OG League of Legends player.
“You understand the game. You’re here to be a hype beast, to run people over and die trying. So we do believe that her skill floor is actually reasonably high,” said Riot Yelough.
LoL players will also notice that she lacks a lot of tools in her kit too that a typical fighter doesn’t have — she doesn’t have hard crowd control (only a slow), she is forced to build aggressively rather than defensively, and apparently, her team fight output isn’t very powerful.
“Our players, to a degree, are allergic to the word dash, which is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we should stop our characters from dashing, and it doesn’t mean that we should stop putting things in our characters kits that are exciting and feel really great,” Riot Yelough concluded. “We just have to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that is reasonable.”
READ MORE: Exclusive: Why do you love Arcane so much? Creators reveal behind-the-scenes secrets
