Hannan Mundia 
Riot Games has officially revealed Hwei, the new champion coming to League of Legends, and Dota 2 fans might find his abilities familiar.
At the League of Legends World Championship final, the developers behind Riot Games’s League of Legends finally revealed a new champion coming to the game, Hwei. In addition to his abilities, fans also now have more information on what sort of playstyle players can expect from the new mage champion.
Although the new champion looks as though he’ll stand apart from other recent additions to the game, Dota 2 fans in particular are finding the kit of Hwei very familiar. One thing almost everyone is agreeing on is that the new League of Legends champion will likely be one of the most complex characters in the game.
Who is the new League of Legends champion?
The new champion coming to League of Legends is Hwei, a human mage mid laner with 10 different spells that will take more than one button press to cast.
The usage of different buttons in particular is something that is also present in the character kit of Invoker, a popular playable character in Dota 2, the biggest rival MOBA next to League of Legends. Some of the developers working on Hwei stated that although they’re aware of the champion’s similarity to Invoker, Hwei has not been designed to be exactly like Invoker in LoL.
As for the expected playstyle of Hwei, the champion has three sets of abilities, with every ability containing three different spells. Similar to other champions, his abilities are used by the usual Q, W, and E, with Q being reserved for his ultimate. Hwei has a unified spell cooldown, meaning that every time you use one spell from an ability set, the other two spells will go on cooldown as well as if you used them.
- The first set of Hwei’s abilities is called Disaster. These abilities are all about dealing damage via fire, thunder, and lava.
- The second set of his abilities is called Serenity. These spells prioritize strengthening and healing Hwei and his teammates, by increasing their movement speed, giving them a shield, or replenishing their mana.
- The final set of his abilities is called Torment. These spells excel at crowd control as they inflict status effects like fear and root on enemy champions to make it easier to take them out.
There’s also the ultimate ability of Hwei, which sends out an orb that sticks to the first enemy champion it touches, expanding on touch while dealing damage to and slowing nearby enemy champions. The orb explodes after a few seconds, dealing even more damage.
When will Hwei be added to League of Legends?
Although there is no official date yet, there is speculation that Hwei will be added to League of Legends before 2024.
The champion will be available to try out on PBE test servers come November 20, 2023, which is around the same time as the return of the game’s Arena mode. This means that it’s very likely for Hwei to join the game in patch 13.24, which is estimated to come out around the end of December 2023.
This would make Hwei the final champion to be added to League of Legends in 2023, a title many expected would go to bloodthirsty recent addition Briar.
