Following the announcement that Akali would be one of the next League of Legends champions to receive a rework, it’s now been confirmed that the champion designer who worked on Zoe and other characters will be heading up Akali’s update.
The champion designer that’s leading Akali’s rework is Bradford “CertainlyT” Wenban, a designer who’s most recently know for Zoe but also has a long line of champions to his name. Riot Reav3 confirmed on Reddit that the designer would be in charge of the rework within a post that linked to the champion roadmap for January.
Though each champion that’s created or reworked comes from a whole cast of Rioters, CertainlyT is known for several champions over the years that many players have a strong love/hate relationswhip with. Darius, Thresh, Zyra, Kalista, and now Zoe are all champions that make upCertainlyT’s portfolio, a quick list of champions that’ll give players flashbacks of being dunked, hooked, or just one-shot into oblivion.
For those who are already dreading the Akali rework after seeing CertainlyT’s track record, it’s important to note that the designer has also worked on champion reworks as well, more than one of which were quite successful. CertainlyT worked on the reworks for Warwick, Mordekaiser, Graves, and Caitlyn as well, Warwick’s being the rework that stands out among the rest as one of the most successful reworks in recent memory with the champion being balanced and played in every rank from low tiers to professional play. Mordekaiser’s rework isn’t exactly in the same league as Warwick’s, but the other two champion still saw plenty of post-rework play due to successful updates.
But while CertainlyT is heading the gameplay aspect of the champion, senior development manager Riot Brightmoon reminded players that there’s more than just one Rioter working on any champion with plenty of different tasks being tackled by different Rioters.
“Also – I know we say this a lot, but it’s true – these projects are a team effort. There is not a singular person ‘in charge’ of a champion, rather it’s a creative team that works really hard to align on a unified vision of what we want to create across design (gameplay), narrative (lore & personality), and art (audio/visual experience),” said Riot Brightmoon. “We call that the DNA. Here’s everybody who works on the champion: engineering, QA, technical art, visual FX, sound FX, design, playtest, animation, production, 3d modeling, concept art, writing, editing, publishing, and illustration.”
Akali has not yet officially been added to the update schedule yet, but expect her update to come sometime after Irelia’s and Aatrox’s.
[“Source-comicbook”]
