- Items are now your source of “levels”, so to speak. For each item (which has it’s own stats) you get total HP. Once three of them are on a champ, their Ultimate unlocks. There is no item removal in the game, though there will be a way to negate the stats an item offers temporarily (but not the HP) This represents the “earning time” of the game, with ultimates often not being available until itemization starts.
- This creates an inherent deckbuilding dilemma: do you prioritize cheaper items with lesser effects to level faster (but risking being outgunned), or prioritize more expensive, game-changing items with monster effects? Or do you have balance between the two, risking that you don’t draw what you need?
- A class using a non-unique ability (Alistar using a, oh say, Nautilus Tank-class skill) costs one more Speed to play. During a teamfight, champs can still act even if they aren’t active so long as they border the acting champ, and all skills they have cost one more Speed to play (and this stacks with the non-unique cost).
- All champs regenerate Speed at the same rate, unless that champ is respawning.
- Speed is used to buy items. Whenever you slay a champ, the champ with the last hit gains Gold, which is worth twice as much and can’t be removed unless spent. Character can use the Farm action (useful if you are at Max Speed), spending two Speed to gain one Gold. You can’t turn Gold into Speed.
Class Breakdown:
- Tanks: Low Speed but hard-to-kill champs with high HPpI and abilities that further make them hard to kill. Front line of your Nexus defense, they prevent damage by existing.
- Bruisers: The “Jack of all Trades” class. Middling stats in everything, and tend to be AD-based. High threat level, but their itemization to be truly effective is the worst.
- Assassin: The quick killers, capable of high burst damage but are generally very squishy. As they are easily taken down they need to be in an early Teamfight slow, like Top or Jungle, though Mid is acceptable if there are other targets available.
- Mage: overwhelmingly Ap-based. Tends to have an exceedingly high range of abilities, but like the Bruiser they have itemization issues while being mostly squishy.
- Marksman: Overwhelmingly AD-based. They’re your cleanup crew: the best balance of damage output to speed cost in the game while having fair utility. However, being somewhat squishy means that they need to be protected by another champ, even before teamfights. The only class to have direct Nexus damage, though it’s still
- Support: The best utility champs in the game, and itemize so well they often don’t need a full build. Also the sole class with healing abilities. However this makes them one of the highest priority targets in teamfights, and without the heals they are also somewhat squishy. Aside from that the class has THE lowest damage output in the game, even worse than tanks, along with low Speed.