After an unforgettable weekend at the 2024 League of Legends Worlds Finals, Riot Games has wasted no time moving forward with exciting new content. As part of this new phase, Riot is gearing up for Ambessa. The game’s lead developer recently confirmed that Ambessa’s design drew inspiration from another character in the Arcane series.
Ambessa is said to draw inspiration from another Arcane character
During this year’s Worlds, Lead Gameplay Designer Matt Leung-Harrison shared insights about how the team approached designing Ambessa’s abilities. According to Leung-Harrison, the developers drew from the game’s existing roster to create a toolkit for her that is both fresh and familiar.
“Ambessa is very similar to Vi or Riven. She has the input paradigm of Riven, but she’s more of a Vi type of character. She’s okay with scrapping with the frontline. She has an Ultimate that can go deep into a fight,”
Vi, who joined League of Legends in 2012, is also a lead character in Arcane, alongside the new champion. Having Vi serve as part of the inspiration for Ambessa not only strengthens the champion’s design but adds a thematic connection to the Arcane series.
Although the team had a strong foundation for Ambessa, they continued to make significant adjustments during her development, Leung-Harrison explained.
“One of the changes that we made late in development, even after she hit PBE, was that we increased her Q cooldown to 10 seconds. We did that because she was having too much uptime on her dashing and I think players just found that initially pretty confusing and what she’s doing was not readable.
The development team ultimately decided to adjust her cooldowns, making it so that Ambessa would complete a sequence of moves before retreating, rather than constantly dashing around.
Leung-Harrison went on to describe her role within the game, explaining what players can expect when they either play as her or face her in matches. Ambessa fills an interesting, less common space in the roster as a mid-range fighter, bridging the gap between fully melee and ranged champions.
“In terms of her place in the game, she’s more of a mid-range fighter, which is not really something that we’ve experimented with very much. She’s got her chains and that’s a very fun pattern to land, but it also can be a pretty frustrating pattern if a champion is playing outside of your range all the time,”
Leung-Harrison compared her to champions like Urgot, explaining that she’ll be a top-lane semi-ranged character who sometimes has to close in for melee combat. The team aimed to achieve a balanced “in-and-out” combat style, similar to that of Riven and Urgot, allowing Ambessa to engage and then retreat.
Ambessa marks a first for League of Legends—she is the only champion introduced initially through Arcane before making her way into the game.