There is a wide range of reasons a champion ends up in a specific position. In the past, it has largely been driven by our attempt to give a wide-variety of roles and classes to players each year. We’d look at what champions we were currently doing big VGUs on, as well as what the last champions released were, and then make sure all players got new champs or VGUs in their role.

Lately though, the number of champions has gotten so high that the demand of making unique and interesting mechanics has also risen. This has caused us to take a slightly different approach to selecting roles. We now start with an exciting or interesting design hook, such as “two champs specifically designed to have unique synergy,” and then after we validate it, we see what role it best fits in. Pyke is a champion that came from this new process, although for him the design hook was a “Support Assassin,” so the role was implicit in the gameplay hook.

You’ll see more champions in the future that started from this new process. That being said, we’d still try to make a champion for a specific role or class if we ever felt like a role was being neglected for a long period of time, since it always feels great to get a new champion in the role you play.