Good evening,

I hope this post finds you snug, don’t be afraid to read further. But be prepared, Roenne is not your typical little girl…

As the only daughter and heir to the Aristocratic and Aquinian Leofric family, Roenne’s life has been overshadowed by tragedy. Gaining her powers after the forges ignited, manifesting into the powers you read about in her pre-release.

Last week we released the lore teaser “In Leofric Manor”, setting the scene for this scary burst mage. Roenne is our first Forger where it really pays to be patient. You’re going to have to wait for that opportune moment to strike out and make your enemies shy away in fear.

Meet the Phantom, Roenne Leofric:

Roenne is intended to be an archetypical burst mage with a heavy mechanical focus on opportunism. Her kit strongly rewards waiting patiently for the right time to strike, while still granting bonuses if you choose to pull the trigger earlier than the last second.

We expect Roenne to be played primarily as a Harrier or a laning Saboteur (check out our roles post for more insight). Her kit works quite well for consistent harass in lane due to her having a ranged point and click damage ability. The cooldown on the harass reward for Harriers is another incentive to hold off and let her abilities empower.

As a saboteur, the time spent roaming to other lanes helps her build up her potential damage to have devastating effect during her ganks. However, this feature may also allow Roenne players that can manage their abilities effectively to jungle as a Poacher or a Saboteur, as the root on her Q combined with the increased damage on her E will allow her to safely kite camps while dealing with them relatively quickly.

Passive: Monstrous Acquaintance

Roenne’s Basic Abilities become empowered while not on cooldown, becoming infused with the shadows. This increases their damage based on how long they were off cooldown, up to a maximum length equal to the cooldown of the ability.

This ability ties Roenne’s kit together. While Roenne will have decent damage if she’s casting her abilities off cooldown, she’ll have a much higher potential damage ceiling than other characters at the start of a fight if she’s allowed time to set up.

Q: Tormenting Apparition

Roenne lashes out with shadow in the targeted direction that deals magic damage to all enemies that it passes through and roots the first enemy Forger or Large Monster hit for a brief duration.

The root’s duration is increased against enemy Forgers with no nearby allied Forgers or structures, and against Large Monsters.

Tormenting Apparition will be useful for clearing waves of minions if the player is choosing to go that route. It also provides Roenne with the only consistent utility in her kit, so she’s quite vulnerable to being jumped on while it’s down. The root will be quite short – primarily existing to cancel out mobility of enemies she hits, rather than focusing on holding the enemies in place – if Roenne doesn’t hit it on an isolated enemy, which further constricts her potential utility. A major design goal of her Q is to provide her with some un-gated crowd control to combine with her E.

W: Under the Bed

Roenne slips into the void by fading into a cloud of shadows over a very short duration, then reappearing at the targeted location, dealing magic damage to targets in the area when she appears at the new target location.

Roenne will not teleport if she is not within the cloud at the end of its duration or if she is crippled, silenced, or otherwise immobilized.

When overcharged by at least a certain percentage, this ability fears enemies in the targeted location.

This is one of the more complex abilities that we have in the initial set of characters, and this is because we want it to have a fair amount of counterplay. Roenne may occasionally be able to use this to escape fights against other low utility characters, but more often than not, if she’s using this to try to get away from the enemy team, they should be able to prevent her from teleporting when the duration of the cloud ends.

Part of the goal of this ability is also to give Roenne some potential mind games. The damage – and fear – will still trigger in the area that she targets, even if she doesn’t teleport at the end of the ability, so she can set up multiple angles to attack from against enemies, especially if they don’t have vision on her when she initially casts this. This will help her very effectively gank enemy lanes, but due to its design won’t help her escape ganks very effectively.

E: Rending Shadows

Roenne blasts a target enemy with magic, dealing magic damage to the target. This ability deal increased damage against rooted or fully disabled enemies.

If the ability is overcharged by at least a certain percentage, the targeted enemy has all CC applied to them increased in duration by a percentage of the remaining duration.

The secondary effect on this ability is experimental so it may not end up being included in the final version of the kit. We wanted to give Roenne a heavy focus on opportunism, which meant needing to give her a reason to use her abilities even if they weren’t fully charged by her passive. By granting her a potential increase in damage, she can choose to fire early while still getting a lot out of her rotation.

The secondary effect is intended to hit the other angle that the rest of her kit is aiming for – rewarding you heavily for waiting to cast the ability until absolutely necessary. This may end up being a bit too powerful when combined with other characters’ crowd control, however, so we’ll be keeping an eye on it in testing.

R: Phantasmal Edict

Roenne attempts to bind an enemy’s shadow, firing a tendril in target direction. Upon hitting an enemy Forger, it deals magic damage and pulls the enemy’s shadow towards Roenne. The forger is slowed by a percentage for a short amount of time.

Roenne can attack and target the shadow transferring a percentage of the damage dealt and any status effects to the target. The shadow slowly drifts toward the forgers current location, ending the effect when the two meet or if the target moves too far away.

Finally, Roenne’s ultimate is as much about the fact that the player gets a free target as it is about the initial damage she deals with the ability. Hitting this ultimate will provide a huge swing in team fights, as it means that a well prepared Roenne will be able to dump her rotation on the shadow without needing to make considerations for the abilities being dodged. While her allies won’t be able to target the shadow, since that would be more of a supportive ability, they will still be able to make use of the fact that Roenne can more effectively guarantee CC on the target by passing it through their shadow.

Patience pays off

It’s been a tough few months with team o7. We hope that you enjoy reading about Roenne and are looking forward to her Lore piece being released shortly. I’m impressed with just how much we’ve pulled together to finalise Roenne and everyone on the team should be proud of showing off.

I hope to see you all tomorrow for the stream, I’d love to hear how people are planning on playing our Phantom.

Yours,

Duncan “Dink_Dunk” Duguid

See you at the forges, soon.