Riot Games finally revealed Senna’s abilities on Tuesday to show what the champion can do with her massive railgun and her newfound control over the powers of the Black Mist. As a support/marksmen hybrid, she’s able to find a home in multiple roles and can fire at enemies from a long range using her Relic Cannon. She’s got abilities to support her allies and deal damage to opponents and can also quite literally shoot someone from across the map.
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The reveal of Senna’s abilities comes after several teasers showing off different parts of the champion’s appearance and her backstory as well as the full reveal of Senna’s theme. All of these announcements were drip-fed to players after a trailer made its debut during Riot’s 10-year anniversary event. That trailer can be seen above and shows the moments when Lucian rescued Senna, his wife, from Thresh’s lantern after her soul had been captured.
Fast-forward to this week and we now know what the champion can do and how she’ll play with other characters. You can find all of her abilities below along with videos for each one to show what it does, and you can find Senna on the PBE for testing before the champion is fully released on the live servers.
Passive – Absolution
“Senna’s Relic Cannon is slow to fire, but deals bonus damage,” Riot Games said about Senna’s passive. “She can power up its range, Attack Damage, and Crit chance over time by absorbing Mist from enemy champions she’s attacking or from wraiths that spawn from dead enemies.”
The champion’s passive appears to work similarly to Thresh’s in the sense that she can absorb Mist (like souls) to power up her attacks. While Thresh gains armor and passive damage on his Flay attack, she gains more offensive stats like attack damage and critical chance.
Q – Piercing Darkness
“Senna fires a bolt that heals her allies, and damages her foes,” Riot said about Senna’s Piercing Darkness. “Senna can keep attacking to decrease Piercing Darkness’ cooldown.”
This appears to be the ability we saw in the previous trailer when Senna shot through Lucian and hit Thresh who was on the other side of him. One would imagine that by using her long range and this ability, she can maximize its power by standing behind her allies in a lane and shooting at enemies.
W – Last Embrace
“Senna commands the Mist onto the first target hit, damaging them and then rooting that target and surrounding enemies after a brief delay,” Riot said about Senna’s Last Embrace.”
Since Senna is mostly an immobile champion aside from a movement speed boost that her next ability has, it makes sense that she’d have some sort of crowd control. This ability allows her to root not only her target but also any enemies who stand near it, so this should be a strong move against supports in the bottom lane who like to stick close to their marksmen.
E – Curse of the Black Mist
“Senna dissolves into a cloud of mist, gaining movement speed and camouflaging her and her nearby allies,” Riot said about Senna’s Curse of the Black Mist. “Teammates who emerge from the mist appear as unclickable wraiths to enemies until they either attack or get close.”
If there’s going to be an ability that’s changed after Senna is released, even if it’s just a nerf, it’s probably going to be this one. This move camouflages Senna and her nearby allies and turns them into creepy specters until they break the illusion. It also renders those camouflaged champions unclickable, so it’s an easy way out of any point-and-click danger players may encounter like Caitlyn’s ultimate.
R – Dawning Shadow
“Senna fires a global beam,” Riot said about Senna’s ultimate. “Allies in the beam are shielded and enemies caught in the center of it take damage.”
Senna’s ultimate immediately caught the attention of players during a gameplay preview because it seemed to span the width of an entire lane, but it appears it’s even worse (or better, depending on how you feel about Senna) than players thought. It’s actually a global ultimate that helps all allies within it’s width, though it only harms enemies in the center.
