League of Legends Reveals New Champion's Abilities

League of Legends, the popular multiplayer online battle arena game from Riot Games, has released its fair share of complicated characters in the past. There's champions like Kindred with two spirits, Rakan and Xayah which have special bonuses when played together, and then there's League of Legends' newest champion, Aphelios, who exists on a level of complexity all his own.

Riot Games today released a kit primer that goes into detail on Aphelios' abilities, which are unlike any other champion's in the past. First off, his whole thing is that he cycles through five different weapons. He doesn't choose which ones to use at any given time, but instead the next one in line becomes available as he runs out of ammo.

The other big difference between Aphelios and other champions is that he only has three abilities: Q, W, and R. At any given time, the champion has both a main-hand and an off-hand weapon, which he can swap with W. Swapping these around can change which new weapon is in the line when based on when they run out of ammo and cycle to the back of the queue. Each of the five weapons has a special Q. And his ultimate (R) is called Moonlight Vigil. Here's how Riot describes it:

"Aphelios' ultimate, Moonlight Vigil, sends forward a moon bomb that explodes on the first enemy hit, damaging nearby enemies. Then, Aphelios follows up with enhanced basic attacks from his main-hand weapon against all enemies caught in the explosion. He automatically learns R at level 6, and it automatically levels up at levels 11 and 16."

But what five weapons does Aphelios have at his disposal, you might wonder? Well, there's Calibrum, a poke/harass rifle, Severum, a sustain weapon, Gravitum, a utility weapon that slows targets, Infernum, an AoE/waveclear weapon, and Crescendum, a close-range DPS weapon that's kind of like a boomerang. All of these, as previously mentioned, have their own Q abilities and function differently when Aphelious uses his ultimate.

If all of this sounds overly complicated, that's because it kind of is. But there's still a little time to catch up: Aphelios is not yet available, and will release during patch 9.24.

What do you think of what we've seen of Aphelios' abilities so far? Are you excited to play as the new champion when he releases? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

League of Legends is available for PC and Mac. A mobile and console version, called League of Legends: Wild Rift, is currently in development. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the popular MOBA right here.