League of Legends' Next New Champion Planned to Release This Year

Riot Games still has League of Legends' Worlds competition and an update for Ezreal scheduled to be out sometime this year, but it's also planning on having the next new champion out before the year's over.

Since the latest Champion Roadmap was released in August, Rioters have been addressing questions about different champion updates and plans to release entirely new League of Legends champions. Ryan "Riot Reav3" Mireles, lead champion producer for League, has been commenting on Reddit and on the game's boards to address questions about release timings and the schedule for when champions and their updates should be revealed. For those who haven't been digging through the comments to keep up with the plans, League's design director Andrei "Riot Meddler" van Roon shared a list of goals pertaining to Riot Games' plans for patches centered around Worlds and the new champion releases. According to his schedule, we can expect the following in this order:

• Worlds Patch (8.19)
• Sometime after that, Ezreal update (limited gameplay changes, focused mainly on W)
• Sometime after that, though still expected this year, a new champion

The scheduled says that the new champion is "expected" to be out this year, so it does leave some room for the release date to be bumped back to 2019. Ezreal's update is one that's scheduled to be out this year though with his Essence Flux a target of the update along with new visuals.

"Ezreal's fantasy of a young, sharpshooting adventurer is pretty appealing, but once you get him in game, his model, animations, and VO don't really live up to the promise," Riot Reav3 said in the latest Champion Roadmap. "We'll be rebuilding Ezreal's audio and visuals from the ground up to really deliver on that fantasy."

As for the new champion that's supposed to be out before the end of the year, Riot Games shared a teaser for that champ in the Champion Roadmap as well. A flowery image with a symbol behind it went along with some test that hinted at an ability power-focused champion that has some sort of stealth mechanic in its arsenal.

"We do have a few new champions in development—including a rather colorful mage that won't stay hidden for too much longer—but it's a bit far away to go into specific details yet," the Champion Roadmap teased.

Another new champion is coming beyond the colorful mage one that's "locked away" without a release date.