The New Dragon ADC Champion - Everything we Know so Far

There is good news for all the dragon enthusiasts out there. Summoner’s rift is about to become the playground for a new fire-breather. Teased in Riot’s Champion roadmap, we got a glimpse at what could become a new meta in the bot-lane. The teaser presents us with an egg which is the birthplace of a menacing drakonian.  

Starting out as a cute baby dragon, this champion will grow stronger and mightier with each level – suggesting a weak to strong early to late game, similar to champs like Aurelion Sol or Shyvana. The growth of the champion through the game will also be reflected in its fire-breathing technique. While the champion is teased to be a ranged marksman, the final lane destination is still under debate.

Riot Games has remained quite tight-lipped about the champion details, but we can still paint a picture with all the data revealed in teasers and leaks.

Champion Design

As the mysterious egg hatches, a cute little creature will set foot on the rift. Recent tweets from the dev team have confirmed the creature to be a baby dragon. But don’t let the words fool you, even as babies, dragons are not so tiny. The young one can still terrorize hostiles with his fire-breathing power.

Quoting Riot’s roadmap tease: “He walks around with swagger given only by an heir of royalty”. Some fans believe the champion might have a connection to Jarvan IV, as he belongs to a royal family. With the champion being a baby dragon, some even go as far as to say that it might be the offspring of J4 and Shyvana. 
 

The Dev Team working on the champion is as below:

• First Twin Enso and now Riot Llama on gameplay.
• Scathelocke on Narrative design.
• Whiteleyth on Concept art.

Riot Llama is also known for his work on K’sante and the latest Scarner rework – which is still in progress.

Champion Abilities

While there is still no info released on the champion's abilities. We can already draw some assumptions from the teases. As the tease infers, we can keep track of the champion’s growth with the evolution of its fire-breathing technique. It is quite obvious that one or more of his abilities will revolve around the fire. 

As the champion is claimed to be a marksman and even a hyper ADC, we can draw a comparison with champions like Kog’maw. Therefore, we might even see stuff like on-hit passives, range-boosting ability, skill shots, etc.

The following line was quoted in the roadmap: “There is something lurking not too far in the distance, always watching”. This set the speculators in a buzz with multiple theories. One of which suggests, there might be an ability that calls upon a guardian to help our young champ in his encounters, this may even be the Ultimate Ability.

When will the new dragon champion be released?

The Champion is set to be released in a time frame between the release of the artistic mage Hwei and the much later release of the Frejlord Vastayan solo laner. As Hwei is set to release at the end of this year, we might see this baby dragon hit the rift either with the new season start or in a patch around early season developments. Read about the release date of League of Legends Season 14 to get a clearer estimate.