League of Legends champion Twitch gets major overhaul after years of neglect

News by Dave Cook Contributor

Published on April 3, 2014

League of Legends developer Riot Games has overhauled its overlooked champion Twitch after years of leaving him untouched.

Over on the League of Legends blog, Riot wrote, "We’ve had our sights set on a Twitch update for years now. While some older champions in our game had (and in some cases, still have) the famous pizza feet, old Twitch barely had feet at all. In fact, because he was mostly hidden beneath his huge cloak, his animation rig (the skeleton we add joints to so we can create animations and emotes) was extremely limiting, making it hard to create new or different skins for the champion.

"So instead of fudging our way through and doing our best with old Twitch, we figured it’d be best to start from scratch and create a completely new Plague Rat."

Riot also posted a trailer of new-Twitch in action, then noted that each champion is dear to some player's hearts for a variety of reasons, so the team was wary of removing what it was people loved about Twitch, so it identified a few core pillars of what made the scurrying fighter so endearing.

The developer said that Twitch had to be comic and manic, and has pledged to give him a 2014-quality character model, new voice-over lines, and the following gameplay balancing tweaks:

We added a sound effect and puff of poison particles to better indicate the moment when Ambush’s invisibility kicks in. This should better indicate to Twitch players when they’ve turned invisible, particularly when they’re being attacked.
We gave Expunge a range indicator, and added a particle linking Twitch with his Expunged victims. This should help players on the opposite team understand why their health just took a nosedive.
We added extra particles to Spray and Pray that show who else is being hit by Twitch’s ult. This should help both Twitch and his enemies see where his damage is going.

Twitch is in the League of Legends Beta Environment now, and we should have more on the scurrying fiend soon. Stay tuned.

Via PCGamesN.