League of Legends’ New Champion Locke Arrives June 24

League of Legends’ new champion, Locke, is set to release on June 24, along with Patch 26.13. He is the only new champion to be released this year.

Locke was born into a community of Demacian occultists, trained to slay demons for the good of humanity. When he reached adulthood, Locke realized that the true root of evil is humanity itself.

Locke is built as an assassin that has to build up his burst before becoming effective. This mechanic tries to answer a challenge that current assassins were designed to be as annoying as possible with their instant kill abilities.

“We came in sort of knowing Locke was going to be an assassin but wanting to design the kit around making it so that Locke would be less indexing on those frustration elements,” said Blake “Squad5” Smith, League of Legends’ champion designer.

With that in mind, Squad5 designed Locke to have a high damage ceiling and AoE chain execution. But to access those abilities, Locke will need to string up some moves that can be predicted by opponents.

This resulted in Locke being a high-risk, high-reward champion. Players will have to exert their peak gameplay to survive long enough to unlock Locke’s potential.

Check out his skillset below.

• Passive: Silver Stake — Locke pins enemies’ souls with his attacks, dealing bonus magic damage on-hit, increased based on the enemy’s missing health.
• Q: Ritual Nails — Locke throws his set of Soul Nails forward, dealing magic damage and marking enemies hit. The nails apply a stack that slows the target. Attacking the enemy consumes the Soul Nails, dealing magic damage per stack. Unspent Soul Nails will restore a portion of cooldown and mana.
• W: Soul Ignition — Locke releases his own seals, gaining move speed that decays over time. While this effect is active, he suffers % health true damage per second but heals back a portion of damage taken, plus an additional amount based on missing health and time passed. The seals remain unbound for a few seconds and can be recast to end early.
• E: Ashen Pursuit — Locke blinks to a location, dealing magic damage around him. After that, his next attack dashes to his target, dealing magic damage to all enemies in his path. Each of these hits consumes Soul Nails. Cooldown resets on takedown.
• R: Purgatory — Locke kicks a binding artifact to a location that opens on arrival, shooting chained Soul Nails at enemies in the area, dealing magic damage and slowing them. Marked champions that are brought below a threshold are pulled inside and killed. If a Champion is executed, the duration of the binding is reset on other affected Champions. After a few seconds, the artifact seals itself and is left on the ground if a champion was sealed. If Locke picks up the artifact, he permanently increases the execution threshold and refunds a portion of his current cooldown for each champion sealed.

Locke will be releasing on June 24, along with Patch 26.13. He is available along with a High Noon series skin.