/dev: Irelia Dances Her Way to Wild Rift

Hey everyone, I’m Sol Kim, and I’m a game designer on Wild Rift. We put a lot of thought into every champion we bring to the game, but some are more complex than others, such as Irelia. How do we ensure she feels easily accessible without sacrificing her high-skill level of play? How do we maintain her identity as a duelist who weaves her blades in and out of battle with deadly decisiveness? In fact, when we were reworking Irelia on LoL PC, we struggled with these same issues. Irelia relies heavily on her (1) Bladesurge which serves as her main mobility and attack tool. It’s a targeted dash that deals damage and resets if it kills the target, or if the target was marked with her other abilities. An Irelia who misplays her Bladesurge becomes extremely vulnerable. Because Wild Rift’s aiming requires more steps than on LoL PC, we really wanted to provide players the ability to reset Bladesurge without requiring god-tier micro.

We tried the most intuitive version first, where Irelia prioritized resettable targets when Bladesurge was tap-cast and the player could dash to their target. This allowed her to jump between minions just by tapping Bladesurge. However, when she wanted to engage on a specific target (such as an enemy champion), it forced the player to either do precise aiming or use the lock-on feature. If the player misplayed, Irelia would dash away from her opponent towards a low health minion. Normally, we encourage players to use the lock-on feature to target opponents; however, Bladesurge is unique because Irelia often wants to reset it, even during takedowns. This forced her to target-lock during her Bladesurge reset which was extremely difficult.

We felt we could do better.

We decided to flip the controls: tapping follows regular prioritization, so when the player goes for a low-health target, tap-casting will do the trick. We also implemented an assist feature where we search for a resettable target near the focus point when Irelia aims Bladesurge. This allows her to quickly flick-cast Bladesurge to reset where she wants, while leaving tap-casting open for kill moments.

This solution is not perfect since it requires more from the player when clearing minion waves and building up her passive. However, we felt that giving the player more control over which target to reset on was worth the extra effort. Once a player knows about the assist feature, quickly flicking Bladesurge becomes intuitive!

We also added a feature unique to Irelia that would help players recognize opportune moments to use Bladesurge. Similar to the white health bar that signals when a minion is killable with an attack, Irelia players will see a purple health bar that signifies when a minion is resettable with Bladesurge. This feature takes Sheen and Trinity Force into account too!

We believe we have a strong control scheme which will allow players to play Irelia like they want to, but we know it is not perfect. We would love your feedback on this feature and would be open to improving it if needed.