Inside Design: Rengar's Mechanics

The Fields of Justice have never been more dangerous than when Rengar, the Pridestalker, prepares for the hunt. With a new resource system, an optional item in the shop, and a dynamic passive that interacts when he's stealthed or in the brush, Rengar¡s bringing many new mechanics to strike down his prey. To learn more about these new mechanics, we went straight to the source and talked to Trevor “Classick“ Romleski about Rengar's kit.

A new item is available in the shop called the Bonetooth Necklace, an item that is only purchasable by Rengar. Can you tell us about this new item? 

Classick: We wanted to find some cool gameplay that lets you become the trophy hunter, gives you the feel of being Rengar. Since he's the ultimate trophy hunter we wanted to make it feel like Rengar was getting more and more powerful as he collected trophies from his kills. He becomes more self-fulfilled, since that's his big thing – he looks for the biggest prey. We tried to create a sort of side quest if you choose to go with the Bonetooth Necklace. If your focus is on picking up kills and gaining power over time, it might be a good decision.

What about the concern that this snowball item might make Rengar's power feel inconsistent?

Classick: You'll notice that the Bonetooth Necklace gains and loses its power at a slower, more consistent rate than other snowball items. You can rack up kills and benefit from the bonuses that the necklace provides, but unlike other snowball-type items in game you only lose a small number of trophies from the necklace on death. You're not going to feel the pendulum swing of power that might come with an item like Mejai's, so advancing with the necklace isn't going to feel like a waste of time if you die at a high trophy stack. You shouldn't rapidly change in power unless you have a huge number of kills or deaths in a short period of time.


What about this item snowballing in competitive play?

Classick: Competitive play was one of the reasons we went with an opt-in item, really. The competitive scene changes rapidly and the option is there for Rengar players. In many pro-level games the number of kills is usually lower than that of a normal game on Summoner's Rift, so the item might not look as attractive. Rengar is not just his item – it's an aspect of his play that you can choose to take part in or not. His viability is not based on the Bonetooth Necklace. It acts as an investment like a snowball item, not an integral piece of his kit.

Ferocity is a new type of resource. Could you explain how Ferocity works?
Classick: Rengar builds up a point of Ferocity each time he lands an ability on a champion or minion, up to five points. When you hit five Ferocity points, Rengar's abilities come off cooldown and you get to make the choice of which empowered ability you want to use. We wanted to make it so you never felt like you were wasting your empowered ability – it's kind of like you get a new set of three empowered spells to use. This was a very important piece of the kit.

Basically, we didn't want players to be upset at the choice they were making preemptively. For instance, if you hit five stacks with his Q, but wanted to use his Q as your empowered ability, you stand around waiting for Q to become available again. With this system you get to use any of your three empowered abilities when you hit max Ferocity. There's a lot of mindshare being used up when you have to cautiously link up your abilities so that your final empowered spell is the one you wanted to use and we wanted to avoid that.

(read more on LoL forum)