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The latest League of Legends (LoL) champion, Ambessa, The Matriarch of War, will drop into the game this week in LoL patch 14.22.
This goes live on Wednesday November 6th 2024 from 7pm GMT.
Ambessa is a Noxian warlord that appeared in season one of Arcane, the League of Legends animated Netflix show, three years ago.
With season two of Arcane now imminent, Riot is adding a host of Arcane cosmetics and updates to its games, including Arcane Season 2 content in Riot Games titles such as LoL skins (due to arrive separately in a later patch), Valorant weapons bundle and more.
Ambessa will be added to LoL, TFT, Wild Rift and Legends of Runeterra.
She also arrives in League of Legends with a ‘Chosen of the Wolf Ambessa’ skin, joining other champions getting Chosen of the Wolf skins, including Pantheon, Kindred, Katarina and Swain (with Swain also getting a prestige version of the skin too). All five champions will get different coloured chromas for these new skins as well.
Ambessa abilities
Passive – Drakehound’s Step
When Ambessa casts an ability, issuing a move or Attack order will cause her to dash after the Ability finishes. Casting an ability also gives Ambessa a charge, which increases her attack range and speed. Attacks consume a charge to deal additional damage and restore Energy.
Q – Cunning Sweep / Sundering Slam
Ambessa sweeps her blades forward in a semi-circle, dealing extra damage to enemies at the edge. If you hit an enemy, it readies Sundering Slam.
Recast: Sundering Slam: Ambessa slams down her blades, dealing bonus damage to the first enemy hit.
W – Repudiation
Ambessa gains a shield, braces herself, then slams the ground. If she braces herself from damage by an enemy champion, large monster, or structure, she does more damage with her slam.
E – Lacerate
Ambessa whips her chains in a circle, damaging and briefly slowing enemies. Using Drakehound’s Step will trigger an additional strike.
R – Public Execution
Passive: Ambessa gains Armor Penetration and her Abilities heal her.
Active: Ambessa becomes unstoppable and blinks to the farthest enemy champion in a line. She suppresses the target before slamming them for damage and a Stun.
Other highlights in LoL patch 14.22 including Warwick changes and ARAM Bridge of Progress
Warwick is getting some updates in patch 14.22.
“In addition to getting scarier and physically larger to more closely match his canonical size, he’s getting some quality of life changes that’ll help him have a smoother combat feel with his attacks,” Riot said in the patch notes.
Additionally, the cooldown paradigm on W is being changed to ‘make it easier to cast as a scouting tool’.
Elsewhere, the Summoner’s Rift mid lane and side lane minions will desync their meet timings by more and more as time goes on, which will increase the ability for mid laners to roam into side lanes for a gank while they’re still clearing their waves.
Some tweaks are being made to AD assassin items to make them stronger at their intended purposes, and Statikk Shiv and Yun Tal Wildarrows are being redesigned.
And the Arcane-themed Bridge of Progress ARAM map will drop, boasting new visuals, quests and gameplay twists.
A small lane speedway in the centre of the bridge has been added to give melees/assassins an alternative strategy in the early game, plus there is a speed zone, side-specific rewards for taking inhibitors, some new base brush/barriers.
The biggest addition Bridge of Progress brings, however, are the five unique Nemesis Quests for players to complete.
See more from patch 14.22 on the League of Legends website
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
