Zaansen positions his sword in front of him, nullifying all damage and crowd control effects for 1 second. This would be Zaansen's main straightforward damage tool since his other abilities are mostly defensive. Basically, in practice it would work like this: You auto the enemy and cancel it with Q and immediately Q again, granting you the ability to auto again very quickly. The auto reset portion of this ability is similar to a fighting game mechanic called stance cancelling, which is cancelling the recovery of an attack with a stance and then cancelling the stance into another attack. If someone doesn't know what an Iai stance is, it's when samurai sheathe their sword and hold a defensive stance waiting for the opponent to make their move and then react appropriately with a counter attack. So this is the ability that makes the champion work. Using an empowered ability puts Iai Stance on cooldown. Zaansen's other abilities are empowered when used during Iai Stance. Deactivating Iai Stance resets the auto attack timer and empowers Zaansen's next auto attack with damage and movement speed on hit.

When Iai Stance is active he gains 40% damage reduction and is unable to move or attack. Not sure how that works in the lore but it's more of a gameplay balancing thing. I figured since he is a Darkin he should have some lifesteal but I thought that since he's not as angry as the otherĭarkin he doesn't drain as much blood and thus his lifesteal is weaker. Moving and attacking drains Mind, staying still prevents it from decaying but does not build it up. When Zaansen enters Iai Stance he builds up Mind, a resource that grants Armor, Magic Resistance, and Attack Damage to himself. From stance cancels, to counters and terrain altering abilities, here's a more detailed explanation of his kit:

So basically, my idea is of a bruiser, a calm Darkin samurai who uses a Iaido stance as his main mechanic and is lightly inspired by some fighting game mechanics and characters like Baiken (Guilty Gear) and Yuzuriha (Under Night In-Birth). As far as his visual design goes, the only thing I thought of was a ronin samurai with an open kimono tied around his waist (kinda like Geese Howard has in Tekken 7).

I didn't think too much about the name and I really have no idea but to facilitate this let's call him Zaansen. What made me really develop this idea was Riot tapping into some more nuanced and unique mechanics with Qiyana and Aphelios without fear of making a kit with lots of abilities and variations in those abilities.

I'm not sure if posting ideas for new champions is something you guys do very often here but I have some ideas that I really like and I wanted to share them just for fun.

Samurai iaido stance