League of Legends is the kind of game where the developers need to be creative in the way they design a new champion so that it can fill a sort of niche that other champions don’t. To that end, Riot Games may have handily outdone themselves with their newest creation: the League’s ‘slowest marksmen yet’, Jhin.
Don’t take this methodical hunter for a lightweight, his mechanics are built to combo into one another and punish players hard with some diligent planning. His passive, named after his weapon ‘Whisper’, is a perfect example of this:
Jhin’s gun - Whisper - chambers four shots, the last of which always crits and applies extra damage based on a portion of his target’s missing health. After firing all four shots, Jhin takes a moment to reload.
Jhin’s crits deal less damage than normal, and his attack speed doesn’t actually scale with attack speed. Instead, Jhin gains attack damage from any attack speed and crit chance he earns through itemization and runes, while crits give him a burst of movement based on his attack speed.
What that means is that while Jhin will never be a fast shot, attack speed runes and items build towards his criticals, giving him the potential to be a hard-hitting, long-range slayer. Each of Jhin’s abilities contains similarly tricky gimmicks to them.
His Q attack is a grenade that bounces to up to four targets. If it kills any minion on the way, then it does more damage to the next enemies in the chain. His E is a trap that will slow and reveal enemies before exploding. W has a passive in which enemies struck by Jhin’s basic attacks, E trap, or nearby allied champs will be marked. Activating the W will fire a line based shot, damaging all minions and the first champ in the way. If the champ is marked, they will also be rooted. Catching a champ with a trap, rooting them with the W shot, and then finishing punishment with a mix of Q and basic attacks seems like an obvious and devastating combo.
Finally there’s the ultimate, ‘Curtain Call’. Activating Jhin’s R causes him to set up a cone of operation in which he can fire four long distance shots. The first champion hit will be slowed and damaged based on their missing health, with the final shot dealing massive damage.
All in all, Jhin sounds like the kind of champ beginners should stay far, far away from. His abilities rely heavily on build-up and chaining, but it sounds like the player that takes the time to practice and learn Jhin’s nuances will gain a very respectable pay off. There’s no announced release date for him yet, but with so much info revealed, Jhin can probably be expected within the next couple patches.
