9 Abilities That Were Removed from League of Legends

What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy! So you guys loved the 10 Abilities You Might Not Know Existed video so much that we decided to do even more digging and find some more awesome abilities that you probably didn’t know were in the game at some point. To be honest these abilities are even cooler than the ones in the last video, but keep in mind most are from Alpha or even pre-Alpha so there isn’t much in the way of video footage of them. We managed to dig up some information and screenshots though that gives us a really good feel for how each one worked. Some of you might remember or know about these, but they should be pretty new for the most of you so we’re really excited to bring them to you. Remember if you like the video hit that like button, and if you don’t hit the dislike. The first ability in our blast from the past is pretty appropriate because it’s for Zilean. The ability was called Recall: Zilean channels temporal energy to refresh an ally’s ability. This was the original version of what turned into his Rewind, and yes you heard that right. Rather than resetting his own cooldowns, he could reset the cooldown of an allied champion’s ability. This definitely would change Zilean’s feel a lot because he’s balanced around his ability to reset his own cooldowns, so by himself he’d probably be a lot weaker. But can you imagine how game-breaking could be with some characters? One of the best things about this ability is how you could create a team composition to really take advantage of it. Riot would probably balance it to not affect Ultimate abilities, but there are still some crazy powerful QWE abilities in the game that could be totally insane when refreshed. Any champion with a long CC would be disgustingly powerful with that ability refreshed. Morgana bind for 6 seconds anyone? And if you needed more damage, maybe refresh Veigar’s Dark Matter or Viktor’s Death Ray. Things would get real interesting with Recall still in the game, but it’s probably a good thing that it’s gone. Next up is Soraka’s old Ultimate, Purify. This was an active ability that cleansed all debuffs and restored a large amount of health to an allied unit. It never made it past Alpha, but to be honest we think it’s probably a more fair Ultimate that her current one! Soraka is so powerful because she can save her team no matter how far away on the map they are. Her global heal is a huge clutch play and can swing a fight with little to no effort on Soraka’s part aside from timing it. On the other hand, this ability would be way more powerful in lane and would make her an awesome niche pick to counter high single target burst or keep her carry alive through debuffs. It would also have a range on it, so Soraka would be forced to remain near the carries she wanted to protect, which puts her in danger too. It would really change the dynamic of how she works and fits into the meta at the moment, but I think this would be a really interesting piece of her kit if Riot decided to bring it back. And let’s be honest, with the changes to Quicksilver Sash, AD Carries could really use a way to bring up their survivability again versus those pesky Zed Ultimates. Annie’s old W Ghastly Shield is next on our list, and in all honestly it’s not actually much of a change compared to her current W Molten Shield. We don’t really know whether this ability was a resistance boost like Molten Shield or if it reduced the damage she took. What this ability actually shows us is that Annie was originally not a fire mage - instead she was an evil summoner who used spirits to attack and protect. I think it’s probably a good thing that Riot decided to turn Annie into a fire mage because it freed up that design space for other champions that want to interact with spirits, like Yorick for example, but it could have potentially been pretty cool anyway. There’s even talk that the spirits that materialized to protect Annie are her dead parents. Pretty spooky. Kayle is a champion that has been changed quite a lot, and you can see why when you hear about one of her old abilities, Eye for an Eye. This ability was an active that caused Kayle to deal damage in an area of effect around her for all the damage she takes. We really like the sound of this ability because it definitely gives Kayle that vengeful, furious angel feeling, but it was probably too strong overall. There’s a limit to how much damage Kayle can reflect because she’d die from taking so much damage anyway, but it could potentially really punish a team for attacking her, which is a pretty feel-bad situation for a game. It’s quite awkward to have to take damage to deal damage too, which is one of the reasons Riot decided it needed to be changed. Champions need to feel consistent, and this ability would be really hit or miss, so it was removed in V.09.22.16. We’re doubling up on Zilean today as we talk about his old Ultimate next, Time Twister. It read: Zilean unleashes an area of effect debuff on enemy units in a single location. Every 2.5 seconds, Time Twister stuns targets for 1 second while dealing damage. This ability sounds pretty broken, being able to keep multiple targets locked down with stuns every couple seconds while also dealing damage. It actually sounds a lot like a combination between Viktor’s W and Ultimate, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a bit of inspiration wasn’t taken from Zilean’s Time Twister Ultimate. It’s far more balanced in terms of Viktor though, because it’s two abilities for the same effect as Zilean’s single Ultimate, and it’s still not as powerful because Viktor can only stun once, after augmenting his W. Time Twister was definitely too powerful for a champion that could already deal huge AoE damage with his Time Bombs, so the change to his current Ultimate Chronoshift was a good decision by Riot. In my opinion Chronoshift suits him way better because it both plays more on the fact that he’s a time-based champion while also making him more viable as a support, without losing any power in the process. Turning back time to save an ally is still powerful, just not as ridiculous as an AoE damage chain-stun Ultimate! We’re actually going to double down on Kayle as well, but before that let’s talk about Tryndamere’s old W, Mighty Cleave. Tryndamere swings his sword in an arc, dealing attack damage to nearby enemies and slowing them down for a duration. Keep in mind that at this time, Tryndamere still had the same dash ability that deals damage to all targets in his path. That means rather than one ability that deals AoE damage and lets him keep up with escaping enemies, he had two! Tryndamere could deal with multiple targets just as well as he could with duelling a single target. His passive let him gain health for killing minions, and even more health for killing champions. He also gained attack speed and movement speed for killing units. So essentially he could use his dash and cleave to quickly clear minion waves to stack up high on health, movement speed and attack speed, and then turn all that power on the enemy laner. You’d think with all that power there would have to be some compromise right? Nope, he could still go Invulnerable with his Ultimate, and he’d still gain critical strike increases as his health dropped lower. Kinda insane from a balance perspective, so he was changed to be a bit fairer, reducing his overall damage by removing Mighty Cleave and replacing it with Mocking Shout. The first passive on the list is the second Kayle ability, called Vengeance. It was added in a slight remake in patch V.09.25.21 as an ability called Holy Fervor. It gave Kayle and all nearby allied champions 10% bonus attack speed. If an allied champion died while under the effects of Holy Fervor, Kayle’s attack speed would be further increased by 20% as she attempted to avenge them, and it stacked for each death. Now you might think that sounds pretty crazy, but Riot went even further. In a later patch, V0.9.25.24, her attack speed amplification was increased further, to 25% per stack, and her Q reckoning had it’s damage increased by 25% if she had stacks. Holy Fervor wasn’t a badass enough name for such a powerful passive ability, so Riot renamed it to Vengeance at this point… and then they changed it back again around 10 patches later. It wasn’t until V1.0.0.87 that Holy Fervor was finally changed and the Vengeance mechanic was removed altogether from Kayle, replaced with an ability that converted her AD to AP and vice versa. Vengeance was an incredibly powerful ability, especially for a passive, and although it gave some unique flavor to Kayle’s character, it seems like something that could never really be balanced to play fairly. It also rewarded Kayle players for letting their allies dies if they were fed, which was not really ideal for a champion that should be saving them with her Ultimate. Overall Vengeance was a cool mechanic, but one that didn’t really mesh that well in a team game. Before Tristana had her Rocket Jump, she actually had another ability that altered her auto-attacks called Draw A Bead. Sound familiar? It’s now her passive! It originally caused Tristana to aim more carefully, increasing her attack range but slowing her movement speed. This is interesting because it gave Tristana the ability to outrange most other ADCs, at the cost of her mobility. It was quite dangerous to use though, because enemies could use that timing to dash on top of her and take her out of a fight. It’s important to be able to stay mobile, so Riot improved the ability by removing the slow component leaving Draw A Bead permanently active. Between using her Q for attack speed and having the range boost from Draw A Bead, Tristana was incredibly weak. Although this definitely made Tristana a solid champion, it also meant that she essentially had one less ability than other champions, which was a little bit boring from a players perspective. Riot eventually corrected this by adding Rocket Jump and shifted Draw A Bead to her passive, where it has remained ever since. In Tristana’s mini rework it was updated to affect new parts of her kit, but essentially it’s the same old range increase it always used to be. Last but definitely not least is Soraka’s original passive, Consecration. To explain the original form of this passive, I need to explain her original kit. Her Q was Starcall which remained relatively unchanged between release and her rework, damaging nearby enemies and reducing their magic resist. Her W was Bless, providing damage reduction and health restoration to target allied unit. Her E was called Wish, and restored mana to a friendly unit. Her original Ultimate at this point was Purify, which we already covered. Her original passive, Consecration, increased the damage of Starcall, the duration that the damage reduction on Bless gave, and reduced the cooldown of Wish so she could restore allies mana more frequently. It scaled up at level 6/11/16, increasing those bonuses and reductions. On release, Bless was changed to give armor to the friendly healed unit, and was renamed to Astral Blessing. Wish was renamed to Infuse, and the name Wish was instead given to her new Ultimate - the global heal that has been the core part of Soraka’s kit since release. In the June 19 2009 patch, Consecration was reworked to give a magic resist aura to nearby allies. Increased magic resist isn’t a particularly interesting passive but to be honest the original Consecration didn’t really make much sense. Why bother to have a passive that buffs your other abilities when you could have the abilities scale in that way by themselves? It made a lot of sense to me to change Consecration into a magic resist buff for your team, and it was pretty powerful in this form on release. An Aegis of the Legion passive from the start of the game was super cool way to defend against multiple-AP champions on the enemy team, but eventually it was removed and replaced by the original form of her current passive Salvation. Instead of offering movement speed though, it used to make her restore more health or mana based on how much health or mana the target was missing. So there you have it, 9 awesome abilities that were removed from League of Legends. What was your favorite ability? Did you see anything you wish was still in the game? Make sure you let us know in the comment section below. That’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like, subscribe if you want, thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!