League of Legends - Shyvana Mechanics Preview

For this mechanics preview, we wanted to focus less on the individual abilities of our upcoming champion and talk about the skillset and character flow of Shyvana, the Half Dragon, as a whole.

Shyvana is a melee champion that heavily rewards aggression. She does so by utilizing a system called Dragon’s Blood, a resource that accrues anytime Shyvana lands an auto-attack. Once her Dragon’s Blood is full, she can unleash it to transform into a dragon, giving her substantial buffs, ability enhancements and some upfront damage. While in dragon form, Shyvana’s Dragon’s Blood is slowly consumed, though she can continue auto-attacking to extend the duration of the Dragon Form and maximize her damage output with each use.

It’s also worth mentioning that Shyvana’s ultimate has no cooldown, but can only be used when her reserve of Dragon’s Blood is full. The right set of circumstances can allow a skilled player to transform much more often than other would otherwise be possible.

In addition, all of Shyvana’s abilities also have benefits that trigger when she auto-attacks. This is to differentiate her from the “melee caster†paradigm embodied by some other characters, making her play somewhere between an Attack Damage carry and a fighter.

Simply put, Shyvana is for players who like any of the following:

-Offensive, aggressive playstyles
-Melee carries or fighters
-The idea of being a super-rad dragon

We think this wantonly aggressive playstyle is something we haven’t seen previously on the Fields of Justice. It’s an exciting opportunity for players to experience a new way to play League of Legends.