Locke, LoL's Newest Champion: Abilities, Role, Release Date and More

This is his bread-and-butter spell. The nails signal to opponents that Locke can come in and kill, and more stacks mean more damage. Landing all three triggers a special animation — a big red stab. One or two stacks still reward bonus damage.

W — Soul Ignition

Locke releases his own seals gaining Move Speed decaying over time. While this effect is active, he suffers % health true damage per second but heals back a portion of damage taken plus an additional amount based on missing health and time passed. The seals remain unbound for a few seconds and can be Recast to end early.

The form also grants attack speed, letting Locke lean on his passive, and stores a portion of all damage taken — including the self-damage and damage from enemies — as grey health that recasting partially heals back. It can be used offensively or defensively, but it carries real risk: lowering his own health can leave him vulnerable to being bursted down. The W cannot kill Locke on its own, since it deals current-health damage.

E — Ashen Pursuit

Locke blinks to a location, dealing magic damage around him. After, his next attack dashes to his target dealing magic damage to all enemies in his path. Each of these hits consume Soul Nails. Cooldown resets on takedown.

Squad5 likened it to Ekko's E. Both portions consuming nails make it his primary wave-clear pattern — throw the nails through a wave, blink behind it, then dash back through — and let him reach marked targets he could not otherwise get to in melee range. The takedown reset is a classic assassin escape valve that rewards aggressive plays.

R — Purgatory

Locke kicks a binding artifact to a location that opens on arrival, shooting chained Soul Nails at enemies in the area dealing magic damage and slowing. Marked Champions that are brought below a threshold are pulled inside and killed. If a Champion is executed, the duration of the binding is reset on other affected Champions. After a few seconds, the artifact seals itself and is left on the ground if a Champion was sealed. If Locke picks up the artifact, he permanently increases the execution threshold and refunds a portion of his current cooldown for each Champion sealed.

The execute does not care who lands the finishing blow, Squad5 noted, which lets Locke hand his whole team kill pressure in fights rather than picking off one target at a time. That stacking execute is uncapped. To temper expectations, Squad5 confirmed the increase is currently half a percent per sealed champion, so a strong game might realistically add somewhere north of ten percent to the threshold rather than anything approaching a full health bar.

A Demacian occultist

Locke's lore leans into moral grey. He is the progeny of Demacian occultists, born "into lies and hypocrisy," and trained to hunt demons before concluding that humanity is the real source of darkness in Runeterra.

"Demons get a bad rap, but the real monsters? People"

As Zhao put it, Locke is "not as black and white" as a typical demon hunter — he exorcises evil with style, while trying to root out its true cause.

His look reflects the cost of that work. Riot's artists tied his white shoes and misty cloak to a slow calcification: the power he wields is gradually turning parts of his body to ash, starting from the bottom up. The team also gave him a casket worn on his back — a key silhouette read that makes him instantly recognizable, which matters for an assassin who can spring from a bush — and a glasses reveal that exposes his striking eyes when he means business.

Filling a gap for assassin players

The studio framed Locke as a deliberate answer to an underserved audience. The previous assassin released was Naafiri back in 2023, and according to Zhao, the data showed the class steadily losing play share to other subclasses. "We felt like there was a gap for assassin players, and that also kind of bore out in the data," he said. Riot is positioning Locke for the high-octane, high-action midlane crowd, with a visual identity Zhao described as more "Dante-esque, Vergil-esque" — stylish, irreverent, and action-oriented.

One of the central design goals was counterplay. Zhao acknowledged that assassins can be frustrating to face, especially when fed, and said the team wanted Locke's burst to "have to set up" through a few steps rather than arriving as an instant kill.

The design conflict that defined his development, Squad5 said, was keeping Locke trackable and honest for opponents while still letting him succeed as a real assassin. Locke also carries a secondary skirmisher profile thanks to the attack speed and on-hit elements baked into his kit.

A High Noon launch skin and modest pro-play expectations

Locke debuts alongside a launch skin from the High Noon line, sharing the thematic with Akshan, who is also getting a High Noon treatment in the same patch. The molten-nail look fit the Wild West railroad theme, and Zhao said the team is shifting its approach so that a champion's launch skin is chosen as the best thematic fit for the character rather than to support a broader event moment.

As for competitive viability, Squad5 was measured. He hopes Locke's differentiating elements help him fare better than most assassins, who rarely see consistent pro play, but said he would guess Locke will not be a high priority in competitive — landing the occasional pick here and there rather than a contested ban. Locke was designed for midlane and should be a medium-difficulty assassin familiar to that audience. Jungle is workable thanks to a decent clear, though his low CC makes for weak ganks, while toplane is likely a losing proposition against bruisers. It is also very unlikely that Locke will be enabled for MSI, as most of the time champions that just got released are disabled for the first few weeks in pro-play.

Squad5 also pushed back on the idea that Locke is a hyperscaling champion. He expects Locke to scale a little better than most assassins, since a strong game keeps raising his ultimate's execute threshold and makes kills easier to secure. But he stressed that Locke still carries the class weaknesses that hold assassins back — opponents who grow too tanky or hit hard enough — so that edge stops well short of a true late-game powerhouse.

Riot has been candid that it is being cautious with his balance state, working closely with its analytics team on day-by-day win-rate contingencies for his first week. Locke goes live on June 24 with Patch 26.13.