Check out my other champions:
- Aerith, The Scrap Genius
- Lor'Mak, The Void Destructor
- Adria & Lianne, The Twin Souls
- Inkha, The Phantom Edge
- Rhus, Lord Of The Swamp
- Draxxar, The Automata Commander
- Amelia, The Heroine
- Jericho, The Mind Of Darkness
Lore[]
A typical Thaal (inspired by Guardians Of Time by Manfred Kielnhofer)
Back in the early days of Runterra, there used to be a group of powerful sorcerers known as the Thaals. Legend has it that the Thaals, beside from their magic, were also great soothsayers. Using only mirrors, the Thaal could look into the future and make extremely accurate predictions about the fate of Valoran. It seemed that every great king and leader in history had consulted a Thaal for at least once in their lives to help them decide on important matters. Mirror worshipping became a religion, and the Thaals had thousands of followers all over Valoran.
Then, for some unknown reasons, the Thaals started to disappear without a trace, leaving many followers with shock and disbelief. By the time the Rune War ended, stories about the Thaals were also lost in time. To this day, scholars still debate on the existence of the Thaals, due to fact that there seemed to be no feasible explanation for their disappearance. Many of them believe that the Thaals were nothing more than a hoax created by scammers in order to deceive believers into donating money and food to them. However, the story is way more terrifying than one could imagine...
Long ago, the Thaals believed that mirrors can be used as portals to travel to realms that are not even known to humans yet. Using the power of alchemy and witchcraft, the Thaals managed to turn conventional mirrors into magical telescopes that enabled them to see strange new worlds. As the Thaals used their mirrors to search for a world with living beings, they came across the Valdrians, an extremely powerful and wise race that lived at the other end of the universe. Not only were the Thaals really shocked to see the Valdrians, they were also extremely surprised to know that the Valdrians were also using mirrors to look for other civilizations across the galaxy.
A friendly relationship was formed between the Thaals and the Valdrians. Using their wisdom and knowledge, the Valdrians helped the human race solve many problems at the time, which the Thaals completely took credits for. The Valdrians also worked with the Thaals in order to create an actual working portal that connects the two worlds, and had succeeded. As the first transportation experiment, the Valdrians sent a painting depicting the sunset view of their world to the Thaals. The Thaals replied by sending a book of human poems to the Valdrians. It was the very first act of diplomacy between the two races, and both of them knew the time for them to meet face-to-face would soon come.
The portal between two worlds, illustrated by Mist Raven
One day, all the Thaals in Valoran suddenly received a distress message from the Valdrians. In the message, the Valdrians explained that their world had been suffering from a world war that had lasted for centuries. By the end of the war, one of the factions had decided to use weapons of mass destruction, which resulted in other factions retaliating with the same method. This means that the Valdrians only had very little time to save the last of their race before their planet’s core heat up and explode. The Valdrians begged the Thaals for mercy, and pleaded them to open the portal to Earth so that some of them can come to Earth as refugees and survive.
Hearing the call from the Valdrian, a group of young Thaals decided to gather all the mirrors they could find to open a massive portal to the world of the Valdrians, hoping to save as much as they can. The Elder Thaals, fearing that the Valdrians would bring their war to the human world, intervened and disconnected the portals before any Valdrians could cross over. The Young Thaals tried to reactivate the portals, but it was too late. They watched in horror as thousands of Valdrians became forever trapped in space and time, while billions of other Valdrians turned into dust when their planets died. Before the vision on the mirrors went blank, the Thaal received the final message from the Valdrians:
“You must, at all cost, stop the Rune War. For the sake of your world, you must not fail like we have.”
The next day, Young Thaals all over Valoran sparked a revolution to overthrow the Elder Thaals, accusing them of genocide. The Elder Thaals, claiming that they had just saved Earth, tried to suppress the revolution, thus starting the Thaal War. Nobody seemed to remembered what the last thing the the Valdrians had taught them – to prevent war by all means necessary. As the Thaal War escaladed, the world was also being ripped apart by the Rune War. In the end, just like the Valdrians, the Thaals have completely destroyed themselves by civil war. During the war, the Grand Thaal Library was set on fire, destroying all evidence about the Thaals and the Valdrians. Consequently, both the Thaals and the Valdrians are now nothing than ashes of the past.
Remnants of a Thaal cathedral, by jorgecarrero
One day, in the foggy morning in Valoran, a strange figure emerged from the remnants of what was once a great Thaal cathedral. The creature, calling himself Klishma, claimed that he might be the last survivor of the entire Valdrian race. It is likely that Klishma is one of the Valdrians that were trapped between dimensions when the Elder Thaals closed the portals. However, nobody, even creature himself could understand how he was able survive after such a long period, and managed to reach Earth as well. The last thing that he could recall is seeing his planet burst into flames. For Klishma, it is not what he concerns about. His goal for now is to try to find his akin, if any of them did survive.
And so, the lonely alien traveled from place to place, asking if anyone had ever seen a Valdrian or a Thaal. Using his magical sphere, Klishma disguised himself as a pilgrim who traveled the world, searching for “The Light” that he has seen countless times in his dreams. During his voyage, he heard stories about the Field Of Justice, and how it was used as a mean to end the Rune War. Klishma was very surprised to know that Runterra did suffer from a world war with the same scale as the war that destroyed the Valdrians’ world, and still managed to stay intact. Looking to find an answer, Klishma traveled to the Institution Of War and in order to see how the humans managed to succeed what the Valdrians have failed.
Upon reaching the Institution Of War, Klishma dropped his disguise and revealed himself to the world for the first time. Klishma’s appearance did attract a great deal of attention. Some people panicked and ran away upon first sight of Klishma. Some came close and kneelt in front of him as if he was a god. Others just stood at distance and look. Despite all the commotion, Klishma quickly familiarized himself with the place, and chose it to be his temporary home. The Summoners, who have already seen all kinds of individuals that come in and out of the Field Of Justice, welcomed Klishma as a friendly guest.
During his stay, Klishma pays countless visits to the library in order to study ancient documents about the Rune War - how it began, its climax, and its end. However, he spends most of his time watching how the Field Of Justice has helped maintaining peace in Valoran. He notices that the type of magic that the Summoners are using is quite similar to one that the Thaals once used on their mirrors. Believing that many other Valdrians like him are still alive somewhere in time and space, Klishma joined League in order to understand the Summoner’s magic. By doing so, he will be able to use it to recreate the mirror portals that the Thaals and the Valdrians had created, hoping to find his akin and restore his race.
Abilities[]
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Strategy[]
I/ Support
- Reflection Of Truth returns pre-mitigated damage taken to the dealer as true damage, so Klishma should be built tanky in order to survive as long as possible and return as much damage as possible.
- The effect of Reflection Of Truth is only visible as the game progresses. This is because the return damage increases based on Klishma's level, and as Klishma purchases more defensive items.
- Sphere Of Mirage is the most important ability in Klishma’s kit. It is both his initiation and disengaging tool. Remember that you can only use the ability for one purpose at a time, so choose wisely. In addition, the sphere can pass through multiple enemies, allowing Klishma to ignore other enemies and focus on the important one
- As an initiation tool, Sphere Of Mirage separate the target from their teammates, allowing your team to focus on that one target, giving you the numbers advantage. Klishma can move around while the orb is returning to him, so he can reposition himself in such a way that his sphere can hit an enemy champion on its way back, allowing him to pull in the enemy with the reactivation.
- As a disengaging tool, Sphere Of Mirage pushes the enemy target away from your teammates, thus allowing them to survive in team fights. During the laning phase, Sphere Of Mirage can be used to push away the enemy Support, so that you and your AD Carry can focus on the enemy’s ADC without trouble.
- Due to the fact that Sphere Of Mirage deals AoE damage, it can be used purely for damage, though it is not very effective without an AP-oriented build.
- During team fights, Klishma can attempt to dive deep into the enemy’s formation and use his Sphere Of Mirage to grab an enemy champion in the back line. Most of the time, these are the enemy’s carries, or those with low health and are no longer be able to participate in the fight. .
- Glass Armor is another ability in Klishma’s kit that serves two opposing function: offense and defense. It gives his ally Reflection Of Truth, which is the damage part. It also gives a shield and damage reduction, which allows him and his teammates to absorb more damage.
- Glass armor encourages Klishma to buy items that give health, so that his shield will be stronger in order to protect his teammates. The damage reduction given after the shield breaks further confirms his role as a tanky support champion.
- Glass Armor has a lot of uses, which makes it useful depending on the situation and the target that it is used on.
- If Klishma uses Glass Armor on himself, he would give himself more survivability as well as more damage, which is suitable for 1v1 situations. If Klishma is initiated on or get caught by the enemy team, Glass Armor should buy him enough time to stall his death and wait for backup. However, using the ability solely for yourself is not efficient, due to the reduced duration of effects.
- If used on a tanky teammate, Reflection Of Truth's return damage would be utilized to its fullest potential, since tanky champions are more likely to survive for its full duration. They are also more likely to be the focus of the enemy, so they would guarantee to take the most damage and return the highest amount of damage. The only inefficiency is the damage reduction, since these champions are already stockpiling tanky items anyway.
- If used on a squishy teammate, Glass Armor will prevent them from being bursted down with the enormous shield and the damage mitigation buff. If used this way, Reflection Of Truth cannot be made use of, due to your teammate’s squishiness.
- Shattered Reality is Klishma’s main source of crowd control beside from Sphere Of Mirage. It stuns the enemy as long as they do not take more than 4 basic attacks from you or your teammates, so be sure to use all your damaging abilities on them first before finishing them of by breaking the glass
- Shattered Reality has great synergy with Sphere Of Mirage, and these two abilities should be used together. Here are some examples:
- Initiation (against champions hiding behind minions): Sphere Of Mirage (pull enemy towards you) -> Shattered Reality. You should cast Shattered Reality while Sphere Of Mirage is travelling so that it will hit the enemy champion as they are being pulled towards you.
- Initiation (against champions not being blocked by minions): Shattered Reality -> Sphere Of Mirage (pull enemy towards you). Since Shattered Reality can travel a further distance, the enemy will be stunned for a longer duration, which makes them easy targets for a follow-up Sphere Of Mirage.
- Push back combo (close range): Shattered Reality -> Walk behind stunned enemy -> Sphere Of Mirage (push enemy towards your teammates). This combo is quite similar to
Alistar’s Q + W combo, though the range of the abilities may make it hard to perform. - Surprise initiation: Sphere Of Mirage (push away the enemy in the front) -> Shattered Reality (hit the enemy in the back). This is very useful against enemies with a lot of mobility, who can jump right back in the moment you push them out.
- Double back (peeling combo): Sphere Of Mirage (push enemy away from you) -> Shattered Realty
- Cosmic Glitz is Klishma’s team fighting ability. Aside from the AoE damage, Cosmic Glitz also blinds all enemy looking at him, making them unable to use basic attacks on him. Against a physical damage-heavy team, Cosmic Glitz would have a tremendous impact, making the enemy unable to maximize their damage output while your team still can.
- If the enemy sees Klishma using Cosmic Glitz, they will probably try to back off and re-engage when it is down. Klishma can use Sphere Of Mirage and Shattered Reality to prevent them from running away and start a fight with brute force.
II/ Mid lane
- As a mid-lane mage, Klishma excels at picking up over-extending enemies from a decent distance, as well as being able to deal single-target burst damage.
- During the laning phase, Klishma should focus on farming, and occasional poke / harass with Sphere Of Mirage. Despite having a lot of hard CC, Klishma is very vulnerable while his abilities are on cooldown. This could open a window for the enemy jungler to jump in and gank you. You should save your abilities to peel yourself or to aid an allied gank.
- Although Shattered Reality is a good disabling ability and deals quite some damage, Klishma would not have enough attack speed to be able to proc the secondary damage without the help of a teammate, usually a junglers. Thus, Klishma is very reliant on roams and ganks from his teammates.
- If the enemy is not hiding behind creeps, you can hit them with Shattered Reality, and make sure to combine with Sphere Of Mirage for the full-damage combo.
- Without any health items, Glass Armor can still shield Klishma or his teammates by a fair amount due to the AP scaling. Be noted that Klishma does not have a lot of AP early game, so his shield would not be strong enough to protect him during aggressive trades.
- During team fights, Klishma should only use Sphere Of Mirage specifically for damage only. If Klishma uses Sphere Of Mirage to push away a tanky enemy, it would not be able to travel the full distance and thus, would not be able to damage all enemies. If used to damage the enemy’s back line, Klishma faces the risk of being engaged upon by the enemy’s front line.
- Another problem is that it would be too dangerous for Klishma to walk into the middle of the enemy team to use his ultimate, even with the help from Glass Armor. If Klishma somehow manages to survive, the total amount of AoE damage, as well as the blind on the entire enemy team would be devastating.
III/ Top Lane
- As a top laner, Klishma can either go for a full-tank or a AP Bruiser build, which both fits his play style perfectly. Despite being a tank, Klishma can afford to go for one or two AP items, since his abilities have rather good scaling with them. Other than that, his laning phase is pretty much similar to a normal top lane tank: just farm, and then use your hard crowd control abilities when your teammates give you a gank.
IV/ Jungling
- As a jungler, Klishma boasts very high survivability with Glass Armor’s active. In addition, Klishma’s main source of damage would come from Reflection Of Truth, which helps him deal consistent damage to the entire monster camp.
- If you are playing offensively, then you should focus on ganking. Klishma gets his full initiation combo upon reaching level 2, so he can go for very early cheesy ganks. The amount of gold acquired from kills and assists should help Klishma buy more items to clear the jungle faster, while helping his team tremendously.
- Regardless, Klishma’s clearing time is rather poor due to the reliance on Sphere of Mirage and Reflection Of Truth. Getting a first complete item would improve his clearing time by a great deal. Furthermore, jungle Klishma is more oriented towards late game, which means that his early game must be sacrificed.
Development[]
Howdy. It’s your partner, Peter from Vietnam.
It has been several months since the long-awaited Taric rework came to League. As I turned on my computer that morning, YouTube was filled with gameplays and spotlight videos of the reworked Taric. Social networks were also full of comments and tweets talking about how cool he was then. Despite not being a Taric player, you have to admit that the old Taric did have serious problems: His visuals were terrible; his gameplay was linear and extremely boring; his skins were basically the classic skin with different colors on. Thus, it was quite exciting to see him getting reworked for the first time.
It seemed that Riot themselves had completely forgotten about Taric for years before they dug him out of the trash, dusted him up, and gave him a new fabulous look– something that was supposed to be done long, long ago. Wanting to join the hype, I went to YouTube and watch a few videos in order to find out what this new Taric has to offer. There was this random click bait video about the old Taric, which I thought was quite interesting. What really caught my attention was when the old Taric said one of his famous quotes:
“You are nothing more than glass, waiting to be smashed” – 
Taric, The Gem Knight
In case you did not notice, the quote is actually a reference to the term “glass cannon”, where you for a full damage build with no defensive items, which makes you really easy to kill. This, in turn, reminded me of an old saying: “Never judge a book by its cover”. In this context, it is necessary to point out that although some champions may look squishy, they are actually rather tanky. Examples include 
Zac, which is basically a giant blob, and 
Amumu, who is a 3000-year-old mummy. Both of them may seem weak and fragile, but they are actually one of the best tanks in the game.
It may not seem like it, but by that moment, I already had the concepts for my next project: I am going to create a Tank champion made from glass…well, mirrors to exact. As I conducted some research on the Internet, I found out that mirrors have countlessly been mentioned in almost every nation’s culture. In good ways, mirrors were once considered the symbol of novelty, and that they can be used to detect vampires. In the opposite direction, breaking a mirror would bring 7 years of bad luck, and that a mourning family should cover all the mirrors in the house in order not to attract evil spirits. As for history, Archimedes constructed a sunlight concentrator made from mirrors to defend his home town from the Roman’s battleships. The mirror was also mentioned in literature with the infamous phrase “Mirror mirror on the wall”.
Having known all that, I was quite worried about his lore: Since my champion is the representation of multiple cultural references, I must make sure that his lore must somehow manage to connect those references together, while being a good story itself. I knew it would take forever just to write his lore, and since I had no ideas in mind at that time, I decided to begin designing his kit first and come back to the lore later whenever I have more inspiration.
Here are the standards that I have set for this project:
- The champion is a support tank, and must have at least 2 different types of hard CC in his kit and/or a shield.
- The champion’s kit offer versatility, which means that he can also be used in solo lanes or jungle (like Tahm Kench)
- The champion must have some unique mechanics that makes him exciting to play as a support, while allowing him to set up good plays (like Thresh and Bard).
- The champion must follow the theme of a “glass creature”. Other deviations include a “light bender”, a “crystal alien”, or a “harbinger”.
At the beginning of the development stage, it was truly a mess. Like I said before, designing a champion is like playing a jigsaw puzzle – you have to try to find the right pieces and put them together to create a picture. At that time, I have pieces everywhere, but I did not even know what the picture should be: scrap abilities, champion concepts, small paragraphs of unfinished lore, small references. In many occasions, I just wanted to forcefully glue everything together, post it on the Internet, and move on to the next project. Designing champions has never been an easy thing, and it was the time I truly experienced such difficulty.
Luckily, inspiration did come to me, probably from one of the weirdest places. I was watching this documentary on TV about the ancient Mayans, when I saw this ‘carving’ depicting the image of a man probably sitting inside a spaceship. What really is surprising is that these carvings are nearly 2000 years old. It sparked the question of whether the history of human, or even our very own existence, was owed to the aliens. If yes, will they ever come back? The answer is still debatable, but the idea for my next champion is clear: He is going to be a Mirrormancer.
So, I went back to the story: There used to be a group of prayers that uses mirrors in order to connect to their goods and receive teachings from them. These teachings, in turn, helped Valoran come out of its early chaotic ages and shaped its future. One day, it is revealed that these gods are just aliens that disguised themselves as divine beings to make it easier to convey their teachings to the world of Runterra. Their world had been through a war that nearly devastated the entire planet. With all the things that they have done for humanity, the aliens hoped that the humans would allow them to come to Valoran and have a new start. Instead, the human were furious for being deceived for such a long time and refused to help. The aliens had no choice but to abandon their home and scatter aimlessly around the universe. One of them did manage to reach earth, and joined League (for some unknown reasons).
Or at least that is what the lore should be. With the champion biography in place, it did not take long for me to define the champion’s main theme and his abilities. I then came back to his lore and rewrote the whole thing. I was really surprised to see how smooth things turned out to be. I guess I was a bit too impatient, but things did come out better than expected. With the introduction of Klishma, I finally managed to build out a proper team composition, which I am really excited about. Designing champions has always been my joy, and I would continue to design champions as long as League still lasts.
Hope you will enjoy this piece of work, and I will see you again in the next project.
Trivia[]
- The name Klishma is a deviation from Krishna, a well-known god commonly worshipped by the Hindus. Some may claim that Klishma also comes from Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fortune in Hinduism.
- Klishma sees Ryze as an admirable figure, who sacrificed his life to keep the world safe, while not being corrupted by the power that he holds.
- Klishma finds great sympathy towards Zilean, who has also lost his home to war.
- The magical sphere that Klishma uses to fight the enemy is actually a multi-purpose device created by the Valdrians in order to help them complete many tasks in their life. Most of the functions are no longer usable due to the damages done to the sphere over the years, which Klishma could not fix. One of the few functions that can still be used is gravity manipulation and light bending, which Klishma uses to fight against the enemy.
Patch history[]
Version 1.1 (December 31rd,2016):Changes made to suit Klishma's role as a support, while coping with the season 7 updates.
Innate: Light Refraction (Old)
- Old effect (removed): Klishma becomes camouflaged after 5 seconds out of combat.
- New effect: Klishma returns a percentage of damage taken to the dealer as true damage
W: Glass Armor
- Removed: Passive effect (became Klishma's new innate)