“An ADC for ADC enjoyers”: League of Legends devs talk Yunara

League of Legends developers at Riot Games answered questions regarding the newly revealed champion, Yunara. Her lead designer, Maxwell "Riot Yelough" Perlman, shared more about Yunara and gave us a peek at the driving reasons behind her gameplay.

First, Yelough emphasized that the main goal for Yunara's design was to make a "traditional marksman." This means rewarding having good fundamentals as an AD carry: spacing, orb walking, and positioning.

He pointed out that the recent marksman releases have either been ability-based, like Smolder and Kai'Sa, or have unique aspects of their kit, like Zeri, Samira, Nilah, and Aphelios. Yunara is their effort to move away from these unorthodox designs.

Due to her conventional design, Yelough expects her to slot in perfectly into the game's ecosystem. She has good synergy with engage supports and some enchanters, so her release won't be as game-warping as champions like Senna. He also said that she doesn't work well with mage supports, so those won't be any more obnoxious than they already are.

Yelough does hope that Yunara gets played and appreciated across all skill levels, though. "I don't personally think she has too much skewing her fundamentally towards or away from any particular skill bracket - she is an ADC for ADC enjoyers," he said.

"Yunara is fully intended for the botlane and we do not wish to see her in any other roles," said Yelough. They do expect players to bring her to all roles when she launches, though, as players do with new champions. However, she will be tuned and balanced as a botlaner.

He also said that Yunara scales "almost entirely" with gold, so having more experience on the solo lanes won't do her any extra favors. Yunara also lacks wave clear, especially in the early game.

Yunara's passive gives her some magic damage in her kit, causing her damage profile to be a little mixed. Riot Yelough stressed that "even if the player is feeling like they are 'losing value' with [Lord Dominik's Regards], magic damage is still generally better than physical damage that is benefiting from armor penetration."

We also asked how other champions interact with Yunara's kit. According to Yelough, Viego gets her base kit and can stack her Q. As for Sylas, he currently gets Yunara's Q buff for the entire duration of the ultimate, but they "are still debating what to do."

In terms of scrapped versions and aspects of Yunara's kit, Yelough has several anecdotes.

"One of the funnier abilities we tried that was very cool but we ultimately went away from was that her passive was sorta similar to the sixth sense rune - she would passively keep track of enemies she had seen/could see recently and if someone she had not recently seen came within like screen-edge distance of her she would reveal them — like she had an actual 6th sense / precognition," Yelough said. "It was neat, but getting the rules to feel good and fair was quite hard and ultimately was not a spell we found a lot of people really enjoyed using."

She is expected to hit the PBE server on June 25, 2025. This means she will most likely be on live servers by LoL Patch 25.14 on July 16, 2025.

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