Everything You Need to Know About New LoL Champion Locke

When Will Locke Release in LoL?

Locke is set to release on the live servers with LoL Patch 26.13, which is due to release on Wednesday, June 24.

Patch 26.13 is the same patch that the LoL MSI 2026 esports tournament will be played on. However, he will not be enabled for the event.

Locke will also release with a Wild West-themed ‘High Noon’ skin.

Locke Abilities

Passive – Silver Stakes

Locke pins enemies’ souls with his attacks to deal bonus magic damage on-hit, increased based on the opponent’s missing health.

Locke’s passive is what holds his kit together, everything works well with the execute-style ability.

This ability is how Riot will incentivize players to go in and auto-attack and it gives players something to do/look for while his abilities are on cooldown.

Q – Ritual Nails

Locke readies a set of Soul Nails to throw forward, dealing magic damage and marking enemies hit. The Nails apply a slow based on stacks.

Attacking the enemy consumes the Soul Nails, dealing magic damage per stack. It restores a portion of the cooldown and mana for unspent Nails.

This is core ability in Locke’s kit, it can be used as a harassing skill and also plays a key role in his killing pattern.

Locke can stack nails on opponents up to a maximum of three times. Consuming all three then leads to a unique auto-attack animation with a two-handed stab.

Riot wanted to make an assassin that had to set up his burst, and this is how players will prepare their targets.

W – Soul Ignition

Locke releases his own seals, gaining move speed decaying over time.

While this effect is active, he suffers percentage-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 early.

This move essentially sees Locke deal damage to himself in order to gain movespeed and close the gap on his opponents.

Plus, getting to mitigate and heal damage taken allows Locke to dive deep and look for riskier plays, if the W is used correctly.

But of course, using the move and damaging himself is risky in itself, though Locke cannot die to his own W as it deals a portion of his current health.

Also, the colour-change gives a clear indicator to opponents that Locke is about to go in, another step in Riot’s attempt to create a fair assassin that doesn’t feel awful to play against.

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. The cooldown resets on takedown.

Locke has multiple dashes, as is expected for an assassin. And like a lot of assassins, his dash’s cooldown will reset if he gets a kill or assist.

This is also his primary waveclear tool. Locke throws nails through the wave, then dives into the minions and back through them to farm and then return to safety.

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 [executed]. If Locke picks up the artifact, he permanently increases the execution threshold and refunds a portion of his current cooldown for each champion sealed.

Locke’s ultimate is where his kit really becomes a little bit crazy.

The execute gets higher and higher as the game goes on as Locke finishes off opponents, then picks up the artifact.

While this increase isn’t capped, Riot claims it isn’t realistic for players to reach a 100% health threshold for the execute in a normal game. More likely it’ll reach around 10%

Riot’s Design Philosophy Behind Locke

As mentioned prior, Riot wanted to create an assassin who would clealry signal to opponents when they want to go in.

A regular complaint for a lot of LoL players is that assassins like Talon suddenly appear and burst their champion from 100 to 0 without any time to try and outplay the combo.

Riot believe they’ve succeeded in this mission and describe Locke as a middle-tier difficulty assassin — he’s not the hardest to play but there’s still room for skill expression.

For now, he will only work built AP and is most viable in the mid lane, but can work in the jungle too. He could also be played top but only into certain match-ups.

Riot believe his core build will likely be Lichblane, Shadowflame, and Stormsurge, playing into his focus on autoattacks and executing low-health targets.

Riot says Locke will still fall off in the late game, though he may scale better than most assassins thanks to his stacking.

As for his design, Riot confirmed they took a lot of inspiration from anime with many fans making immediate comparisons to Jujutsu Kaisen.

The use of nails is very similar to the ability of Nobara Kugisaki in JJK, while Locke himself somewhat resembles Kento Nanami and Satoru Gojo from the show.

What do you think of Locke’s kit and design? Will he be broken on release? Share your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord.

Meanwhile, the most recent LoL dev update revealed traits are gone from ARAM Mayhem and Ranked 5s are returning.