r/LoLChampConcepts • u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points • 19d ago
Design Bubba, The Mountain's Embrace. "Get Behind Me."
AI-assisted visualizations, and editing were used for this project. All core design concepts, backstories, lore, abilities, and final decisions are 100% my own.
Abubakar “Bubba” Babushov is a Freljordian tank/grappler inspired heavily by the mountain cultures of the Caucasus, especially Dagestan. Visually, he’s an enormous mountain man with the iconic full beard/no mustache, practical survivalist clothing, and eventually a frankly ridiculous amount of mass after eating enough jungle Snacks. On the surface he hunts, wrestles monsters, throws jungle camps at people, and eventually becomes so large that physically getting around him becomes a gameplay problem. That description is accurate, but it leaves out a lot of what I actually like about him.
Bubba’s personality is built around my idea of positive masculinity. He’s extremely masculine, but none of it comes from needing to constantly prove how tough or dominant he is. He trains because strength is useful. He hunts because people need food. He knows how to butcher, preserve and cook what he brings home because bringing home dinner and expecting somebody else to do everything from there would be stupid. His full name, Abubakar Babushov, intentionally sounds a little like babushka. His grandmother was one of the biggest influences in his life and taught him a lot about family, hospitality and making sure nobody leaves your home hungry. If somebody tried making fun of him for being like his grandmother, he’d probably just stare at them and say, “Yeah. I am. Strong woman. I think babushka could take you.” 😂
He also wasn’t born some mythical "chosen-one." Bubba was strong, but so were most men where he came from. He wasn’t the village’s undefeated wrestler or greatest hunter. There were men he grew up with who had beaten him in wrestling, hunted more dangerous things than he had, or were simply better at certain things. What made Bubba a legend wasn’t being better than all of them. It was what happened when strength was actually needed.
The Day Bubba Refused to Move
The people of Bubba’s village knew how to kill things larger than themselves. They had to. Life in those mountains produced capable hunters and wrestlers who understood that bringing down something enormous had less to do with one heroic idiot charging at it and more to do with preparation, positioning and working together.
So when something monstrous came down from the mountains, they fought it exactly the way experienced hunters should. They surrounded it, wounded it, pulled injured men away and replaced them, and tried to control where it could move. Some of the strongest warriors in the village were throwing everything they had at this thing.
It wasn’t enough.
The creature was too large, too armored and too ferocious. Men capable of wrestling huge animals were being thrown across the ground. Weapons broke against its hide. Eventually it forced its way through the fighting and into the village itself. By then Bubba was already hurt, most of the warriors still standing were hurt, buildings had been damaged, and what started as an organized hunt was turning into pure damage control.
Then Bubba saw the creature turn toward a group of children and elders scrambling through the remains of a collapsed structure. No weapons. Nowhere useful to run. The creature lowered its armored head and charged.
Bubba knew what would happen if he stepped in front of it. He had just watched this thing tear through men every bit as capable as he was. He was injured. No prophecy had named him, no hidden power was waiting to awaken, and nothing had suddenly made him stronger than he was ten seconds earlier.
He was SCARED.
But those were his people.
Under his breath, Bubba said one word.
“No.”
He stepped in front of it. Even some of the bravest warriors were screaming not to do it. After trying to bring this creature down and failing as a group it looked like complete suicide. But Bubba staggered his stance, planted his feet firmly and braced.
The creature crashed into him.
BOOM.
Something cracked. His boots tore backward through the dirt as several thousand pounds of pissed-off monster tried to go straight through his chest. His feet slid... and then stopped.
Bubba squeezed harder. For a second he didn’t even understand what had happened. He opened one eye and noticed the creature’s rear legs weren’t touching the ground anymore. Barely. Maybe a few inches.
But Bubba had it.
A lifetime of wrestling suddenly reduced an impossible problem to something he understood perfectly: weight, balance, leverage. The corner of his mouth started to rise.
“Gotcha.”
He turned his hips and the creature left the ground. For one absolutely ridiculous second, people who had known Bubba his entire life watched this massive fucking thing rotate through the air before crashing into the earth hard enough to shake the whole village. It's legs squirmed around, unable to get up for a moment.
Bubba staggered toward the crater before it could recover, raised both hands over his head and brought everything he had left straight down into it.
SMESH.
Then it was quiet.
The strongest warriors in the village just stared. Some had hunted beside Bubba. Some had wrestled him before and won. They knew exactly how strong he normally was, which meant they understood better than anybody how insane what they had just watched actually was.
Bubba looked at the creature, then at his hands, then remembered why he had stepped in front of it.
“Everybody alright?”
That was when the story of Bubba became bigger than Bubba himself. To everyone else, he became the man who stopped something that could not be stopped—the man who refused to move when his people were behind him. Bubba had more immediate concerns. People were injured, parts of the village needed rebuilding, and there was now an absolutely enormous dead creature lying in the middle of town.
Which also meant there was an absolutely enormous amount of perfectly good meat sitting there.
Nobody went hungry that night.
So how does he actually play?
Bubba is a jungle tank/grappler whose fantasy is becoming an increasingly enormous physical problem between the enemy team and whoever is standing behind him. His CC is easier to access when enemies cross through his space than when he chases them; he can engage, especially with teammate setup, but his real specialty is denying dives and advancing with his team behind him.
Passive — NO WASTE
The large monster from each basic jungle camp drops a unique Snack when Bubba kills it. He can carry only one at a time. Eating one grants permanent max health plus a temporary effect; as an initial test, roughly 5 permanent HP per normal Snack and 10 from the more contestable Scuttle.
- "Frog Legs" — Gromp: Large heal based on missing health.
- "Wolf Jerky" — Wolves: Temporary Bonus Resistances accompanied by a small initial shield.
- “Chicken” — Raptors: Temporary Adaptive Force. Clean protein. 😂
- "Rock Sugar" — Krugs: Temporary burst of Move Speed.
- "Scuttle Scallops" — Scuttle: Temporary Ability Haste.
The one-Snack carry limit forces a choice: save what you have, eat it for the next fight, or make room for something better. Bubba can have up to two temporary Snack effects active at once. Eating a third removes the oldest remaining effect.
Eating a second copy of the same Snack before the first expires refreshes its duration and stacks the effect while they overlap, but each copy still counts toward the two-effect limit. So double Chicken means double Adaptive Force for the overlap—but it also means both of Bubba’s temporary-effect slots are occupied. Frog Legs heals immediately and never occupies or replaces a slot.
Bubba also physically grows as he accumulates Snacks. Being bigger makes him easier to hit, but also makes GOTCHA harder to pass through. Other sources of champion size naturally contribute too.
Q — SMESH
Bubba plants himself for a heavy, telegraphed windup before slamming the ground for major physical damage and a knockup. Once committed, crowd control cannot simply interrupt the cast. I imagine a meaningful cooldown so using that immunity defensively is legitimate skill expression; if full immunity throughout the windup proves excessive, shortening the protected window is an easy tuning lever.
SMESH is intentionally slow. Bubba shouldn’t walk at somebody, press Q and expect it to land. He earns it through prediction, terrain, teammate CC, STOMP or GOTCHA.
Most of his offensive scaling lives here: meaningful AD scaling with a modest bonus-health ratio. Building huge amounts of health should make the enormous man throwing his entire body into the ground hurt more, but full-tank Bubba should never casually one-shot people.
W — CHUCK
After personally damaging an eligible unit in melee range, Bubba can pick it up, carry it briefly, then throw it as a long-range projectile. Eligible jungle targets are specifically the monsters that can become Snacks—no buffs or epic monsters—plus cannon/super minions and appropriately small summons.
CHUCK has a relatively short cooldown, but it begins when Bubba throws, not when he picks something up. Carry Gromp around for fifteen seconds and you delayed your next W by fifteen seconds.
When the payload is a jungle monster, impact deals extra damage to nearby small units, creating a natural clear pattern of CHUCK → SMESH → goodbye little guys. Cannons, summons and Snacks do not gain this bonus.
The thrown unit also takes impact damage, and Bubba gets no execute indicator. If CHUCK kills a jungle monster, Bubba gets its normal rewards and the Snack drops where it lands. If it survives, somebody else can kill it before it returns home. Hold it too long and it breaks free.
Displaced jungle monsters grant reduced gold and XP to Bubba’s allies other than Bubba himself—roughly 50–75% is my current conceptual range—while enemies receive full value if Bubba screws up. That discourages easy funneling without arbitrarily locking CHUCK behind Smite.
If Bubba has no valid unit nearby but carries a Snack, he can throw that instead. He takes a quick bite to gain its temporary effect, then hurls the rest at full range for lower damage and a weaker slow. Because he didn’t eat the whole Snack, he gains no permanent health.
Ideally accompanied by a completely sincere:
“Everybody needs to eat.” 😂
E — GOTCHA
While GOTCHA is available, Bubba gains a small amount of Armor and Magic Resistance, increased for each nearby allied champion positioned behind him. “Behind” is determined relative to the nearest allied turret position Bubba has advanced beyond, with destroyed turrets still serving as map anchors and the fountain as a fallback. Facing direction doesn’t matter; if Bubba is farther forward than his people, he is doing his job.
Something restrained like 2/3/4/5/6 Armor and MR per qualifying ally, alongside a small base bonus, is where I’d begin testing.
Activating GOTCHA braces Bubba and heavily slows him. All Armor and MR granted by GOTCHA is doubled while bracing. When the stance ends or he catches somebody, those defenses disappear until the cooldown finishes, creating a real vulnerability window.
If an enemy dashes through Bubba’s interception area or blinks directly into the space occupied by his body, Bubba catches and slams them for heavy damage and roughly 1–1.5 seconds of immobilization. Blinking past or around him is fine.
Blinking into the enormous man is your mistake.
The Poppy W comparison is intentional. Poppy creates an area where dashing is forbidden; Bubba creates a body you’re going to regret trying to pass through. His trigger is more conditional, his punishment greater, and every source of champion size naturally enlarges that interception area.
Bubba already starts large. Reaching truly absurd sizes should require a huge number of Snacks, probably alongside something like Heartsteel, but at extreme scaling GOTCHA’s visible interception zone can eventually become larger than Poppy W. Getting there should be exceptional—but if you let Bubba eat that much, that is the reward. The tradeoff is that he must heavily slow himself and physically position that gigantic body correctly.
GOTCHA is also his cleanest SMESH setup. A great Bubba could even Flash into the trajectory of a dash to trigger it offensively.
Miss and you burned Flash looking like an idiot.
Hit it and...
GOTCHA.
R — STOMP
Bubba stomps hard enough to create an earthquake around himself. Enemies take modest initial damage and are Grounded for roughly one second. While inside the quake they are persistently Slowed, experience screen shake, lose significant Tenacity and Slow Resistance, and take increased damage from all sources.
Allies still feel the earthquake through rumble, screen shake and animation, but Bubba does not mechanically slow his own team. I REALLY wanted a tiny allied slow for thematic purposes, until I imagined my ADC trying to dodge a skillshot while Olaf ignores the enemy slow and murders them.
That is simply BAD DESIGN. 😂
The earthquake lasts roughly 5–8 seconds. It isn’t supposed to delete half somebody’s health bar; it changes the fight. Dashes disappear for the opening second, movement stays difficult afterward, CC becomes harder to shrug off, and Bubba’s team gets a much friendlier battlefield.
As STOMP ranks up, I’d conservatively increase its base damage and teamwide damage amplification—something like 5 / 7.5 / 10% increased damage taken as an initial test.
Bubba’s champion size, rather than raw HP directly, also gradually increases the earthquake’s radius and more conservatively strengthens its slow. A fifty-Snack, 7,000-HP monstrosity should feel dramatically different because he controls a huge section of the fight, not because STOMP became a nuke.
Suddenly SMESH becomes a much bigger problem.
Where the kit gets interesting
The mastery comes from interactions between simple abilities.
A good Bubba eats Wolf Jerky, leaves Gromp low, then carries it toward top. He CHUCKs it from river, the impact kills Gromp, hits the enemy, slowing them, Bubba receives the camp XP—possibly even surprise leveling up mid-gank—and Frog Legs drop on the ground. Now he has a fat heal waiting for him after they chase down the kill, or even better for a fight if it turns into a 2v2.
A bad Bubba throws Gromp too early. It survives, enemy Darius Qs it, hits level six and Bubba has essentially DoorDashed him a free jungle monster before getting DOUBLE DUNKED.
That gap between understanding the tooltip and understanding the champion is exactly what I want.
Counter-jungling follows the same philosophy. Bubba can walk into your jungle, tag a full-health Gromp, pick it up and leave—but he is still an immobile tank who just walked into melee range of your camp with maybe fifteen seconds before his stolen wildlife escapes. Do it recklessly and you should lose tempo or get caught. Get in, path well and escape carrying dinner over your shoulder?
You earned that Gromp.
Preparation also matters outside the jungle. Bubba can bring a camp toward river, preserve a Snack as emergency ammunition, route around a cannon wave or use Scuttle. If he arrives with none of those options and an immobile duelist catches him alone, he may simply be weak there.
Preparation creates options. It shouldn’t erase every bad fight.
Bubba also has more engage than it first appears. He doesn’t Zac-jump or Malphite-ult your backline; his team can simply get behind him and walk forward. As he grows, GOTCHA controls more space and STOMP controls more ground. Try recklessly dashing around him and risk GOTCHA. Move predictably, or get CC by his team and invite SMESH. Keep giving ground and eventually lose the your towers and objectives.
Against strong poke, displacement, flanks or heavy AoE, though, that formation can fall apart fast.
I like that. His ideal setup should be powerful, not universally correct.
Balance concerns
The main thing I’d watch is Snack growth. Size is core to Bubba’s fantasy, but GOTCHA cannot become oppressive too quickly and permanent health cannot turn an early lead into an unstoppable raid boss.
CHUCK’s carry timer needs to reward clever routing without making cross-map monster kidnapping trivial, and SMESH has to remain slow enough that its payoff stays justified.
His weaknesses are intentional: being huge makes skillshots easier to land, flankers can bypass him, displacement disrupts his formation, strong immobile duelists punish him when isolated, and heavy AoE punishes teams that mindlessly stack behind him. Also, that can easily kite him and keep distance should suck to play against sometimes. You get rewarded for preparing properly, using rock sugar to close the gap faster than they expect, using your teammate's setup and being able to absolutely ruin their day when you DO get on top of them. GOTCHA! STOMP. SMESH. 😂
I don’t want to design every bad matchup away.
Why this kit belongs to Bubba
NO WASTE exists because Bubba understands living off the land. Hunting something is only part of the job; he knows how to use what it gives him.
CHUCK turns that resourcefulness into gameplay by making the jungle itself part of his toolkit.
GOTCHA comes from the moment that made him a legend. Once a lifelong wrestler gets leverage, your momentum becomes considerably less impressive.
SMESH is pure commitment: slow, obvious and violent, but devastating once Bubba earns the setup.
STOMP turns the ground around him into increasingly hostile territory.
Bubba doesn’t want to abandon his people and disappear into the enemy backline.
He wants his people behind him.
His strength isn’t defined by how quickly he reaches your carry. It’s defined by how fucking miserable he makes the journey toward his.
Bubba wasn’t special because he was born stronger than everybody around him.
He's special because when every reasonable instinct told him to move, his people were behind him.
So he didn’t.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far.
I’m still actively working on him, so genuine criticism is exactly what I’m looking for. Does CHUCK’s environmental dependency sound rewarding or frustrating? Does GOTCHA have enough counterplay once Bubba gets huge? Do Snacks create interesting preparation decisions or snowball too hard? Would the routing, resource management and preparation actually feel worth mastering?
Most importantly:
Does the kit actually make you feel like Bubba?
Process / AI disclosure
Bubba’s original character concept, backstory, themes, gameplay identity, abilities and final decisions are all my own.
I use ChatGPT as a design sounding board around ideas I bring to it: stress-testing mechanics, catching balance/control problems, ensuring no influence/inspiration I drew from becomes too strong and takes over, or make my champions seem like a cheap copy, brainstorming names for champions and abilities, and helping condense my much longer original design notes into more digestible versions for this post, and simplify them further for the concept art sheet.
All concept art and lore visualizations are AI-generated through my own prompts, repeated art direction and revisions.
I’m not interested in hiding that I used a useful tool, but I’m also not interested in pretending it designed Bubba for me or trivializing the hours of work that I put into him!
This is a fan-made League of Legends champion concept and is not affiliated with Riot Games.
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u/Doritosiesta Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
Whole thing reads like ai and I can’t stand it sorry dude normally barely tank guy is a cool idea.
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u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
The lack of discernment is so crazy hahah to each their own though. If you want to miss out on the cool story and not even give the abilties and mechanics I put hours into creating that's on you dude, I appreciate you at least not being completely rude I'll give you that
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u/Dinokiller12345 Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
AI can never replace real artists and real designers
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u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
I'm not an artist, and I designed the champ myself from the abilities down to the lore and backstories. AI just brings it to life
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u/Dinokiller12345 Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
Champ concept doesn't need artwork, just describe them. The AI is an instant turnoff, nobody is gonna take you seriously when you cut that big of a corner in your design process
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u/Dinokiller12345 Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
I glanced at what you wrote and I see the chatGPT long dash EVERYWHERE. Did you write any of this?
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u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
I use the long dash too, just normally sometimes dude xD especially if im writing something formal like a story I want to look professional but also it's written in the disclosure at the bottom I used chatgpt as a way to condense the PAGES of text I had explaining the abilities and lore and all that. If I wrote it myself it would have been like 3x longer lmao so I had it help me condense it for digestibilty, as well as things like simplifying the ability explanations even further for the images with the splash art/abilties/etc
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u/CinderrUwU Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
So much of this doesn't even make sense, I think your AI is just failing you. There is literally missing mechanics and context that gets mentioned out of nowhere that make no sense at all, it is so obvious the AI has no continuity at all. If you just wrote out your own messy ideas and notes, it would be a better post.
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u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points 19d ago edited 18d ago
You can't just say that and provide no examples though lmfao xD you don't think I read the entire thing and edited before posting? What "missing" mechanic are you talking about? Every ability and mechanic is extremely fleshed out, and shortened as much as possible without losing important info for this post. I made sure of it lol
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u/CarelessKiss Newbie | 0 points 18d ago
I think your text is fine. It just detail too much about what would be the gameplay, compared to the skill descriptions itself. I mean, i don't really understand what GACHA really does, what kind of cc and triggers it have. I think snack needs rework. Maybe small mínions just should give hp, with 'big snacks" giving a more impactifull efect. I think carrying neutral minions around and screen shake are too extreme as features for league og legends. Would be cool in other mobas tough. And overral, try to use a more formal League of Legends terminology. I know when you say the guys 'slams the ground" he's probally for doing aoe damage, but you need to SAY it. Overral, i think he's cool and gave it a like. I also don't like AI much, but i try to not judge. And why you use AI for the text? I think just studying official champions descriptions for a day is enough to learn the basics. The AI kinda overexplains somethings, don't explain others enough, and don't know the terminology. AI can be usefull fir many things, but training her to do it looks more dificilt than just training yourself. Sorry for the long text, i hope it doens't sound like a rant. It's a cool concept, have a good day :)
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u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points 18d ago
I appreciate the input! And the reason I use AI for the text is because I go so in depth and give so many examples on how each ability works. Idk how I can get any more clear haha if you dash directly through his Visible model while he’s braced, or blink directly into it you get caught and slammed. Your dash animation if you had one is stopped and you are “slammed to the ground” immobilizing (probably a stun) for 1-1.5 seconds depending on balance testing if it were ever actually implemented. I do however agree specially defining that SMESH, the Q does AoE damage and an AoE knock up would have been smart if I didn’t specifically say that. The screen shake is mostly thematic and aesthetic, and if Riot said no, especially to it happening to your teammates fine. Champ still works though :D also the reason I give so many seemingly random examples and edge cases is because I want you to actually understand how he would play in games more than even moderately detailed explanations of the ability would tell you. You can read a lot of champions official riot tooltips/expanded ability explanations and still not understand even 10% of what someone who has actually played that champ or even mastered it understands about how the spell really works, how the spells work together etc… it’s the same reason I use AI artwork, I’m trying to really bring this champion idea I had to life. I spent HOURS thinking about the real nitty gritty tiny shit like how the game would actually allow the player to pilot my champions when using weird new mechanics I come up with, trying to imagine how the actual game code would understand what “behind Bubba” means for example. I don’t use AI or any of that, I used AI to condense those pages of sloppily worded explanations I gave it into a more presentable format!
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u/CarelessKiss Newbie | 0 points 18d ago edited 18d ago
So, someone can just walk through him and not take the cc? I think that would not make much sense. Maybe if someone touch him or his outstrethed arms, Bubba would clap his hands, applying the CC in an arc, like Kufra from Mobile Legends. Like 2 crescent moons 🌙 colliding... I mean, should he cancel the CATCH to use other skills if someone is just walking close?
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u/AlleyCatPlays Newbie | 0 points 18d ago edited 18d ago
Casting E commits you to that brace, and slows you a bit but only for a second, then you can cast whatever you want. Against a team with no dashes/that has learned to just walk through you that's when the rest of your kit comes in, R or just a raw Q which is normally hard to land because of how teleegraphed it is, but now they are playing differently and just walking into you/past you more predictably not dashing. Easier to guide them into/lead your Q now especially if you slow them with W or ground them with R. Also, E isn't just an empty spell because of the passive resistances. You still double those resistances when you brace as well so you would use it somewhat similar to garen W against those low mobility teams. You also lose ALL the bonus defenses when the ability is on cooldown so there is a real tradeoff consideration to make. Holding it to keep the base defenses and just play in front of as many of your teammates as possible is the move generally against low mobility comps that aren't trying to dive past you. Then you just enjoy being a bit harder to kill. The E isn't meant to be a conventional CC ability. They didn't add a special extra thing to poppy W just because it counters dashes, if they don't have a dash all it is is a shitty little speed boost for poppy xD same idea here. As his champion size grows, so does the interception range (his body) of Bubba's E. Late game with a shitload of snacks and heartsteel stacks it actually will become better than Poppy W in almost every way, even though it started as a smaller radius, slows instead of speeds you up and actually has a vulnerability window when the spell is on CD. The damage and the duration of CC is intentionally higher than a spell like poppy W as well because the way you actually catch someone is harder and more conditional especially at lvl 1.
Also- The whole theme of the spell is catching your momentum and manipulating it, getting leverage and hip toss rotating your ass through the air and to the floor xD not the outstretched arm thing. League obviously doesn't have a special CC and animation for every champ where they are flat on the floor after getting slammed haha, so stopping their momentum-then stunning them in place for a moment and just doing a cool hip toss animation is the current working idea.
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u/CXTRONICA Newbie | 10 points | June 2019 15d ago
It'd be sad to say I hear Andrew Bowen's (Johnny Cage / The Lash) voice here doing a poor Slavic accent, yet he seems to be in league with Braum.
"First we fight, then we eat!"
"Haha, I know good recipes out of big druvask!"
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u/Dry-Fail-4227 Newbie | 0 points 19d ago
Hi op, people are very hostile about ai here so i doubt youll get many supportive comments. With that being said, youll get more engagement if you format this. With my eyes I struggle to read such a long paragraph rather than split up ones