Infamous League of Legends champion designer Bradford ‘CertainlyT’ Wenban has departed the development team, Teamfight Tactics’ lead designer has confirmed.
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CertainlyT has long been a divisive member of the Riot Games development roster, churning out some of the community’s most hated champions in the game.
Wenban, who first joined the backend team for the MOBA in 2011, created mechanics-loaded characters like Yasuo, Zed, Darius, and Zoe, all of whom have become near-universally synonymous with unbalance in Riot’s flagship title.
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Now he has made the switch from character creation and reworks to research and development projects, TFT lead designer Stephen ‘Mortdog’ Mortimer confirmed this week.
“CertainlyT has moved on to R&D projects, so CertainlyT is not on the TFT team anymore,” Mortdog said as he played a game of TFT on-stream.
[ad name=”article3″]Considering CertainlyT’s infamous reputation in the League of Legends community, many speculated that his swap from design to research may not have been 100% voluntary, but Mortdog clarified on Reddit that the move was mutual.
“He did great things on TFT and will be missed. He’s just on to do even more cool stuff,” the auto-chess design lead confirmed.
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The on-the-move Riot personality also created Zyra, Thresh, and Kalista, and had a heavy hand in reworking Mordekaiser, Graves, Caitlyn, and Warwick. He most recently reworked Akali.
For many, confirmation of CertainlyT’s departure from the design team is quite welcome. Many of his creations are among the most disliked in the game, drawing hosts of bans during ranked and draft matches on Summoner’s Rift.
Yasuo leads the way in Wenban’s banned creations, with a hefty 45.1% ban rate according to analytics website U.GG at the time of this article’s release. Zed isn’t far behind at 42.6%, and Darius rounded out the top three with 34.6%.
His recently reworked champion Akali has also been drawing annoyance from much of the community since his additions to the mid lane assassin, with a hefty 29.9% of players banning her in each game despite her mild 5.2% average pick rate per match.
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For CertainlyT fans, however, there’s still something to look forward to – Surrender@20 mod Spideraxe recently suggested Wenban has one last release on the horizon, a new character expected in Q4. Fellow designer Stashu is believed to be finishing the development.
