All Locke Abilities explained

Locke is the new AP assassin coming to League of Legends in patch 26.13 on June 24, 2026, and will be the only new champion released in 2026. The Ashen Exorcist is a mage assassin demon hunter from Demacia, and his kit is all about nails.

Locke’s kit plays around burst damage and has high mobility. It will be super important to manage cooldowns and have control and hit all of Locke’s slows and bindings to execute and play up to the champion’s identity. Locke wants to set up his enemies for execution by stacking up his Ritual Nails and then sealing them away in his artifact ultimate.

Silver Stake gives Locke bonus magic damage On-hit increased based on enemy missing health.

It’s a super simple passive that helps Locke finish off lower health targets by increasing his damage against chunked, low-health enemies.

Ritual Nails readies a set of Soul Nails to throw forward, dealing magic damage and marking enemies hit, applying a stack on each time enemies are hit by Ritual Nails. The nails apply a slow based on stacks.

Attacking the enemy marked by the nails consumes the stacks, dealing magic damage per stack, while also restoring a portion of the cooldown and mana for unspent Ritual Nails.

Locke’s Ritual Nails seems to be the key ability in the kit as it synergizes with the rest of his kit, empowering some of them. The Q ability will likely be a spell Locke always wants to give up for teamfights to utilize the slow and extra damage you get from procking the stacks.

Soul Ignitions gives Locke Movement Speed decaying over time. While Soul Ignition is active, he loses percentage health per second but heals back a portion of all damage taken plus an additional amount based on missing health and time passed. Gray health is similar to what Pyke and Tham Kench have.

Soul Ignition can be recast to end early after a few seconds.

Gray health is health you can recover with either an ability or over time. In Locke's case it is health that you can heal back when recasting Soul Ignition.

Locke’s W simply explained, is an ability where you sacrifice some health at the start for movement speed; however, you can gain gray health for all the damage taken and time passed. This ability will be very important, and the difference between a good Locke player and a bad Locke player will depend on how good the Locke player is able to manage and calculate the gray health heal and loss of health in fights.

Ashen Pursuit lets Locke blink to a location, dealing magic damage around him when he dashes. Then his next attack will make him dash to his target dealing magic damage to all enemies in his path. Imagine a mini akali ult dash. Every hit in his dash consumes Soul Nails.

The Ashen Pursuit Cooldown resets on takedowns.

The E ability will be super important to manage, as it is his only blink and dash spell. Ashen Pursuit will be key in chasing down enemies and hitting as many enemies as possible in teamfights by dashing through the enemies or chasing them down. Having it reset on takedowns will make this ability super important, and being able to master the movement of Locke will be key in the champion’s practicality.

Purgatory is a big circle ability that marks all enemies in the circle, shooting chained Soul Nails at the enemies in the area, dealing magic damage, and slowing anyone within the circle. Marked Champions that are brought below a threshold are pulled inside and executed. If a Champion is executed, the duration of the binding is reset on the other marked enemies. After a few seconds of Purgatory being cast, it will leave behind an “artifact” on the ground if a Champion was executed with the ultimate. If Locke picks up the artifact, the execute will permanently increase and refunds a portion of his current cooldowns for each champion “sealed.”

The R ability will be important in big teamfights to increase the execute threshold and to re-apply the slow by playing around the effect reset on takedowns, synergizing well with his E ability: Ashen Pursuit. From the sound of the ability, it can be cast both at the end of a fight to slow and chase down low enemies, or at the start of the fight to make it easier for both you and your team to reach them as the slow resets on takedowns.

Locke will be played in a very unique way as you need to manage your nails, gray health and cooldowns. His kit has a lot of slows but not much lockdown so it will be important to play around Locke’s Q ability and E ability. His R will be important in fights and to help him slow down multiple enemies and giving him an execute on his spells to help his scale more going mid to late game.

His build will utilize the heavy AP items as he wants to have as much damage as possible as an assassin, however some may look to build a few utility items like zonyas etc. as they aren’t really available to most assassins, as most of them are Attack Damage based. It will be interesting to see what builds the playerbase cooks up.

Locke looks to be a super mobile AP assassin who relies on managing cooldowns and getting ability resets with takedowns as well stacking up your ults execute. The kit has a lot of slows, and with his W movement speed when Locke first gets on top of the enemy, it will be hard to run away.

However, as any assassin, he will be countered by hard crowd control, and if Locke doesn’t play around his E, Ashen Pursuit, cooldown well, he will likely be very easy to shut down.