Neeko champion guide: How to master the Curious Chameleon

How to Play Neeko: the Curious Chameleon
SKILLS
PASSIVE - INHERENT GLAMOUR
Q - BLOOMING BURST
CONCLUSION

In 2018, Riot Games prioritized champion reworks over new champion developments with many older champions like Urgot, Aatrox and Irelia getting well-deserved overhauls. Unlike other years, Riot has only introduced two new champions to Summoner’s Rift with a third hitting the live servers as we speak.

Riot’s first shape-shifting chameleon and ‘Color Mage’ from Runeterra has the ability to take the form of other champions on her side, which is definitely going to introduce an additional comical aspect to the game. With this in mind, welcome to a Mobalytics champion guide for Neeko, by PicklePants.

Before we begin, you may want to familiarize yourself with Neeko’s kit

While out of Combat, Neeko can choose to disguise herself as one of her allies. While disguised, she will appear as an exact copy of the champion she has chosen including base stats, level, current health and resource levels.

Inherent Glamour is an extremely strong tool in the right hands. It’s a mind trick that really messes with the opponent’s heads. For example, you could disguise yourself as the jungler and show yourself top-side, which would make the enemy bot lane think they can play aggressively and not risk being ganked. This could set up an easy gank from your jungler and leave the enemies wondering how they got to bot lane so fast. You could also pretend to be the marksman overextending alone in a lane. The enemy could try to pick up an easy kill, but seal their own fate by engaging onto you.

There are so many possible ways to use Inherent Glamour, which makes its skill ceiling very high. The possibilities are endless and change depending on the state of the game. There’s also a ton of really fun and cool interactions and I’m sure there’s many that have yet to be discovered.

Neeko tosses a seed at a target location. The seed blooms and deals damage in an AoE. If the seed hits an enemy champion, large monster or kills a minion, it will bloom again up to two times.

This is your main poke and waveclear tool. Due to its surprisingly short cooldown, you should look to use this as often as possible to poke down the enemy or to push the wave. You could also try to do both at the same time by hitting the minion wave while also poking the enemy. You will get at least two blooms onto your opponent if you manage to land your E (Tangle-Barbs) onto them beforehand, allowing for a nice chunk of damage.

Due to it being an AoE ability, Blooming Burst can allow you to absolutely decimate a teamfight if you manage to land it onto multiple enemies. This is easily done if the enemies are grouped up and under some form of CC, such as Tangle-Barbs, or a Nami bubble, for example.

Neeko is an extremely fun to play trickster mage who can become very annoying for your opponents to deal with. If you get pleasure out of watching others get frustrated, then Neeko is definitely the champion for you. While she does have a relatively low skill floor, her skill ceiling has yet to be seen. I cannot wait to see some of the wild plays that pro players are able to make with this champion and can already picture the Reddit threads begging for her removal from the game. If you enjoyed Zoe, then I’d highly recommend giving Neeko a shot!