Locke abilities in League of Legends explained: Full kit, ultimate, and combo guide

The Locke abilities revealed by Riot Games showcase a deadly new mid-lane assassin built around burst damage, high mobility and devastating chain executions.

Known as the Ashen Exorcist, Locke hunts his targets by driving ritual nails into their souls before sealing them away within a cursed artifact.

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Designed to thrive in skirmishes and teamfights, Locke can rapidly stack his ritual nails across multiple enemies, setting up explosive area-of-effect executions that punish anyone caught in his path.

In this guide, we’ll break down Locke’s abilities, passive, ultimate and gameplay mechanics to explain how the Ashen Exorcist works in League of Legends—pro tips included.

All Locke abilities in League of Legends

Passive -Silver Stake

Locke pins enemies’ souls with his attacks dealing bonus magic damage On Hit, increased based on enemy missing Health.

Silver Stake helps Locke convert successful trades into kills by significantly increasing his damage output against low-health enemies. Players should look to weave auto attacks between ability casts to maximize the value of consumed Ritual Nail stacks and passive damage.

Q – Ritual Nails

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

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

Ritual Nails is Locke’s primary setup tool. The ability can be cast up to three times before entering cooldown, allowing him to stack marks on enemies and gradually increase the strength of its slow. One of the most important details is that the projectiles pierce through targets. Attacking a marked target consumes the stacks and deals substantial bonus damage, making proper mark management critical to Locke’s burst combo.

Tips on using Ritual Nails:

• Aim Ritual Nails (Q) through minion waves or grouped enemies to apply marks to multiple targets.
• Landing all three casts creates a powerful slow that can set up an all-in.
• Save opportunities to consume stacks with basic attacks or Ashen Pursuit for maximum damage.
• During lane phase, look for enemies who are overextended and build three stacks before committing.

W – Soul Ignition

Locke releases his own seals gaining Move Speed decaying over time. While this effect is active, he suffers percent 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 to end early.

Soul Ignition is Locke’s risk-versus-reward ability. Activating it grants movement speed but causes Locke to take true damage based on his current health over time. The ability can be recast manually or allowed to expire naturally, healing Locke based on champion damage taken, self-inflicted damage, missing health and duration.

Tips on using Soul Ignition:

• Use Soul Ignition aggressively to chase opponents or initiate tower dives.
• Stay in combat as long as possible before recasting to maximize the heal.
• Don’t panic-recast immediately; timing the heal correctly often determines whether a play succeeds.
• Remember: crowd control will not prevent the healing recast.

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. Cooldown resets on takedown.

Ashen Pursuit serves as Locke’s primary mobility tool, allowing him to blink and damage nearby enemies before empowering his next attack with a follow-up dash. Importantly, the follow-up dash consumes Ritual Nail stacks just like a basic attack, making it an integral part of Locke’s burst combo.

“Ashen Pursuit’s dash is a fixed distance, so keep your positioning in mind when hunting down your foes,” David “Phreak” Turley said in the Locke Champion Spotlight. “Whenever Locke secures a takedown, Ashen Pursuit’s cooldown resets, allowing you to keep staking your claim across the enemy backline.”

Tips on using Ashen Pursuit:

• Use Ashen Pursuit to trigger Ritual Nail consumption when enemies are out of auto-attack range.
• Think ahead before dashing, as the follow-up movement travels a fixed distance.
• In teamfights, takedown resets can allow Locke to rapidly chain between multiple targets.
• Pair the ability with Purgatory executions to snowball fights.

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.

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

Purgatory is Locke’s signature execution tool. A crucial detail is that the execution effect is duration-based rather than range-based. Abilities like Yasuo’s Wind Wall can’t block the incoming totem toss, but they can interact with the missile it throws upon landing.

• Cast Purgatory early in teamfights to maximize the duration of its execution threat.
• Use it on clustered enemies to create pressure even before anyone reaches execution range.
• Follow up with Ritual Nails and Ashen Pursuit to force targets below the threshold.
• Always try to recover the totem after successful executions to benefit from the cooldown refund and permanent bonuses.

How to play Locke: Best combos

Locke is designed to snowball leads through aggressive early-game skirmishing and repeated assassinations.

His ideal pattern involves stacking Ritual Nails, using Ashen Pursuit to stay on top of targets, and leveraging Soul Ignition to commit to high-risk engagements.

“Time your Ashen Pursuit to cut off their escape route,” said Phreak, who also tipped that Soul Ignition enables some of Locke’s most dangerous plays.

“Use W to gain the movement speed needed to tower dive. Stay in the fight as long as you can, and recast the ability just in time to heal back up and survive the encounter,” Phreak continued.

Locke’s strengths

• Explosive burst damage against squishy targets.
• Strong early-game skirmishing.
• Excellent mobility and target access.
• Teamfight snowball potential through Ashen Pursuit resets and Purgatory executions.
• High carry potential when ahead.

Locke’s weaknesses

While Locke can pressure tankier champions early, his damage does not scale with enemy maximum health.

“Defensive items in the mid to late game can greatly hinder his kill potential,” Phreak warned.

Like many assassins, he is also vulnerable to crowd control and coordinated play. Players can also reduce Locke’s effectiveness by approaching from multiple angles, making it harder for him to stack Ritual Nails efficiently.

Overall, Locke excels when he can snowball early kills into repeated executions, but he becomes much easier to contain if opponents survive the laning phase and build defensive items.