Ezreal Answers Questions About Future Champions and More!

Game Designer "Ezreal" is so cool that he has his own hero named after him. Incidentally, for those of you that know how long the champion Ezreal has been around, this also makes him one of the longest members of the Riot team. Earlier today he answered a huge batch of questions on his @Ezreal thread including topics like:

Future Champions:
Q: Are there any other support champs in the works?
A: Well, we work on champions as far as 8 months ahead of time. So yes, there is at least one more support in the works. And HE...is one of the coolest characters I have seen in League of Legends. Source

Q: Will there be another Yordle Jungler in the next year?
A: Barring unforeseen circumstances, yes. Source

Q: Can we expect a new female AD ranged carry anytime soon? Can we get a new mage that is ice based? We have Anivia but I just don't feel it with her. When I say ice mage I think of Crystal Maiden, Lich, or AA from DOTA rather than Anivia. I guess more than anything I'd like a freeze and the slow debuff.
A: 2013 will be a good year for you... Source

Note: Seems like we'll get two heroes, one female ranged ad carry and an ice mage! Some of you might wonder if maybe it's the same hero, but we do have Ashe already, so that wouldn't make much sense.

Am I not...icy enough for you?

Redesigning Champions:
Q: Will you guys ever redesign champions just because they could be more interesting or fun? (Opposed to redesigning champions because they need fixing). I'm talking about someone like Wukong. He's not bad but c'mon, his kit is a bit bland. He only has one way to use his abilities. E ~ Q ~ R or W

A: Well, our primary focuses in doing champion updates are as follows: make the character more fun, fix the core problems, and don't remove what make the character fun in the first place. So yes we redesign characters to make them more fun.

That being said, I don't believe we would update a character like Wukong. We specifically made his kit simple with easy combos and a single ability that can be used for amazing effects. Take for example a lot of our early champions. Yes they are easier to use than our newer champions, but that is by design. We want champions that new players can join the game and fully understand on their first play through. Having a wide range of characters in both skill level and play style only improves our play experience. Source

New Announcer Voices:
Q: Will Riot ever have a system where we can purchase the announcers voice to be something else? possibly popular champions?

A: I hope we offer players alternate announcer packs, though honestly it hasn't come up that often. I recently brought this up to one of our design departments, and we are going to look into it again. Source

Note: I really hope they come out with this...I can think of a few announcers that would be simply LEGEN wait for it....DARY

Mana-Stealing Spells?
Q: What do you think about mana/energy stealing items? Possibly an active that uses the opponents mana to cast your own spell? 
A: We have removed spells and items which have done this in the past. Check out Zileas's post on Anti Fun Patterns to learn more! Source

Information on Heimerdinger
Q: When are the Heimerdinger updates coming out?
A: Still planned, we just need the art resources to do it. Basically we had it mostly done and then Xyph was put on the S3 item overhaul. You can guess which project was more important. Source

Lore Updates
Q: Lore?
A: We refocused where the lore department should focus. Rather than giving small bits of trivial information we instead focused on drilling down on our IP internally. Now we feel that we can do more interesting and better things. 2013 will be a good year for lore! Source

Q: More Zaun Champions and Lissandra the ice dervish?
A: Yes Source

Note: Lissandra may turn out to be the ice mage that Ezreal mentioned is being released in 2013!

What do you guys think about these tidbits? Anything particular that you're excited about? Comment below!