Cover-Credits:
In a blogpost on Friday, Riot Games revealed the winners of the voting polls for the next visual and gameplay update (VGU) and skin thematic revamp. The company announced that Skarner won the VGU poll by a landslide and will be receiving a rework for all his abilities and visuals. Similarly, the Gothic skin line won by a massive margin in the skin thematic revamp poll in every region.
It has become a tradition for Riot to host this poll every year allowing players to voice their opinions regarding the older and less popular champions from the League of Legends champion roster.
In January, Riot called for League of Legends players to vote in the annual polls for VGU and skin thematic revamp. The five contenders for the VGU were Kog’Maw, Nocturne, Shyvana, Skarner, and Tryndamere, while Arclight, Gothic, and Infernal were nominated for the thematic overhaul of the skin lines. The polls were run between 7th-19th Jan inside the game.
Shurima’s crystalline scorpion is a crowd favorite
Loads of you gave the Rift’s one and only scorpion some love this time around. Skarner stood head and shoulders (do scorpions even have shoulders?) above the other contenders, claiming the top spot in the global polls by a wide margin"Riot Games
Although many saw Shyvana as a clear favorite to win the polls for the VGU, the voting statistics indicated that Skarner won by a comfortable margin with 33.4% votes, while Shyvana managed to garner only 19.6%.
Lead Producer of Champions Ryan “Reav3” Mireles said: “We’re super excited that Skarner won the VGU vote, as we think he has tons of potential to be something truly special on the League roster. We’ve tried smaller reworks of Skarner’s kit in the past, but it never really increased his playrate, so we’ll be looking to do a massive reboot of his kit, theme, and visuals (similar to Sion and Urgot). We’ll look to keep his kidnapping ult in some form, but otherwise, we’ll be rebuilding him from the ground up.”
Mireles hinted at Riot diving deeper into the lore of Skarner and the community can expect to see more inputs on the backstory and the universe of the ancient Brackern race.
Shyvana is a strong contender for the next VGU
Mireles also acknowledged the community’s disappointment after Shyvana managed to only place second in the poll, just like in the past. Riot recognized the need for an overhaul of the half-dragon’s visuals and abilities and announced that she is a “strong contender” for a VGU in the future.
Calling Shyvana “forever-a-bridesmaid,” Mireles said, “Like many of you, we really want to see her updated because a badass half-dragon shifter has so much potential. As you know we don’t do votes for every VGU, like with Mundo. So while we can’t promise that Shyvana will be the next big VGU we do, she is a pretty strong contender for the next one we explore outside of a VGU vote.”
Gothic skin line wins polls
The poll results shared by Riot showed that the Gothic skin line took home the lion’s share of votes in the thematic revamp. It garnered 49.4% of the votes, while Arclight and Infernal skin lines managed to get only 25.1% and 25.5% of the votes, respectively.
We haven’t visited the Gothic thematic in a minute—and much like emo—we’re glad it’s not dead. We’re really excited at how our middle school aesthetic might look in current League, and there are a bunch of different directions we could take it. We've started exploring some of them already, as we’re well into the discovery process—from cute and spooky to serious and dark, there are so many shades of black for us to try on."Riot Games
Riot thanked the community for its valued opinions and feedback regarding the future of League of Legends. The Skarner VGU currently has no official release date but the players can look for updates on the rework throughout this season. It will also be interesting to see the direction Riot takes with the Gothic skins since it hasn’t released any from the skin line for quite some time now.
