DJ Sona

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Riot Receives Backlash From Community for “Stealth Nerfing” DJ Sona

Sadakshi Kalyan Ramun
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Highlights
Riot games made significant changes to the VFX of League of Legends champion Sona and also updated several of her skins.
The players were quick to notice the downgrade to her Ultimate skin: DJ Sona and claimed that Riot “stealth nerfed” it.
The DJ Sona skin is available for 3250 RP and its overhaul is being questioned on social media.

The League of Legends player-base lashed out at Riot after it visually updated the DJ Sona skin in Patch 12.2. The community alleged that it “stealth nerfed” the skin by removing some of its popular features. Sona was given a complete visual effect (VFX) update in Patch 12.2 to try and modernize her animations in an attempt to make her abilities look distinct and clear. While a majority of her skins were given updates apart from her classic skin, the community was seemingly upset with the changes made to her ultimate skin - DJ Sona, released in 2015.

The DJ Sona skin is unique to League of Legends as it allows the champion to switch between three song modes: Kinetic, Concussive, and Ethereal. Each theme changes DJ Sona’s appearance in-game with a new model with distinct colors and particles. The best part about the skin is that DJ Sona can share the music with her allies while strolling through the rift and slaying enemies.

Changes made to DJ Sona

One Reddit user wrote a detailed post on how the ultimate skin was being stealthily nerfed by Riot, hurting the novelty of the 3250 RP skin. But Riot in the 12.2 Patch notes wrote that the update to DJ Sona was a “complete overhaul” and that it was giving “additional special celebration effects for each passive aura.”

The user debated whether the additional special celebration claimed by Riot was “a straight up lie” and questioned if the skin was just bugged out.

The update also removed the feature where the skin would change colors when Sona used her abilities. Earlier, her Q, W, and E abilities would change the color of her DJ soundboard to blue, green, and pink respectively, noted the Reddit thread.

The Reddit thread also pointed out the irony in Riot’s attempt to make her abilities look distinct and clear. It claimed, “Now all your effects on allies and enemies are harder to see and less bright for some reason.”

Apart from these gripes, users also pointed out problems with teammates now not being able to listen to the unique soundtrack that the ultimate skin provides in-game. The players claimed that the toggle button to listen to her soundtrack was missing.

Another user was quick to point out that the skin’s soundtrack could be bugged. They commented, “The skin is bugged from the release, music was supposed to get better throughout the game while you leveled your spells. It was like that only on pbe. Now besides ultimate promise not working we have bland and robbed VFX still for the cosmic price. Yikes.

The players also voiced their disappointment on the DJ Sona downgrade on Twitter.

Riot has yet to respond to the backlash around the VFX upgrade to DJ Sona. For now, the players have to make do with the skin in all its glitchy glory.

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Sadakshi has been a gamer throughout her life and has followed League of Legends since Season 3, immediately falling in love with the esports scene. Bringing in her print journalism experience, she focuses on content that is both informative and innovative. While her heart still remains with League, her love for competition has pushed her to explore other titles such as Valorant and Apex Legends.

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