Champion Reworks are Silly

Date: 02/27/2023

As League gets older and older, a lot of the champions from the earlier days start to feel unpolished and out of date to the newer fancier champions Riot releases. Obviously this is because it continues to get more and more in revenue each year thus can invest more in labor and champion development technologies.

So in comes the rework, and for this post I mean the full on VGU(Visual Gameplay Updates), like we saw with Fiora, Ryze(like a thousand times) Aatrox, etc. On the surface these seem like a great idea, bring the old era into the new. But you can honestly count on one hand the amount of these VGUs have made the game healthier and more interesting to play. 

If I am personally gonna count the WORST VGUs, the list would look something like this.

Aatrox

Fiora

Udyr

Mordekaiser

Akali(big emphasis on this one)

In each of these instances, Riot took a beloved older champion and essentially just deleted them from the game. None of these champions are recognizable from their old self and have inherently made the game more frustrating and harder to balance.

Not all of Riot’s attempts and changing how champions play and feel have been bad. Even a some of the full VGU’s have worked incredibly well. For instance, Gangplank. Yes they essentially deleted old GP but his kit just feels well balanced enough with a lot of skill expression that it just seems to mesh perfectly.

Updates like the “Assassin Class Update” and “Mage Class Update” are also pretty good examples of fixing older champions WITHOUT DELETING THEM FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH and making a whole new mess to balance. These are honest attempts to properly balance the game.

Malz, Kat, pre-full VGU Akali, these were fairly well received changes that we as players have gotten used to(except that version of Akali, the replaced her with the ABOMINATION that was her VGU). At the end of the day we can all respect that the game is very difficult to balance and keeping the game fresh and players interested is a monumental task, so I applaud them for trying.

BUT, I am still gonna complain when they take an unbalanced older champion, effectively delete it and replace it with something one-thousand times worse. I think they realize this a bit and that's why they are putting out these new “ASU” updates like the new Ahri, and soon to be Teemo and Lee Sin. Which updates their current kits and changes audio/visuals to match the ever-changing game.

They will delete old Aatrox, and Fiora but wont delete current Yuumi? Curious.

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