Skarner set to receive new VGU, after landslide win on community poll

In recent years, the League of Legends community has chosen some of the new skins that would arrive in the game. Indeed, this includes reworks for some of the oldest and most forgotten champions in the meta.

While players took their chance to vote for Udyr on last year's community vote, this year, it was possible to choose between five champions, of which the winner would have a new visual and gameplay update (VGU). Among the nominated champions were Shyvana, Nocturne, Skarner, Tryndamere and Kog'Maw.

So now, after nearly a month of voting, Riot has released the final results. Similarly to what happened with the Spirit Walker, Skarner has been chosen by the League community as the next champion to receive a VGU in a landslide victory.

Skarner to receive new visual and gameplay update

"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," commented Ryan "Reav3" Mireles, Lead Producer of Champions at Riot.

"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 added.

It's expected that, like the other VGUs, Riot will share the progress of Skarner's transformation on their developer blogs, with a possible launch set for early 2023.

Besides, Riot also confirmed that after the massive response from the community, Shyvana would remain a strong contender for the next VGU, outside of the results from the global vote.

Results of the vote for the next themed skins

Riot also published the results of a vote to choose which would be the next League skinline to receive new content, with the three options being Arclight, Infernal, and Gothic.

Similarly to Skarner's case, the Gothic theme managed to sweep the vote, taking a massive victory in all competitive regions.

"We're excited to see this level of former emo kids excitement and can't wait to deliver this angsty thematic."

"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," added Riot.

According to Riot, their next step will be identifying what feels good about the existing Gothic skins and which direction they'll like to move in for the new skins. Therefore, it will take some time before we get any further updates.

But don't worry, as the Crystal Vanguard and Gothic fans will surely receive some love soon.

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Featured image courtesy of Riot Games.