@Riot: Serious Talk About Udyr's VU?

PhoenixSlayer13·Jun 28, 2014·3 votes·645 views

I first posted this thread back in the early days of the Community Beta. With the next Ultimate skin (hopefully) rolling around soon and the increased focus on VU's, I felt like it would be a good time to re-post this.

So, as we all know, Udyr's base could use some polishing. The advent of his Ultimate skin made us all realize that Udyr's base is pretty old and clunky at this point, and in return people clamored and complained that his Ultimate should have just been his VU.

I'm here to share a different opinion on the matter.

In the Spirit Guard mythos, Udyr has achieved true enlightenment. He's bonded with his animal spirits in such a way that he controls their power, not the other way around. His blows are calculated, controlled, and graceful. He relays wisdom to the player.

With Udyr's VU, we need something completely opposite from what Spirit Guard represents.

In base Udyr's storyline, he has just begun to train his abilities. He can call upon his animal spirits at will, but he is not in control. In truth, it is the spirits that control him.

Udyr's VU should be feral, savage, and dirty. He should have none of the grace present in his ultimate skin. Bare-foot and covered in the pelts of the animals he has slain with his own hands. Fierce, animalistic rage burning in his eyes. Almost unintelligible, but with a wicked intellect that only a born hunter-killer can have. When he summons his spirits, they are in complete control, and that's exactly how Udyr likes it.

His blows are not calculated like those of his other incarnation. In Tiger form, he does not swipe in a neat form. He stabs, growls, rends his prey to shreds. Turtle form attacks should be clumsy but hefty, smacking opponents with closed fists. Bear form should try to slam his opponents straight into the ground with heavy overhead blows, pummeling foes into submission. Phoenix form should strike with elongated arms, as if striking foes with wings, and spring forward with a crossing double arm strike when releasing a flame cone.

By no means does he need to be as technically complex as Spirit Guard, but he should have a drastically different feel. He should be the antithesis to everything Spirit Guard represents.

TL;DR: Udyr's VU should be feral and be the opposite of his ultimate skin so people won't complain that the ultimate skin should have been his VU.

4 Comments

ThalesJun 28, 20141 votes

By no means does he need to be as technically complex as Spirit Guard, but he should have a drastically different feel.

I certainly agree that he should have a different feel than SGU, but it's your first clause which is where the problem lies. Look at Karthus or Twitch or Braum. They're all at least as visually impressive as SGU, and probably not much less technically sophisticated. If Udyr gets updated to modern standards, he will be at least as impressive as SGU. He will probably have more VO lines, will draw on some of the same tech they used to build SGU, and will probably have even more care be put into the animations specifically to distinguish him from SGU.

The only things SGU has that a modern-standards Udyr likely wouldn't have would be the model changes with maxing a stance and the profile icons. And the problem will only get worse as baseline standards continue to rise further. I'm not sure if control vs. fury is a strong enough point of difference to not make people feel that 3250 is an excessive price.

PhoenixSlayer13Jul 2, 20141 votes

Yeah, didn't update that part. I see exactly what you're getting at. With an Udyr VU Spirit Guard would probably have to be updated to keep its "ultimate" feel, but I'm just not sure what could be done in that department. First thing that comes to mind is evolving models for each skill point instead of the five-point burst change, but that is a lot of work, even considering that it's an ultimate skin.

More champ interactions would definitely be needed, and they would obviously need to be different from base Udyr.

ThalesJul 2, 20141 votes

I'm not actually sure if evolving model for each skill point would feel any better than SGU does now. The changes would necessarily have to be subtle to have the start and end points be acceptably Udyrish, and therefore they'd probably end up feeling far lower impact than the dramatic change that happens on the current SGU when the skills hit level 5. It would be a lot of work, but it feels to me like it's work that would be there solely so they could justify it being at 3250, rather than work that follows from and enhances the idea of the skin.

I like SGU quite a lot, but I do consider it one of Riot's bigger mistakes. PFE is thematically very different from base Ezreal, but SGU is basically Udyr Udyr. The intended savagery/control dichotomy is ill-represented by the base Udyr skin, with its barely parseable animations. I honestly don't know if there's any way to give Udyr a VU without causing major problems at this point.

BaconPecsJun 29, 20141 votes

I also agree that he should have more of a savage like attack patterns then he does now, You could make new skin out of him being controlled by the Animal spirits and call it Berserker Udyr. Playing as Udyr without the SGU, sometime grow borning and unappealing because of his basic attacks. So i think a change up to that and the SV would help alot.

Also i think he should be made a bit tanker then he is. Im not saying make him unstoppable, but able to have more of a Defense more like DrMundo . Or just adding more defence and life steal to his Turtle Stance. This will make him a affective jungler and top laner.