Let’s stop kidding ourselves: Shyvana needs a full scale update the most - and it’s not even close.
Let’s examine the 5 champions riot has proposed changes on. No worries, it’ll be brief.
Fiddlesticks:
In reality, you have a good kit that probably just needs some QoL buffs that give him more consistency. He has one of the best ults in the game. At worst, he needs a small rework to reshuffle power in his kit but fiddle absolutely lives up to his character.
Volibear:
If there was one champion that came close to Shyvana, it’s volibear. However, at least volibear is functional. He’s just bland and generic, and he really doesn’t have much of a feel character-wise.
Nocturne:
This champion just needs defensive stat buffs. A single spell shield on a diver used to be all you needed, but the game has changed. He has an amazing character and his kit has held up well over time. He just needs better scaling HP. That’s one place to start.
Dr Mundo:
C’mon man, he’s everybody’s favorite beef stick that goes where he pleases. Seriously though, I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with Mundo save for his W. You could do a small rework on this spell, because it doesn’t offer much anymore as mundo doesn’t favor the jungle any longer. Other than that, mundo is mundo.
Now let’s get onto Shyvana:
Please understand, I do not play Shyvana so I could absolutely be speaking out of term here. Then again, I almost never see Shyvana anymore and she’s a champion that used to be incredibly popular - so I have to assume she’s fallen out of favor for many of her mains. That said, I also know that the idea of riot reworking your main is terrifying but in riots defense, they’re usually pretty damn good with full scale updates.
Here’s my issue with Shyvana: what does she do? What’s unique about her? Yes, these same questions apply to voli as I mentioned above, but he at least has some functionality. Furthermore he’s bland and generic, while Shyvana has a cool concept that is simply super disappointing. She doesn’t even feel like a “two-form” champion because going into dragon form isn’t really rewarding at all. A champion that functions similarly is Gnar in that he has to build up rage to transform (though he cannot control it). You know when mega Gnar is around, you feel his presence. Dragon form Shyvana? Eh....was that a cannon minion that just hit me?
Shyvana’s biggest problem is that you have made her so reliant on just being a stat stick. Back in season 3 and 4 when she was one of the best top laners, riot constantly nerfed her because she was a champion you couldn’t really kite while you couldn’t ignore either. That was the quintessential problem with bruisers back then: they filled multiple roles while being straight forward and bland, barely any depth at all. So their playstyle, naturally, was “run at them until one of us dies.” Ask yourself this: has that really changed with Shyvana? Not really. In fact, they’ve further reinforced that with her passive, which is one of the worst passives in the game: get stats for killing dragons. So she doesn’t even truly have control over the stats she can potentially get, making it even more mundane.
Listen, Shyvana has one of the coolest potentials in league. Dude, a god damn half dragon? There’s so much there that it hurts to even think about how basic she is. It hurts to see how utterly unfunctional she is, so much so that people find it better to build her as AP than her intended on-hit bruiser style - and in my experience, AP Shyv performs better (obviously I do not have stats to confirm or deny this so I admit this is entirely anecdotal). Nevertheless, a problem. And I honestly think when you consider all of this, Shyvana has to be the most disappointing champion in the league, especially when you consider how popular she was in s2, s3, and s4.
