The price of Hextech Annie/Soulstealer Vayne with the Augment + bundle (is still unreasonable)
Assuming Gemstones drop at a rate of 5% (1 in 20 chests), then the Augment+ bundle grants an average of 1.5 gems per 2950 RP spent. Acquiring 10 gems in this fashion would require 6 and 2/3 of a bundle for an average total cost of 19,667 RP. The optimum rate of purchasing RP is $100 US -> 15000 RP.
That means that Hextech Annie (or Soulstealer Vayne) during this event costs you $131.11 US on average.
Without the special offer, the cheapest way to acquire Hextech Annie is through the 10+1 chest bundle for 1950 RP. That grants 0.55 gems per bundle on average. This requires a little over 18 bundles totaling a price of 35,454 RP which, at optimum RP prices, comes out to $236.36 US. The special bundle saves you over 100 dollars, which is still a little less than half the price.
I don't think this is good enough. Hextech Annie has no unique voiceover and no other special features aside from I think a single custom animation (recall) meaning its value is firmly below a "legendary" tier skin which, at the same price conversion ratio, is valued at less than $13 US. Also note that the special bundles are only available for 6 days, which isn't even long enough to afford 1 of the 2 skins before the event is over and gems are back up to their higher price point.
The additional content that comes with these purchases feel like a smokescreen to cover up how horrible this pricing mechanism is for the consumer. Skin shards are kindof worth 1/3 of a mystery skin and a lot of the time you get champion shards or ward shards in their place which are worth much less. You only need 32 cores to unlock all possible content they are required for, and after that they will only be good for disenchanting into nigh-worthless IP (and we don't even know how much yet). Especially after a Rioter revealed that the bonus skin shards aren't guaranteed to be for 975+ RP (after I had already purchased a bundle thinking I would be guaranteed a number of high value skin shards), the value per cache just seems on par with what you would get from spending the RP on chests considering the increased price per cache, and the value of a chest at normal price was dubious at best.
The crafting-exclusive skins still feel like obvious whaling expeditions that are completely disrespectful to Riot's customers. Given the price of legendary skins that are objectively higher quality than these crafting exclusive skins aren't even worth $13 (not including the fact that they occasionally go on sale for 50% off) I think a path towards the skins that only costs the consumer 20 dollars out of pocket would already be the upper limit of a reasonable price point. Anything more than that should be considered to be Riot trying to scam their players.
