What is Dark Water?
So I'm struggling with the new skins on the pbe. Let me preface this by saying Diana is my second most played champion, I may have used Vlad when he was free once oor twice, but couldn't guarantee it. I saw the Vladimir skin first and was very impressed. It's a skin that makes you want to try the champion. Hours later i saw Diana's and my reaction very 'meh'. Being an avid Diana fan I've over analyzed what problems I see. And since anyone can post here, you get to hear about it. Lucky you!
The problems revolve largely around the theme, or more honestly, the lack of one, leading to the title question; what is Dark Water.
When you look at a lot of the theme multi champion skins you can look at them and say "those belong together!" (Don't mention blood moon akali, just don't.) Snow day, dark star, pulsefire (great job OB those btw) and so on. I've heard these skins as existing in their own architecture alternate league universe, and with most you look at them and you get an idea of what that universe is like. That seems sorely lacking with this pair. They both like blue, that's cool, I mean unless you buythe chromas, then never mind. Vladimir looks like a malicious water bender. With him the dark water gives off energy if he's feeding it or I'if it's feeding him, I don't know. But there's force there vibrancy. Dark water is alive. His attire? He's definitely ornate, maybe a noble of some sort? But outside of what appears to be an eye patch nothing about his appearance reads as pirate, or sailor, or any sea going anything. Let's compare this to Diana.
She's a sailor, probably an officer based on the fancy hat. Her tailor may have gone a little darker on the blue than she planned, but she can play that off. Her sword is pretty cool, especially the hilt/ handle area. But her abilities just don't reflect dark water as a power source. I might every go far as to say they don't even reflect water in general. If the skin wasn't named waters you told me the blue tint to everything was for any other reason, I'd believe you. It just doesn't read very watery at all, even looking for it because of the name. Obviously the way their skills work is part of the part of the problem. Short of a full vgu, or an 1800 or higher price worth of work getting her to feel more liquid seems very hard.
Also, while the smaller changes on Diana may take equal, or even greater time to design than Vladimir, there is a question here on if we're paying for what you put into it, or what we're getting out of it. I really can't see any way those two skins should be the same price based on the viable results.
Lastly a couple ideas for this.
- Give them different names so the fact there's not a good overriding theme isn't as noticeable.
- Define clearly what dark water is. The name of an island, or ship, or ocean? Magical energy? Define it and make that a more readable link between them. Given it looks like they're launching with Pyke making them more spectral and un dead sea fairing person on nature would tie them both together and to Pyke. But i don't know if you have the time for that. (You should really talk to me about these things sooner XD)
