Nocturne's PBE Texture Rebalancing

As an avid fan of Nocturne, I'm just putting my 2 cents out here. The new texture rebalancing for his skins are really hit-or-miss. EDIT: This is going strictly off the screenshot images on Surrender@20: http://www.surrenderat20.net/2014/09/925-pbe-update-sion.html#more

For the base skin, I like that you've made his central body something other than a black blob. However, you also really dimmed down the sheen of his blades. While I get this may be for more of a "shadowy" sort of look , it also makes Nocturne stand out less, giving him more of a "dimness"; his defining model feature, in my humble opinion, is his blades. Making them slightly brighter to give them emphasis, particularly on the edges, would not only make base Nocturne stand out more, but help players remember him for that feature.

For Frozen Terror: Overall, I like it. The "frozen edge" textures give the skin more character, and I feel that replacing the grey with navy blue is an improvement of the color palette, making him darker without making him black. Only complaint is that I miss the little runes on his blades, but that's relatively minor. In all, I feel like this is a strict improvement, and as such is my favorite rebalance of the set.

For Void: Oi. This is where is starts to go downhill again. You removed a lot of the "high-contrast" coloring (which seems to be a common theme with these texture rebalances), but as a result made his upper arms, central body, and spines all really... same-y, lacking in texture, flat. The high-contrast coloration gave his body some texture that is now lacking on the rebalanced model; the current model feels flat. This is most apparent close-up to Nocturne; at a distance it's less of an issue, but suffers from the same "dimness" as the base model. The skin just doesn't stand out much. The one thing I like is that you've brightened up his blades a little bit on this skin, whereas before they were unnecessarily dark.

For Ravager: To be completely blunt, this is the worst. Granted, Ravager Nocturne didn't have a lot going for it in the first place, with its over-blackened textures; as such, some/much of my argument could probably be applied to the old texture, as well. However, this new rebalancing just looks poor; it's almost a strict downgrade from the base skin. As someone who bought Ravager with the express purpose of completing a collection of Nocturne skins, I'm considering refunding the skin entirely. The "same-y-ness" is really strong on this skin; the entire champion looks like a blob of orange with a few blue accents. The dark "muscle-y" outlines are really too soft, in my opinion, and could use with a little more darkening for improved contrast and more variation on the color palette.

Going back to the blades being Nocturne's defining feature: The blade-body boundary on Ravager isn't well-defined at all. While I understand that, for this skin, the point is to make the blades seem to be an extension of his body, the end result is a model with very little variation to distinguish one part of the body from another. It's just one orange same-y mess that happens to trail off into black wisps and has primarily black particles.

On Ravager's particles: If you plan to modify his particles to be more orange-yellow, then at least there will be some consistency. Otherwise, this skin's model and particles are going to be at even greater odds with each other than before. The skin was poor before, but at least it still looked "dark" enough to justify the black particles.

I know I'm just one fan with no art experience speaking to a bunch of professionals, but I greatly enjoy this game and its beautiful art assets, and appreciate all the work you put into this game. But as a major fan of this character you've created, I humbly ask that you reconsider some of the choices you've made working on this texture rebalancing. With this opportunity to improve the textures of existing champions, I feel like there's still room for improvement in the Nocturne department.

Thank you for your time and consideration.