After Urgot is completely released can we expect the next two VGU's in the champion update schedule ? And if so are they going to be Nunu and Mordekaiser ?
Edit: For everyone who wants to see the Tier 1 list -> https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/yghB24Gs?comment=0004
RiotReav315 votesI plan on doing a "Champions" update at some point after Urgot is out. Will be going over Retros on Champions and VGUs released the first half(ish) of the year as well as talking about plans for the next couple VGUs.
Chromatic Eagle2 votesCan you give us even a little tease on Urgot's lore direction?
RiotReav316 votesIt's brutal.
Malicious Metal5 votesRiotReav312 votesUrgot could totally play drums for DethKlok. His quadruple bass drums would be relentless.
Malicious Metal5 votesSooo...
Inb4 Pentakill Urgot release when?
Chembaron Yamada2 votesHow about a rival band for Pentakill? Would be pretty cool to have another LoL band and then they are having a competition.
They could even make an event out of it. :O Imagine, they release songs for both bands and then the players can vote for their favourite band!
AND THEN THE WINNING BAND GETS A HOLOGRAPHIC CONCERT LIKE THAT ONE THEY DID FOR HATSUNE MIKU!
(Maybe I get a bit too hyped...)
Big Lincoln2 votesdoes he have four arms???
is he goro now???
RiotReav36 votesLast I checked you played Bass Drums with your feet...
Big Lincoln2 votesI don't know what I was reading ?_?
Sharjo7 votesYes you can expect new ones. No you can't know who those are yet. The champion the Urgot team will be transitioning towards will be elaborated on when Urgot's much closer to release.
Lyaso1 votesA rioter said that Morde and Nunu are the highest priority on the VGU's list.
Sharjo3 votesThat doesn't guarantee them slots. They are high priority, certainly, but there are others up there too.
Lyaso1 votesSo who would you like to see after Evelyn ? =)
Sharjo3 votesHonestly I'd love to see a Rammus VGU come about. Dude could really use some in game visuals love. Plus an expanded VO that goes from like 8 lines to like 22 lines or something to that effect.
Malicious Metal8 votesHonestly? Mordekaiser isn't even numero uno priority for me at this point, I enjoy the champion and there are champions that are also in dire need of some love.
PANTHEON especially could be one of the coolest champions!
Wrathof3004 votesThe fact that you are willing to let Panth see his VGU before Morde brought tears to my eyes. I assumed you main Morde to some effect? Now I want Morde to be next just because of your words of kindness.
Malicious Metal5 votesTo some effect? A million mastery points and still counting, plus he's been my main for as long as I can remember.
Thing is, he has a small but dedicated player base and doesn't really warp the game around him. So he can be left in this state for a bit longer.
Whereas champions like Pantheon haven't gotten any love recently. Plus he's a very popular champion whenever he's strong so it's about damn time he can be allowed to be popular AND strong without being nerfed whenever he rears his head.
Sharjo10 votesPantheon also has huge slews of narrative potential considering the Targon update. I always liked the vibe that in game he'd have a reverse Yorick thing where you'd here Pantheon talking most of the time, but every now and again Atreus would speak up. When Panth dies Atreus is like "Really? This is the best the Spear of Targon could do with my body? I would've killed all of them!"
Malicious Metal5 votesDo. Not. Hype. Me. Up.
Thanks.
Sharjo4 votesFEEL THE HYPE FLOW THROUGH YOU MALICIOUS
Malicious Metal6 votes
Garentheon4 votesI eagerly wait for a Pantheon VGU everyday of my life
Oleandervine3 votesA rioter said that Morde and Nunu are the highest priority on the VGU's list.
Evelynn and Urgot were actually higher priority than Warwick/Gallo, but Riot said they chose to do them out of order so you weren't being slammed by dark/moody champions consistently. They have a thematic flow to how they rerelease champs as well.
RiotReav38 votesFirst of all I did not say that. I posted a rather large list of potential "Tier 1" VGUs. I also stated that just because a champion is "Tier 1" doesn't mean they will be the next champions worked on.
Urgot for, for example, was higher priority then Galio or Warwick but we never has anything we felt was going to be amazing for him until recently.
Nunu and Morde are definitely high priority but so are many other champions.
Raxistaicho2 votesOut of curiosity, has that list changed? Most notably, Rammus was a Tier 1 but he just recently got a Shyvana-rework. Would you say that knocks him down to Tier 2?
And how many more VGU's will there be this year after Evelynn?
RiotReav35 votesSmall updates like that don't generally change our priorities. Swain got a small update but has remained a Tier 1 candidate.
Lyaso3 votesCould you send me the link to the Tier list ? =) And do you think wouldn't it be better if Riot should focus more on champions that need a rework instead of creating new champions. I would say that there are enough champions in the League universe and a releasing schedule of 1-2 new champions per year would be perfect. So it would make it more special if a champion would be announced because of this =)
RiotReav34 votesI don't know about going down to 1-2 Champions a year (At least at this point.) There are still many players that would prefer new champions over VGUs. Every year the scale tips a little bit more though.
Lyaso4 votesI just read about your comment here -> https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/Nc0QAZZM?comment=000100050000 and I think it would be more reasonable do to even 60/40 VGU's vs New. The community tends to like VGU's more after they got released and the game would be healthier fixing existing problems old champions caused rather than creating new champions. Those old champions are causing balance issues that's why they don't fit into the current game, thus new champions interact poorly with them =)
Zoli Ben4 votesSo say, 
and 
be the constant number one and two on player request list, would that make them prioritized over other Tier 1 then? Would you fully VGU despite he had a VU earlier that did not solve his gameplay issues?
Raxistaicho3 votesTHe only thing we're sure of is that Kayle and Morg aren't this year. Meddler just announced that in his most recent game thoughts.
Wrathof3001 votesRiot will release an official post once Urgot is released. It will cover the Urgot rework and some of their objectives and goals with the Urgot rework and gloss over what the second team would be aiming for on Evelynn, that post would also include the next 2 VGUs after Urgot and Evelynn. They did something similar last year when Yorick was released and they announced both Warwick and Galio would be reworked, iirc it was Reav3 that confirmed this post would be made after Urgot's rework.
RiotReav34 votesI also did one after Warwick was released
:P
patmax171 votesin your article, will you also go over the small updates made by the live gameplay team?
RiotReav32 votesNo, it will focus primarily on VGUs and new Champions with a little bit about roster. Meddler usually does a pretty good job at covering the small updates in his daily posts.
Erdamon1 votesI have a kind of off-topic question, will we ever see visual only updates again? I feel like there's a handful of champions whose gameplay still lives up to today's standards, or had a sufficient gameplay update already so that more kit work isn't really required.
RiotReav35 votesI would't say never. Nothing is ever absolute at Riot as we constantly re-evaluate priorities and what will have the highest player value. We stopped doing pure VUs because they really didn't have much effect on the game at all for the amount of time spent on them. In fact, many players didn't even notice when we did them at all.
Lee Sin, for example, doesn't have the most up to date visuals in the game. That really doesn't prevent players from playing and enjoying Lee Sin. He is still one of our most popular champions. When we did a VU on Karthus it didn't really change player perception or engagement with Karthus either.
The gameplay updates and big VGU's have a enormous effect of players engagement and enjoyment of the game so we started to prioritize those over VUs.
That isn't to say we will never do VUs again, just that they aren't currently the highest value thing we could be doing at the moment. While VU's don't take as long as a VGU, they do take time and would slow down the cadence of our big VGUs by quite a bit. Our big VGUs have a much bigger impact and are also in much higher demand from our player base, in fact many of our players want us to do the big VGU's faster.
HowPlayGAEM1 votes[deleted]
RiotReav39 votesIn retrospect Fiora was one of our highest value VGUs. We do a survey to players every 3 months or so that asks them a bunch of questions about our champions. most fun abilties, highest overall quality, best art, etc. Of all our VGUs Fiora is consistently the highest rated VGU by players we ever did. Not on day 1 of course, but overtime when the dust settled she remains the stickiest and strongest of our VGUs
A lot of this has to do with the fact that her theme was very strong (Fencing Duelist) We actually want to do more of these in the future. Champions that aren't the worst, but are pretty dated and have very strong themes. This is one of the reason we keep bringing up Irelia as a high priority champions for a full VGU.
Also to your point on Annie and Karthus. I think both of those would have greatly benefited from full VGUs.
Monotachi2 votesWould you say that about Akali as well? A Fiora-type VGU would do wonders for her. Her theme is clearly strong (ninja chick, uses smokebombs, dashes around alot) but her current gameplay using these ninja tools feels lackluster and watered down over the years.
Fiora kept her original skill profiles intact (except for ult) but given more skill expression. Akali's kit matches similarly in this regard.
RiotReav34 votesI think we should have pushed Fiora further from the Art/VO stand point. But, yes I would put her more in the camp of Fiora & Warwick where we would want to modernize her rather then re-invent her. Evelynn and Irelia are in a similar camp.
Valor Bot1 votesSorry to add to the pile of questions Reav3, but would you consider Quinn a Tier 2 list champion?
RiotReav35 votesProbably Tier 2 or Tier 3.
SlyTactician 3 votesWould Teemo be a candidate for a modernization or a full on VGU as well?
It's so odd to see him with the "Swift Scout" title when very little about him is quick or mobile (especially in regards to his lackluster W). Even Teemo's own champion profile page on the client shows his mobility as one of his lowest stats.
Chromatic Eagle2 votesWhat's wrong with Quinn that she's even on the list at all?
RiotReav35 votesHer kit just isn't very healthy, especially as a top laner (playing against specifically.) Also her thematic and art execution is a bit weak.
Octavia3 votesHer kit just isn't very healthy, especially as a top laner (playing against specifically.) Also her thematic and art execution is a bit weak.
All I ask is don't screw her up and make her into an ADC bot laner who can't defend herself without a support. She needs to be able to roam, duel and kite. That is Quinn.
LankPants1 votesYou pushing Fiora in the art direction just pissed a lot of people off, don't just gloss over that, it's important to remember that this was an abomination that people didn't like.
http://i.imgur.com/iAwR9PP.jpg
It's also worth noting I literally found this as the first result by googling "Fiora shit art", that should tell you the communities opinion on you "pushing Fiora's art" as a whole
RiotReav36 votesThat was exactly my point. When we did Fiora is was before we had 2 full VGU teams. Fiora kept the same rig and we just updated the model (Same as Shen.) If we had put both through the full VGU process and pushed them further and spent way more time on there art I think they both would have been much better. Fiora is a case where we only went halfway, which never really works very well. Had we pushed it as far as our other VGUs it probably would have been a lot stronger.
