Key Takeaways
- Viktor mains aren’t happy with the champion’s visual update, inspired by his appearance in Arcane.
- High Noon and Deathsworn Viktor are particularly reviled by the community.
- Although Riot claims this is a VGU, there aren’t any major gameplay updates to Viktor.
I’ll preface this by saying that a person’s main in League of Legends is often very important to them. We’ve seen famous players and streamers build identities and brands around their proficiency with a single champion. These people are commonly known as “one-tricks.” When you spend a significant portion of your life playing a single champion then you form a strong attachment to them, their visuals and their kit. In fact, we’ve seen one-tricks outright quit League of Legends after certain champion reworks that changed the core identity of their main.
This is important to note because players who complain about changes to their champions aren’t being frivolous. If you used something every day and then someone else changed it without consultation, you probably wouldn’t be too pleased, either. The latest League of Legends gripe is with Viktor’s visual gameplay update (VGU) which has come about as a result of the character’s arc in the mega-popular animated series Arcane. A VGU is generally a visual update combined with a gameplay update, but Viktor’s gameplay changes are very minor in this case. You can see all of the visual changes in the video from Skin Spotlights, below.
The Power of the Arcane
A thread on the Viktor mains subreddit, posted by Deeb_Cx, captures some of the discontent surrounding Viktor’s updated visuals. In fact, it’s the second-most upvoted post ever on that subreddit. The original poster showcases before-and-after images of Viktor’s Deathsworn and High Noon skins. The results aren’t too flattering, with Different_Recording1 suggesting that the new Deathsworn skin makes Viktor look like one of the Zora people from The Legend of Zelda.
The comments are full of negative comments regarding these changes, “The extreme loss of personality baffles me,” writes Reasonable_Display95. “Actually insane how someone looked at both of these and said yeah, release it, I cannot imagine anyone likes this? Even if you like Viktor from Arcane more than the game, most of the skins are objectively so much worse,” concurs StirlingOwl79.
This negative feedback isn’t isolated to only the Viktor Mains subreddit, either. The Public Beta Environment (PBE) post regarding Viktor’s ASU has also been flooded with negative comments. The top comment on the thread from kinkichiouma reads, “Most of his skins are literally a major downgrade, especially Deathsworn. I really wanted to be optimistic about this rework, but I’d rather keep old Viktor than this upgrade.”
As for gameplay changes, the only major change to Viktor is that his ultimate now grows larger when it kills an enemy. In reality, this doesn’t really affect gameplay significantly because all of Viktor’s damage is front-loaded, meaning he doesn’t necessarily rely on his ult constantly ticking on multiple opponents.
