League of Legends fans got their first peek at the upcoming Fiddlesticks and Volibear updates in a recent video by game developer Riot Games. Let’s have a look, too!
After a lot of anticipation among League of Legends players, Riot finally lifted the curtain. The developer showed the fans a bit more about the planned updates and new champions scheduled for 2020.
The video called “Champions in Season 2020”, updated League of Legends fans on the visual and gameplay updates Fiddlesticks and Volibear will be getting soon. It also confirmed there will be several new champions coming later this year. The champions to be updated were picked in a community poll last year, where Fiddlesticks and Volibear got about 24% of the results each.
League of Legends lead champion producer Ryan “Reav3” Mireles did not get into details about any changes to their specific abilities. Instead, he focused on the themes the two champions will have in their look and gameplay.
Fiddlesticks
Fiddlesticks’ upgrade will focus more on the horror he inspires. That is pretty impressive, considering that most League of Legends players have gotten their share of jump scares at the sound of cawing when a Fiddle ults into their team.
What is more, the Surprise Party Fiddlesticks skin is probably single-handedly responsible for giving some players a phobia of party horns*. It is chilling that Riot Games has decided that we need to have more fear of the scarecrow, and by the looks of it, they are not going to go easy on us.
The reveal post on the Riot blog stated that we can expect more opportunities to set up his signature ultimate. Perhaps an invisibility or nearsightedness effect like Nocturne’s Paranoia?
Volibear
Meanwhile, League of Legends’ own thunder god is going to get a more primal makeover, just in case a lightning-clawed armored bear was too civilized for anyone. Expect the new Volibear to be more savage, beefier, and altogether a nastier jungle predator.
Reav3 also noted that a lot of the players wanted the champion to have a more “eldritch horror” theme. League of Legends already has several other champions who are not exactly cuddly or particularly mindful of the natural laws of the Runeterran universe. However, the League of Legends design team did decide to make their ideas for such a variant into a separate skin. Even better, Reav3promised that the skin would be free for anyone who already owns the champion when the rework is released or unlocks him during the patch of the release.
The reworks will continue later down the line, though, and the League of Legends producer promised another poll to determine the next champion to be updated next year. This comes as a bit of a surprise. Last year, Riot stated that due to the poll results, we should expect a Shyvanarework sometime after Volibear and Fiddlesticks got theirs.
That does not mean the League of Legends design team has no plans for the rest of this year – far from it. In fact, they will focus on new champions after the reworks come online. Reav3 unveiled a plan to tie champions to events spread throughout the year. In typical Riot fashion, he provided titillating tidbits but few specifics.
What we do know is that we can expect two new League of Legends champions released during a summer festival event. One of those will be a jungler and the other – a masked champion “who refuses to die”, with some more to come later on. It sounds like it’s going to be a busy year for League of Legends. After all, last year, the designers let us know that they planned to focus on new champions for 2020, and it seems they will keep true to their word.
At the end of the video, Reav3 revealed the origin of the special calling cards with a beast motif that many players got.
If you are one of them, congratulations – your pugnacious ways have impressed League of Legends champion Sett and you can use the card in your inventory to unlock him for free. Go break some heads!
*We could give some numbers, but like 97.3% of all online statistics, they would be made up.
