Faker's ultimate skin sparks debate, resembling the Dark Knight, with disappointing design; Oner emerges as the winner

Hello to all LPL viewers and League of Legends summoners, this is World Game Report.

T1's championship skin was officially released early this morning, later than last year's release time. Many fans were eagerly waiting, but the final skin quality revealed by Riot did not meet audience expectations.

Editor

Most viewers feel this championship skin does not resemble a true champion skin, but rather looks like a part of a skin series.

All T1 skins revealed, closely resembling the Dark Knight

The overall design style of this T1 championship skin mainly uses black, red, and silver—the three colors Riot frequently applies in their skins. In other words, it’s a safe choice, but making it stand out with such a palette is challenging. For instance, after the splash art was unveiled, viewers immediately thought of Riot’s previous Dark Knight series.

Editor

It can be said that whether it’s the color scheme or the armor design, this T1 skin could easily be labeled as part of the Dark Knight series without feeling out of place to the audience.

Putting aside the drawback of the creative overlap with the Dark Knight theme, the overall splash art is decent but not very striking. The NAR wearing glasses feels a bit out of place, though this glasses-wearing NAR seems to be a design element requested by Zeus and was included by Riot.

Moving on to the model and effects design, the three main factors determining a skin’s quality are splash art, model, and effects. This time, the model and effects, like last year’s championship skin, were criticized by viewers for lacking T1 and champion elements.

Faker’s ultimate skin sparks controversy, design disappoints

Some viewers even questioned if Riot just reused the Darkin skin effects from the second half of the year with minor changes, since apart from the recall animation, no T1 elements were visible. Normally, including the champion team's logo in skill effects is standard, but this time even that was missing. The T1 elements are truly scarce.

The model that stands out more is Oner’s Vi, which looks great and features a recall animation where she wears a coat. Among all the skin designs, it’s the best. Interestingly, Oner initially wanted a Xin Zhao skin, but Riot advised him to switch. Some viewers joked that it was because Xin Zhao already has a Dark Knight skin, so Riot suggested the change.

Faker’s recall animation includes a shushing gesture, which is a highlight. Combined with Yone being a hero well-suited for the black and red theme, Faker’s Yone skin is relatively well-received by the audience.

Then there is Faker’s ultimate Sylas skin, which has caused the most controversy. Firstly, this ultimate skin does not resemble the usual ultimate skin style, and the splash art is unsatisfactory. Secondly, the model and effects emphasize Sylas’s dark red chains, and many dark red effects during attacks look quite cool.

Riot’s design feels careless and hard to understand

Compared to regular skins, Faker’s skin design is quite good, but as an ultimate skin, it falls short compared to other attractive ultimate skins. Riot has created many beautiful ultimate skins, but the S13 and S14 ultimate skins have generally been unsatisfactory.

When the T1 skin was revealed last year, some viewers already called it the weakest T1 skin set. This year’s quality seems even worse than last year’s, indicating Riot’s design has become increasingly careless.

Personally, the hardest thing to understand is that Faker and T1 are Riot’s biggest cash cows, so Riot should have made the champion skins more attractive to boost sales.

Instead, Riot’s production cycle keeps getting longer, and the quality declines year by year. Does anyone remember when the IG championship skin was released? Back then, Riot managed to release the skin quickly in the first half of the year with high quality. Now it’s already August, and the results are still like this.