LoL Fans Demand ASU For Champion After LoR Reveal

It doesn't often happen that a card game has better graphics than one of the biggest game titles in the world. But after the reveal of the champion in Legends of Runterra LoL fans demand an ASU.

Nidalee Leopard Skin HD
LoL fand demand ASU for Nidalee after seeing her new desing in LoR |©Riot Games

League of Legends is an old game and so are some champs. From time to time, Riot Games overhaul some of these older champs to give them new graphics, skins or even abilities. After the reveal of Nidalee in Riot's popular card game Legends of Runterra fans demand a rework for the shapeshifting cat-lady.

LoL Fans Demand ASU For Nidalee

The champion in question, Nidalee, was released back at the end of 2009. So her overall appearance isn't the freshest one, to say the least. But now a new design for Nidalee was used in Riot's popular card game Legends of Runterra and fans are demanding an overhaul of the champ for League of Legends as well.

An overhaul like this is called an ASU, that stands for art and sustainability updates. If Nidalees ability-kit needs to be worked over as well is a hard to answer question. She's a hard to play champ and her overall pick rate is with 3.42% relatively low.

Right now, Nidalee is definitely a champ for the higher Elos where she ranks in the top 10 picked junglers from Diamond upwards. An overhaul of her abilitiy-kit might only be useful, if Riot wants to make Nidalee more accessible for lower Elos as well. But some graphical adjustment could help Nidalee to regain some popularity within the broader community.

The LoL Reddit community seems to be very open for a Nidalee ASU:

Nidalee base skin
Nidalee with her good old design |© Riot Games

In the Reddit Thread a lot of users are sharing their opinion regarding the new LoR design. The user "TheFlax", who opened the Thread, asked:

Nidalee got a new design for her cards in legends of Runeterra. Now she actually looks like she belongs in Ixtal and doesn't look like a parody of a concept. Her cougar form also got completely changed. I think it looks a little over designed but it'll grow on me. Not sure how I feel about the new cat ears tho.

The majority of answers reveal that the community is very open to a new Nidalee design. The user HiVLTAGE shared his opinion: "That's a pretty good design, seems way more shapeshifter". User Ikasul found another aspect of the LoR design that he likes: "She has cat ears now in human form!?! When do we get that ASU? It better be soon!" And the user Inspired_Performance simply screamed: "SHE LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER. Never even seen that! Very cool!"

So, it will be interesting to see, if Riot will take a look at Nidalee and decide to overhaul the champion. Right now, there is a long list of champions that would need an ASU as well. But that shouldn't surprise us, after 163 champion releases there are especially some older champs that are in the same position as Nidalee.

Let's see on which character Riot's focus will lie in the coming years.

Henning Paul
Henning Paul