Here's How Riot Games Picks League of Legends' Victorious Skins

It never fails that some players are overjoyed and other left unhappy with every Victorious skin [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

League of Legends Victorious Graves Header

It never fails that some players are overjoyed and other left unhappy with every Victorious skin that's introduced into League of Legends, but with the start of this year's preseason, we now have a breakdown from Riot Games that explains how they choose from their Victorious candidates.

With the announcement that Victorious Graves would be this year's chosen skin, the same responses began appearing once again related to the decision. Considering how Graves fell out of favor to tanky junglers with hard CC later in the season, some felt he didn't deserve the skin, but others who remembered getting burst down in their own jungle in the Spring thought Graves a fitting choice. The discussion eventually took the form of a question in an Ask Riot post where Riot's IAmWalrus explained their decision-making process.

The Rioter began by confirming that they start looking a Victorious champion in the Spring and then tease it one month prior to its release. Solo queue stompers also aren't weighed as heavily in the process with ranked and professional play being looked at more, but once Riot begins forming some idea of who will get the skin, they start crossing off champions according if any of these five points apply to the champ:

  1. Already have a Victorious, Championship, or Conqueror skin. We wouldn't do Conqueror and Victorious Karma in the same year, or Victorious Elise 2.0.
  2. Play the same role as a recent Victorious Skin. Since we had a top laner last season, we tried to avoid picking a top laner again this year.
  3. Have another skin coming out soon. We try to spread out skin content across our whole champion pool rather than drop a bunch of skins for one champ at the same time.
  4. Have a very small number of skins. Since the Victorious Skin can't be attained by everyone, we don't want that to feel like the only skin your favorite champ gets.
  5. Have a big balance change incoming. This is definitely the hardest criteria to figure out because balance can be fluid and we're trying to predict the state of the game six months or so in advance.

Based on these criteria, IAmWalrus said that Graves was a perfect fit for the Victorious Skin. So, when you see a Victorious skin chosen next season, you can look back on this list and get an idea of why it was chosen if you didn't already predict it yourself.

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