League of Legends Is Adding Ally Skin Previews to Champion Select

Skin previews of your allies’ chosen cosmetics are being added to the champion select screen soon after being first tested first on the PBE.

Riot SapMagic wrote on the League of Legends PBE boards that the ally skin preview change would be moving to the PBE testing grounds later on Wednesday for players to preview the new system. As indicated in the screenshot above that shows off a full Star Guardian squad of champions in champ select next to their Summoner name and chosen champion.

“Later today we’ll be activating Ally Skin Previews in Champion Select on PBE. The name pretty much says it all – starting patch 8.2, you’ll be able to see which skins your teammates have selected. Now you can set up that sick Championship Thresh / Kalista bot lane or that all-Star Guardian team.”

As SapMagic indicated, the feature is fairly self-explanatory, but there are a few specifics that were provided on how and when the previews would appear in each game.

The Details

1. Previews work in any matchmade game
2. Previews are only visible in Finalization Phase
3. Previews for other players are throttled slightly to avoid spamming, which can have negative impacts on performance
4. Previews only appear for skins you own

The final part of the details that indicates that “previews only appear for skins you own,” looks to be referring to the way that your skin preview will show up for others, meaning that you can’t hover over a locked skin during the finalization phase and make it appear as a preview for others. With your preview changing in the finalization phase as you pick your skin from those that you own, other players will be able to change their skin choice accordingly to coordinate entire teams or duos of a certain skin line.

The feature is scheduled to go into effect in Patch 8.2, a patch that’ll be one of the smaller updates as part of the new big patch, small patch cycle.