Riot Games confirmed months ago its plans to rework the League of Legends champion Udyr, and this week, players got one of their first big previews of the plans for the rework. The Udyr Visual and Gameplay Update Team shared a post on the League site talking about plans for Udyr’s new abilities, his character design, and the backstories surrounding Udyr that’ll govern his history and why he looks and acts the way he will once his update is completed.
All those elements are important to Udyr’s design, but as is the case with any champion, what Udyr can actually do in-game will be most important to those who play him now. We don’t yet know what all his reworked abilities will do, but we at least know of some directions the VGU Team wants to take him. Stash “Stashu” Chelluck, the gameplay designer working on Udyr’s rework, said the team has elected to let Udyr keep four basic stance-based abilities with no plans for an ultimate. He won’t have aimed or ranged abilities nor will he have “significant dashes,” and he’ll still be able to max different stances and build items differently to create playstyles unique from one another.
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One interesting idea being explored is a “super stance” where he gets an empowered version of one of his stances every now and then which would be highlighted by a separate resource bar. The current plan being kicked around is giving Udyr the chance to reactivate an active stance to use this “super stance.” A brief video showing abilities going off on Udyr’s old model showed arcs of lightning, trails of fire, and more effects stemming from the empowered stance.
“My next plan is to explore just how far super stances can go,” Riot Stashu said. “Should they be simple upgrades to the base stance, or can they be a little more differentiated? What are the craziest effects we can add on empowers? And so on.”
While lighting and ice shown in the video do look different from his current animal-based abilities, it looks like that change will be addressed in his lore. Narrative writer Dana Luery “griddlebones” Shaw said one idea being explored now is tying Udyr’s abilities more closely to his homeland of Freljord and specifically to the demigods that originated there. Those include Volibear, Anivia, Ornn, and others not yet mentioned.
As is the case with any of these previews, things could and probably will change, but we won’t know for sure what’s preserved and what’s not until the next update on his rework releases. That’ll happen towards the end of this year, Riot said, with Udyr’s rework planned for a 2022 release.
