League of Legends Is Updating Ignite's Visual Effects

One of League of Legends' most popular Summoner Spells is being updated soon to give Ignite a new set of effects that'll better show when an enemy is under the effects of the ability. The new version of Ignite was previewed this week by Riot Games ahead of its PBE appearance before it gets its wide release in a future update. The result of the changes is a much more clearer representation of the spell's effects and how long a champion is taking damage from Ignite.

Senior VFX Artist Riot Sirhaian shared a preview of the new Ignite effects in a brief video that showed what the Summoner Spell will look like when it's updated. Instead of just showing ticking damage on a champion while they're under the influence of Ignite, the spell now literally sets enemies on fire with a big plume of flames enveloping their whole body. It's an obvious effect, but not so invasive to the point that you can't see what's going on while you're Ignited.

Also coming in 10.18, a VFX Update for the Ignite Summoner Spell!

Our goal was to improve its visual quality while greatly reducing how noisy it was, but trying to keep its importance level.

YT Video: https://t.co/hpoTCaKVjE pic.twitter.com/4Y2K7oCzrp

— Sirhaian (@Sirhaian) August 21, 2020

Over on Reddit where the Summoner Spell update was discussed, Visual Effects Lead Artist for Skins Riot Beardilocks shared some more context on the changes.

"Updated the visuals for ignite to reduce the overall noise whilst making it clearer when targets were affected by this powerful debuff, as well as more clearly communicate when the individual ticks of damage occur," Riot Beardilocks said.

This Summoner Spell update will be shipping in Patch 10.18 alongside some other updates for a few champions. Riot is continuing its VFX updates for different characters with new looks for the abilities of Nocturne, Viktor, and Malzahar. These champion updates happen frequently enough now, but we don't often see Summoner Spells updated.

"Our goals for these sorts of smaller scope updates is to improve the overall gameplay clarity of vfx whilst bringing them up to modern League of Legends standards," Riot Beardilocks said about these sorts of changes. "This means that our efforts are primarily aimed at spells which do not clearly communicate the hitbox. Our goals are not to change the art direction for these skins or champions - those kinds of changes are reserved for full Visual + Gameplay updates (VGUs)."

The new Ignite effects and those for the other champions will be released in Patch 10.18.