Did the devs reveal Sona’s upcoming visual rework in the preseason video?
Currently, there are almost 160 heroes in League of Legends. Some of them appeared on Summoner’s Rift many years ago, so it’s no wonder that their models or animations are not the freshest. The game has changed a lot in recent years. Riot tries to smooth and refine the appearance of characters or skills so that even older champions can please the eyes of players.
Of course, not every rework is about fully refreshing the hero. It takes a lot of time and resources to update both the model and skillset, animation appearance, voice, or lore. Sometimes it happens that the character does not require a complete rebuild and only the appearance of skills could get a few corrections. In these situations, Riot decides to update VFX.
Some time ago, the creators asked the community about who should be reworked in terms of appearance in the game. They also admitted that they will soon take care of some characters and refresh their visuals. It turns out that Sona was among this pool of champions.
Sona’s visual update
Riot recently announced that Syndra will be getting a VFX refresh (see: League of Legends Syndra will receive the VFX update. How does the refreshed heroine look like?). The news of this really surprised many players, as they did not expect Riot to choose this character. According to the community, a lot of other champions need to be tweaked because their visuals are not as good as the majority of champions.
A few days ago, a video related to the preseason appeared on the official League of Legends channel. The Rioters talked about their plans for the next year. It was revealed, among others, that not only a new challenge system and new items will be added, but also one of the newer rotating modes will return. However, apart from the information about what awaits players in 2022, the fans focused on something else.
Many Summoner’s Rift scenes are shown during the video. The heroes fight each other and at some point, Sona is also seen. However, the appearance of her abilities does not look like it currently does.
Below are the excerpts from the video compared to the current state of the character’s VFX.
As you can see, Sona’s abilities depicted in the video differ from those that are actually seen in the match. Auras are much smoother and more uniform. There are also no characteristic waves.
For many players, the situation is clear – Riot prepared a visual rework of Sona and used a refreshed version in the film.
Recently, the mentioned heroine enjoys great interest on the part of the creators. In patch 11.16, a small Sona’s makeover appeared on the servers to bring the character back to the meta. It quickly turned out that the changes turned out for good – After mini-work, Sona became the best support in League of Legends.
Fans are happy that Riot is interested in their favorite heroine, who has been on Summoner’s Rift for 10 years.
So far, the developers have not confirmed that they are introducing the aforementioned VFX update. However, a large part of the community believes that it will appear soon.