- Riot brings new life to the old-school jungler
- His abilities have been reworked but are still in line with his original concept
- Udyr also gets a lot of new visual updates and skin reworks
Udyr is one of LoL’s classic junglers and was desperately in need of a rework to make him more competitively viable in the game’s newest meta.
Udyr Needed a Major Update
With over 150 champions currently in League of Legends, Riot Games often has to release patches to rebalance and fix problems that inevitably come up in such a big roster of characters. The game’s latest such update was Udyr’s rework which addressed many of the problems players had been facing.
The Summoner’s Rift’s resident spirit walker used to be one of the best champions when he was released at the dawn of League of Legends in 2009. However, his career that spans more than a decade saw Udyr get surpassed by the many champions Riot put into the game over the years. This inevitably necessitated a big rework to put the aging character back to speed.
As years passed and more champions got added to League of Legends, Udyr started to fall into obscurity to other junglers like Viego and Bel’Veth. Not only his abilities struggled, but even his visuals felt very dated, adding to the reasons players avoided playing with him. With Riot’s latest patch, all of these changes.
Udyr’s Rework Finally Released
Arriving on August 23, Riot Games’ extensive Udyr rework completely overhauls the champion’s visuals and in-game kit in an attempt to breathe new life into his gameplay. The champion has always been good at getting close and personal with enemies, thus Riot wanted to preserve this trait.
“We really wanted to preserve his stance changing identity, and keep him as an auto-attacking, melee-focused champion,” said product lead Lexi Gao at a press roundtable discussion of the rework “This is what makes Udyr really stand out in our roster of champions, so we really want that to remain the same.”
Designer Stash Chelluck echoed Gao’s words. He explained that the team wanted to keep his kit pretty similar to the current one. “We liked that he’s a relatively straightforward melee bruiser who is all about getting to you and dealing damage,” he said. Detailed information about the champion’s abilities can be seen on the official League of Legends page about him.
As mentioned before, Udyr’s visuals have also been reworked. Udyr’s four primal spirits from his original skin—Tiger, Turtle, Bear, and Phoenix—are no longer a part of his official kit but are still present in his Spirit Guard skin. In addition, all of his old skins have also been reworked.
Let’s hope this major update will once again see Udyr shine bright like in the early days of LoL.
