One of the most highly anticipated champion updates coming to the League of Legends belongs to Lee Sin, who will be receiving a visual facelift in just a few weeks.
In a developer update shared by the League devs earlier today, it was confirmed that Lee Sin’s update will arrive on live servers on May 1, in concordance with the release of Patch 14.9.
For years, Lee Sin has been one of the most popular champions in League, largely due to his high skill ceiling and impressive graphical effects. The champion’s mechanics were ahead of their time when he was first released in 2011, and his intuitive gameplay has granted Lee Sin staying power as a go-to pick for junglers throughout his history. With Patch 14.9, he’ll finally be getting his first major visual upgrade.
Lee Sin will be receiving an “Art and Sustainability Update,” which differs from a gameplay update or complete rework in that it only targets the visuals of a champion. Some League players should be relatively familiar with the concept of an ASU, considering Ahri received one just last year. Many of Lee Sin’s newer skins have left his older model looking outdated, so this ASU will aim to bring the champion up to speed across the board with the modern standards of League’s art style.
“As one of our older and most iconic champions, Lee Sin needed a lot of work to meet our modern art and tech standards, while maintaining the feel that his mains have learned and come to love over the years,” League studio head Andrei “Meddler” Van Roon said in today’s dev update.
Riot has made a conscious effort to make Lee Sin’s model look more consistent across all of his skins, as they rebuilt the champion’s appearance “from the ground up” for this ASU. Additionally, many of Lee Sin’s visual effects attached to some of his skins were targeted and revised for being too “noisy.” Riot specifically showed off changes to his Storm Dragon, God Fist, and Muay Thai skins in today’s dev update, all of which look far more steady and streamlined when compared to the updated base model that the champion is receiving.
Lee Sin’s ASU will be going live alongside the launch of Patch 14.9, which releases on May 1.
