Udyr, the Spirit Walker[]
Udyr is a martial arts champion based around 4 fighting stances: Tiger, Turtle, Bear, and Phoenix. Each form has an activation effect and a persistent effect. The persistent effects ensure that each stance fulfills a different role, while the activation effects encourage Udyr to constantly switch as the battlefield changes. Udyr is a champion with 4 basic abilities, and no ultimate (a groundbreaking skillset in the League of Legends!), allowing players to choose which abilities are worth maxing out based on how the game has evolved.[1]
Roar into battle as Spirit Guard Udyr[]
Enhance your experience with an evolving model that transforms as you reach max rank in each stance, new spell effects and animations across all four forms, as well as new VO and sound effects. Vanquish your prey with unique kill effects on minions, champions, and, for the first time, neutral monsters.
You can become one with the four eternal spirits as Spirit Guard Udyr for just 1950 RP for four days after release. For those who haven't yet unlocked Udyr, a bundle will be available for 2295 RP. When the sale ends, Spirit Guard Udyr will return to his regular price of 3250 RP.
"Heart of Flame"
In his core, Udyr has become one with the four eternal spirits. Conquer the blaze that burns within the phoenix and consume your enemies in fire.
"Power Without Bounds"
The fury of the wild emboldens Udyr; embrace the power of the bear and maul opponents with massive stunning blows.
"Wrath of Nature"
The mantle of spirit guardian has passed to Udyr. Channel the ferocity of the tiger and sate your feral hunger with rapid slashing attacks.
Full Relaunch[]
Choose a Champion Update for 2022[]
- Udyr
Udyr’s warrior-shaman theme feels unique to League, but his outdated visuals leave a lot to be desired. If we were to update him, you could expect major improvements to his art and a more modern take on his thematic.
At a high level, Udyr has one of the most interesting kits in the game. His form-swapping mechanic is iconic, and he's the only champ whose entire kit revolves around modifying his basic melee attacks—both of which we’d want to preserve. One thing we’d aim to solve is how one of Udyr’s forms tends to become his default state. Our goal would be to build a kit where all forms feel meaningful and useful, regardless of balance state.
Voting Results: Champion Update & Skin Thematic[]
We asked, you answered: Udyr and Crime City Nightmare are the winners of the Season 2021 polls!
- The First VGU of 2022
The votes are in, and unlike the last VGU poll where we had two candidates extremely close, this time we have a landslide victory. The champion that won by a large margin was Udyr!
Not only was he ahead by a lot when all the votes were combined, Udyr was also far ahead in every region individually as well. We have heard loud and clear that you all want to see Udyr brought up to modern champion standards, and that's just what we are going to do.
Just like the last couple VGUs, we’ll be doing a few dev blogs to update all of you on the progress as we move along. We’ll start work on Udyr’s update soon and plan to have it ready for early 2022. Now let’s kick things off with a few words from some of the developers who will start to re-imagine Udyr for his big update!
Stash “Stashu” Chelluck, Gameplay Designer: Udyr's unique kit hook excited me ever since I first started playing League, but he hasn't quite kept up his luster as the game evolved around him. I hope to do his classic stance-dancing motif justice by pushing the unique powers and playstyles of each stance while keeping him the heavy hitting, full-melee fighter that really slaps when he closes the gap.
Justin “RiotEarp” Albers, Concept Artist: Udyr is one our oldest champions (2009?) and it's time he received his upgrade. He’s got tons of potential to be one of the coolest characters in the game, and I'm looking forward to exploring and figuring out what the best version of our bearded melee spirit shaman can be. There are lots of things with him that are already working and we can just embellish on those characteristics, namely his ancient, primal nature vibes, doing something really cool with those different stances, and making sure he feels right at home in the Freljord.
Mary “a highwayman” Gumport, Narrative Lead: Udyr has such an untamed, deeply human core. We want to do that heart justice, so we’ll be digging into how our favorite shaman can keep wrestling with everything on his mind while more deeply connecting with the ferocity and spirit of the Freljord in his own unique way. The Narrative team on League has been thinking about him and his place in Runeterra for a while now, so I’m excited to finally give him the full attention he deserves.
Champion Roadmap: April 2021[]
- The Many Forms of Udyr
As many of you know, Udyr won the player choice VGU poll earlier this year. Since then we’ve started giving the old spirit walker a huge makeover. We’re still super early in development, so we don’t have quite enough content to fill an entire blog, but we should have one coming in a few months.
In the meantime, we wanted to share some rough sketches Justin “RiotEarp” Albers has been working on to see what’s resonating with all of you.
Kicking Off Udyr's VGU[]
By The Udyr VGU Team[5]
Hi everyone, today we’re ready to give an update on the champion you all chose for a VGU earlier this year: Udyr. We’ve been sharing our progress with all major VGUs recently, and not only have you all seemed to really like it, but we’ve also gotten some great feedback early enough to actually affect the direction of the projects. So this feels like a win/win for everyone!
Before we get to the meat of it, let's recap why we chose Udyr and what our goals are. Udyr made it to the VGU poll because he’s one of the last really, really visually outdated champions in the game. Beyond that, his gameplay is over a decade old, and it FEELS like it (unlike, let’s say 
Lee Sin, who still feels pretty good after all these years).
With that in mind, our main goals for Udyr’s update are…
- Preserve Udyr’s stance-changing identity and keep him as a primarily auto-attack/melee-focused champion. We think this is what makes Udyr unique and stand out on the roster. To help his gameplay feel more modern, we’ll be looking to add a bit more interest to his stances and melee pattern to give some more depth to playing him, as well as make it more clear when Udyr is doing something cool (he doesn’t really have a hype gameplay moment right now).
- We want to upgrade Udyr’s visuals to modern League standards while keeping his general theme of a warrior shaman intact. Our goal is to build on Udyr’s visuals, not reinvent them.
- As for his narrative, we want to bring his in-game portrayal closer to how he’s been portrayed in recent lore and give him stronger ties to the Freljord.
With that, three of the devs currently working on Udyr will go more in-depth on what we’re exploring for Udyr’s gameplay, art, and narrative design.
- Shifting Stances
Stash “Stashu” Chelluck, Gameplay Designer:
Hello! Riot Stashu here, and I’d like to talk a bit about how our man-bear-phoenix’s gameplay has been coming along.
I was pretty thrilled when I got the Udyr update because Udyr and I go wayyyy back. I’ve played League for over a decade now, but I still remember the awe I felt when I first scrolled through Udyr’s kit in the shop all those years ago—all melee, no ultimate!? The mad man. I was intrigued and began my stance dancing journey asap. I first learned how to jungle with phoenix Udyr, but soon took him up top lane and had a blast first-blooding my unsuspecting opponents with the unfair red potion + tiger stance start. Eventually I got more into playing champions that had a few more tricks up their sleeves, but me and Udyr spent a long time together kicking butt and he’ll always have a special place in my heart.
Since Udyr’s early days, it feels like just about everything else about League has changed, and yet somehow his classic style has weathered it all. Even in today’s faster paced, longer-ranged, bigger-and-scarier world, Udyr somehow manages to keep up and throw down with the best of them using his brutally simple kit. His popularity has waxed and waned over the years, but somehow there have always been plenty of players in his corner ready to stance dance and maul their way through the Rift (especially recently, after seeing him clean up in the competitive split).
So! What I’m getting at is that while his straight-forward melee style might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s clear that Udyr’s gameplay has stood the test of time. The all-melee brawler has carved out a clear niche for himself, so the plan is to stay true to the Udyr we all know and love with this VGU. You may ask, then, why are we updating his gameplay if he’s so great? Well! We think the core of Udyr is really strong, but see two main areas for improvement:
Variance/High Moments: Udyr’s pace of play is pretty consistent from the moment he dings level two. With no ultimate or other high-power options and a passive that says “always be castin’,” Udyr is constantly churning out medium/low-impact spells and doesn’t hit those jaw-dropping moments that other champions can produce. We’d like to mix this up a little bit, and introduce a few moments where everyone can look over and see Udyr doing something a little more visibly awesome and powerful.
Thematic Execution: Udyr’s “Animal-Shaman-X-Martial-Artist” theme is pretty cool in a vacuum, but doesn’t feel connected to Runeterra in a satisfying way; if Udyr can channel the greatest spiritual powers of the Frejlord, what’s up with the turtle and the monkey? There’s nothing wrong with these animals per se, and we want to keep true to Udyr when possible, but we think that by making a few thematic tweaks, we can make an Udyr that has far more exciting connections to the world around him and to those that would fight him for it. Whatever theming changes we make here, the gameplay will embrace them to really make Udyr shine.
So to summarize, Udyr’s gameplay update will address: adding variance (and high moments) and delivering more strongly on a theme (see the narrative section for a bit more there!). With that in mind, the rest of the design team and I discussed what we believed to be core to Udyr, and decided to try to preserve the following:
- Udyr’s kit has four basic abilities that change stances (no ultimate)
- Udyr has no aimed/ranged abilities or significant dashes (he’s all-melee)
- Udyr can deal and/or withstand a lot of damage, based on build
- Udyr can max different stances and plays differently when he does (Tiger vs Phoenix)
With the higher level stuff sorted, we got to work. How did it go in practice? Well, the team brainstormed a bunch of possible ways to heighten Udyr’s high moments. We came up with directions like: Udyr permanently gains a super-buff based on whichever stance he maxes first, Udyr can have two stances active at once, Udyr has an ultimate that turns him into the avatar of whichever current stance he’s in, and dozens more.
Finally after much paper kitting and vetting, we were excited to try a version of Udyr where he got a similar set of four stances as always, but occasionally gets to use a “super version” of each stance.
The original pitch for this “super stance” kit was that stances would passively grow in power as they went unused, such that if Udyr didn’t cast a stance for several minutes it would be SUPER CHARGED and have some special and more powerful effect. Everyone was excited about their forgotten stance occasionally being worth casting, so we tried it out. It had some mixed results; managing this power up was awkward and often ran counter to the things the player naturally wanted to do, but having the power up and using the super-verison of a stance was actually very exciting!
After many iterations and variants of “super stance,” we think there might be something here. Today we’re playing around with kits where Udyr can recast his active stance to use the super version (on a cooldown). We’re still considered other possible directions, but here’s Udyr casting some [experimental] stances and recasting them:
(Also, yes, that’s a skillshot in there. We experimented with breaking some of those core Udyr rules; it’s good practice to test our assumptions to see if they’re more constraining than useful. In this case, the “all melee” constraint seemed correct so we decided to stick to it.)
My next plan is to explore just how far super stances can go. 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.
And that’s about it! Now remember, we’re still at the point where nearly all of this can change, but I’m feeling pretty good about where we’re going. Thanks for reading, I’m so glad to have been able to share our progress with everyone!
- Going into Beast-Mode
Justin “RiotEarp” Albers, Concept Artist:
Udyr has been around for a long time—AND has seen a lot of things happen in the world of Runeterra. He's a very unique champion in our roster because he has immense spirit power that he channels in combat, which denotes an extreme ability to have discipline, but his outset appearance is very organic, primal, and almost humble in a way, like that of a monk. No crazy huge armor, extra limbs, demon horns, or anything of that sort, but a primal battle-ready confidence that only someone from the Freljord can possess.
From the first explorations we shared in April, we as a team centered around the Mountain Brawler, Wild Druid, and MMA Shaman, and were even more confident when you all keyed in on those same iterations. We may use some of the other initial explorations as inspiration for his Spirit Guard skin, like for example the Deity Invoker. For base Udyr, we want his melee-feel to take priority because at the end of the day, he still physically attacks his enemies. The Spirit Guard skin leans more into the spirit realm (obviously), so we can get away with more spirit energy visuals there, and then both can have their own unique space.
Now that we had direction for his base character, I wanted to explore how to visually represent the animal spirit energy he channels.
From there my goal was to organize his thematics into three visual pillars (at least in my mind to help me understand his thematic hierarchy):
- Freljordian primal shaman: Denoted by antlers, long hair and feathers/trinkets in hair.
- Strong melee fighter channeling animal spirits: The big hook here is his body type—-strong but not cut, muscular but not a bodybuilder, with simple fighter rope on his hands/knuckles, giving him the space on his arms to represent what animal he is channeling while his horns would signify the corresponding element (electricity, fire, etc.).
- Traveling spirit walker: His travels to Ionia have given him the discipline needed to hone those powers and strengthen his connection to the spirit realm (bead necklace, Ionian rope belt, tattoos/markings).
I'll be first to admit Udyr’s hair was a bit off in the first spread, and lots of you called us out on that! The intent was to give him a cleaner style, almost like that of a fighting game character in order to denote his melee combat abilities, but in doing so I strayed too far from Udyr's shamanistic wandering lifestyle. He's out in the woods, not in the streets, so we explored some options that were more influenced by his lifestyle and wild man aesthetic.
In refining his overall design, we thought it would be way cooler and more unique if Udyr had tattoos of the animals whose spirit energy he channels. The antlers around his head add a lot to his silhouette, and is a very universal shaman visual. Although we tried versions where he had the antlers on his shoulders, it felt more like an armor set and less interesting than when they were around his head, so I also needed to work out how that attachment worked. Also, he’s a hairy dude!
Next we will be figuring out what each stance will look like—we want to make each stance as powerful-feeling and indicative of the Freljordian animals as possible. Lots to do still, but we wanted to share where we’re headed!
- Finding Udyr’s Voice(s?)
Dana “griddlebones” Shaw, Narrative Writer:
One of the first things the team discussed when we started working on Udyr was that he’s got some really cool lore already. Skiptmyluo’s short story “A Walk with the Voices” and WAAAARGHbobo’s “Silence for the Damned” both paint a picture of a man in conflict with spirits, humans, animals, gods, and himself most of all. He’s a man who struggles to walk the line between animal instinct and practiced mastery, between the physical world and the spirits, between overwhelming connection and icy isolation. He lives in this interesting in-between space, where all of these pieces of himself are in conflict with one another and yet he has managed to find the balance within that conflict, to find himself among the endless voices of others.
To me, that’s not a champion that needs a rework, that’s a champion that just needs an update.
We’re not changing much of Udyr’s lore, but we are diving deeper into who he is, how his mind works, how his abilities work, why he fights, why he fights the way that he does, and what his connection to the Freljord looks like. I’d like to bring that idea of “balance within conflict” to the forefront, with his belief that the Freljord thrives on struggle and obstacles and combat, and that peace would be its ultimate undoing. When Udyr fights, he’s fighting to keep the balance of the Freljord by using two sources of strength and tension—physical prowess and spiritual power.
But if Udyr is fighting for the Freljord, with the spirits of the Freljord at his beck and call, you wouldn’t know it from his current stances. Most of his current abilities are linked to animals that sound Ionian, which, sure, he spent many years training there. However, he came of age in the tundra, intensely familiar with its mystical landscape and needs, and has returned to his homeland. Isn’t it time that Udyr’s abilities reflected his home and his heritage?
We’re exploring a few options, but the one I find most compelling is linking his abilities to those of the most powerful spirits in the north: the demigods. 
Volibear, 
Anivia, 
Ornn, and… did you know that there were others? The lore names at least two more. Udyr wouldn’t be drawing on their power directly (“Silence for the Damned” illustrates why that would be a bad idea—Volibear, at least, can exert control over people who tap into his power), but perhaps the animals that most closely resemble the demigods are enveloped in their spiritual energy and can lend him their own enhanced strength.
And though the demigods are the most powerful beings of the Freljord, they aren’t necessarily the most powerful beings in the Freljord. Those would be far beneath the ice, under the watchful eyes of the same people who killed Udyr’s tribe when he was young. Perhaps there’s a connection there, another path for Udyr’s story to walk...
- What’s Next?
We’re planning to release Udyr in 2022, so you can expect the next /dev blog towards the end of the year, once we enter full production. In the meantime, we’d love to hear what you think so far: What excites you? What would you want to see more of? Does anything feel untrue to Udyr? We’ll be reading through your thoughts and feedback, as we want your help in making the best warrior-animal-shaman-martial-artist-monk possible.
Champion Roadmap: September 2021[]
- The Latest on Udyr
We’ve made a lot of progress on Udyr’s VGU since we last checked in. We’re planning to do another blog early next year with a lot more info, but we wanted to talk about a few small things before then.
First up, let’s talk about his antlers.
When we shared our last update, many of you liked where his hair landed, but there was some uncertainty with his antlers. We discussed your feedback and decided that it was important to keep the antlers because they add a unique differentiator for his silhouette and readability, and because they provide a focus for his druidic power. However, we agree that the designs needed work because they were large and demanded a lot of attention. So we started with a new spread of smaller antlers.
We thought option B was the most promising here, so we pursued that design. We think we’ve landed on something cleaner, more natural, and a little more “druidic focus” and less “sharp weapon.”
We also wanted to add something to Udyr’s design that expressed the friendship he cultivated with Lee Sin while in Ionia. To do this, we added a headwrap given to him by Lee Sin that he now uses as part of his hand wraps.
In Udyr’s last dev blog, we shared our idea of evolving Udyr’s theme by making each of his stances associated with a Freljordian demigod. Your response was overwhelmingly positive, which got us even more excited by the prospect of connecting Udyr to Runeterra in a much stronger way! We’ve decided to lock in this direction, and we can’t wait to talk to you more about it in the next blog. In the meantime, here’s some concept art that Justin “Riot Earp” Albers has been working on for Udyr’s demigod-inspired stances.
Champions in Season 2022[]
| “ | So that's all for new champions, but what about VGUs? Later this year, we're releasing the champion you all voted for last year: Udyr. We have a dev blog coming out today that dives deeper into his update, but we do have one small change we wanted to share here. We know that Udyr's antlers weren't really hitting the mark for many of you, even after the tweaks. And once we got them in game, we also realized they weren't really needed for a unique silhouette. So we removed them. Goodbye antlers! Be sure to check out the dev blog to see all our awesome progress that the team has made so far on Udyr. |
| — Ryan 'Reav3' Mireles[6] | |
 |
The Latest on Udyr's VGU[]
By The Udyr VGU Team[7]
Hey all, Ryan “Reav3” Mireles here with another update on Udyr’s VGU, which will come out later this year. Since our last check-in, we’ve entered full production on Udyr, so this post will focus on how he’s looking in-game. But before we get into it, here’s a quick recap of what our goals were going into Udyr’s update:
- We want to preserve Udyr’s stance-changing identity and keep him as a primarily auto-attack/melee-focused champion. We think this is what makes Udyr unique and stand out on the roster. To help his gameplay feel more modern, we want to add a bit more interest to his stances and melee pattern to give some more depth to playing him, as well as make it more clear when Udyr is doing something cool (he doesn’t really have a hype gameplay moment right now).
- We want to upgrade Udyr’s visuals to modern League standards while keeping his general theme of a warrior shaman intact. Our goal is to build on Udyr’s visuals, not reinvent them.
- As for his narrative, we want to bring his in-game portrayal closer to how he’s been portrayed in recent lore and give him stronger ties to the Freljord.
Oh, and in case you haven’t seen the Champions in 2022 video we released today, we decided to remove Udyr’s antlers. We know a lot of you weren’t really digging them, and once we got him in game (as you’ll see below) we felt they weren’t really needed for a unique silhouette.
And with that, on to the new stuff you all came here for!
- Antlers or No Antlers?
Jason “OOYOO” Namgung, Character Artist:
Udyr’s rework has been a long time coming, and I was stoked to help recreate one of League’s most “senior” citizens.
When we got started, I assumed that Udyr would be a rather simple and straightforward champ to work on, but that façade wore away very, VERY quickly.
I got started by blocking out a proxy model to get him in-game to start testing our ideas for his visuals and gameplay. But in order to do this, we needed to get his proportions correct because without a good base we’d just be “polishing a turd.” Our goal was to make him feel like a big, strong mountain man, and that became our north star for his body type.
While working on his proportions, we ended up removing his antlers. While we really liked the idea of them and we tried a lot to get them to work, we couldn’t get them to not look goofy because of how hunched over he is.
In one attempt they looked like wings, and in another they looked like propellers. No matter how hard we tried to get them to work, they just always looked off. Although the idea was cool, Udyr’s the animal spirit guy, not the antler guy. So ultimately we decided to table the antlers and refocus on his animal spirit fantasy.
After we built out Udyr’s base body, we got started on his stances. And that’s when we realized the mountain man was going to be a bit complicated.
His base body was pretty straight forward, but his four stances were a major hurdle. Not only were there four of them, but we also had to make sure each one amplified the fantasy of the animal spirit they’re associated with.
We try to create sustainable resources as we go, this way we’re future proofing new champions, making it much easier to develop skins and future updates. We decided to use the same “bones” in each of Udyr’s models to keep things simple for us and help readability in game for players.
This meant we had to do A LOT of iteration to find what felt the best for our big boy. Some were simple while others required 10 or more iterations to get right.
...But that's the fun of game development!
We’re still early in Udyr’s production and everything’s a work in progress, but we’re slowly getting closer to the final look and feel for our big boy. And hopefully all of you will enjoy him when he finally comes out!
- Mastering Udyr’s Many Stances
Koingyeal “Koing” Jang, Animator:
Gameplay clarity is really important in League, and I knew Udyr would be challenging because I needed to look at each of his four stances as separate from each other, but still connected—because they needed to feel like Udyr in order to be clear in game. But I also wanted to animate his stances as if they’re four different champions with entirely different characteristics. That way it won’t be confusing to figure out which stance he’s in.
Udyr holds a deep reverence for wild animals, and I wanted that connection to be clear in his animations. Phoenix stance was the most challenging to animate and it took many iterations before I found the right direction.
We wanted his pose to look bird-like, magical, and related to ice, which is... a lot. I also wanted to preserve his wildness, so after much thought, I came up with the wind attack idea.
The idea was to mimic a bird’s wing, with Udyr creating wind with the swipe of his arm. I liked the direction a lot, but there were a few problems: The size of the air made the attack look like it hit multiple enemies instead of just one, and the team wanted this stance to be related to ice more than wind. That meant I needed to go back to the drawing board.
My next idea was to animate Udyr creating ice instead of wind, so that it looked like he was using his magic to attack with the ice. We all liked this direction more than the first iteration with wind, but we were afraid that he looked too magical and lost his wildness aspect that’s key to who he is. That meant I needed to find a good balance between his magical power and inherent wildness.
Next I leaned more into a physical version of ice. And while I really liked this direction, it felt like it lost the connection with birds.
So I changed the stabbing lunge to a swipe to bring in bird-like inspiration from the first idea, but kept the iced wings as a nod to a certain winged Freljordian demigod. The final idea ended up being a blend of everything I did leading up to this point, in true game development fashion. And we’re all really excited with where we ended up.
Udyr has many types of basic attacks, which meant I had to animate it for each stance. My approach to each is pretty much the same: I consider his personality first, and then need to think about the spell's function, all while making sure they feel unique to each stance. Here are some of the others using the same process:
- Awakening the Beasts of the Freljord
Luis “Riot Bloois” Aguas, Visual Effects Artist:
Udyr's VGU gave me a good opportunity to push boundaries in League's VFX style. The first inception of that came from the question, "Can I make Udyr look like he’s in a fighting game and in League?"
Fighting games have always been a genre where you can express individual mastery over a character and its matchups. When I looked at Udyr's new gameplay, I immediately thought of that individual character skill expression you’d find in a fighting game. His stances have different use cases—Bear Stance is great against certain champions in a 1v1 duel, Phoenix Stance is great in an AoE situation, and so on.
I picture an Udyr player knowing when it’s the right time to use the optimal stance, and that being the thing that differentiates between a good Udyr player and a great Udyr player. He’s an incredibly versatile and flexible champion—exactly the type of character I’d want in a fighting game.
But fighting games and League are two different games with two different types of VFX. Where’s the happy medium?
Before we get into examples, let me explain Udyr’s passive, which is what I’ll be talking about: If Udyr is already in a stance and it is on cooldown, he can Awaken it. Each stance has an empowered form or function when it’s Awakened.
With this in mind, his passive should visually make you feel powerful when you Awaken each stance. Going back to my original goal of trying to combine League and a fighting game, I decided to go for heavily stylized, sharp, hard-edged shapes to hit that “powerful feeling.” Oh deer, it's Udyr. It's also VFX time!
First Iteration of Udyr's Passive VFX—I Used a Flat White Color to Figure Out The Silhouette Before Moving on to Colored Effects
After looking at the first iteration I decided that, while cool, the direction didn’t quite fit League’s VFX style. So... now what?
I looked for answers in Udyr’s spiritual energy. What does this power look like after he channels it? How does it feel connected to the spirits he holds dear?
I replaced the hard shapes with softer ones to match League’s VFX style and introduced color to deepen the overall fantasy. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that initial fighting game design, so I had a thought... What if we add everything together and make color the differentiator between his stances?
Because there are 4 stances, I needed to create a color palette for each one. These visuals are all using the same exact VFX, with the only exception being their color!
This design felt really cool, but nothing actually communicated that Udyr entered a more powerful form. So I decided to tone down the visuals I had and focus on a way to make it clear he was in an enhanced state.
Up until this point I was creating VFX on Udyr’s old model. But around this time OOYOO completed an updated proxy model to give us a better idea of how he’d look in game. This meant that I could start creating VFX based on Udyr’s updated kit and model, instead of just “blue skies”ing ideas on his old one.
Before I got started working with Udyr’s new model, I needed to prioritize which elements of his gameplay are most important to communicate. For example, when you press Q, three things happen:
- Udyr enters Bear Stance
- Udyr gains bonus attack speed for the next two auto attacks
- Udyr gains bonus attack speed for a certain duration
Since the bonus attack speed lasts longer than the Awaken passive, that gets a higher visual priority. But even higher than that is making it clear which stance is Udyr in.
In League, we typically communicate an auto attack enhancement by applying VFX to a champion’s hands. In Udyr’s case, I added lightning VFX to his Bear Stance’s bear claws to indicate that Udyr’s auto attacks are doing something extra. There were three visuals I needed to create, with each one unique but still feeling connected to the others: The idle VFX with bear claws active, the stance activation with the active Awaken buff, and his passive’s Awaken VFX cast and buffs.
You might notice some of the visual language from my early “fighting game” exploration and that’s because... it’s there! I was able to combine sharp shapes with thematic lightning hooks and soft blending to ground it within League’s VFX style while still giving it something uniquely Udyr.
Then I needed to move on to the effects when you interact with enemies. When Udyr’s Bear stance is Awakened, your next two auto attacks will arc chain lightning to your primary target and then spread nearby enemies. (Sound familiar?)
Furthermore, when this arc of lightning hits a single target and doesn’t bounce to others, it’ll do increased damage. Kind of like a big lightning bear when he’s mauling your face.
And that wraps up what I’ve got to share for Udyr’s VFX! As a reminder, everything I’ve shared is a work in progress, and the final product may still end up a bit different than the direction we currently have. I hope you like what you’ve seen here, and I can’t wait to see what you think when you get your claws on him. Thanks everyone~!
- Channeling the Dragon Spirit
Justin “RiotEarp” Albers, Concept Artist:
Udyr has just a few very classic, very well-known skins in his catalog (Spirit Guard, anyone?), and as we were figuring out his base, we were keeping ideas for his skins in the back of our dev brains. We decided to start with his most recent, 
Dragon Oracle.
It’s a great looking skin with an excellent thematic, so there’s a lot to keep with some things that need to be adjusted to match his new character. Also, the dragon thematics and colors will easily translate to what the new-dyr is here to represent.
We wanted to do our due diligence by going wide with the explorations—we have a pretty solid understanding of this dragon world now thanks to the extensive amount of skins—so we focused on a few different areas. We decided early on that he should remain on the mystical dragon side of things, and not among the draconic division of dragonslayers—he still channels the dragon spirits for just a hint of their power. But that left us asking, how dragon-y should he look? How physically affected is he by the animal spirits he channels? (That will forever be a question on Udyr!)
We decided to keep Udy more human than dragon to show that he’s in control of the draconic power he’s summoning. Some dragon elements will be cool for this skin, some scales, and definitely horns! But overall we want to keep his arms and shoulders free to show off his stances and animations.
Next we’re honing some of the more minor details for his base before doing the in-game version and concepting the dragon form stances!
And here’s where we’re heading with this skin: getting into the in-game view and his ortho for modeling.
There’s lots more to come on Udyr skins, so keep an eye out for these in a later update!
- What Comes Next?
As you can see we’ve made a lot of progress and we think his base is coming along nicely. I think it’s worth sharing that Udyr does have quite a few skins, and the nature of his form swapping makes each one take longer than the average champion would—not to mention he also has an Ultimate skin.
Given all that, we still have a ways to go before we can finally get the new Udyr into your hands. We want to make sure we get him and his skins right before he releases into the wild, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated in future champion roadmaps once we have a clearer picture.
Champion Roadmap: April 2022[]
- Guarding Spirits
There isn’t much to say about Udyr that wasn’t covered in our last update—he’s still a big boi hanging out in the Freljordian wilds, communing with spirit animals. Base Udyr is finished at this point and now we are focusing on his skin catalog, with most of the team working on his Spirit Guard skin. We really want to pour a lot of love and attention into that skin, with it being an Ultimate and all.
One of the goals for Spirit Guard is to keep some of the essence of old Udyr, so to do that it will represent the time he spent training in Ionia, and will also use the same animals as pre-VGU Udyr (Tiger, Bear, Turtle, and Phoenix). We wanted Spirit Guard to immortalize his old animal forms, while also cranking them up to 11. I don’t want to spoil everything yet, but I will leave you with concept art and an early model of his Spirit Guard skin before he channels one of his animal spirits.
Udyr VGU: Rebuilding the Spirit Walker[]
By Landess 'SMALL BABY PANDA' Cole[9]
In the more than a decade since he was unleashed onto Summoner’s Rift, Udyr has become an icon in his own right.
Running around the jungle like a possessed wild man? Iconic. Not having a traditional ultimate? Iconic. Flash, bear, slap? Iconic.
But as zoomers like Zeri debuted on the Rift, papa Udyr found himself needing to get with the times. His kit and appearance had fallen behind the rest of the game, earning him the most votes for a VGU.
We know it’s been a long road since that vote, but we hope the new Spirit Walker has been well worth the wait. Prepare to harness the power of the Freljord, stance dance like everybody’s watching, and, of course, run in and punch stuff.
- Udyr Awakened
When we take on a VGU, the primary goal is to preserve the things that players love about a champion, dial up their fantasy, and bring their kit and visuals up to modern standards. But doing an overhaul of a champion as old as Udyr is a huge effort, especially when numerous skins are involved, not to mention an Ultimate.
As we mentioned earlier this year, we had a few core goals for Udyr’s VGU: preserving his stance-changing, melee identity; upgrading his visuals to modern League standards; and bringing his in-game portrayal closer to his recent lore.
On the gameplay side of things, Udyr’s stance-dancing identity is what makes him feel so unique within the League roster. So his kit remains that of an immobile melee juggernaut, punching his way through the jungle.
“Udyr’s gameplay stands out because he’s so different from other champions. He doesn't have an ultimate, he only has four basic stances, and he can only use one at a time,” says game designer Stash “Riot Stashu” Chelluck.
“Players were very clear about what they liked about him. A lot of the longtime Udyr mains I’ve spoken to gravitate towards him for his unique combination of versatility and simplicity,” explains Riot Stashu. “But his skills just fell a little flat in terms of execution. They weren’t quite as satisfying as they could be.”
To up the satisfaction and make Udyr more versatile, the team wanted to create a kit where all of his stances felt useful, satisfying, and cohesive—and one form wouldn’t become his default state.
Prior to the VGU, Udyr players would often plan their game around either a ‘Q max’ or ‘R max’ build, depending on the meta. (Because before this update, Q and R were essentially just damage spells.) Now, both abilities still deal damage, but R’s damage has been reigned in and combined with a slow to help the two stances coexist a little better.
One of Udyr’s new passives takes this one step further by “Awakening” each of his stances and making them even more powerful.
“The Q Awaken doubles down on Q's high damage output and offers all builds a potent burst option if they find their target isolated. The hefty base damage and AP ratio ensures it will be the stronger burst option compared to R, even in AP-heavy builds or lower Q-rank builds,” says Riot Stashu.
R Awaken grants Udyr the flexibility that no other stance can—range. This, combined with some considerable base damage and slow power, ensures that even AD-building, Q-maxing Udyrs will find themselves in situations where only the R Awaken can give them or their team what they need.
These were key changes that delivered more satisfaction, versatility, and power in Udyr’s gameplay. And with the addition of Freljord-infused stances, updated lore, and reimagined visuals, we believe the ‘Dyr is finally living up to his full potential.
- Spirits Gather
Instead of completely reinventing Udyr’s kit, the team spent a lot of time deeply connecting Udyr’s gameplay with his wild Freljordian roots, martial arts training, and Spirit Walker identity. To bring Udyr’s kit and visuals more in line with the region he hails from, the team went back to the drawing board with his stances.
Instead of bear, turtle, tiger, and phoenix stance, base Udyr now has claw, mantle, stampede, and storm stance. These new stances are rooted in the power of the Freljordian demigods: Volibear, the Iron Boar, Ornn, and Anivia.
“There was a lot of opportunity to build really satisfying and interesting connections to the rest of the world, make him cooler, and spend the time and love on him that he deserves,” says Riot Stashu.
When he goes into each stance, Udyr is not channeling the demigods themselves, but the animal spirits around him. The unique personalities of each animal spirit subtly reflect in Udyr, like the joyfulness of the bear spirits or the stubbornness of the boars.
But there’s a fifth demigod that introduced an entirely new level of power to Udyr. With his new “
Awakened Spirit” passive, Udyr can now Awaken his active stance periodically, enhancing its effects. Awakening stampede stance, for example, grants Udyr even more movement speed and crowd control immunity for a brief period.
This power was bestowed upon Udyr by the Seal Sister, a playful and powerful demigod who leaves no pot unstirred. Disguised as a strange old woman, the Seal Sister challenged Udyr to complete impossible tasks, all of which he inevitably failed. But she delighted in his efforts and gave him her blessing—the ability to amplify all of his stances.
“Udyr has these two types of power as a Spirit Walker: One is an empathic power where he can hear and understand the wants and needs of the spirits around him, and then his other power is channeling animal spirits,” says narrative writer Dana Luery “griddlebones” Shaw.
“And when he Awakens each stance, he’s tapping into this power that was given to him as a blessing by the Seal Sister in disguise.”
The most powerful Spirit Walker alive, Udyr seeks to preserve balance in the Freljord, a concept he never would have fully understood had he not left his homeland. During his training with Lee Sin, Udyr saw the cooperation and harmony that maintained balance in Ionia. This brought him to the realization that the recipe for balance in the Freljord is a different beast, built on continuous struggle.
While the Avarosan attempt to unite the Freljordian tribes as one, Udyr believes doing so would undo the balance of the land. He’s no warmonger, but Udyr thinks the future of the Freljord depends on the inherent conflict and struggle that comes with living in such a brutal environment. The animals, spirits, and people of the Freljord must be pushed and challenged in order to grow and maintain that balance. This belief leads Udyr to offer his wisdom to the Winter’s Claw and Sejuani in order to hinder the Avarosan.
Similar to Udyr’s gameplay, there was a great foundation to work from in the narrative department. Griddlebones says she had a great north star to work from in the short stories written by Michael “SkiptomyLuo” Luo and Odin Austin Shafer—but there was still a lot of work to be done to bring Udyr’s story into the present day.
“A lot of it was working around the framework that already existed,” says griddlebones. “We now know a bit more about his relationship to the Winter’s Claw from his youth. We know a bit more about his time in Ionia and his time with Lee Sin. We know more about the people who he has loved and the people who he has left."
- Born of the Freljord
The team wanted to make sure that Udyr’s body type, hairstyle, and clothing enhanced who he is meant to be: A warrior shaman with a background in martial arts; A wild loner who hears the nonstop feelings and voices of the animal spirits around him; A bulky, strong survivor.
He’s no 
Olaf-style bodybuilder, nor does he have a belly like 
Gragas. He’s a strong, burly, hairy wildman who can undoubtedly survive the harsh elements of the Freljord. Basically, he’s an absolute unit.
“Udyr’s personality, body, and mentality have been shaped by the brutality and the ferocity and the harshness of the Freljord,” says senior concept artist Justin “Riot Earp” Albers. “But the humility and practicality of how he looks belies the true power that he has been able to harness through training and discipline.”
Udyr carries talismans related to each demigod that help him focus his channeling and tap into the right spirits—the spirits he knows will serve him best in battle (and on the Rift). He wears a bear claw bracelet, a boar tusk hanging from his belt, a buckle with the insignia of the ram, and a cryophoenix feather in his hair. And the cloth wrapping on his hand comes from his time training in Ionia with Lee Sin, a parting gift he promised to someday return in person.
The team tried to add some extra flavor to Udyr’s visuals, but in some instances it didn't work out. The team initially included a pair of antlers, experimenting with how they could change with each stance, whether that be bursting into flame, freezing over, or turning into metal. But ultimately they decided to scrap the idea for clarity’s sake.
“In theory the antlers seemed pretty cool, but when we tried them out in game, they just did not look good,” explains Riot Earp. “It was kind of an obstacle for him moving around and fighting, to have these big things sort of coming off of his shoulders. They looked cool in concept, but in game they just hindered his movement and readability.”
The team also reimagined Udyr’s VFX to convey his power and personality, taking inspiration from Udyr’s tattoos, his Legends of Runeterra card illustrations, and fighting game VFX.
VFX artist Luis “Riot Bloois” Aguas had to first create a strong foundation for Udyr’s visual style, before taking on his stances. “Udyr is mechanically straight forward, and visually I needed to communicate only the important things the player playing as Udyr or against Udyr needs to know so they can easily identify what is going on,” says Riot Bloois.
Next, building out VFX for each of Udyr’s stances was like working on four champions in one, while keeping it all in one cohesive package.
“While color is the first and most common thing that sets Udyr’s abilities apart, I had to rely on shape language that made each stance unique from each other,” explains Riot Bloois. “I focused on confident, bold colors and strong shape language to link back to his narrative design and voice over.”
We can’t stress enough just how many Rioters around the globe worked on Udyr’s VGU, reimagining and redesigning visuals, gameplay, narrative, sound design, and more, not only for his base model, but for his many skins too. 
Spirit Guard is now the most ultimate of ultimate skins, 
blackbelt Udyr got a masterful makeover, and yes, 
Definitely Not Udyr is as goofy as ever.
The ultimate hope is that both longtime Udyr mains and players who’ve never stance danced a day in their lives will appreciate the love and listening that went into this project.
“I want players to feel like the Udyr that they read about has come to life,” says griddlebones. “And that that's who they’re playing.”Updating Spirit Guard Udyr[]
By Erika 'Cashmiir' Haas[10]
For years Udyr has been the embodiment of old League. Outdated graphics, simple kit, low poly model. He’s a relic of the old Summoner’s Rift, when raptors were wraiths and buffs had friends. And yet, he has an Ultimate skin.
Ultimate skins are the pinnacle of a champion’s fantasy. They’re a moment to celebrate the most exciting version of who they could be. But they’re also a ton of work. They’re essentially treated as new champions with new models, rigging, animation, VFX... the whole shebang.
So when everyone’s favorite stance-dancing, handful-of-polygon-having mountain man won the VGU poll, his dev team took one look at his Spirit Guard skin and thought, “Well, f*&^.”
- Ionian Harmony
Unlike skins where champions are cybernetically-augmented superhumans or UwU weeb teens, Spirit Guard Udyr is just more Udyr. The biggest difference between base and Spirit Guard is that where normal Udyr left Ionia to return to the Freljord, in Spirit Guard he decided to stay.
“Instead of rewriting Spirit Guard’s story, we took what already existed and expanded on it,” explains senior narrative writer Elyse “Riot apothecarie” Lemoine. “We knew he stayed in Ionia and didn’t return to the Freljord, so we asked ourselves why? What about Ionia kept him there? What was more important than the promise he made to protect 
Sejuani?”
The answers to these questions lie within the Hirana Monastery. Or more specifically, with a certain blind monk who trains there.
After training with Lee Sin in Ionia, Udyr achieves a level of spiritual calm and balance that he had never felt in the Freljord. And so he decides to stay in Ionia with his longtime friend and partner.
“In Ionia spiritual balance comes from harmony and coexistence. Udyr realizes that the world has a different idea of balance depending on where you’re located,” Riot apothecarie shares. “And as someone whose job it is to bring together the spirit and physical worlds, it’s his job to bring harmony and balance to them both. He achieves this global perspective of what it means to be a spirit walker, and it keeps him from returning home—for which he has a lot of regrets, but he’s also moving forward on this really intense journey in Ionia.”
So the team had the story. Udyr stays in Ionia to be with his roommate Lee Sin. They then used that to explore how the skin would look in-game.
“When I began thinking about what an updated version of Spirit Guard Udyr would look like, I knew we wanted to deliver on the narrative story that Riot apothecarie landed on. So instead of trying to reinvent the skin, we just wanted to focus on modernizing,” shares senior concept artist Justin “Riot Earp” Albers.
Similar to Udyr’s new base, the updated Spirit Guard skin features Udyr in his gloriously new bulky stature with a few... minor differences.
“It was important to us that we keep Udyr’s body-type representation close to the strongman that we were using for his new appearance. But unlike his base skin, Spirit Guard reflects his lifestyle of living and training with the discipline and balance he’s experiencing in Ionia. All of this reflects back on his body. So it’s very similar to his base, except he’s got a little more definition and tone,” Riot Earp laughs.
A slightly more muscular physique isn’t the only thing from Ionia that made it into Spirit Guard Udyr’s skin.
“A lot of the visuals I did for Spirit Guard Udyr were based off of the world guide for Ionia that the Legends of Runeterra team made. A lot of the shape language for their architecture, the patterning for their clothing, even the symbols in their calligraphy,” says VFX artist Luis “Riot Bloois” Aguas. “I tried to blend that Ionian style with the Freljordian demigod-inspired style we landed on for his base. Because this skin is really a mixture of those two parts of Udyr.”
The team felt they had a good foundation for who the updated Spirit Guard Udyr would be. But there was just one problem: The new-and-improved Udyr left his former spirit animals in the dust. What would that mean for Spirit Guard Udyr? Would this version of the big ol’ beefcake call to his new Freljordian spirits in Ionia? Or would he find new spirits in Ionia to guide him on his journey?
- Spiritual Harmony
“We decided to keep the original spirit animals when updating Spirit Guard because we felt it would be a good way to give back to original Udyr players. It’s a nice nod to his original spirits, but they also feel right at home in Ionia,” Riot Earp explains.
The team decided to swap the colors for bear and tiger stance to better reflect updated base Udyr’s visuals
Part of the reason Spirit Guard Udyr chose to stay in Ionia is due to the peace he found with the spirits there.
“One of the biggest differences between base and Spirit Guard Udyr is that in his base he has a slightly more contentious relationship with the spirits he channels. Spirit Guard Udyr’s relationship is much more symbiotic,” shares Riot apothecarie. “He has formed individual relationships with each of these spirits, and understands their unique personalities. They have a mutual respect and understanding. So when he channels the Ionian spirits he actually walks with them—he projects both of their thoughts and they speak as one.”
To show this symbiosis, the team wanted the spirits to physically be with Udyr.
“At one point I pitched an idea that the spirits would be on at all times and would mimic Udyr’s attacks and abilities. It was cool in practice, but it got insanely busy insanely fast,” recalls Riot Bloois. “We ended up cutting it because there wasn’t enough Udyr on the screen, and it started to feel like the character was more about the spirits than about Udyr himself. So we looked for other opportunities to showcase the spirits.”
One of the ways the team did this was to focus on his Awakened and fully upgraded forms. How could they make these feel as cool as possible?
Part of Udyr's new kit is to Awaken his spirits. He unlocks their truest potential and empowers their base gifts. When Udyr Awakens a stance, the corresponding spirit animal appears.
“Turtle stance was really challenging to figure out. I always pictured Udyr as a mountain man living in the woods, but there’s an elegance to his Spirit Guard skin that you don’t have in his base,” says senior animator Eric “FattyLeesPlease” Lees. “His activations are all really, really quick. Riot Bloois did an amazing job of making everything clear and readable, but I had maybe 10 frames of animation to sell the spirit coming out. Turtle’s protective and solid, but still harmonious. There’s really only so much you can do. I hope it landed somewhere that really sells that, and that it plays up the spirit turtle’s personality.”
In addition to Udyr’s evolution forms, they also decided to focus on his weapons.
“We wanted a way to differentiate from base where he has spirit arms on top of his normal man arms. So we carried over the weapons that he has on the pre-rework skin,” Riot Earp shares. “He has spirit claws in tiger form, magic spirit turtle shell armor, golden celestial shoulderguards for the bear, and then fiery arm gauntlets for the phoenix. And when you max them out they all become empowered.”
- The 28Mb Challenge
Udyr’s a big boi. In personality. In spirit(s). In size—both in- and out-of-game. But League needs to be able to run on a potato. A huge amount of players only have access to 32-bit processors. So while the team was figuring out how to make Spirit Guard Udyr live up to his Ultimate status, they also had the challenge of getting it within the allotted memory constraints.
“Everything in League has a memory budget. Each champion, skin, emote, even the map itself. Champions are allotted 20Mb of memory, Epic skins get 25-26Mb, Legendary 26-27Mb, and Ultimate skins get a max of 28Mb,” explains rigging technical artist Dawon “Riot WONY” Lee. “I often say no to some concept and ideas to keep things within budget. But Spirit Guard is an ultimate skin, and we wanted to give a new experience to players. So I had to try not to say no to a lot of ideas, and instead we tried to cut down on memory elsewhere.”
Between the base stances, max stances, Awakened forms, spirits, weapons, emotes, and dad bod, the team needed to find ways to cut down on the “cost” to make sure they could deliver on the feeling of an Ultimate skin.
One of the ways they achieved this was by re-using rigs and models.
“We worked really closely with our creative studio in Hong Kong to make sure that we were being smart with our modeling resources,” says 3D character artist Jason “00Y00” Namgung. “It took a lot of thought and planning to make sure Udyr didn’t have three unique models for every stance, with base spirit, Awaken, and max stance... Plus his non-spirit base stance at the start of every game. That would just be so many resources in the files.”
The team tried to reuse as much as possible, treating each stance’s evolution as additive instead of a transformation. Basically this means that Udyr’s stances each have a single model, with visual effects and bonus models signifying the difference between each level.
“Yeah, the spirit animals themselves also share the same rig, so we didn’t have to use as many bones and joints for them,” adds Riot WONY. “The main difference between them is their animations and obviously the physical appearance, but underneath all that they’re really one model. We also tried to cut down on his hair textures. Texture files are often the biggest ones in-game, so we wanted to keep those simple and limited.”
That’s right. Hair. Did you really think we’d skip over the ponytail?
“Udyr’s ponytail is a pretty hot button issue,” laughs Riot Earp. “Some people love it, some hate it. But he needed some value breakup. We also wanted an easy base hairstyle to differentiate from his upgraded hair in each Awakened stance, and that’s where the ponytail comes into play.”
“I think it fits his character more, too! He’s a more refined, elegant champ now. Having his hair in his eyes just doesn’t fit anymore,” adds FattyLeesPlease.
“Yeah! And Ionian champions love ponytails. Both Lee Sin and Yasuo have ponytails, too!” Riot Bloois adds.
“Ponytail lover or not, I’m obsessed with the turtle stance braid. Ionian spirits should be hairdressers,” Riot apothecarie jokes.An Udyr for Every Occasion[]
By Stash 'Stashu' Chelluck & Paul 'Aether' Perscheid[11]
One of Udyr's coolest traits is build versatility. Here are a few ways we took that into consideration while designing his update!
Over the years, one of Udyr's coolest traits has been build versatility. Aside from just "Tiger = AD" and "Phoenix = AP", we've seen tank, bruiser, lethality, on-hit, and pretty much everything in between. We wanted his VGU to preserve that versatility, and while it'll ultimately be your creativity that determines which Udyr builds we see in the wild, we're going to share a few ways we took build versatility into consideration.
- Awakens
One of our goals for the Awaken mechanic is that all builds should have situations where they want to awaken each stance, regardless of which one they're maxing. For example, the AP ratio on Awakened Q's chain lightning means that in a 1v1, magic damage builds are better off Awakening Q rather than R. Awaken effects scale with level, rather than stance rank, to make sure that putting even a single point in a stance means you can Awaken it effectively—and therefore, choosing not to rank up a stance at all is a really impactful decision!
- Q-R Differentiation
For all the potential build versatility Udyr has always had, one of the significant limiters was that both Q and R were pure-damage, so whichever was more efficient was the build that won out. We shifted a bunch of R's power into utility—both its slow and its Awaken's ability to follow targets at range—to make sure the choice between Q and R is more than just a convoluted math problem.
- Front-to-Back Fighting
No one champion should be able to do everything all the time, and Udyr really embraces this in how he specializes builds from game to game. That said, Udyr's old kit lacked any options to bolster his damage against beefier targets, no matter how he specialized. Enter empowered Q's max health damage: Dropping a point in Q gives AP, bruiser, and tank builds some scaling threat against targets who'd otherwise be able to brush them off as the game progresses (plus better dragon/baron clear times). Which leads us to...
- Tanking
R-tanking will still be Udyr's primary tank build, especially when his team has plenty of other physical damage. It's shifting toward a more disruptive playstyle, though, since the build is trading a decent chunk of damage for new crowd control strengths. This version of Udyr wants to set fights up for his teammates to follow through on.
A new build we're hoping folks try is Q-max, full-tank Udyr, which wasn't previously an option since old Q fell off without item support. This theoretical Q-tank Udyr relies on Q's max health ratios to grind down enemies as his tank runes and items keep him alive. To be honest we're not entirely sure if it'll stick the landing (or be good for the game long-term if it does), but we're excited to see how things play out.
- WizarDyr
The last thing we want to touch on is build diversity within Udyr's magic damage builds. Under normal circumstances, R-max Udyr rarely built more than one, sometimes two damage items because his kit overall didn't scale well with AP. We wanted to support AP a bit more—better payoff on W, the new ratio on Awakened Q—to give spicy Udyrs more incentive to explore riskier R builds.
No matter what build fits your fancy, we hope you live your best life storming (or clawing or ramming or... boaring...) the Rift!
A Spirited Adventure - Udyr’s Journey to Legends of Runeterra[]
By Jon 'More Synergy' Stebel[12]
Udyr and the powerful spirits of the Freljord are making their journey to Legends of Runeterra in A Curious Journey on February 16! With his announcement, we wanted to take the opportunity to share a bit more background on his development and inspiration.
When we add new champions to Legends of Runeterra from League of Legends PC, our designers generally have their work cut out for them. It takes a lot of work to translate a well-established champion’s identity, narrative, appearance, and abilities to an entirely different format, but there’s a source of truth to work off of in LoL PC.
However, Udyr is in the process of receiving a visual and gameplay update (VGU) in LoL PC that we knew wouldn’t be finished by the time A Curious Journey released. When that became apparent, our team was faced with a unique need and opportunity: we had to take a fresh look at the champion and figure out how we might be able to reimagine him in the period leading up to his VGU. We didn’t want to release a 1:1 version of him with the existing version of Udyr since he’s about to have a shiny new VGU, but due to development timelines it wasn’t possible to develop a version that’s going to be 1:1 with his post-VGU design, so we decided on somewhere in between the two.
As with his VGU, Legends of Runeterra’s version of Udyr focuses on his ties to the Freljord, but carries some additional inspiration from our established group of shamanistic Freljordian followers - you’ll see a lot of blue in Udyr decks.
His iconic stance changes are preserved in his Legends of Runeterra iteration, but they also have an identity of their own here. While his LoL PC VGU has nods to Freljordian demigods, in Legends of Runeterra we see him drawing strength from the various animals that make their home in the frozen tundra - some of which you might recognize from earlier expansions!
We’re excited to finally be able to share this look at Udyr in Legends of Runeterra, and we hope you’ll enjoy stance dancing and clawing your way through the competition when he launches in the A Curious Journey expansion on February 16!
Trivia[]
- Udyr and
Spirit Guard Udyr are voiced by Sean Rohani, whom first voiced him in Legends of Runeterra.[13]
- Udyr and Spirit Guard Udyr were previously voiced by J.S. Gilbert, whom also voiced Battlecast Prime Cho'Gath, pre-rework Dr. Mundo and Corporate Mundo, Gragas, and pre-rework Sion.
- Udyr's Japanese voice actor is Tsuguo Mogami
- Udyr and
- Udyr was designed by Steven 'Coronach' DeRose.
- Udyr was the first Champion released after the official October 27, 2009 launch of the game.
- Udyr's original champion title was "the Animal Spirit" but with the Freljord patch his champion title was changed to "the Spirit Walker" and changes were also made to his lore.
- Udyr literally translates into 'Beast~Monster' in Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Nynorsk (cognates: Swedish odjur, German Untier, & hypothetical English *undeer),
- However, udyr is mostly used to describe people acting like animals, i.e. instinctively.
- 75% of Udyr's skills are based off the 4 Beasts of the Cardinal Directions, with the exception of the Azure Dragon.
- Udyr has 4 unreleased icons for his basic abilities:
- Tiger Stance.
- Turtle Stance.
- Bear Stance.
- Phoenix Stance.
- Udyr was chosen by players to receive a Visual Gameplay Update at the start of Season 2021.
Media[]
- Related Music
| Spirit Guard Udyr Theme |
- Related Videos
- Main article: Summoner icon
References[]
- ↑ http://pc.ign.com/articles/104/1049824p1.html IGN on Udyr
- ↑ Choose a Champion Update for 2022
- ↑ Voting Results: Champion Update & Skin Thematic
- ↑ Champion Roadmap: April 2021
- ↑ /dev: Kicking Off Udyr's VGU
- ↑ Champions in Season 2022
- ↑ The Latest on Udyr's VGU
- ↑ Champion Roadmap: April 2022
- ↑ Udyr VGU: Rebuilding the Spirit Walker
- ↑ Updating Spirit Guard Udyr
- ↑ An Udyr for Every Occasion
- ↑ A Spirited Adventure - Udyr’s Journey to Legends of Runeterra
- ↑ Udyr VA