One of the numerous memes out there within the League of Legends community is that people play X champion because of new skin. It doesn’t exist without a degree of truth behind it, as the years have shown us, even the most irrelevant champions can benefit in pick rates if they’re given a new coat of paint (Heartseeker Ashe, Devil Teemo), but not all of them can be winners either. (Slayer Pantheon, any Worldbreaker). Regardless, it’s safe to assume that if you see an overzealous insta-lock of a particular champion that just got a new skin, they will undoubtedly perform poorly and are playing for no reason other than to show off their skin.
This goes doubly and triply for temporary game modes where the games are shorter, but the luxury of being able to select one’s own champion is still available. Needless to say, I’ve enjoyed playing Poro King over the last few weekends, since it’s been helping me rapidly boost my mastery rank with champions like Maokai, Skarner and Fizz, but it’s not lost on me that there’s an inordinate number of people playing Lux in the vast majority of these games. Sometimes on my team, sometimes on the enemy team, often times on both, I’ve seen a few good ones and way more bad ones, but almost in all cases, they’re using the brand new Elementalist Lux skin (above, right), and I’m under the impression that most are playing her not because they believe she’s a smart pick for Poro King, but they just want to use the new skin.
Personally, I think Lux is a poor choice for Poro King because although she provides decent crowd control and a little bit of wave clear in her ult, she’s a shit duelist if you can get up in her face, and is useless if she’s ever facing more than one enemy and will concede every objective.
But let’s not let those important factors factor in when it comes to choosing a team component, because that new skin is just so damn pretty.
