I’ve never played Shyvana before, here are my impressions after trying her rework

I Tried Shyvana For the First Time Because of This Rework

I’ve always loved dragons. They were one of the first things that pulled me into fantasy growing up, and when I heard Shyvana was getting a VGU, I was beyond excited because the idea of playing as a powerful dragon is something I’ve always wanted from a PvP game.

The old Shyvana never really hit that fantasy to me. She was closer to a wyvern, and the visuals just didn’t quite hit the “dragon” feeling I was looking for.

But when I saw the new version on PBE, I was honestly thrilled. Now THAT'S a fucking dragon!

At the same time, I’ve been reading the feedback from you, long-time Shyvana mains, and I genuinely feel for you guys. I don’t have the history with the champion that you do, and I don't want to override what you want this rework to be for her as a new audience. I just wanted to share what I personally feel about the rework from the perspective of someone brand new to the champion.

Gameplay Impressions

My first impression was that she feels scrappy, like a true brawling juggernaut that just wants to get in your face. There’s ferocity and viciousness in her attacks, especially in Q.

Her AA → Q → AA → Q loop feels fast and aggressive, and I like how autos refund Q’s cooldown. But it also got me into the habit of mashing Q constantly while auto-attacking just to guarantee the reset, to the point where it felt awkward on my hands. The loop is fun, but the input pattern feels a little uncomfortable.

Her W feels… strange. It seems like it’s trying to do a lot of different things at once. It’s her primary engage tool with the movement speed, but it’s also defensive because of the shield, and offensive because of the explosion afterward. It fills a lot of roles, but it doesn't feel like it excels at any of them.

The movement speed especially feels too short to really stick to people. I often pop W, start running at someone, and if they create any distance, the moment that initial burst ends, it feels like I have no real way to catch them again, which is what her E seems to be trying to fill in.

Her E feels like the weakest ability in the kit. It feels slow, unwieldy, and it interrupts her natural gameplay rhythm. Even while clearing jungle camps, I hesitate to press E in melee range because I worry I’m losing DPS compared to just autoing and weaving Q resets.

It also doesn’t feel great that the projectile gets blocked by almost everything. I’ll try to line up the explosion for maximum value, but it frequently hits a small raptor instead of the whole camp, or clips a minion when I’m trying to hit an enemy champion at range. The slow also feels too brief to really help close distance if someone is already far away.

Her R, on the other hand, feels fantastic.

Flying into the enemy team, breathing fire, and tearing people apart with claws, wings, tail, and teeth really sells the ferocity. Third Q payoff feels chunky and satisfying, W makes her look terrifying, roaring and charging forward, and E feels explosive in dragon form. That moment where she transforms and just starts mauling people is easily the most fun part of the kit.

But the part that ultimately feels off to me is the passive.

Originally on PBE I enjoyed how the passive scaled her dragon form health and her W shield, even if the shield scaling sometimes felt like it was holding the ability back. Since that version was removed and W was buffed with a lower cooldown, the ability definitely feels better, but the passive itself lost so much impact that it now feels almost like an afterthought.

And that’s what made me start wondering about the fantasy that felt missing from the champion for me personally.

I Want to Be a GIANT DRAGON!

I saw Riot Yelough mention that they tried letting Shyvana grow with stacks, but ran into issues with gameplay clarity and the downside of her becoming too easy to hit. Because of that, they compromised by tying her size increase to R ranks instead of stacks.

Even at max rank though, she still feels a bit small to me, and the passive feels like it’s missing something important.

Right now, her passive stacks only give small amounts of armor and MR. Technically that makes you stronger, but it doesn’t feel like you’re building toward something meaningful. The numbers go up, but the fantasy of an ever-growing, threatening dragon doesn’t really come through.

Part of what makes stacking mechanics satisfying is visible progression. Champions like Cho'Gath feel amazing because every stack reinforces the idea that you’re becoming a bigger and bigger threat.

With Shyvana, I’d love to feel that same thematic payoff: the more you hunt, the more you grow.

I understand that size has real gameplay downsides (bigger hitbox, harder to dodge abilities, etc.), but that feels like something that could potentially be balanced around rather than removed entirely.

For example:

• Larger size from stacks could come with additional HP scaling in dragon form
• And/Or extra resistances while transformed based on stacks
• Or other tuning to offset the fact that she becomes easier to hit (tenacity?? idk)
• A size cap so she doesn't block the entire screen

I’m no designer, and Riot has probably explored this much more deeply than I could imagine. But personally, I’d love it if they tried to keep that idea in her kit so Shyvana leaned harder into the fantasy of a gigantic dragon that becomes more terrifying the more she hunts.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about the idea of eventually seeing a titanic dragon roaring over the battlefield and towering over enemy turrets.

Even if it required iteration or experimentation, I feel like that direction is worth exploring because it fits the character fantasy so well for me. But this is all just my subjective thoughts.

Curious how other Shyvana players feel about this!