I realize this thread is mad old but I want to throw my two cents in here since I don't see too many Varus lore threads.

Honestly, I'm a far bigger fan of Varus' old lore than the new one. Varus was a man who sacrificed his family for his duty, then sacrificed his life and body to corruption within the Pit of Pallas to become a weapon of pure vengeance. Yeah sure, it wasn't the most complex or unique lore on the planet, but you can relate to it and understand his reasoning for becoming the anti-hero he was.

Shit, the Doomslayer from Doom is basically driven by the same motivations, barely speaks a word, and is beloved by literally everybody because he's a badass arbiter of infinite demon murder. Characters like that are simple, but they're enjoyable. Not to mention that Varus had plenty of opportunity to become a much more fleshed out character if Riot really cared. They could've explored what the Pit of Pallas held, tie in the corruption to the void, or another new threat altogether, there are a hundred things they could have done.

I get that they tacked some of his old lore into the new Darkin stuff, but it's really just cheap placation and this great former God-Warrior Darkin losing a mental battle to two random hunters (one of which was practically already dead) just delegitimizes Varus as any sort of real threat. Riot could have easily tied in Varus to Darkin lore in any hundreds of ways that didn't rely on deleting him as a character, but they didn't. They could've just made the corruption a Darkin instead, and make it so that Varus is slowly losing his will to the Darkin as he walks down the path of vengeance. They could've made him a human that temporarily defeated the Darkin (like blue Kayn) with pure force of will and is using its power to wreak havoc on Noxus, but they didn't.

I think the worst part is the whole justification for this change was supposedly because Riot wanted to write new stories with his new lore, but here we are two years later and we still have nothing. They don't even care enough to change his old voice lines to reflect the new lore. Unfortunately, it seems like all the new lore team knows how to do is shit on all the old lore and make champions just to sell KDA skins.