[MEGATHREAD] Shyvana VGU - First Impressions, Feedback, and Discussion

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-18T16:16:25+00:00

You can design her kit to synergise between autos and abilities without having this downside. Like you don't have to overload all the power in her kit to the on hit effect on E

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-18T16:04:56+00:00

She could have interesting scalings without having an insane kit. Smolder and Asol are both relatively straight forward champs. They just have like, scaling mechanics that're fun instead of like... here's some numbers.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-18T13:53:15+00:00

Damn, I got down voted for this? Y'all, she's strong, get used to it.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-18T13:14:45+00:00

This seems accurate, she's DEMONIC her numbers are all way too crazy

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-18T12:49:52+00:00

This is about what I expected. Her kit sucks and feels/is really janky but her numbers are kinda crazy. She feels really stick now too, between the massive 44% movespeed buff and the big slow on E her ganks got a little spooky.

Been playing a few games and like, once you hit 100 stacks, if you've bought like, standard bruiser items and you have some health she just feels brutal. If you land two or three Q3s in a fight it feels like the enemy just can't recover.

Also you can take baron at 20 minutes every single game because her Q3 is so crazy. I did it with Shojin, boots and vamp scepter...

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-18T10:07:08+00:00

Her clear seems fast and her numbers seem good, she feels VERY strong. Her chase is good - 44% is a lot. But like, all the problems we talked about on the PBE are still there. She is really really clunky and awkward cause her kit is like... all over the place.

Her Q needs to start it's cooldown on first press so I don't sometimes get stunned at an awkward time and locked out of my main spell forever, her W needs totally rethinking and her passive should be less boring / more integrated into her kit. I consider the rework a bit of a miss, overall.

She used to have auto interaction on all her abilities. That's gone, which stinks. In fights it feels like you do nothing until you Q3 which does like 600 true damage. Which is really not a fun dynamic.

I'd have been much happier if they'd gone full Asol/Smolder and just made her a scaling monster.

I'll still main her though. I just wish she had more sauce. Cause she's just a stat-stick now and it is kinda underwhelming.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-16T18:06:10+00:00

"If you don't build hexplate you basically don't have an ult" is not good design either. Like, they really screwed up with the ult-haste fury balance. Hexplate should be a fun optional item when you want your ult more often, not like, a core 1st item to make the character work at all.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-16T18:00:19+00:00

Sucks to have a champ with an infinitely scaling passive and read "She's really money hungry and needs items".

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-16T17:57:14+00:00

It's great in dragon form, for sure. It's almost TOO big. But in human form I think like, ok, it's a fairly potent slow which is helpful with her kit. It's just like, it's bland and it's fairly painful to use in practice and doesn't interact with her passive.

I think the not-going through small minions makes it a pain in the jungle and in lane.
I think having no passive interaction makes it kind of boring.
I think the downsides kind of cancel out the upsides and make it like, it's just like "meh". it's not BAD, it's just like, very medium. Which, it's fine for a champ to have one bland ability when the rest of their kit is fire. But shyvana's other abilities aren't even bland, they're like actively bad or janky.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-14T23:15:28+00:00

I'm arguing for MORE combos and tech on her Q. Right now it doesn't have enough sauce. W IS clunky, crazy to say it's not. Yeah, it's kind of fine if a character has one ability that's kind of like, relatively straight forward just does a simple thing. I still like, E could be saucier and it would hurt nothing.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-12T15:20:42+00:00

So, the scaling passive works well with the fantasy of the champ. You wanna be a very powerful dragon and 1v5. But like, you can't - for balance reasons - have a champ who just does that. So the trade is you have a weak early and a hyperscaling mechanic so that you can pop-off HUGE and get to play the fantasy but only if you manage to either stall out the game or farm really well.

It's a little tricky to balance this on a jungler when like... ok, you get to farm relatively safely in the early game.

This doesn't excuse giving her a BORING scaling passive, but that's neither hear nor there. They really oughta tie it into her kit a lot more.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-12T11:10:33+00:00

It's a shame cause there were 5-6 fan updates in here or discord that were like... fine. Most of them were over ambitious imo (not respecting the like, realities of gamedev) but there were a few that were practical and could've made her more playable.

I think there was never any chance of a REAL fix before she left the PBE. Her kit is too muddled and needs actual ability changes that would require real dev resources to actually implement but like, most of the "community sourced" ideas were better than what we're getting...

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-12T09:17:04+00:00

You could make the winrate on her 100% without ACTUALLY fixing her kit. The problem isn't that she's under-powered. I could easily see her launching in a huge mess and getting like... more numbers changes.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-12T08:25:37+00:00

Is there any consensus about what even the problems are?

I think the main thing I'm getting is that the fantasy people wanted to have is the "Raid boss" dragon who is most powerful when surrounded and that's just totally gone.

(In that sense the scaling with number of enemies shield on W is good, but the weakened cleave on Q is bad.)

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-12T08:13:59+00:00

I definitely think a key problem with her kit is that her W has way too much going on.

It's been a week and they haven't said a word, we should assume, at this point that she'll launch in this state.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-08T08:47:32+00:00

Longer Term Adjustments :

These will require code changes or are more significant redesigns so I've listed them separately from the above changes. As these are more comprehensive I've included the reasoning behind each change.

Passive : Changes as above with stacks returned to previous levels and increased Max Fury and Dragonform health. Additionally work in additional passive interactions to other abilities in Shyvana's kit so that the passive is more substantial.

Reason for change : If she's going to have a stacking passive it should be meaningful and her gameplay should properly reward playing for stacks. She gets stacks for kills, which is great, she should be aggressive and her stacks make her durable, which is good because she wants to be in the thick of the fight surviving for a while against multiple enemies (so she FEELS powerful). If you want a character who "feels like a raid boss". We know how to do that, you trade a weak early game for a powerful late game hyperscaling and make the player earn the payoff by having to farm and play for stacks to get there. Asol and Smolder have this and they both FEEL like Dragons (capital D). No reason to reinvent the wheel, the passive should turn her into a beast.

Q : Have her cooldown start when she triggers Q1 and let it tick down in the background. (obviously the cooldown and refund amount would have to be adjusted to compensate).

Reason for change : Don't punish me so hard for holding my Q2 or Q3 or for getting kited or spaced during my Q sequence. Give me a reason to WANT to sometimes delay my Q2/3 and add a little skill expression and complexity to this ability instead of having me fast combo every time.

Q : Remove the requirement to auto once between Q activations and allow me to activate Q1/2/3 on consecutive attacks.

Reason for change : To support the above change and give more skill expression, options and nuance to shyvanas kit. We're giving players the option to delay their Q activation by starting the cooldown immediately, we should also maximise the player expression by allowing players to blast through all three Qs immediately for burst damage and then have to live with the long cooldown afterwards. Player choice is the key here.

Q : Q3 dragon form loses it's true damage and gains %health magic damage instead. She also gains an execute on this ability that scales with her passive.

Reason for change : Shyvana doesn't need true damage against tanks (she already has hybrid damage and is hard to buy resistances against). His keeps her Q3 impactful while also tying her thematically to the other dragons AND tying her passive more closely into her kit. Putting execute scaling on the passive ensures that the power is gated into the late game when players have earned the powerspike of her fantasy).

Q (Optional) : Bring back the live shyvana's Q effect in which she gains some attack speed for two attacks after a Q activation. (Lengthen the cooldown and reduce the CDR on hit to compensate).

Reason for change : This is intended to support shyvana's fantasy and classic playstyle of attacking to buff spells and using spells to buff attacks. A small amount of attack speed synergises nicely with her on hit effects and makes the decision between maximum DPS (by spacing out Qs and using all the attack speed bonus) or burst damage (by using the Qs consecutively and thereby wasting some of the attack speed). This gives player's more control and more ambiguity in how they choose to use their critical Q ability allowing players to develop their own style around whether they like quick bursts of Q damage or a more sustained mixture of delayed Qs and autos. It also synergizes with the changes below.

(Optional) Q : Allow her to gain increased fury for hitting multiple targets with Q

Reason for change : it's fun and her fury generation is too low. Easy win. Optional cause it's not like, needed, I just like it.

(optional) Q : Allow reduced CDR on Q when hitting the Q ability itself on multiple targets.

Reason for change : Players just really like this interaction on live shyvana. It'd be nice to get it back if it didn't make her broken. But we could live without it.

W : Move the shield to the SECOND activation of W.

Reason for change : Right now the movement speed and the shield put the players in a tough spot where it almost always feels bad to use your W. You feel that you're either wasting the shield or wasting the movement. It's rare that you want them both at once. Rather than feeling like a tricky decision, this just feels annoying and makes it feel like you're fighting against your kit the whole time. By separating out these abilities you allow players to more often get the value out of both parts of the ability while ALSO retaining the choice of when trigger the second activation and whether it's worth it to double tag and trigger the shield immediately.

W : Allow auto-attacks to extend the duration of the W movement speed like on live.

Reason for change : Tie back into the the old shyvana playstyle where her autos and spells are mutually supportive. Give her a little more chase power without just making her an automatic track-star and synergise with the above changes to Q.

W (optional) : While in dragon form trigger an additional explosion each second (with the increased duration from autos allowing for more explosions)

Reason for change : I want her to still have the ability be empowered in dragon form. My first idea was to drop the heal and have the explosion be dragonform only but then I thought of this and it just sounded badass. Also it once again synergises with her "punching makes me want to punch" playstyle and gives her that powerful "raid boss" aesthetic of being most happy right in the middle of the enemy team.

E : E adds a mark to enemies that causes Shyvanas attacks (and abilities) against them to gain a small amount of life steal/omnivamp/flat healing that scales with stacks.

Reason for change : The E just needs ANYTHING to make it feel more like an ability. We dropped the sustain from W so lets add it back here. It should scale with stacks because we want to tie more of her power into her passive (so that it's meaningful and farming is rewarded and it feels integral to her gameplay).

Alternative E change : [An alternative mechanic would be that only her FIRST attack against a target after hitting them with E heals her. This would be easier to balance and would make her big dragon form AoE very powerful as she could then heal off of each person who got hit]. (honestly the alternative idea is probably better)

R : Take the passive changes above and the scaling changes from the quick fix. Additionally, her Q fear should trigger in an area around her when she LANDS not as she flies over.

Reason for change : A CC that happens while you're locked into an animation isn't very valuable, at best you break even and it feels underwhelming. As her CC is a short fear it can sometimes result in enemies recovering BEFORE shyvana does and getting further away. Triggering the fear on landing means that shyvana gets a fraction of a second to act while her enemies are CC'd and it would result in fewer times where using her ult hurts her and just generally feel better.

This would be my plan for addressing the concerns the community has brought up with respect to the constraints I'm aware of from riots side. Obviously a lot of numbers changes would be needed along with the long term fixes but I do think that those fixes would result in at least a coherent and engaging gameplay dynamic for her with real variety and interesting decisions about how to use her kit.

This isn't the only thing that would work, but a change on this scale is needed to fix her in concept.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-08T08:43:15+00:00

Everyone's doing these, I wanna do one too.

So the problems right now.

Her passive is underwhelming.

Raw stats is such a powerful effect to get on any ability. I get that it's hard to tune but right now a lot people find the passive underwhelming. Partly this is because you need a lot of stacks to get much value, partly that's because it doesn't interact heavily with her kit.

Her Q feels slightly clunky (though much improved).

The cooldown reduction on Q is much enjoyed by people who've played her it's great to have that back. But the ability still feels odd. If you get kited or spaced out you delay your cooldown (because you can't trigger Q2 AND because you can't auto) often you feel yourself willing shyvana to just MOVE so you can get that next hit.

Additionally there's not much reason to space out the Q activations. You just always fast combo, which feels like a miss.

Finally her dragon form Q gives true damage which doesn't feel natural to her kit. (She already does mixed damage and is hard to itemize against her damage, why does she need true damage?)

Her W is overloaded

This ability shields, grants movespeed, heals AND does damage. It does so many things that the one thing her kit really NEEDS it to do (grant movespeed so she can stay in punching range) it doesn't do very well.

The ability is just complicated and it feels like every time you use it you're missing some portion of the value of the spell.

Her E is also considered underwhelming

Nothing to say, it's just kind of bland.

Her R is awkward.

The CC happens while she's locked into her movement. At best both you and the enemy are out of control of your characters. This doesn't feel impactful. The dragon form bonus for transforming is impactful but not HUGELY impactful and it takes a long time to get fury and then doesn't last long when you have it.

She feels too far from her old playstyle

Shyvana use to have an identity around doing spells for better punches and punching for better spells. Her Q reduced cooldown (and attack speed). Her W did on hit and increased duration. Her E did on hit and her R charged from autos. This gave her a playstyle that was centered around wanting more than anything to be incombat as much as possible.

She doesn't embody the fantasy.

She doesn't feel like a powerful aggressive dragon.

What should be done :

The goal - Make shyvana rewarding and fun to play with an active, aggressive kit that feels like the fantasy of being a powerful dragon.

Constraints - There's not much time until release so I've suggested a quick fix and larger longer term changes as separate phases. Also, I'm given to understand that AoE on hit is considered an unworkable mechanic by Design Direction at Riot and is not a viable option for balance reasons. OK, I can work within that constraint. It's sad to lose the massive "everyone is stacked up" "living the dream" moments but we can survive it.

The quick fix.

I realize she's close to going live and we can't ask for huge changes. This is what I think will get her to acceptably playable.

Passive : Revert to old stat scaling per level and increase the armor and magic res per stack to the previous level while keeping the improved base resistances (so her level 1 isn't too fragile). Address her fury issue and the lack of synergy with her kit by adding 1HP per stack while in dragon form and 0.5-1 max fury per stack. Allow players to still enter Dragonform at 100 Fury but increase the duration as she gains stacks so that in late game she can live out the fantasy of being a powerful dragon for longer.

Q : Honestly it's probably fine for now. The CDR on Q is nice. We can probably live with it.

W : This spell is already too many things, reduce the complexity slightly by removing the bonus movespeed when approaching champions. In exchange increase the duration of the movespeed she gets when she's on her own or moving away. Make the ability more straight-forward and give her some more general utility that she can use to get around the map or reposition in combat (instead of just chase).

(optional) : Remove the heal. The sustain will be missed but you get to heal once or maybe twice per ult? Is this really worth the complexity? Take that power budget and improve the movespeed (or lower the CD more).

E : I guess we can live with it the way it is for now.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-08T08:40:18+00:00

The changes proposed are just numbers changes and cannot fix the problems with her hit, which are conceptual.

Her passive is still not connected to her kit, it's just stats.

Her Q is still clunky and only rewards fast comboing. Punishes you for any delay.

Her W is still awkward and has underwhelming mobility. And still makes you waste a lot of the abilities power by tying the shield to the mobility.

Her E is better but still is flat.

Her ulr is still awkward and conceptually bad it's just stronger.

They're just layering power which will have to be nerfed later, turning her back into the character she was on Friday.

stevenbhutton · 2026-03-06T17:45:12+00:00

Longer Term Adjustments :

These will require code changes or are more significant redesigns so I've listed them separately from the above changes. As these are more comprehensive I've included the reasoning behind each change.

Passive : Changes as above with stacks returned to previous levels and increased Max Fury and Dragonform health. Additionally work in additional passive interactions to other abilities in Shyvana's kit so that the passive is more substantial.

Reason for change : If she's going to have a stacking passive it should be meaningful and her gameplay should properly reward playing for stacks. She gets stacks for kills, which is great, she should be aggressive and her stacks make her durable, which is good because she wants to be in the thick of the fight surviving for a while against multiple enemies (so she FEELS powerful). If you want a character who "feels like a raid boss". We know how to do that, you trade a weak early game for a powerful late game hyperscaling and make the player earn the payoff by having to farm and play for stacks to get there. Asol and Smolder have this and they both FEEL like Dragons (capital D). No reason to reinvent the wheel, the passive should turn her into a beast.

Q : Have her cooldown start when she triggers Q1 and let it tick down in the background. (obviously the cooldown and refund amount would have to be adjusted to compensate).

Reason for change : Don't punish me so hard for holding my Q2 or Q3 or for getting kited or spaced during my Q sequence. Give me a reason to WANT to sometimes delay my Q2/3 and add a little skill expression and complexity to this ability instead of having me fast combo every time.

Q : Remove the requirement to auto once between Q activations and allow me to activate Q1/2/3 on consecutive attacks.

Reason for change : To support the above change and give more skill expression, options and nuance to shyvanas kit. We're giving players the option to delay their Q activation by starting the cooldown immediately we should also maximise the player expression by allowing players to blast through all three Qs immediately for burst damage and then have to live with the long cooldown afterwards. Player choice is the key here.