Udyr fans rejoice — we’ve finally gotten an update on his VGU and, needless to say, it’s a sight for sore eyes! This age-old jungler was selected for a complete VGU primarily because he’s so visually outdated it doesn’t make sense. He’s a remnant of the past, and not a particularly attractive one. He looks and feels out of place, so it was about time he got a bit of love from Riot.

The goal, however, isn’t as simple as it might seem. They want to preserve his stance-changing identity and keep him as a “primarily auto-attack/melee-focused champion.” That sort of simplicity makes him stand out (for better and worse). Still, it’s not that contemporary of a take in terms of champion design, so Riot will be looking to add a bit more “interest” to his stances along with additional melee patterns so as to provide players with a bit more depth.

Additionally, Riot’s goal is to keep his “warrior shaman” identity intact, so they’ll only be building on his visuals rather than inventing them from the ground up. That, paired with stronger ties to the Freljord, should make Udyr a much more attractive option once this VGU is shipped to live servers in a couple of months’ time!

One of the more nuanced things that Riot wants to accomplish is to give Udyr the ability to have some of those “jaw-dropping moments” that other champions can produce with ease. He’s pretty consistent playstyle-wise from the moment he hits level two, and with no concrete ultimate or high-power option in his kit, he’s not all that fun to watch nor can he compete with most other champions — all of which have something “flashy” built into their kits.

So, to balance things out, Riot will look to introduce these moments where “everyone can look and see Udyr doing something a little more visibly awesome and powerful.” The end result? Empowered stances. Right now, the VGU team is exploring a version of Udyr that will allow him to recast his active stance and therefore harness its more powerful version (on a cooldown). You can check out a couple of experimental stances by clicking here.

The VGU team is still experimenting, so take everything you read with a bit of reserve as it could easily change over the coming weeks and months.

The VGU team will focus on three distinct concepts, all of which were shown off back in April: the Mountain Brawler, MMA Shaman, and Wild Druid. These three concepts correlate to Udyr’s inherent identity the most and will be at the core of his rework.

But that’s just the base character. The team then went on to explore how he could channel his immense spiritual energy and what that would look like in-game. It’s still an ongoing process, but they’ve settles on a couple of specific identities: the Freljordian primal shaman (indicated by his antlers, extra long hair and multiple trinkets spread throughout), the strong melee fighter who can channel animal spirits, and the traveling spirit walker, an Runeterran vagabond whose travels to Ionia had given him the “discipline needed to hone his powers and strengthen his connection to the spirit realm.”

You can expect this oh-so-interesting Udyr VGU to hit live servers in the first half of 2022. Also, a more detailed developer blog is all but guaranteed towards the end of the year, so stay tuned!