League of Legends’ latest skin has proven controversial with the community. The Immortalized Legend Ahri skin was designed to commemorate Faker as the first pro player inducted into Riot’s League of Legends esports Hall of Fame, called the Hall of Legends. To mark the occasion, the skin has an optional extra tier that costs about $500 to unlock. While many fans objected to the price tag online right away, their displeasure has now moved in-game, with Ahri’s ban rate suddenly skyrocketing after her new skin’s release.
The skin arrived in patch 14.12, which hit servers on Wednesday. Since then, Ahri has gone from being banned in about 8% of ranked games to being banned in over 15% of ranked games, according to Lolalytics. While the uptick in bans is true globally, it’s most pronounced in North America, going from around 10% to over 23%, suggesting that either NA players hate this skin a little bit more than the rest of the world, or the region’s ranked players are more committed to sending a message than ranking up — a theory that the region’s Worlds results certainly back up.
This type of change in bans is usually reserved for champions who get substantial in-game buffs, or with enormously high win rates, but neither is true for Ahri. In this case, it really seems to be all about the skin — which gives no practical in-game bonuses unless you count opulence and pride as psychological buffs.
With no meaningful buffs, this admittedly funny banning trend is likely to correct itself in the near future, which means that soon enough League’s biggest spenders will get to show off their shiny new skin.
