Riot updates Kai'Sa's Star Guardian skin after feedback from League of Legends beta testers

After receiving feedback from League of Legends PBE testers, Riot made a significant number of modifications to Star Guardian Kai'Sa before her official launch on July 14.

A week ago, Riot revealed Star Guardian Kai'Sa as one of six new skins coming to arguably the most popular skinline in League of Legends. Sona, Fiddlesticks, Taliyah, Nila and Ekko happen to be the other five champions.

Kai'Sa will supposedly have a big role in the 2022 League of Legends Star Guardian event. A few days back, Riot unveiled the event news with an official anime-styled teaser titled Return to Valoran City. The visuals of the one-minute clip displayed an urbanesque high-school setting and featured an aesthetic compilation of different scenes without people.

.

The teaser ended with a girl with pink hair wearing a school uniform and a Star Guardian pendant around her neck. She was none other than Star Guardian Kai'Sa, indicating her massive importance in the new Valoran City-tale.

Star Guardian Kai'Sa, along with the other five, was launched in League of Legends PBE by Riot on Jiot 22. After a week of rigorous beta testing and experimentation, Riot finally chose to evaluate the feedback of the LoL testers and modify the in-game skin before its official launch two weeks later.

Star Guardian Kai'Sa skin's VFX modulations were done by Riot's senior VFX artist, "Star Guardian Sirhaian."

---

League of Legends PBE feedback prompts Riot to make prominent adjustments to Star Guardian Kai'Sa

Star Guardian Kai'Sa's in-game visuals (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Here goes the entire tweak details for Star Guardian Kaisa.

Rigging/animation

• Adjusted her hair to reduce the stiffness.
• Adjusted her run to be more bouncy, rotation in the hips, and more left and right movement.
• Added a spin animation to her homeguard to really give that Star Guardian feel.
• Improvements to her animation transitions.
• Updated her dance to improve her gestures a bit.
• Joke/Recall animations are more polished.

Visual effects

• SG Kai'Sa now has a small transformation sequence in her Recall. She now also changes into her slightly brighter form and stays in it for a few seconds after; successfully recalling to base, casting her (R), and respawning
• We adjusted her ribbons to make them more unique.
• Added additional VFX to her evolves to make them feel more empowering.
• Her ankle asset will now show during her (E) evolve.

Sound effects

• Adjusted the On Hits for her basic attack with a bit more high end sparkles.
• Similar to previous Star Guardian skins, this year's Star Guardian theme will also be played upon loading into the game.

Splash

• Her Splash Art has received some adjustments to align facial likeness to other depictions.

Icon

• Her icon has been updated to reflect a closer face shape.

---

Riot thanked the League of Legends beta community for feeding them with valuable suggestions on Star Guardian Kai'Sa. The dev team quoted:

"Firstly, we want to thank you all for taking the time to write up feedback for us! We always appreciate hearing from you all so thank you for taking the time to give us your thoughts, especially when they are so clear and actionable! As we've worked to make adjustments based on your feedback, we wanted to share some context on our end around the changes we've made, as well as some of the requests we couldn’t accommodate."

As per Riot's schedule, Star Guardian 2022 will be a two-phase event with part of the skins being released with patch 12.13 and the rest following in patch 12.14.

---