League of Legends’ stone guardian, Galio, will be receiving a huge Warwick-sized update— and it could be hitting the PBE soon. Riot finally teased his new design today on Twitter, and he looks really cool.
Read more: Galio’s new look is so pretty it gives Taric a run for his money
About six months ago, Riot confirmed in a news post that Galio was on deck for a rework following Warwick, and frankly, he needs it. For starters, Galio’s kit of spells is very lackluster. Aside from the fact that Galio and all of his spells look very dated, they are also boring to use. He has two skill-shots—one that slows his targets, and one that speeds up his allies when they walk behind it. He also has a shield that grants a chunk of resistance to the ally he gives it to, and a big, flashy ultimate that taunts everyone near him. The skills don’t sound too bad, but when you think about his theme as a champion, it starts to get muddled up.
Galio is a giant, stone gargoyle destined to protect the proud nation of Demacia. That’s all we really know about him from his lore. So… why does he shoot wind out of his face? Why does he have a taunt? What does any of this have to do with what or who Galio is? Well, it doesn’t really. When you play Galio, you don’t feel like you’re a giant stone guardian, you feel like you’re an oversized bat that shoots poorly-animated wind at people.
Following major champion updates like Poppy and Yorick, the idea behind Galio’s rework is to redesign him from the ground up. His spells and character model will all look totally different, and the abilities themselves will be changed to a spell kit that gives Galio the big stone guardian identity that he deserves.
Riot didn’t give us many details in its state of champion post, but one line stuck out that’s enough to make us all very, very excited for this update: “Galio will likely be our largest transformation to date.” That’s right, Galio is going to be the biggest champion makeover we’ve seen so far. Bigger than the Poppy, Yorick, Warwick, and Ryze updates, which were all very large in their own rights.
Warwick’s update only a couple of months ago was a huge success. The design team went all-in with new teasers, videos, and a complete reimagining of our feral wolf buddy. Warwick’s play rate skyrocketed from about a meager 4 percent to about 23 percent upon his release, and he’s hovered around 10 percent in the following weeks as his update hype has died down, according to a League statistics website, Leagueofgraphs. He’s been a very viable and quite powerful pick in today’s meta, and Champion.gg (another League stats website) places him in the top ten of overall jungle performance.
If the Warwick update’s success tells us anything, it’s that Galio’s update has a good chance of being equally as awesome. In fact, if what Riot said in that post was true, and Galio really is the largest update project yet, it could be even better.
If you’re enough of a Galio fan to have invested in his legendary skin, Gatekeeper Galio, we’ve got some good news for you. According to a follow-up post from Riot on Nexus, League’s editorial website, the design team put some extra love into the skin to make it truly worthy of its legendary status.
Currently, Galio is an underplayed, undervalued, and underpowered champion. Hopefully this large update does the big guy some justice to bring him back into the light.
