Several players appear to be abusing the Pay To Win Jarvan IV Skin in Solo-Queue.
Skins are cosmetic upgrades players can buy for their champions in League of Legends. They provide players with distinct auditory and visual effects that set them apart from the base champion. These skins can range from simple color changes to sophisticated new animations and sound effects.
That said, skins are mainly used for their cosmetic effects and usually have to impact on gameplay. But, there are certain outliers to the rule. There are some skins in the game that simply gives the user an advantage. For example, the iBlitzcrank skin, its Q – Rocket Grab animation, is pretty hard to see, thus harder to dodge. Or Cosmic Lux, which has spell effects that are pretty similar to one another, so it’s hard to guess which ability is flying at you. However, these skins give players some advantage but are by no means game-breaking, unlike a certain Jarvan IV.
There’s a Jarvan IV skin in the game that straight-up gives the user an unfair advantage, and many would consider it an actual Pay-To-Win skin.
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Pay To Win Jarvan IV Skin
The skin we are talking about is the Fanatic Jarvan IV skin. It is a fairly old skin from 2014. Other than the fact that it is a nod to Fanatic’s victory in the 2011 World Championship, there’s not much going for the skin. But underneath its bland exterior, the skin has some perks that make it far better than his newer skins.
Fanatic Jarvan IV lets you mask the animation of Jarvan IV’s E – Demacian Standard. If Jarvan IV does the E+Q combo, there’s a clear visual indicator that he used the E before casting his Q – Dragon Strike. But in the case of Fanatic Jarvan IV, there’s no indicator of him casting E; it skips the E animation and only shows the Q animation. So there’s no telling if Jarvan IV used only Q or E+Q. This leads to a situation where you would constantly have to guess if Jarvan IV used the E+Q combo or not. To add insult to injury, Jarvan IV E+Q into Ultimate is one of the strongest engagement tools in the game, and not being able to react to it properly leads to some unwanted situations.
Hopefully, Riot will take notice of the issue and fixes it soon.
Here’s a great video of King Nidhogg showcasing the Fanatic Jarvan IV animation cancel.
