The newest League of Legends champion Smolder isn't even out yet, but everyone's already hating on it

League of Legends (LoL) developer Riot Games recently revealed the newest champion that will arrive on the Summoner’s Rift. Champions team lead Lexi “Lexical” Gao described it as “a cute ‘smol’ ADC. Enter Ignacarious Gigantareno Rex Le Spes Offerentis, aka Smolder:

Smolder was a Dragon hatchling separated from his mother after Noxian beastmasters found him in the desolate kingdom on Camavor. Although his mother set the entire ship ablaze to save him, he got lost in all the chaos and washed ashore south of the capital, where a young boy found him and named him Smolder.

While playing, Smolder accidentally started a forest fire, drawing the attention of his mother. Reunited, Smolder is now learning to inherit the Camavoran imperial dragon lineage. Eager to grow and practise his fiery abilities, even as a fledgling, Smolder's skills are potent, setting fire to everything in his path.

While his lore seems to be cute and quite heartwarming, and a bit reminiscent of “How to Train Your Dragon,” it was his champion design that divided the internet between those who loved it and thought it was cute and those who absolutely hated it.

After all, when you think about cute and ‘smol,’ many expect something a bit cuddlier with bright eyes and an adorable face — like Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon or the Dragonite in Pokémon.

Instead, we were introduced to a scrawny creature that looks starved and may have seen better days if he hadn’t been caught by the Noxians. Many also pointed out that he looked like he had human features, with several folks fixating on his nose. Others pointed out that baby dragons weren’t new to the LoL universe, like Dragon Trainer Tristana, which was a beloved skin.

In fact, an entire Dragon Trainer skinline also featured various cute baby dragons along with it too. Legends of Runeterra has also shown baby dragons from guardian Drakes—so why can’t Smolder be as cute as those baby dragons? Some even pointed out that Smolder looks a lot like the first version of Sonic the Hedgehog in the Sonic movie (before the internet went up in arms and made the creators re-do the entire model).

The internet successfully pushes Riot into updating Smolder’s visuals

With hundreds of complaints and memes popping up on Twitter and Tiktok about Smolder’s questionable design, Riot eventually relented and immediately made changes, which Lexical posted on Twitter a few hours later:

The team added more draconic features and scales to the champion design, instead of a smooth texture of a humanoid dragon. His eyes were also adjusted to make it look more pointed and almond-shaped, similar to most dragon-like designs.

Many called these changes a big win and a huge improvement, although others agreed that some more changes to the overall design needed to be made as the champion felt “flat” and rushed to them.However, in Lexical’s follow-up post, she promised that more adjustments will be made on the way post-Public Beta Environment (PBE) release, with the team working on the splash art to make a few adjustments as well.

Now we wonder, can Riot feed Smolder a bit more? Many are still looking forward to his final outcome —when he arrives on PBE on 10 January. This also gives the Champions team a bit more time before his release on live servers in Patch 14.3.

Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.

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