Riot Games consistently produces some of the best in-game cosmetic skins out of any game currently on the market when it comes to their League Of Legends skin lines. There's the Space Groove skin line where champions are turned into alien-esque amalgamations. There's also the extremely popular PROJECT skin line where champions are turned into cyberpunk-inspired heroes (among many more). League Of Legends consistently releases new skins for players to collect and obtain.
While some skins provide champions with some much-needed visual flair, others provide players some hidden advantages when piloting their favorite champions due to new particle effects or smoother animations. This list will go through 10 different League Of Legends skins and the advantages they give to players who use them.
10 Arclight Varus
Varus’ Arclight skin provides the champion with some pretty evident benefits. The skin produces lighter particle effects making his abilities like Piercing Arrow and Hail Of Arrows, alongside his ultimate Chain Of Corruption, incredibly difficult to see.
Due to its incredibly light particle palette, Arclight Varus gives players an advantageous edge on their opponents enabling them to make quick, almost unseen catches both in lane and in team fights. This skin becomes incredibly obnoxious in late-game team fights where tons of champion abilities are all going off at the same time.
9 Justicar Syndra
Much like Arclight Varus, Justicar Syndra’s particle color palette is extremely light thus making her Dark Spheres very hard to dodge whilst laning against her. Justicar Syndra gives users a literal hidden benefit and competitive edge simply because her abilities using this skin are so difficult to see.
This Syndra provides many of the same benefits as Arclight Varus in that the particles get muddled up with environmental effects. Justicar Syndra makes dodging any Dark Spheres and Scatter The Weak combo’s very difficult, providing a clear advantage to players using this skin.
8 Dark Star Karma
Dark Star Karma is a downright awesome skin visually. Using this skin Karma throws literal galaxies at her opponents dealing massive damage as an enchanter support champion. The only downside, however, is that her regular abilities are impossible to distinguish from her Mantra abilities.
Her base Inner Flame on the Dark Star Karma skin is the exact same particle as the empowered version with the only exception being that it is a very minorly bigger in size. The hitbox is also incredibly janky on this skin as the Inner Flame particle is much more narrow than it seems.
7 Spirit Blossom Yasuo
It is probably a good thing that Yasuo, the 0 - 10 mastermind and every bronze Mid Laner's main champion, has a skin that provides him a blatant advantage. Spirit Blossom Yasuo was released in 2020 during the Spirit Blossom event, giving Yasuo players yet another beautiful skin to intentionally feed with in ranked games. However, this time, the skin came accompanied by unintentional benefits, yay!
The aspect of Spirit Blossom Yasuo that makes the skin incredibly advantageous is that his Steel Tempest tornado’s particle is incredibly tiny with an extremely large hitbox. That’s right -- the most important part of Yasuo’s kit, that allied players always seem to struggle landing, was buffed inadvertently by Riot Games!
6 Dark Waters Vladimir
Dark Waters Vladimir provides players with a hidden advantage due to the fact that, while fighting around important objectives in the river such as Dragon or Baron, all of his abilities are incredibly difficult to see. This is because they are all based on “water-like” effects consisting of very dull blues that blend in with the environment.
This skin also provides players with a brand new, crispy-looking, auto attack animation that makes last hitting minions much easier. This skin, alongside occasional Vladimir buffs in updates and patches, makes him a true menace to deal with.
5 Blackfrost Anivia
Blackfrost Anivia is an advantageous skin for a number of reasons. Firstly, her auto attack animation is a lot smoother in this skin making last hitting extremely easy. Anivia’s Frostbite also looks eerily similar to an auto attack making it incredibly hard to discern between the two.
Much like Dark Waters Vladimir, Blackfrost Anivia utilizes an entirely blue color palette making it extremely hard to perfectly see her abilities while team fighting in the river over neutral objectives such as Rift Herald or Dragon. Blackfrost Anivia almost entirely changes the particles and effects of the champion's base skin making it an extremely advantageous choice.
4 Elderwood Bard
In the hands of a good player, Bard can be one of the most annoying enchanter support champions in the game. Being constantly binded to minions, walls, or allies by a Bard one trick can be extremely some of the most frustrating gameplay in League Of Legends. However, what makes this even worse, is the fact that Bard has a pay-to-win skin in Elderwood Bard.
The hitbox size on Cosmic Binding on Elderwood Bard is extremely large although the particle is extremely small. This becomes annoying when playing against Elderwood Bard, considering there are moments where the player might think they dodged a skill shot with a side step, but due to the inaccurate representation of the particle effect in relation to its actual hitbox size, the player is binded regardless.
3 Muay Thai Lee Sin
Lee Sin is one of the most mechanically intensive Jungle champions in the game utilizing a plethora of difficult mechanics to generate leads. Lee Sin’s base skin is quite clunky in terms of his auto attack animations making it rather cumbersome to pilot the champion to a proficient level.
Lee Sin’s Muay Thai skin completely undoes this by giving him a new auto attack animation that is much cleaner than that of his base skin making him feel a lot smoother to play in general. Not to mention, Muay Thai Lee Sin is an awesome-looking skin in terms of its design replacing Lee Sin’s more classical Monk garb with hand wraps, an awesome headband, and blue Muay Thai shorts.
2 Zombie Brand
Zombie Brand is an extremely frustrating skin to play against, giving Brand players a distinct advantage over lane opponents and the enemy team in general. When Zombie brand is running towards an enemy champion he throws his hands into the air, which looks similar to the animation when casting his Pillar Of Flame ability, making it extremely difficult to dodge in and out of the lane phase.
Zombie Brand’s Sear ability also looks eerily similar to his auto attack animation making it incredibly hard to predict, as well. Overall, Zombie Brand gives players an advantage over their opponents due to the difficulty discerning different abilities due to the color palette being almost entirely green, as well as the fact his ability animations are so close in design to his running animation and auto attack animation.
1 Steel Legion Lux
For the longest time, Steel Legion Lux was the definition of a broken skin due her particle effects being completely washed out and small, looking almost exactly like her auto attack. However, in more recent years, Riot Games has gone back and updated particles on obviously broken skins such as iBlitzcrank and Steel Legion Lux in hopes of making them fairer to play against.
Even after the changes, Steel Legion Lux is still an advantageous skin because the animations for Light Binding on this skin look so close to her auto attack animation. When laning against Steel Legion Lux, dodging her most crucial snare ability can be incredibly difficult.