Any respectable Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or MOBA, will have a wide array of playable characters. Given the wide sample space, it’s not surprising that some characters would draw the ire of a game’s player base. However, League of Legends’ new champion, Seraphine, takes the cake for being the most disliked champion.
Welcoming Champions to Summoner’s Rift
New champions to the League of Legends usually get treated to the Champion Spotlight treatment. These are short informational videos that detail all of the new champion’s abilities. The videos often give players an inkling of how and where to play the strengths of their new potential pocket pick.
Fans usually flock to these videos to get an idea of what they might be facing on Summoner’s Rift in the future. The videos usually get tagged with a respectable amount of likes and a small number of dislikes. The dislike numbers on these videos can mostly be attributed to kneejerk negative reactions from viewers. Summoners may hit the thumbs down button purely based on their initial dislike of the champion.
Seraphine, LoL’s newest mage, released in October of this year with her very own Champion Spotlight video. Things looked to be business-as-usual for Riot Games given their extensive history of moderately successful champion releases. However, a mere six days after her video released, Seraphine has claimed a distinction that doesn’t call for celebration.
Champion Spotlight Statistics
- Likes vs Dislikes = Dislike Percentage
- Yorick: 13k vs 10k = 43.5%
- Teemo: 28k vs 5,1k = 15.4%
- Akali: 31k vs 4.1k = 11.7%
- Zoe: 34k vs 4.1k = 10.8%
- Yasuo: 66k vs 4.1k = 5.8%
- Sett: 84k vs 12k = 12.5%
- Lilia: 29k vs 2.4k = 7.6%
- Yone: 36k vs 3.1k = 7.9%
- Samira: 37k vs 4.2k = 10.2%
- Seraphine: 41k vs 74k = 64.4%
Seraphine’s Champion Spotlight currently holds the title of being the most disliked from the over 100 videos on the official League of Legends YouTube channel. The previous record-holder, the original Yorick, not only scored a little over 20% under Seraphine’s dislike ratio, his numbers were nowhere near as close. The latest Champion Spotlight currently holds around 74k dislikes against its total 1.4m total views. It’s a safe assumption to view this hate as going beyond knee-jerk ire towards the latest champion. An astounding number of players chose to express their dissatisfaction with Seraphine in a way that can’t be ignored easily by Riot Games.
It’s interesting to note that even the most reviled champions on the League of Legends roster can’t even hold a candle to Seraphine’s dislike stats. Teemo, one of the most annoying champions in the game, holds a 15.4% dislike rating on his video. Likewise, Yasuo, another polarizing champion, only stands at 10.8% dislike. The dislike boon is not just due to Seraphine’s status as the newest champion. The four most recent champion releases before Seraphine hold a dislike rating between 13% and 7%. Just what could be the possible reason for all the hate directed towards Seraphine?
A Different Approach
hi i'm seraphine and welcome to my Music Corner pic.twitter.com/QhTfboiI2a
— Seraphine⭐🌊 (@seradotwav) June 27, 2020
The entire campaign leading up to Seraphine’s official release was a new approach for Riot Games. They started off with an attempt at a viral campaign, framing Seraphine as a fan of the virtual Kpop group, K/DA. This almost immediately attracted the attention and curiosity of fans. Seraphine was also promised to bring something new to the mage position, something sorely lacking from the oversaturated position. Riot Games’ failure to live up to the hype and promises the built surrounding Seraphine could be one strong reason why a lot of fans are disappointed in the new mage.
One other possible reason for all the hatred is her skill kit is an almost blatant similarity to an existing champion. Most of Seraphine’s music-based skills, including her single-line crowd control ultimate, is strikingly similar to the kit of Support mage, Sona. The key difference being Seraphine’s kit being geared more towards damage output as opposed to team fight utility. It could possibly be the amalgamation of the overinflated promises for a brand new mage, and the introduction of something less than advertised that ignited this dislike spree on the new video. This doesn’t even take into account some subjective hatred that was fueled because of her ultimate-tier skin.
There’s hardly anything new Riot Games can do with Seraphine beyond reworking her entire skill kit. All champions have the right to exist on Summoner’s Rift alongside all the talking animals, little Yordles, ethereal creatures, and almost any moving creature that chose to fight. There has never been an instance in the game’s history where a champion was straight out disabled because of negative feedback from fans. If that was how League of Legends operated, we would no longer have Teemo or Yasuo. Seraphine will most likely stay on the roster, ready for any player willing to field her on the rift.
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