World Champions: 2020 Skins

DAMWON Gaming ran through Worlds 2020 like nobody was watching and Riot gave them five skins that actually capture that energy. Been playing ranked since season 5 and the DWG set is one of those Worlds lines where I look at the roster and think yeah, these champions make sense. Not sure if it's just me but this particular lineup - Twisted Fate, Nidalee, Kennen, Leona, Jhin - feels like it belongs together more than most Worlds sets. The blue and white palette ties everything tight, and each skin carries that clean Korean esports aesthetic without looking like a corporate ad.

What Makes the World Champions: 2020 Set Stand Out

Real talk though. Most Worlds skins share a formula: team colors, team logo on the back, maybe a stylized recall animation referencing a play from the tournament. The DWG set follows that template but does it cleaner than average. The color scheme is a deep navy blue fading into white and silver, with these sharp angular particle effects on abilities that remind me of cracked ice or shattered glass. Every skin in the World Champions: 2020 line shares that visual language and it reads well on the Rift even in chaotic teamfights.

What I think separates this from weaker Worlds sets is consistency. Some years you get one banger skin and four forgettable ones. The 2020 lineup doesnt have that problem. All five sit at roughly the same quality level, which is rare for a Worlds collection. The splash arts share a unified composition style too - dark backgrounds, dramatic lighting from above, each champion posed in their signature stance with DWG branding woven into the design elements rather than slapped on like a sticker.

Compared to something like the World Champions: 2019 set for FunPlus Phoenix, the DWG skins feel more restrained. Less flashy particle work, more emphasis on clean model changes and texture quality. Could be wrong here but I think that restraint actually works in their favor. The FPX skins went hard on red and gold VFX and some of them got visually noisy in lane. The DWG skins stay readable. You see a DWG Jhin ult coming across the map and you know exactly what it is without squinting.

(Random aside: I watched the 2020 finals live at like 4 AM my time and ShowMaker's Twisted Fate game is permanently burned into my brain. So yeah, biased toward this set.)

The recall animations are the highlight for me. Each one references a specific moment or habit from the actual players during the tournament run. Riot's been doing this since the SKT sets but I feel like they got better at it over the years. The little details - BeryL's Leona recall in particular - show that whoever designed these actually watched the games.

Best World Champions: 2020 Skins

Gonna rank all five because with only five skins in the set theres no reason to skip any. Starting from the top.

DWG Jhin. Easily the best of the bunch. Ghost's Jhin was iconic during that Worlds run and the skin does it justice. The fourth shot has this satisfying blue crack effect, the W snare looks crisp, and the curtain call ult channels with DWG-themed particles that actually feel premium for an Epic tier skin. Been spamming this in Diamond on my ADC games and the auto attack animations feel slightly different from base - smoother, if that makes sense. Might be placebo. Worth 1350 RP without question for any Jhin main.

DWG Kennen takes second. BeryL picked Kennen support during the tournament and the skin captures that energy. The ult is the money ability here - blue lightning storm with the DWG logo faintly visible if you look close. Locked in this skin for maybe 30 Kennen games last season and the Slicing Maelstrom VFX make it way easier to track the stun proc timing in teamfights. Not sure if that's intentional or just the color contrast working better than base Kennen's purple.

DWG Leona comes third. Solid support skin. The shield bash animations have that clean blue particle trail and the ult drops a DWG-branded solar flare that looks genuinely good. BeryL's Leona was a staple during the run so it fits. Kinda feels like every Worlds support skin is either Thresh or Leona at this point but the execution here is above average. My duo partner mains Leona and has this permanently equipped since it dropped.

DWG Twisted Fate fourth. ShowMaker's signature pick. The gold card has a blue tint that reads differently from other TF skins which is nice for clarity. Destiny ult effect is clean. Good skin, just doesn't pop as hard as Jhin or Kennen in-game. The splash art carries it honestly - ShowMaker's pose with the cards is probably the best individual splash in the set.

DWG Nidalee fifth. Not bad, just the least exciting. Canyon's jungle Nidalee got a skin that changes spear and cougar form particles to match the DWG palette. The spear throw has good visual weight. Cougar form pounce leaves a blue trail. Functional, clean, but doesnt make me go "wow" the way the Jhin skin does. Still better than most standard Nidalee skins though, so jungle mains shouldn't skip it.

Champion Roster and Thematic Fit

Five champions. Twisted Fate, Nidalee, Kennen, Leona, Jhin. Each one representing a specific DAMWON player's signature pick from the 2020 Worlds run. ShowMaker on TF mid, Canyon on Nidalee jungle, Nuguri... wait, Nuguri didn't get a skin in this set which is interesting. BeryL got both Kennen and Leona which is unusual for Worlds sets - typically one skin per player.

Honestly not gonna lie, the champion selection here is strong for skin potential. Jhin is one of those champions where every skin looks good because his animations are so well-designed at base level. Twisted Fate has that card-throwing fantasy that adapts well to any theme. Leona's shield and sun motifs translate cleanly into the angular DWG aesthetic. Nidalee's dual-form gives the skin team more surface area to work with.

Kennen is the wildcard pick. Support Kennen wasnt exactly meta outside of BeryL's hands during that tournament, and seeing a Worlds skin on a champion mostly known for top lane splitpush duty feels a little off. But it works. The yordle model with DWG gear looks surprisingly good and the ult VFX justify the pick.

If I had to pick one champion who should've been in this set but wasn't, it's probably a Nuguri champion. Ghost and BeryL both got represented but Nuguri - who was arguably the best top laner at that Worlds - didn't make the cut. (Sidebar: I think this had to do with his move to FPX after the tournament, whole thing was messy.) The roster feels slightly incomplete without a top lane representative but what's here is quality.

Tier Breakdown and Value

Simple breakdown here. All five skins are Epic tier at 1350 RP each. No Legendary, no Mythic, no Prestige edition. Just five clean Epics. Standard for Worlds champion skins - Riot has never done a Legendary for a Worlds set as far as I remember, and honestly thats fine. The 1350 RP price point gives you new model, new particles, new recall animation, and that's exactly what these deliver.

The full bundle when it launched in 2021 was around 4500 RP if you didn't own any of the champions, roughly 3000 RP for the skins alone. Fair pricing. Not gonna lie, I picked up the Jhin and Kennen individually and skipped the bundle because I dont play Nidalee or TF enough to justify it. For someone who mains two or three of these champions though the bundle was solid value.

Compared to other Epic tier skins at 1350 RP, the DWG set sits comfortably in the upper half. They're not at the level of something like Spirit Blossom or Coven Epics in terms of sheer visual impact, but the cohesive team aesthetic and tournament-specific details add value that standard skinline Epics don't have. You're not just buying a skin - you're buying a piece of esports history from that specific Worlds run. Season 10, Busan library, DAMWON's first title. That context matters to a lot of players.

World Champions: 2020 holds up well. Been almost five years since release at this point and the skins still look clean on the current Rift. No visual artifacts from map updates, particles render correctly, model quality hasn't aged poorly. Good set. Not the flashiest Worlds skins ever made but probably the most consistent top to bottom.