Star Guardian Rakan

First time I saw the Star Guardian Rakan splash I thought Riot finally figured out how to make a support skin that doesn’t feel like an afterthought. Locked it in immediately. No hesitation. Been maining Rakan on and off since his release and this was the first skin where I felt like the champion actually transformed into something with real narrative weight. Not just a recolor, not just sparkly particles slapped on top of his base kit. This one changed how it felt to play him.

How Star Guardian Rakan plays different

So the big thing with this Legendary is the new voice lines. Ronan Summers voices Star Guardian Rakan and honestly the performance carries a lot of emotional range that base Rakan doesnt really have. There’s this tension in the VO between the cocky charm Rakan always has and a darker undertone tied to the Star Guardian Season 3 storyline where he’s corrupted. Kinda feels like Riot wrote an actual character arc into the skin instead of just recording 40 generic quips.

The Q hits different visually. Gleaming Quill sends out this violet-tinged feather that reads way cleaner against the Rift than base. W is where it gets interesting though. Grand Entrance has this burst of dark star energy mixed with guardian light, purple and green colliding mid-animation. In teamfights its actually easier to track your engage timing because the VFX telegraph is sharper. Played maybe 150 games with this skin across two seasons and I think the W visual clarity genuinely helped my engage reads in Diamond.

E shield dash has trailing star particles. Simple change – huge impact. When you’re peeling for your ADC and dashing back through the backline, those particle trails make the movement feel faster even though the numbers are identical. R is the showpiece. The Quickness gets this massive cosmic explosion on activation, dark purple ripples spreading outward. Could be wrong here but I swear the charm radius feels bigger just because the VFX sells it harder. Obviously it’s the same hitbox. But perception matters when you’re trying to land a five-man ult in dragon pit.

Recall animation ties into the corrupted Star Guardian narrative. Won’t spoil it fully but there’s a moment where Rakan reaches for Xayah and it hits hard if you know the lore. (Random aside: I watched a lore breakdown of this skin at like 3 AM one night and honestly it made me appreciate the recall animation ten times more.)

The Star Guardian Season 3 context

Star Guardian Rakan dropped September 12, 2019. Late season 9. This was the batch where Riot went darker with the Star Guardian line, corrupting Rakan and Xayah as a pair. The whole Star Guardian Season 3 wave had this fallen-hero energy that the earlier batches didn’t touch.

Esben Lash Rasmussen and Atey Ghailan handled the splash. Two artists on one piece and you can tell because the composition has this cinematic quality that most single-artist splashes don’t hit. The lighting on Rakan’s corrupted form against the starfield background is genuinely one of the better splashes in the game. Credit to both of them.

Three chromas available. Ruby shifts the palette toward red tones which honestly clashes a bit with the Star Guardian fantasy. Aquamarine is my pick, the blue-green reads like an uncorrupted version of Rakan and there’s something satisfying about that headcanon. Rose Quartz leans pink, fits the classic Star Guardian color scheme if you want that softer look. Not a huge selection compared to some Epic skins that get eight or nine chromas but for a Legendary at 1820 RP the base skin does enough work on its own.

Still in the shop. No vault rotation nonsense, no loot-only gatekeeping. You can grab it whenever.

Who this skin is actually for

Real talk though. Star Guardian Rakan is a Legendary that earns the 1820 RP price tag. New VO, new VFX on every ability, new recall, new animations. The full package. Been running this as my default Rakan skin since around season 10 and I keep coming back to it over Elderwood and Arcana.

Not sure if it’s just me but playing this skin in duo queue with a Star Guardian Xayah feels like a completely different game. The shared recall, the matching corrupted aesthetic, the voice line interactions between the two. Riot designed these as a pair and it shows. Last Thursday I queued bot with my duo partner, both running the Star Guardian set, and our Kayn jungle actually typed “you two look like anime protagonists” in chat. Fair point.

The skin works fine solo too. You don’t need the Xayah pairing to justify the purchase. But if you do play the duo? It’s the best bot lane cosmetic experience in the game. Not even close. The voice lines reference each other, the particles complement, the whole thing coheres in a way that most skin pairs dont bother with.

Should you buy it? If you play Rakan at all, yes. 1820 RP well spent for mains. If you’re a support player who locks in Rakan maybe once every 15 games, probably skip it and grab Cosmic Dawn or something cheaper. But for one-tricks and Rakan enthusiasts this is the Rakan skin if you can only own one. The corrupted Star Guardian narrative gives it depth that pure fantasy skins like Elderwood can’t match, and the gameplay feel with the updated VFX and VO is a genuine upgrade over base. Been spamming this in Diamond for seasons now. No regrets.