Summer is here! This week we got some real treats, 1.19 is out and with it comes Lyra. With a new season beginning, roster changes have begun as well.

Summer Swaps

With Spring season at its end and the Vainglory Live Finals finished, many pro players have gotten picked up by new teams.

CullTheMeek has jumped to Team Phoenix

iLoveJoseph is now on Nemesis Hydra

Statusbaked has also swapped over to Team Phoenix

PONtheoriginal has joined Hammers eSports

VONC has filled TSM’s opening.

1.19 Released

1.19 is a huge update to Vainglory, it’s the first update in over a year to add new items and the first update ever to add so many major items. Roams are now freed up to pick whatever they like for their first item, no longer tied down to Ironguard Contract. There’s a number of other utility items added as well, including an expansion of options for boots. In addition to these changes, we have a new hero, Lyra. Lyra made quite a huge splash showing herself to be quite a jack of all trades while still surpassing many other more specialized heroes in their niches.

Sunny Days

1.19 also introduced summer progression with a new system called Sunlight. Sunlight levels from 1 to 50, with a reward of cards for seasonal skins at every level up. Leveling up in Sunlight also improves the rewards from your summer chest, which can be opened daily for various rewards. Sunlight progression can be boosted by using skins or by buying a boost from the Market.

Since the updates release a few quirks have been found:

Battle Royale matches only reward (already-reduced) Sunlight on wins, no is rewarded on a loss.

Co-Op vs Bot matches reward Sunlight, but only if the match exceeds 10 minutes.

Ranked and Casual matches only reward Sunlight if the match is longer than 15 minutes.

A huge motivation for summer progression is to unlock the three Summer Party skins that will be released over the season. This Friday, the first—Summer Party Krul—was released. Each skin will require 50 cards and will be available for unlock from their release to the end of the season. While the next two have not been revealed, one is speculated to be a skin for Alpha and the other is speculated to be one of the big guys: Lance, SAW, Ardan, or Phinn. Cards for the skins are already being rewarded and show of a mysterious silhouette skin.

Hotfixes Rolling Out

The first of potentially several 1.19-hotfixes has rolled out for iOS, 1.19.1, which helps Lyra cool off a bit from her sizzling debut. The changes tune down the CP ratio on her basic attacks and the duration of her B ability, Bright Bulwark. The update itself fixes some technical issues on iOS and reduces the app’s file size.

Various developers have already said on Twitter to expect some more hotfixes coming soon.

Amazon and Evil 8

Amazon has announced that they will sponsoring Vainglory’s Summer Season. Twitch, owned by Amazon, already was a sponsor of Vainglory, but this shows that they sees to be willing to step that sponsorship up to the parent company. They’ll also be hosting a new NA and EU tournament for the summer dubbed “The Evil Eight.” Few details are known about the tournament’s structure quite yet, but it seems that the top 8 teams from each region will be placed in the upper tier of the competition while “challenger” teams attempt to battle their way into The Evil Eight.