Is it true that some skins buff or nerf your champion?

Question

I am playing League of Legends and I have seen some videos saying that skins can actually buff (make them better) or nerf (make them worse) the champion you're playing.
Is this true? And if so, can I see a list of the skins that buff or nerf your champion?

Answer 1

Skins are cosmetic. They do not buff or nerf your champion stats. However, cosmetic changes can still affect your own gameplay.

Ease of use

The most common competitive argument for a skin is that it has an auto attack animation that is easier to last hit creeps with for CS. When last hitting minions, often a player starts auto attacking and realizes a moment later that the attack was too early to get the last hit. Then, they cancel the auto attack and restart it. An auto attack animation that provides more consistent feedback to the player about when the attack will land on a creep can be an advantage when timing last hits.

Opinions on this benefit are subjective, but an example of a common opinion is that Blood Lord Vladimir is easier to last hit with than the default skin.

Difficulty of use (for your opponents)

Some skins have ability animations that are more difficult to see, or more difficult to interpret for your enemies. This means that choosing a particular skin can make it harder for you opponents to dodge skill shots.

A common example of this type of skin is Steel Legion Lux. In this skin, Lux's abilities all appear very similar to each other, and it is much harder to identify which ability she is using when playing against her.

This category is the most common reasons why some skins get banned in competitive play.

Bugs

This is rare, but occasionally a skin will be bugged and actually provide a true advantage or disadvantage. One example is Zombie Brand, which has a special ability to change walking animations depending on whether the player is walking towards or away from an enemy champion. Originally, this animation could be used to detect if enemy players were hidden in bushes, before the bug was fixed.

Another less serious example is Pulsefire Ezreal. When last hitting creeps, this skin would sometimes not properly display the gold you received (you would still get the gold, but there was no animation).

Overall though, skins are a subjective preference, and some players like certain ones more than others. Most likely, the person in the video you watched was just making a joke that their preferred skin was actually better for competitive reasons.

Answer 2

Yes and no.

In stats, no.

But in visuals, maybe.

Some are easy to say that skin has an advantage, because effects make it harder to read the skill coming out or the AOE circles are harder to see.

You could also say some are advantageous against particular opponents that have visual impairments like color-blindness.

But all of that is very relative and very opinion based.

Reminds me of an EVO (fighting game tournament) where there was a rumor going around that the skins using white suits were harder to read. And poof, everybody was using their characters white suit skin.

Its a very subjective subject.

But in terms of cold hard stats, no.