I jumped online for a quick game with my buddy this morning . We typically duo queue a couple times during the day, especially after there’s a patch. Bans went Kog’Maw, Amumu, Shen, Vladimir, leaving Morgana open for first pick. I didn’t really feel like playing her, but I definitely didn’t want to play against her. My friend has been on a Morgana kick, so he offered to swap if I chose her, which I did.

Our opponents first picked Ezreal and Miss Fortune, so I figured Malphite would be a good tank. He’s a blast since the buff and the armor was definitely going to help out against those two. Once everyone’s selection had been placed we traded and popped into the load screen. My friend doesn’t own a ton of skins, so I was surprised to see him with Fallen Angel. He said he didn’t own it (I do, though). Then I realized I had Shamrock Malphite, which I definitely don’t own. My friend does, though.

As it turns out, swapped champions will retain whatever skin the owner put on the champion. I don’t know if it’s intended, but it could be a cool way to get players to buy skins. When I was running around as green Malphite, I actually started to like the skin. I think the glow of Brutal Strikes on his regular skin is much cooler, but being big and green is kinda neat. I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that once players see themselves in a given skin, they might be more willing to drop down some cash on it.

It’s one of the shortest lines in this week’s patch notes, but one of the sweetest. I actually reread this three times late last night when I was browsing the notes – “You can now request a trade with other players at the end of Draft Mode.” Say hello to the best feature since Season One launched. this is a big deal, especially for premade teams. You no longer have to have your Morgana/Amumu/Vlad player create the game.

This could also help a lot of solo queue players, depending on the community reaction. In DotA, swap was huge, and players were pretty cool about trading if they didn’t want to play a given champion but had the coveted first pick. Other players don’t like having first pick, and might use trade to barter a later pick slot with other players.

I’m more excited about this than I am about anything else in this game right now.