If you like to spend your time playing ARAM Mayhem and Arena, then Patch 26.16 adds a fair few changes.
While some of the shine was taken off ARAM and Arena thanks to the release of League Classic, the two modes are getting plenty of love, especially Mayhem.
ARAM: Mayhem – Fighters finally get some love
Riot’s decided fighters have been getting bullied in extended fights, so there are two new Gold Augments to help them. Upgrade Ravenous Hydra makes your spells apply cleave with no cooldown and chucks in 18% lifesteal on top.
Shark Bait got a proper glow-up (base damage 120-350 now, and it eats 30% of missing health instead of 20%). Nature is Healing has been reworked so each bush has its own cooldown and heals the second you step in.
Snowbomb’s radius is 30% chunkier with a longer knockup, which is going to feel dreadful to be on the receiving end of. Locke also gets a tidy buff across the board: more damage dealt, less taken, and 20 tenacity out of nowhere. Upgrade Sundered Sky is the other new Augment. It reduces the item’s per-target cooldown to 5 seconds (down from 8), grants an extra 9% missing health healing on empowered strikes, and immediately gives you 500 gold.
On the nerf side, Critical Missile and the Skilled Sniper snipe range both got trimmed. So don’t be shocked if your old comfort picks feel a touch weaker.
Arena: Bravery Wednesdays are back
Bravery Arena is returning, and it’s landing every Wednesday alongside Crowd Favourites. Each Wednesday, you either roll the dice with Bravery or pick from your Crowd Favourite pool (the more champs you own, the more options you’re offered).
Balance-wise, this is a “lift the strugglers” patch. Rek’Sai is the standout: her maxed tunnels now have a 0-second reuse cooldown, so she can pop in and out, plus a healthy healing buff on top. Gnar’s tired time is gone entirely, meaning you’re mega-Gnar-ing and back again constantly. LeBlanc, Volibear, Shaco, Poppy and Warwick all got meaningful bumps too, so expect to see a lot more of them.
Now You See Me got a fun upgrade as well. At level 2 it leaves a clone where you vanished from, which is exactly the kind of “wait, which one’s real” nonsense Arena lives for.
Getting tapped down, Aurelion Sol, Bel’Veth, Sona and Soraka, with Three Sacred Treasures and Nesting Doll reined in on the Augment side.
“Welcome to our first patch update for League Classic! We’re delivering brand new old champions, brand new old runes, and a suite of balance changes aimed at the game’s biggest outliers. Are you excited to be a flippin’ Ninja?”
New (Returning) Champions
Akali
Akali is flying in with invisibility, targeted dashes, invisibility, and tons of damage. Better buy a Pink Ward!
Passive – Twin Disciplines
After gaining 20 Ability Power, gain a percent of your total Attack Damage as bonus damage on-hit.
After gaining 10 bonus Attack Damage, gain Spell Vamp.
Q – Mark of the Assassin
Throw a kama, damaging and marking your target. Attack the marked target to deal more damage and refund some energy.
W – Twilight Shroud
Throw down a smoke bomb, which gives Akali Invisibility and bonus resists while in the area. Enemies in the area are slowed.
E – Crescent Slash
Slice all nearby enemies, dealing damage.
Be careful, this can empty your energy reserves quickly.
R – Shadow Dance
Dash at an enemy, dealing damage upon arrival. This ability can hold a maximum of 3 dashes at a time, like ammo.
Kennen
Kennen makes his return in a somewhat familiar form, ready to dive-bomb into enemy teams with Slicing Maelstrom or play it cool as an AD auto-attacker.
Passive – Mark of the Storm
Kennen’s abilities add stacking marks to their targets. Upon reaching 3 stacks, they’re stunned and Kennen refunds some energy.
Q – Thundering Shuriken
Throw a shuriken in a straight line, damaging and marking the first enemy hit.
W – Electrical Surge
Passive: Every few attacks, Kennen’s attack deals bonus damage and marks his target.
Active: Kennen damages and applies an additional mark to all nearby marked enemies.
E – Lightning Rush
Kennen becomes a ball of lightning, gaining bonus movement speed and resistances. Enemies he collides with while a ball of lightning are damaged and marked.
R – Slicing Maelstrom
A maelstrom follows Kennen for a few seconds, damaging and marking a random enemy champion several times per second.
Shen
Shen subscribes to the philosophy that one can hide in plain sight. He’s still the same dashing, taunting ninja he’s always been, but has the added benefit of providing healing for himself and his allies.
Passive – Ki Strike
Every few seconds, Shen’s next attack deals bonus damage and restores some energy.
Further basic attacks ready his next empowered attack sooner.
Q – Vorpal Blade
Throw a blade, damaging and marking the targeted enemy. Any time Shen or his allies attack the marked enemy, they restore some health over time.
If the blade kills the target outright, Shen gets a partial heal.
W – Feint
Gain a shield. While it persists, attacks refresh Ki Strike faster.
E – Shadow Dash
Dash in a straight line, taunting and damaging all champions Shen collides with and restoring energy for each one.
R – Stand United
Target an allied champion anywhere on the map to grant them a shield. After a few seconds, if they’re still alive, teleport to that ally.
Champion Changes
Alistar
Alistar’s pretty decent in both solo lanes, whether played as AP burst or as a Headbutt-autoattacker. However, he’s quite weak at support, so we’re looking for some support-skewed buffs.
E – Triumphant Roar
Allied Heal Effectiveness: 50% ⇒ 75%
Amumu
Amumu is performing worse than he ought to, so we’re looking to return him back to normalcy. We’re reverting some nerfs from 2012-2013, ensuring he has a strong strategic niche of helping AP teams destroy squishy targets
Blitzcrank is the #1 support in the game right now, topping all three of win rate, pick rate, and ban rate. So yeah, it’s time for some nerfs to pull him down. We’re digging up the history books and reverting some of their “recent” buffs from 2011-2012. We’re targeting early pressure and overall cooldowns, due to how impactful their abilities can be. If a hook attempt misses, their opponents should have plenty of time to punish.
Dr. Mundo’s faring even worse than his patients, and that’s saying something! He’s receiving a suite of buffs to both damage and durability to allow him to soak up as much punishment as possible while still dishing out the pain. These buffs manifest as reverts to nerfs from early 2012.
Garen’s doing quite poorly at the moment, so we’re here to buff him up to snuff. We want him to feel advantaged in early laning, so we’re buffing his early regeneration to enable more aggressive trading and allowing him more frequent access to his rank 1 ultimate to let him convert those fights into kills.
Base Stats
Base Health Regeneration: 8.2 ⇒ 9.0
Passive – Perseverance
Maximum Health Per Second Regeneration: 0.4% ⇒ 0.5%
R – Demacian Justice
Cooldown: 160 / 120 / 80 ⇒ 140 / 110 / 80
Heimerdinger
Heimerdinger is the single best-performing mid laner, and he’s way up there in top lane, too. We expect him to do well for now, considering how rusty the average player is, and how strong his turrets are, but he’s still outperforming our expectations. We want to make him more vulnerable early in his turret fortress and create a larger window without his pocket crowd control. For the rockets, they simply lack the early game counter-play required for a base damage this high.
Janna is the second of our support nerfs this patch as she’s performing a little better than she ought to, so we’re dropping some small nerfs. We want her high impact ultimate to have high a impact mana cost and want to make sure that she isn’t just using her strong safety tools to bully her enemies out of the lane.
Base Stats
Attack Damage: 51.95 + 2.95 ⇒ 49 + 3
R – Monsoon
Mana Cost: 100 / 150 / 200 ⇒ 200 / 275 / 350
Jarvan IV
Jarvan is one of the game’s strongest junglers and deserving of a nerf. Considering how good the reliably Flag and Drag combo is, we’re leaving that intact. Instead, we’re swinging for his late game to ensure he isn’t the best at all points in time.
Katarina is performing much better than she ought to, especially for a difficult champion whom no one has played for approximately a decade. We always want high-mastery champions to be worth mastering, but if rookies are winning this much without practice, something’s wrong. Ultimately we’re fixing our own bug here: She’s supposed to be throwing 10 daggers over 2.5 seconds, not 12, so both the DPS and maximum damage of her ultimate is being reduced.
Lux is our single worst mid laner AND support right now, so she’s due for some very real buffs. We’re going back on a move speed and ult CD nerf from early in 2013, as well as an AP ratio nerf from 2011, with the hopes that Lux can keep up with all the mobility these “modern” (released after 2010) champions have.
Base Stats
Move Speed: 330 ⇒ 340
R – Final Spark
Cooldown: 80 / 65 / 50 ⇒ 80 / 60 / 40
Damage: 300 / 400 / 500 + 75% Ability Power ⇒ 300 / 400 / 500 + 85% Ability Power
Miss Fortune
Miss Fortune is performing the worst of all conventional bot laners, so we’re delivering some buffs. To start, we’re improving both her sustained auto-attack damage and her spell casting ult playstyle, partially or fully reverting changes from patches 3.1 and 3.7.
Nasus is performing better than he ought to, even for a champion with a shallow learning curve and a playstyle that hasn’t changed much over the years. We still want his infinitely-stacking late game bonking to be his biggest strength, which means pulling out power elsewhere. We’re reverting a few buffs from the Skarner launch patch in 2011, making his early game weaker and making him think more carefully about using Wither.
Passive – Soul Eater
Life Steal: 14 / 17 / 20% ⇒ 10 / 15 / 20%
W – Wither
Mana Cost: 80 ⇒ 100
Skarner
Skarner has been one of the weakest junglers so we’re here to buff him back up. We’ve got a small bugfix to his E’s missile radius, which made it harder to hit than it should have been. Otherwise, we’re reverting a few nerfs that Skarner received early in his release.
Passive – Energize
NEW Structure Interaction: Once again works on structures
Soraka is one of our weakest supports at the moment, and while she performs better in solo lanes, she’s not strong there either. As a result we’re looking for some meaningful support-skewed buffs and it’s fine if she gets a little stronger in top lane or mid lane. As support Soraka maxes her W first while solo lane Soraka does not, this should be a meaningful buff for where she’s played most.
Tryndamere has wound up as the single most performant champion in the game, both in top lane and jungle, which means he’s up for some substantial nerfs. We want to retain his late game big crit fantasy but he should take longer to get there and be more peelable when he does. As with many of our nerfs, these are reverts of buffs from back when Lux launched in 2010.
Twitch is the strongest bot laner in the game right now. To start, our nerfs are going to be reverting his buffs from 1.0.0.144 and 1.0.0.146, both from 2012. Because his late game can be so potent, we’re doubling down on his scaling archetype and making his laning phase even more difficult.
Veigar is one of the very worst mid laners in the game, so it’s time for some buffs. Due to how core Q-spamming on every minion is to his playstyle, we want to make sure it feels supported, while still requiring him to buy some mana items to keep up.
Warwick is the best-performing jungler in the game right now, and while his resilience in the face of a dangerous jungle is likely a contributor, he’s performing above our expectations for such a straightforward jungler. We’re reverting an attack speed buff from early 2012, as he has access to much better on-hit itemization than he used to.
Base Stats
Attack Speed: .679 ⇒ .644
Runes
Rune Balance
We’re increasing the default stat value of the placeholder rune slots in Classic to be 80% of the equivalent rune rather than 66%.
Default Placeholder Rune Power: 66% ⇒ 80%
Scaling Armor Seals: Increased to 0.17 armor per level from 0.15 Armor per level.
New Runes
We’ve added the following runes to the Classic Store:
Marks
Minor Mark of Ability Power: 0.7 AP
Seals
Seal of Energy Regeneration: 0.7 Energy per 5s
Glyphs
Glyph of Energy: 2.3 Max Energy
Minor Glyph of Mana Regeneration: 0.33 Mana per 5s
Quintessences
Quintessence of Energy: 6 Max Energy
Quintessence of Energy Regeneration: 1.8 Energy per 5s
Quintessence of Health Regeneration: 1.3 Health per 5s
Quintessence of Mana: 38 Maximum Health
Systems
Classic Gold Generation
League Classic has higher stakes and is generally more snowbally than Season 2026 and that’s intentional. We also want players to have a fighting chance at comebacks without adding systems like Objective Bounties that players have to identify and play around. We also don’t want to inflate total gold in the game too heavily.
So we’re raising the floor on passive gold income and reducing the income of those who farm the best. As a whole, these changes will result in all champions having about 215 more gold passively, with the average laner roughly treading water.
Start of Ambient Gold Generation: 65 seconds ⇒ 90 seconds
We want the early game to have high stakes but that doesn’t mean a single kill should spell doom for the next 30 minutes straight. As a result, there’s a careful balance to strike between properly rewarding the victor for an early kill and helping losing players have something to look forward to. One of our attempts to strike that balance was early game Homeguards, which shipped with Classic last patch. This moderate 10% move speed buff should only shave a second or two off of someone’s walk back to lane but your feedback that it feels too modern has been heard. We’re keeping the mid-game version of Homeguard, which exists to help winning teams cross the map and continue sieging, but the early game one is being removed. In its place, we’re reducing early game death timers by a couple seconds. No new mechanics to learn and winners still get ahead, but losers can get back in there and earn XP and gold to look for their comeback.
When porting over jungle monsters to modern systems, we miscalculated how durable regular jungle monsters would become in the mid and late game. This global health scaling buff will make camps more closely match their histories. Your first clear won’t be affected at all, and non-epic monsters will scale up to 5-25% more health than they had before.
Maximum Health Scaling: 250% ⇒ 315%
Classic Turrets
Despite having the same effective HP they had in 2013, player feedback has been overwhelming that turrets feel too squishy. And they’re certainly much frailer than 2026’s norms. As we want turrets to matter and feel important, we agree that they could stand to hold up better, so we’re buffing their health by around 15% across the board and nerfing the AP ratio to on-hit damage conversion against towers.
Outer Turret Health: 3000 ⇒ 3500
Inner Turret Health: 3250 ⇒ 3750
Inhibitor Turret Health: 3500 ⇒ 4000
Nexus Turret Health: 2600 ⇒ 2750
Champion Damage To Turrets: 100% total Attack Damage + 40% Ability Power ⇒ 100% total Attack Damage + 20% Ability Power
Finally, next to the changes to boot rewards in midlane, we are also adjusting MR for all ADC champions to help them out against mages early game. We also hope this will help a few of them in mid lane, where we believe a healthier pool of AD champions (including potentially Akshan and Tristana) will also help create a more diverse jungle meta beyond AD fighters.
Speaking of a more diverse jungle Meta, we are adjusting the way jungle pets scales to help mage and tank junglers against the current AD fighter meta.
Finally, we are adjusting Support Role Quest progress to penalize heavy early game roaming by increasing the penalty while outside of bot lane, and removing the bonus progress gained from champion combat over minion last hitting.
Stack Consumption On Champion / Turret Damage: 22 Melee || 20 Ranged and 24 Melee || 22 Ranged ⇒ 18 and 21
Stack Consumption On Creep Score: 15 and 20 ⇒ 18 and 21
Minion Creep Score Experience / Gold Penalty: -25% outside of bot lane until level 3 ⇒ -33% outside of bot lane until level 5
We are continuing to monitor Azir, especially as players continue to pick up Press The Attack as his optimal keystone. For now however, we are going to give him a moderate buff to his laning to help him out.
Bel’Veth has come out with the scaling curve of Kayle and Aurelion Sol. Her power is rapidly growing across all skill brackets and given her early game is already quite weak, we’ve opted to make her late game a bit less sharp.
Base Stats
Health Growth: 110 ⇒ 105
R – Endless Banquet
True Form Total Attack Speed: 5 / 15 / 25% ⇒ 6 / 13 / 20%
NEW True Form Remora Indicator: Resource bar now turns purple when True Form can spawn Remora
With roaming supports all the rage, Camille has been queen. We are simultaneously looking to nerf her support roaming power while keeping or (hopefully) actually buffing her top lane. This means trading the raw all in power behind her passive shield early game in favor of significantly lowered cooldowns for better repeatable trading.
Base Stats
Mana: 339 ⇒ 375
Passive – Adaptive Defenses
Shield: 20% Maximum Health ⇒ 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% Maximum Health (levels 1 / 7 / 13 / 19)
Gwen has remained slightly weak since her nerfs earlier this year. We are buffing her passive sustain back up towards where it has previously been, which should help her be a powerful threat in some of her stronger matchups without making her feel uncounterable.
Passive – A Thousand Cuts
Healing On Champions: 50% post-mitigation, capped to 10-25 (based on level) (+6.5% AP) ⇒ 67% post-mitigation, capped to 12-40 (based on level) (+7% AP)
With the reshape to Hextech Rocketbelt to prevent it from becoming the ubiquitous mage legendary, Kennen came out behind the pack. We are buffing him to compensate, making sure he is rewarded well when he does find the right flanks for those huge team-deleting ults.
Nasus has been a distinct jungle pick that we think is pretty exciting to see; however his top lane has lagged very far behind. We are adjusting his Q stack generation to bring these two roles closer to each other in raw power.
Q – Siphoning Strike
Stacks: 3, increased to 12 on champions / large minions / monsters ⇒ 4, increased to 10 on champions / large minions / monsters
Poppy is meant to be a tank whose gameplay has leaned too far into early game snowball fighter, to the point she’s choosing Hail of Blades and Sundered Sky over more tank runes and items. We’re looking to shift power out of her early game AD fighter pattern and enable her tank pattern by significantly increasing her scaling with durability and giving her enough mana growth that sustained combat doesn’t immediately run her out of resources.
Total Armor and Magic Resistance: 12%, doubled below 40% Maximum Health ⇒ 16%, doubled below 40% Maximum Health
Items
Berserker’s Greaves
Berserker’s Greaves have been sitting at a particularly low state of power for a while now, and with the state of AD champions in both bot and mid, we feel this is the right time to buff them.
Attack Speed: 25% ⇒ 30%
T3 Attack Speed: 40% ⇒ 45%
Black Cleaver
Black Cleaver has become a Smolder / Senna item more than a core AD fighter item. We are re-adding the Melee / Ranged split on the move speed effect to buy space to buff it for AD fighters without pushing it over the top for its ranged user base.
Attack Damage: 40 ⇒ 45
Fervor Move Speed: 20 for 2s ⇒ [20 Melee || 10 Ranged] for 2s
Eclipse
Eclipse has similarly fallen behind as an option for AD champions as a high ticket early AD item that isn’t in the Lethality space. We feel it has clear space for a buff.
Damage: [6% Melee || 4% Ranged] Target Maximum Health ⇒ [8% Melee || 5% Ranged] Target Maximum Health
Runaan’s Hurricane has lost all of its core users over the course of the year as ADCs have moved to a wider variety of AS Crit itemization. We are buffing its unique effect and movespeed to help players capitalize on the positioning requirements of that unique effect.
Sterak’s Gage has also lost its position as the premium juggernaut / diver teamfight item, with Guardian Angel taking its place. We think Sterak’s is a much healthier fit for these champions to take.
Bonus Attack Damage: 45% of Base Attack Damage ⇒ 50% of Base Attack Damage
Sundered Sky
Sundered Sky, on the other hand, has been the meta dominant AD fighter item for the last year. While we do find it exciting to see when players manage to chain its triggers through a teamfight and barely survive risky engages, we think it’s a bit too performant when optimized to the point where it’s healing for more than even lifesteal based items.
Healing: [100% Melee || 50% Ranged] Base Attack Damage + 6% Missing Health ⇒ [90% Melee || 45% Ranged] Base Attack Damage + 4% Missing Health Health: 400 ⇒ 450
Sunfire Cape
Sunfire Cape has remained a powerful item in League, both in purchase and winrate, but players have repeatedly called out dissatisfaction with the item because of how directly it’s compared against Hollow Radiance. We are upping its cost to match Hollow Radiance and shifting its power towards PvP damage to give the item more comparable advantages.
We continue to feel that defensive boot optimizations in mid lane stifle action. Since we are looking to shift mage power back from bot lane to mid lane this patch, we are also taking the time to nerf down mid lane counter itemization against mages.
Magic Resistance: 30 ⇒ 25
Spellslinger’s Shoes
Along with Chainlaced Crushers’ change, we are buffing Spellslinger’s Shoes to further affect mid vs bot mage balance.
Magic Penetration: 18 + 8% ⇒ 20 + 8%
Tiamat
Tiamat has ended up in a state where even if you are buying a Hydra item, it’s optimal NOT to purchase it until you have all the other components. That’s pretty lame, yo.
League Classic is now live with the launch of Patch 26.15, and it puts the game back the way it played before the rune rework, flat rune pages you had to buy, a 21/0/9 mastery tree, and an item shop full of things that stopped existing around a decade ago! 60 champions are live in the mode at launch, and the meta is shaping up to be nothing like the one you know.
Two things are live on U.GG today to help you make sense of League Classic!
The Classic Tier List Ranks All 60 Champions
All champions in League Classic are ranked S+ through D. The old rune and mastery system rewards a completely different set of strengths, so the order is completely different compared to the live version of the tier list.
While the tier list tells you who’s strong, the individual champion pages tell you how to play them. Each of the 60 champions has a full build page covering:
Rune page
Masteries
Summoner spells and skill priority
Starting items, full six-item builds, and situational picks
Ability tooltips as they work in Classic (different from live versions)
As an example, here’s Ahri’s detailed champion profile:
Ahri’s League Classic Profile on U.GG
We hope the tier list and build pages help you navigate the new League Classic mode and we’ll see you in-game!
After evaluating his most recent state, we don’t think that Nasus Jungle is in need of a nerf right now (though he is present and popular, which is fine for a champion to be).
Nasus is a champ with quite a shallow mastery curve and a starting high level of proficiency for novices, so his high winrates can be misleading.
We do think Nasus top is in need of a buff however, and so the current set of changes are targeted at giving a relative buff to Nasus top, while being power neutral on Jungle.
Azir has been pretty absent from both the Pro meta and showing low winrates in regular play, so we’re looking to give him a buff.
We’ve been noticing a bunch of players experimenting with Press the Attack, and after investigating further, it looks decently strong. That said, we’re still looking to buff him a moderate amount.
Giving a top focused buff to Gwen (where the healing will be more impactful) and also some scaling buffs to Kennen.
We don’t think Kennen’s lane needs a ton of extra help and haven’t liked it too much when he’s a super lane dominant pick; would rather he be picked for having huge ults.
Bel’Veth has been showing up pretty strongly for many players especially in the average skill bracket and is receiving a regular play skewed nerf (late game skewed).
It’s also trying to add a bit more power at specifically the level 6 spike.
Mages Bot and Approach for 26.16
The big change in 26.16 is about the bot lane mage meta. Riot Phroxzon has given us an early preview of what they plan to do.
Mage in Bot Lane Pro Meta
Mages in Bot Lane Pro Meta
While Mages Bot at MSI only represented ~20% of picks (and often felt like much more), we have been seeing a significant uptick in their presence and priority at EWC and Kespa Cup and it seems only likely to continue increasing.
This presence has also started to trickle its way into Ranked play in a major way.
Only a few months ago in March, we were seeing a significantly Enchanter and range dominated support meta, which also resulted in ADC and hyper carries in bot lane being very powerful.
These champions benefitted a lot from the Season Start 2026 changes; from things like the ADC quest hyperscaling with Enchanters + changes to nerf roaming in the support role generally.
So in Patch 26.11, we made some adjustments to buff melee supports, nerf ranged supports, especially Enchanters.
But at the same time, some certain chefs were also cooking some clever ways to bypass some of the anti-roaming and lane swap controls that we added into the Support quests at the start of the year.
What resulted was 2 major swings towards roaming supports and away from ADC bot (it’s an interesting thought experiment for what would have happened if we had changed nothing about the First Stand Enchanter meta and had the roaming developments play out).
While we overall like Mages bot being viable in some capacity, what we’re observing now is arguably too far of a swing in the other direction, players are familiar with and we still want to support ADC as being a primary supported class there.
All of the previously listed dissatisfactions with gameplay that led us to nerf support roaming in Season Start 2026 still stand and in that set of changes, we intentionally went a bit lighter on some of the anti-lane swap, anti-support roaming controls to avoid overly punishing either accidental roaming or unique playstyles.
We’ve also heard a lot of the Pro Player complaints about the meta and are taking that into consideration.
We don’t want to force them to suddenly completely swap subclasses by suddenly making ADC and that learnt skill expression unviable, so it’s a fine balance.
That said, for those who want to learn it, we want to encourage and allow for skill expression of Pros to play a variety of things resulting in more flexible comps, dynamic lanes, etc. and greater champ variety long term.
Mage Bot in Regular Play
Mage Bot in Regular Play
A lot of this “excitement” has also made its way to regular play.
Players have been excited to try out Mages bot. That said, not everyone is excited about that; Mages represent a natural counter to ADC for a decent chunk of the game duration and people trying to replicate the Pro Play Support roaming style often causes more grief to their lane partners than benefit.
Overall, we like that Mages are playable bot as it adds to a lot of variety in the lane and the games that players play.
However, too many mages bot with them being too powerful in certain cases results in undermining a lot of the mastery and expectations of what can be played in the lanes.
We’re not looking to adjust this power dynamic significantly as a result (eg. Mages have earlier spiking, smoother scaling curves. ADC have later & stronger scaling, but sharper successes and failures), but we are looking to address some of the magnitude of differences to make some of them less extreme.
Flattening the differences between Mages and ADC bot so they have the same smooth builds, the same amount of mana, similar levels of spikes, etc. is a quick way to make it so there’s no class differentiation, even if it would “solve the problem”.
The profile of Mages in bot lane is also quite dissimilar to how they manifest in Pro Play.
For several years now, Mages bot like Brand, Swain, Ziggs, Veigar, Seraphine, Xerath etc. often don’t win by allowing a support to roam (especially historically), they often win by either poking you out with the support or 2v2 killing especially in average play.
They also have higher winrates on account of having higher starting winrates for first time plays compared to ADC, shallow mastery curves and favorable matchups in some (but not all) cases against ADC.
Their winrates as a result, I think are misleading for their true power level, in the same way that one shouldn’t be alarmed by Malphite having a 52-53% winrate (high winrate as a novice, low skill growth).
What is Changing
What are Riot doing?
In 26.16 we will be making some targeted adjustments to these dynamics; some examples.
Straight nerfs to support roaming using already established levers (starting at upping out of lane support gold/xp penalty from 25% until level 3 >>> 33% until level 5.
Some underpowered ADC tools will get buffs (Berserker’s Greaves, Fleet).
Buffs to ADC base MR, nerfs to MR growth.
Buffs to Heal.
We’re also testing a variety of speculative things; will share more later in the week once we’re more firm on tactics.
Next week, we will share a clearer understanding of upcoming changes, including specific details about who and what will be impacted. For now, it appears many ADCs will receive buffs.
Roaming Supports
Another big area of change is the roaming support issue in LoL. Riot clearly likes that supports can roam, but not that you have to. This is mainly a pro meta issue, but these things tend to bleed into normal games eventually.
Roaming Supports
While the Roaming Support gameplay can be interesting when seeing it every few games, the current state of it is a bridge too far.
Many supports in the current Pro Play metagame are defined by their ability to leave the lane at level 3 and worse is copycats in regular play thinking they’re able to do it and griefing the whole game over it.
As mentioned above, we also think the gameplay patterns of this are pretty undesirable.
We’re making some targeted adjustments to the support role quest to penalize some of these roaming behaviors and targeted anti-support skewed nerfs to Poppy, Camille and Hail of Blades (which is predominantly used by many of these champions).
For Camille in particular, we’re looking to move some of her power from support to Top lane.
For now, we’re not looking to nerf the comeback XP as we want to see how impactful the out of lane penalty is and the comeback XP plays an important role in anti-snowballing + helping players who accidentally disconnected (among other things).
In theory, extending the out of lane penalty will also mean that supports are returning to lane around level 5, which also reduces the impact of the comeback XP at the relevant XP breakpoints.
I still remember the day I saw the League of Legends box on the shelf at my local CeX (it’s a second-hand media shop in the UK, yes, you pronounce it the C as an S). At the time, I thought, “What a stupid idea, a box for a free game.” I wish I had purchased it all those years ago; well, now you sort of can again.
League of Legends Classic Collector’s Box
So, the box itself comes with a bunch of stuff, including “Founder’s” versions of some of the classic skins. This includes the following digital rewards for League Classic and League Modern:
League Classic Box Defeat
Classic Season Pass
Annie Champion Shard
Alistar Champion Shard
Classic Annie (Founder’s Goth) Classic Chroma
Classic Alistar (Founder’s Black) Classic Chroma
Goth Annie Modern Skin
Black Alistar Modern Skin
Resplendent Explorer Ezreal Portrait
Can’t Chronokeep Me Down Emote
Mighty Metagolem Emote
Kayle Champion Shard
Silver Kayle Modern Skin
Classic Kayle (Founder’s Silver) Classic Chroma
The box also has some physical stuff, including the actual box:
Classic Collector’s Box manual
Totally Legitimate Runeterra map
Classic Rune coasters
Victory/Defeat reversible keychains
Classic Champion Quotes sticker pack
League Classic Box sticker
This limited edition box retails for $89.99 and is being made to order by Riot Games for those who preorder. The orders are set to be fulfilled in December 2026, so there’s plenty of time before they get shipped out.
This is part of a larger collection of goodies people can buy to celebrate the release of League Classic. With the new game mode set to stay for the immediate future, it makes a lot of sense for Riot Games to cash in on the nostalgia, giving people a chance to get some cool limited edition stuff. For collectors, it’s also something they can leave sealed for 20 years and hope it’s worth double the money.
Riot Games developers announced their plan to keep League Classic match history data out of the official Riot API to “preserve the spirit of the mode.” They also ask that League Classic data not be aggregated or displayed to users in any form. , League Classic will also be supported as a valid map type in the Riot Tournament API to allow for the creation and management of community-led League Classic initiatives.
Hi everyone, with the announcement of League Classic we want to share a quick but important update regarding its data. League Classic match history data will not be available via the Riot API and to preserve the spirit of the mode, we ask that League Classic data not be…
— Riot Games Developer Relations (@RiotGamesDevRel) July 28, 2026
League Classic Tier List
Based on PBE testing, we’ve come up with a tier list for League Classic that you can check out here.
League Classic brings back three long-forgotten systems. Here is how Runes, Masteries and old-school items actually work, and why they feel so alien next to the League you have been playing.
League Classic landed on 29 July alongside Patch 26.15, and it included three systems that modern League quietly buried years ago: Runes you buy with IP, a Masteries tree you actually spend points in, and a shop full of items that got deleted somewhere along the way.
If you started playing after 2017, you have literally never touched two of these. And if you were around for Season 3, congratulations, your muscle memory is about to become useful again. So before you load into the old Rift and start panic-clicking, let us walk through what Classic Items, Runes and Masteries do, and how they differ from the League you know.
Runes
Modern runes are free, you pick them fresh every game, and half of them actually do something. Electrocute chunks people, Grasp heals you, Lethal Tempo dumps attack speed into your hands mid-fight. Forget all of that. Classic runes are pure stat sticks.
Before a game, you build a Rune Page, and you fill it with four flavours of rune:
Marks (the red ones): offensive stats. Attack damage, armour penetration, attack speed, that sort of thing.
Seals (yellow): defensive stats. Armour, health, health regen. Your survivability glue.
Quintessences (purple): the chunky ones. Each Quint is worth roughly three of the smaller runes, so this is where the big movement speed, AD or life steal goes.
Riot has made this a lot less painful than it was in 2013, mind. Everything is Tier 3 from the off, you unlock runes just by playing, and there is no upgrading nonsense. You start with three Rune Pages, get two more from Classic Levels, and can buy extras with IP (yes, Influence Points are back, pour one out). Forget to set a page, and you get a sensible default, so you are a little sub-optimal rather than actively griefing your team.
Masteries
If runes are the stats, Masteries are the personality. And if you picked up League any time after the 2017 preseason, this is the bit you have genuinely never seen, because Riot deleted Masteries entirely and folded them into the current rune system. An entire mechanic, gone, and half the player base never knew it existed.
Offence (red): damage. Straight up.
Defence (yellow): tankiness and sustain.
Utility (blue): cooldowns, mana, movement, gold, the sneaky stuff.
Reaching the good stuff at the bottom of a tree takes 21 points, which is most of your budget, so you are always picking one main tree and sprinkling the leftover nine somewhere else. That is why old League builds were written as numbers. 21/9/0 is your damage-hungry bruiser. 21/0/9 is an AP carry who wants a touch of utility. 0/21/9 is your immovable tank support. Say “21/9/0” to anyone who played back then and they will know exactly what you meant.
Classic Items
Classic brings back nearly every item from League’s first few years, and the shop plays by completely different rules from the one you know. A few things that will short-circuit a modern player’s brain:
Gold per 10 items – Philosopher’s Stone, Kage’s Lucky Pick, Heart of Gold, Avarice Blade: cheap items that passively earn gold every ten seconds. Supports (and greedy junglers, and the legendary Bankplank) would stack several and simply get richer for existing. Filling half your inventory with GP10 was a real, respected strategy.
Snowball items – Sword of the Occult, Mejai’s Soulstealer, Leviathan: dirt-cheap items that stacked stats every time you got a kill or assist, then dumped most of it when you died. Get fed, become a god. Feed, become a very expensive paperweight. High risk, silly-high reward.
Cursed actives – This is the era of Deathfire Grasp, an item whose active nuked a chunk of the target’s max health and turned certain mages into one-shot machines. Actives mattered, and knowing which button to press won fights.
Classic vs modern League
System
League Classic
Modern League
Runes
Bought with IP, slotted into pages as flat or scaling stats. Purely passive.
Free, chosen fresh each game, with active keystones and adaptive effects.
Masteries
A separate 30-point, three-tree talent system you spend into pre-game.
Gone. Merged into the rune system back in the 2017 preseason.
Items
Gold-income items, snowball stacks, wild actives and unstandardised builds.
A leaner shop with mostly settled, predictable build paths.
Currency
Influence Points (IP) for runes and extra pages.
No rune costs at all. Everyone gets the lot for free.
Modern League hands you a clean, free, streamlined toolkit. Classic makes you buy your stats, spend your talent points and build a genuinely weird item pile, then trusts you to make it work. Go set a page, lock in your main, and we will see you on the Classic Rift.
Patch 26.15 notes for League of Legends are here. (Source)
League of Legends Classic
Our newest (oldest) game mode is coming to a server near you! Relive the glory days with League Classic. Marvel at what passed for modern graphical fidelity in the 2010s, outplay your opponents with point and click stuns and using old new items like Heart of Gold…! Classic features 60 champions using classic versions of their gameplay across League’s early history and is an experience that emphasizes strategy over mechanics and stronger consequences, both positive and negative, for your actions. If you want to learn more about League Classic, check out our dev blog here. We’ll see you on the Rift, but be careful, the monsters fight back (use your health potions please)!
Ranked Season 3 Start
Ranked Season 3 will start at 12pm on July 29 local server time. Victorious Ranked Mission (15 Ranked Games won) will be refreshed with season start, and end of S2 rewards will be distributed shortly after S3 start. Shard transfer service will be temporarily off until S2 rewards are granted.
Aegis of Valor
Aegis of Valor has helped make autofill games feel worth playing out, but its loss protection and Mastery requirement created a secondary objective: play for the grade, not necessarily for the win. That’s the opposite of what a Ranked incentive should ask of you. We want every Ranked teammate to share the same goal, which is trying their very best to win the game.
We’re refocusing Aegis entirely around victory: it will no longer reduce LP losses in the case of defeat, and wins will award double LP without requiring a minimum mastery score.
Apex Duo Restrictions
When we brought duo queue back to Apex, our goal was to let more high-ranked players play together without compromising the quality of the ladder. The results were mixed. In Master, duos were generally manageable, but we still saw enough impact on match quality to warrant tighter limits. In GM and Challenger, smaller player pools and extremes of skill give duos an outsized impact on game outcomes, one we can’t consistently offset without creating excessive skill gaps or less competitive lobbies. As our matchmaking systems improve, we’ll keep looking for ways to bring duo queue back to GM and Challenger, but only once we can do so without compromising the fairness and competitive integrity they’re meant to represent.
Master players will now be able to duo, but only with players close to them in rank.
GM, Challenger, and players with GM or Challenger MMR will not be allowed to duo.
For more details on the exact restrictions, see here.
Ever since the loss of Mobility Boots / Symbiotic Soles, Alistar has felt constrained in his gameplay, to the point he’s failing to compete in the current meta even though it favors roaming supports – a space we expect him to excel in.
This patch, we’re launching a set of Bel’Veth changes that are aimed at making her gameplay pattern a bit less focused around her early game, in order to allow her to fulfill her fantasy as a late game scaling champion. The major changes here are making her Q at early levels function more like a regular dueling ability in order to reduce just how heavily she can put certain champions behind with early invades. Historically, this Q tuning has caused us to repeatedly balance around her very early strength at a loss to many of her other more core functions. While we acknowledge that there’s a subset of Bel’Veth players who love this capability, broadly, we think it’s paying too many tradeoffs for the rest of her audience. We are looking to move some of her early game power to her mid and late game by leaning more on her evolution fantasy and her stacking mechanic. We believe that high moments like having form until death when you have gotten enough stacks feels like a transformative yet exciting moment that lines up a bit more with her kit expectations.
Base Stats
Attack Speed: 0.85 ⇒ 0.67
Attack Speed Ratio: 0.85 ⇒ 0.67
Attack Damage: 60 ⇒ 55
Basic Attack Damage Modifier: 75% ⇒ 100%
Attack Cast Time: 0.25 ⇒ 0.22
Total Attack Animation: Adjusted to feel better at lower Attack Speeds
Armor: 32 ⇒ 28
Armor Growth: 4.7 ⇒ 5
Health: 610 ⇒ 580
Health Growth: 105 ⇒ 110
Model Size: 100% ⇒ 95%
Passive – Death In Lavender
Attack Speed After Spell Cast: 20% minimum / 40% maximum for 2 attacks ⇒ 20% for 3 seconds
Attack Speed per Stack: 0.28% minimum / 1.1% maximum ⇒ 0.1% minimum / 2% maximum
Damage per Strike: 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 (+8% Attack Damage) (+8% On-Hit effects), increased up to 300% based on missing Health ⇒ 10 / 12 / 14 / 16 / 18 (+12% Attack Damage) (+12% On-Hit effects), increased up to 100% based on missing Health
Number of Strikes: 6 + 1 per 33% bonus Attack Speed ⇒ 6 + 1 per 40% bonus Attack Speed
Target Swapping: Passive removed when swapping targets ⇒ Passive no longer removed when swapping targets
Maximum Epic Monster Stacks: 10 ⇒ 8
Passive Application Requirement: E and Q required Bel’Veth to have attacked the target first ⇒ E and Q no longer require Bel’Veth to have attacked the target first
Despite the recent buff, Kai’sa remains weaker than expected, especially late game for a marksman who is supposed to hyperscale to make up for her short range. We’re tapping up her scaling to help her output as she nears her final form.
Locke continues to climb the mastery curve, so we’re continuing nerfs to keep him in line. Particularly, we observe his early game to be clearly over, even for a snowball reliant assassin, and we also want to avoid W 2nd max as optimal as it gives him too much safety for the risks he should need to take.
Maokai has gradually faded out of both top and jungle play since our last major work on him. We think that ultimately his top laning experience is not the greatest for all parties involved, so for now we are mainly focused on buffing his jungle back up, where we think he has a fairly unique output as a zone controlling tank.
We overshot last patch with the R buffs, and after re-assessing what he looks like with a meaningfully stronger ult, decided to instead revert the R buff entirely in favor of improving his ability to catch and keep opponents in his range. Accounting for the bugfix for his R, we believe these two adjustments to his E will be a net positive from 26.13 and will keep an eye on his performance.
Naafiri remains a hot topic in the meta, both for solo queue and pro play. While we are quite happy with how many people have taken her up since her rework, she’s still on the strong end, especially when she really gets the ball rolling with back-to-back-to-back ultimates.
Endless Hunger’s addition to the game has given Riven an extremely potent new tool that fits her play pattern almost perfectly. While we feel we’ve gotten it into a fairly good spot among most users, Riven is notably overperforming. Targeting her R’s AD scaling (heavy synergy with Endless Hunger haste, mid quest scaling) will impact all her spells and how unstoppable her snowballing can feel, while still leaving a lot of room for her high moments.
R – Blade of the Exile
Bonus Attack Damage Ratio: 25% ⇒ 20%
R – Wind Slash
Bonus Attack Damage Ratio: 60% minimum / 180% maximum ⇒ 55% minimum / 165% maximum
After his buff in 26.12, it was clear that we moderately overshot our target. We’re pulling back the chains a tad to prevent him from bullying too hard.
Since our direct and systemic adjustments, the bear has been hibernating from dusk till dawn for a couple patches… we’re giving him more chances to gap close, especially for laners, without raising his already thrilling ceiling of spell chaining.
We believe that Zac brings unique gameplay and class diversity to the jungle. That said, his presence in the jungle has fallen quite a bit over the more recent patches. We believe giving him a bit more opportunity to execute on his distinct gank angles as well as a bit of durability in a team fight can help lift up our favorite secret weapon.
The item has been near bottom pickrate since release, and the distance between it and the next least popular Lethality item is quite far. We’re making it both more accessible and slightly stronger on its less noticeable effect, because we find that lethality users putting more of their gold into utility and progressing the team game is healthy in the long term.
Terminus is meant to be one of the premium capstone items for scaling On-Hit builds, but has been more of a mid game spike item than a true late game scaling option, leaving the on-hit space a bit sparse for options later on.
Yun Tal Wildarrows has fallen significantly over this year from its spot as the go-to scaling crit item. We believe the game continues to benefit from its function as a scaling option, so we are buffing it up to compete with the broader array of early crit items currently on offer.
Cost: 850g ⇒ 750g
Attack Speed: 40% ⇒ 45%
Runes
Jack Of All Trades
Different statlines are much more accessible with items like Endless Hunger/Gluttonous Greaves/DHelm, and even though we love players shooting for creative builds to utilize JOAT, it definitely has room to be weaker both early and late while still giving a ton of bang for your buck.
Adaptive Force at 5 / 10 stat breakpoints: 10 / 25 ⇒ 8 / 20
With League Classic here, it’s time to look at how to actually get into the game. Thankfully, the process is fairly simple, though we can only help you get into the game; flashing over the Wraith camp wall is on you.
League Classic is keeping everything super simple. It’s all going down within the standard League of Legends client.
What is League Classic
If you can imagine it, think back to Season 3 of League of Legends; that’s what League Classic is. This is pre-reworks, runes and masteries, Influence Points, stacking HP potions, and even mana potions. The key difference is that the pace of the game is much slower. Riot Games has talked about Yasuo being “The Wall” for League of Legends, so we are pre-Yasuo.
League Classic released with 60 champions, with at least 4 champions expected “soon” according to Riot Meddler (Graves, Urgot, Jinx, Nami). Thus far, if a champion came out after 2013 (pre-Yasuo), they won’t be added to League Classic. League Classic sits alongside URF or Arena as a Featured Game Mode. If you want the deep dive on every returning rune, mastery and item, check out our everything we know about League Classic.
League Classic Champion select
No Extra Download Required
Let’s be honest, we’re all sick of downloading more games, more different clients for games or 40GB patches that add one new map. Sure, League Classic is coming in a patch, but you won’t even notice it. Just grab the League Client, and away you go. Head to the Featured Game Mode and you are set.
Getting Into League Classic
Download the League Client orpatch up – Make sure your client is on the latest patch. If League is already installed, it will have grabbed the update by itself; just let it finish.
Hit Play – Same button you always use.
Pick League Classic in the game mode picker – That is the bit where you normally choose Ranked, ARAM, or TFT.
Choose your queue, lock it in, and off you go – Pick how you want to queue, add your friends, and get gaming.
League Classic Game Modes
One really key bit of information: League Classic is a for-fun mode, not an entirely new game with ranked. Riot has kept things simple with just three versions of League Classic, but realistically there is just one actual competitive mode.
PvP Draft is the main event. A single draft queue, bans and all.
Co-op vs AI for warming up or learning the older kits without the pressure of real opponents.
Custom games for full control, or for dragging your mates into a lobby.
Instead of LP, you get Summoner’s Journey, an achievement-style progression that runs from Salt all the way up to Legend and unlocks at Classic Level 10. Riot reckons only a single-digit percentage of players will ever hit Legend, so the top stays exclusive; but this isn’t an MMR grind. Curious who is actually strong before you queue? Our League Classic tier list is already tracking the early meta so you can dodge the coin flips.
Riding along on the same patch is ARAM: Mayhem Classic-ish, a retro-flavoured spin on Mayhem with its own separate queue. Heads up though, champions keep their modern kits there rather than their Classic ones, and it is a limited-time mode, so it will not be sat in the queue list forever.
And that is genuinely all there is to it. No hoops, no separate downloads, just pick it from the mode list and go. Round up the old squad, dig out that 1% crit rune, and find out whether your muscle memory held up better than your knees do.
