“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 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 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 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’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 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
Passive – Cursed Touch
- Magic Resistance Shred: 15 / 20 / 25 ⇒ 15 / 25 / 35 (levels 1 / 7 / 13)
- Shred Duration: 3s ⇒ 4s
Q – Bandage Toss
- Base Damage: 80 / 130 / 280 / 230 / 280 ⇒ 80 / 140 / 200 / 260 / 320
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.
Q – Rocket Grab
- Base Damage: 80 / 135 / 190 / 245 / 300 ⇒ 60 / 120 / 180 / 240 / 300
- Cooldown: 20 / 19 / 18 / 17 / 16 ⇒ 22 / 21 / 20 / 19 / 18
W – Overdrive
- Cooldown: 15 ⇒ 20
R – Static Field
- Active Damage: 250 / 375 / 500 ⇒ 200 / 300 / 400
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.
W – Burning Agony
- Damage Per Second: 35 / 50 / 65 / 80 / 95 ⇒ 40 / 55 / 70 / 85 / 100
- Tenacity: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30% ⇒ 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 35%
R – Sadism
- Health Regained: 40 / 50 / 60% ⇒ 40 / 55 / 70%
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 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.
Q – H-28G Evolution Turret
- Base Attack Damage: 30 / 38 / 46 / 54 / 62 ⇒ 28 / 36 / 44 / 52 / 60
W – Hextech Micro-Rockets
- Base Damage: 85 / 135 / 185 / 235 / 285 ⇒ 70 / 120 / 170 / 220 / 270
E – CH-1 Concussion Grenade
- Cooldown: 13 / 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 ⇒ 14 / 13 / 12 / 11 / 10
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 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.
Base Stats
- Armor Per Level: 3.6 ⇒ 3
W – Golden Aegis
- Bonus Shield Per Nearby Champion: 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 ⇒ 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40
E – Demacian Standard
- Mana Cost: 55 ⇒ 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 / 75
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.
R – Death Lotus
- Maximum Damage: 480 / 690 / 900 + 450% bonus Attack Damage + 300% Ability Power ⇒ 400 / 575 / 750 + 375% bonus Attack Damage + 250% Ability Power
- Damage Per Dagger: Unchanged
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 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.
W – Impure Shots
- Bonus Damage Per Stack: 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 ⇒ 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 14
- Maximum Stacks: 5 ⇒ 4
- Maximum Bonus Damage: 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 ⇒ 24 / 32 / 40 / 48 / 56
R – Bullet Time
- Damage Per Wave: 65 / 95 / 125 + 35% bonus Attack Damage ⇒ 65 / 95 / 125 + 40% bonus Attack Damage
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 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
Q – Crystal Slash
- Slow: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% ⇒ 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 / 45%
W – Crystalline Exoskeleton
- Cooldown: 18 ⇒ 14
E – Fracture
- Missile Width: 70 ⇒ 120
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.
W – Astral Blessing
- Armor Buff: 25 / 45 / 65 / 85 / 105 ⇒ 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125
- Armor Buff Duration: 3 seconds ⇒ 5 seconds
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.
Q – Bloodlust
- Cooldown: 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 ⇒ 14 / 12.5 / 11 / 9.5 / 8
- Bonus Attack Damage Per Fury: 5 ⇒ 3
- Maximum Bonus Attack Damage: 40 ⇒ 24
E – Spinning Slash
- Cooldown: 8 ⇒ 9
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.
Base Stats
- Attack Damage: 52 ⇒ 50
W – Venom Cask
- Projectile Speed: 1400 ⇒ 1300
E – Expunge
- Mana Cost: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 ⇒ 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90
R – Spray And Pray
- Missile Speed: 5000 ⇒ 4000
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.
Q – Baleful Strike
- Mana Cost: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 ⇒ 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70
- Damage: 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 + 60% Ability Power ⇒ 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 + 65% Ability Power
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
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
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
- Passive Gold Per 5 Seconds: 8 / 10.5 / 11.5 / 13 at 1 / 10 / 15 / 25 minutes ⇒ 10.5 / 11.5 / 13 at 1 / 15 / 25 minutes
- Melee Minion Base Gold Value: 20 ⇒ 19
- Ranged Minion Base Gold Value: 15 ⇒ 14
Classic Homeguards
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.
- Homeguard Activation: 0 minutes ⇒ 15 minutes
- Death Timers: 12 / 14 / 16 / 19 / 22 / 25 / 28 / 30 ⇒ 10 / 12 / 14 / 17 / 20 / 23 / 26 / 29 (levels 1-8)
- Death Timers At Levels 9+: Unchanged ⇒ Unchanged
Classic Jungle Tuning
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