Zaahen went live with the 25.23 LoL Patch and Riot has posted the official Champion theme on their YouTube channel. You can listen to it below.
While the Champion is fairly new to the game, our site has been updated with preliminary data, as top builds continue to emerge.
Zaahen, the newest Darkin champion in League of Legends just released on November 19th with Patch 25.23. The question is, how strong is he, and can he be played in roles other than Top Lane?
View Full U.GG Data For Zaahen
Based on our data, Zaahen ranks as an S+ champion in the Top Lane across All Ranks. While he can also be played Mid or Jungle, he performs much better when he’s in the Top Lane.
To quote Phreak from the Champion Spotlight: “If you’re drawn to-unflinching champions like Illaoi, Darius, or Jax, give Zaahen a try.”
Zaahen at his core is an AD teamfighter that gets stronger the longer a fight goes on. If he’s able to reach maximum stacks during a fight, he is able to revive when killed mid-fight.
Some of his best items are Trinity Force, and Sundered Sky, though some Challenger players have been experimenting with Stridebreaker.
| Rank | Champion Tier | Win Rate | Pick Rate | Ban Rate | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Challenger | S+ | 53.16% | 10.5% | 25.5% | 269 |
| Grand Master | S+ | 50.99% | 9.3% | 29% | 506 |
| Master | S+ | 51.86% | 9.4% | 29.7% | 1587 |
| Diamond | S+ | 50.89% | 10.1% | 30.8% | 4146 |
| Emerald | S+ | 50.23% | 10.9% | 31.2% | 10,309 |
| Platinum | S+ | 50.09% | 11.9% | 30.1% | 19,497 |
| Gold | A | 49.85% | 12.6% | 28.1% | 31,555 |
| Silver | B | 49.78% | 13.6% | 25.2% | 34,659 |
| Bronze | S+ | 50.04% | 14.7% | 20.7% | 22,571 |
| Iron | S+ | 50.89% | 15.2% | 16.9% | 12,027 |
| All Ranks | S+ | 50.08% | 12.9% | 26.2% | 137,126 |
Zaahen has quite a few counters, and interestingly, both Illaoi and Jax are among them, two champions that were listed as “Similar Champions” in the Champion Spotlight.
Unsurprisingly, an armor-heavy tank like Malphite counters him, as well as Teemo who can blind Zaahen and stop him from landing his Q.
Finally, let’s compare Zaahen with Aatrox, another Darkin champion who also primarily plays Top Lane.
Overall, it seems that Zaahen is off to a hot start on the rift. Keep track of his best builds, stats, counters and more with U.GG.
View U.GG Zaahen BuildLeague of Legends 25.23 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
Zaahen, The Unsundered, is reborn on the rift November 19th.
Just a heads up that Zaahen’s Eternals are delayed to patch 25.24.
When we make a champ’s Eternals we normally use a champion’s PBE time to see how you all play a champion—what are the key moments that feel great that you’d want to track. However, since Zaahen had a different cycle (so we could keep him a secret until his cinematic) we didn’t get the normal time allowing this. So for the Zaahen Eternals, you have a chance to shape what his Eternals might be! So queue up, lock him in, and start swinging that glaive and maybe your match data will help us decide!
Here’s a fun story: Aatrox’s VGU was slated for the jungle for part of his early development before being shipped as a top laner. He’s a very interesting champion with fun mechanics to play around, so we’re alleviating some max-HP caps and adding some jungle juice to see how he performs in this new role.
Our latest buff to Ahri didn’t get her quite as high up as we’d hoped, so we’re back to deliver some more damage. We’re juicing up her W when used to pick off an individual target to reward her for landing autos, E, or generally just properly isolating her opponents.
Ambessa’s jungle play rate never really took off but it’s always been right behind top lane in terms of actual power. We’re giving it a light nudge that should make her balanced in this alternate role and especially help unoptimized players who can’t always get sweet spots to land on large jungle monsters.
We’re delivering a suite of ADC changes in this patch in order to shake up the end-of-season solo queue meta. A few of the most commonly picked are being nerfed and some of the least common are being buffed. We’d also like to move in a direction of making non-caster ADCs more attack speed-reliant, which you should notice in many of the ADC changes later on in this patch.
Ashe has been a top performer in terms of both pick and win rate for most of this season, so we’re tapping her down to create a little more equity in ADC pick rates. We’re maintaining Ashe’s appetite for attack speed by giving her a little bit less from Q.
Like Ashe above, Caitlyn has also been eating up a lot of ADC pick rate. We think she should maintain her identity as a long-range lane bully, but she’s also bursting champions too hard with late game Headshots, so we’re bringing down the top-end damage a bit.
While he’s no stranger to being played in all sorts of alternate roles, Cho’Gath has a naturally fitting jungle kit and we’d like to make that work well. We’re adjusting his E damage vs. monsters to no longer care about their max HP and instead just deliver a solid punch to get through his camps. This should be an unequivocal buff to early monster damage.
Dr. Mundo has once again risen up the ranks in popularity due to some very skilled players playing him very publicly. This time, in the jungle! We think Dr. Mundo is appropriately balanced in both roles at the present, but will continue to monitor how he’s performing in the coming weeks. All that said, we’re shipping a very impactful bug fix in this patch, which will increase his win rate, so we’re also preemptively nerfing him a bit. We’re happy with his recent reduction in burst damage, which this bug fix furthers, but want to maintain his overall sustained threat, so we’re re-buffing his functional attack damage.
While Fizz wins an appropriate number of games in mid lane, he’s incredibly feast-or-famine and often relies on simply leaving his lane to go kill other champions, so we’d like to make him more robust in playing out his laning phase. In order to do that, we’re improving his early resilience so that he can take more trades and compensate elsewhere to make him a little less ult-reliant.
We’re also taking a swing at enabling jungle Fizz. We think this new role is a bit of a stretch and may not pan out in the end, but we’re swinging hard to get his first jungle clear into something comfortable and seeing if players will enjoy him here.
We think Jayce jungle is a bit of a longshot but there’s a chance he’s got a real player base in this new role, so we’re delivering some buffs to make his first clear more comfortable and watching to see how many players are interested.
Jhin looks quite weak at the present, so we’re giving him some damage buffs and found another place to include the number 4 in his tooltips, which is the only buff he really needs, right?
As with the other ADC nerfs above, Jinx wins a large portion of her games and risks crowding out other champions if left untouched amidst the other nerfs in this patch. We want to preserve her identity as a late-game auto attack monster, so we’re nerfing some of Jinx’s spell damage.
Kai’Sa has been the most picked solo queue ADC in most ranks for months on end, so we’re delivering a small nerf to create more variety in the role. The primary nerf is to her base armor, where a bit less early safety should make her feel more assailable.
Hwei’s a well-performing mid laner who has low-quality gameplay when he can simply throw out Q-E and clear waves with little effort. We’d like to weaken his access to non-committal wave clear by nerfing that output. As the intended rank 5 magnitude would mark an over-nerf, we’re partially compensating him with an AP ratio buff. These changes will still result in a net reduction in power and should open up more room for laning phase interactivity.
Malphite has a natural jungle kit with a decent gank paradigm, and repeatable damage for killing monsters. He just doesn’t deal enough right now to comfortably clear, so we’re juicing both his early game clear (hint hint start W!) and late-game as well, since he often builds full tank and needs his damage to keep up with growth monster health.
We’re glad that Mel is a viable mid laner (shoutout League’s GOAT for raising awareness!). However, she’s also proven to be one of League’s most frustrating champions, which we’re looking to alleviate. Her passive buffs that required her to take on more risk were successful in our eyes, so we’re headed back to that. To continue to expose her to more risk, we’re weakening Solar Snare’s lockdown and self-peel potential. We know she’s still got such sharp interactions that she’ll still sport one of League’s highest ban rates, but we hope this adjustment will be roughly power-neutral and frustration-reducing.
Miss Fortune isn’t winning as often as she should for how straightforward she is to play, and unlike many of the other ADCs in this patch, she is indeed a caster, so we’re looking to amp up her ability to take over teamfights with her ultimate.
While Ornn is a totally viable top laner, we think he could also shine in the tank jungle roster, so we’re buffing some of his monster damage caps. We’re also adding some tooltip clarity, as some of his numbers weren’t exposed to players.
Rek’Sai top has been an enjoyable spectator experience but a fairly miserable one to play against and she’s significantly overpowered for those who know what they’re doing. We don’t want to remove this role from viability but we’d like to reduce just now immovable she is through her lane sustain. Her jungle will take a small hit from this nerf, but she can sustain a small nerf there, as well.
Riven’s native mobility, strong dueling, and interesting risk profile of having to burn damage in order to close the gap could make for a really compelling jungle champion. She’s also monstrously hard to play, but even accounting for that, she appears to be a pretty abysmal jungler at her current tuning. We’re substantially buffing her first clear to see if players will find a fun, dynamic, high-skill fighter compelling in this new role.
Sion is pretty playable in the jungle but is slightly weak and deserving of a small nudge for players who want to yell “COWARDS!” as they barrel up and down the river. We’re just delivering a light touch to see how many players want to try their hand at Si-ungle.
Last patch’s Skarner changes unfortunately landed him weaker than we had hoped and anticipated. We’re now here to deliver direct buffs in order to give him the power he deserves. We were overly cautious on how much attack damage to give him, so we’re back for more, and his Q isn’t doing quite enough now that he can’t quickly get two cycles off, so we’re buffing its uptime and throughput.
Swain is quite weak in his most-played role of support. We’re giving him a little more power in his E as well as lowering its mana cost to let Swain support have more room to work with without a mana item, since he typically doesn’t buy one there.
Tristana is a little underrepresented and could do with a small buff and we’d like to ensure she has good late-game attack power, so we’re bumping her AD growth.
We’re continuing to identify ranged top laners who undeservedly gained laning dominance from our recent lane sustain changes, and Vladimir is next on that list of overperforming ranged tops. We’re looking to make his matchups more interactive by giving more room for typically-physical melee champions to strike back during Vlad’s moments of downtime. Also, the number 607 makes it uncomfortably easy to type 6-7 and we just can’t have that.
Volibear’s last patch succeeded in addressing his jungle-vs-top gap but left him a little weaker than we wanted across both roles. We’re here to deliver him some more power to our favorite Zilean-hating demigod. We chose attack damage here to ensure that as a moderate-mobility melee champion, his attacks are appropriately threatening
While Rakan’s been making waves, Xayah’s been sitting on the sidelines for quite some time. We’re looking to bring up her feather damage to help her cut through her opponents.
Zeri’s in a relatively weak spot with pretty much no presence in pro play as well as a generally low pickrate. We want to bring her back toward those glory days of being one of the fastest ADCs in the game, so we’re buffing her top-end move speed during her ultimate.
Sunfire Aegis has been strongly losing to Liandry’s on any tank jungler who can reasonably choose between the two. We’d like to bring back tank-forward itemization here and allow Aegis to return to the forefront.
Darkin are ancient warrior gods trapped within powerful weapons. When someone unknowingly (or knowingly) wields such a weapon, the Darkin will fight to take control of the host’s body.
The first Darkin champion in League of Legends, Aatrox, was released in 2013. The second was Kayn in 2017, followed by the Varus retcon the same year, which altered his original Ionian lore and turned him into a Darkin. The last Darkin champion released was Naafiri in 2023. Like the other Darkin, Zaahen has possessed a host (Xin Zhao) and League even temporarily removed Xin Zhao from play to reflect the takeover.
League of Legends’ newest Darkin champion, Zaahen, is a powerful skirmisher with built-in armor penetration, a revive for risky dives, and has plenty of attack damage and sustain.
Exact data subject to change upon release.
Cooldown: 300 / 240 / 180 / 120 (based on level)
Innate: Zaahen’s damaging basic attacks and against enemy champions generate a stack of Determination for every instance of damage dealt to each target, lasting for 5 seconds, refreshing on subsequent damage, and stacking up to 12 times.
After the duration, the stacks expire by 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 (based on seconds elapsed) every 0.5 seconds.
Determination: For each stack, Zaahen gains bonus attack damage equal to 1.5% – 3.3% (based on level) AD; at maximum stacks it is further increased to 36% – 79.2% (based on level) AD.
Periodically, if Zaahen would take lethal damage while at maximum stacks, he enters resurrection for 4 seconds: becoming invulnerable, untargetable, and unable to act. He restores 30% – 75% (based on level) of his maximum health over the duration.
Cost: 25 mana – Cooldown: 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 – Cast Time: none
Active: Zaahen empowers his next basic attack within 5 seconds to have an uncancelable windup and gain 25 bonus range. On-attack, he will strike the target twice and heal himself. The strikes deal modified physical damage and the heal is reduced against non-champions.
Each strike applies on-hit effects and can critically strike for 50% bonus critical damage AD bonus physical damage.
Total Physical Damage:
15 / 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 (+ 100% AD) (+ 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 / 70% bonus AD)
Healing:
5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9% of his maximum health
In 1.5 seconds after the attack, The Darkin Glaive can then be recast within the next 5 seconds.
Recast: Zaahen empowers his next basic attack within 5 seconds to have an uncancelable windup, gain 25 bonus range, deal bonus physical damage and knock up the target for 0.75 seconds.
The Darkin Glaive deals 150% damage against monsters.
Both casts will reset Zaahen’s basic attack timer.
Bonus Physical Damage:
30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 (+ 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 / 70% AD)
Cost: 50 mana – Cooldown: 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12 – Cast Time: 0.5s – Range: 850
Active: Zaahen extends his glaive in the target direction, dealing physical damage to enemies hit. Upon reaching maximum range, all enemies hit are dealt the same physical damage, stunned for 0.25 seconds, and pulled 225 units toward Zaahen.
Physical Damage:
40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 (+ 50% bonus AD)
Total Physical Damage:
80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 100% bonus AD)
Cooldown: 10 / 9.5 / 9 / 8.5 / 8 – Cast Time: none – Range: 350
Active: Zaahen dashes to the target location. Upon arrival, he flourishes his glaive to deal physical damage to nearby enemies.
Physical Damage:
40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 (+ 50% bonus AD)
Enemies hit by the outer edge are dealt increased physical damage and bonus magic damage, with the latter capped at 400 against monsters.
Increased Physical Damage:
60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+ 100% bonus AD)
Bonus Magic Damage:
4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8% of the target’s maximum health
Aureate Rush deals 50 bonus physical damage against monsters.
Cost: 100 mana – Cooldown: 110 / 95 / 80 – Cast Time: 0.5s – Range: 600
Passive: Zaahen gains armor penetration.
Armor Penetration:
10 / 20 / 30%
Active: Zaahen launches to the target location. He then slams his glaive, unleashing a shockwave that deals physical damage to nearby enemies and heals himself for 33% of the post-mitigation damage dealt to champions.
Physical Damage:
250 / 400 / 550 (+ 200% bonus AD)
Zaahen is unable to act, gains crowd control immunity, and gains 50% damage reduction from the start of the cast time, and retains these effects until 0.9 seconds after the dash.
Check out the full patch 25.23 here
The Preview Patch notes for 25.23 are here. From Riot Phroxzon via X (Source)
-Zaahen is starting out development as a support.
-We hadn’t made a support for a while and we already had a headstart on wanting Zaahen to be a Darkin with eye/all-seeing motifs.
-The first iconic ult Squad5 tried was swinging his Glaive to Deathmark everybody (think Deathmark meets Xin Ult)
-One of the issues with this was that Zaahen had a support economy, so he’d do this and just die. It wasn’t a fatal flaw, but it wasn’t quite cool enough to build a kit around.
-Another idea tried was to embody the idea of sacrifice; Zaahen would gain stats each time he got a takedown or died (because supports die a lot)
-Teammates weren’t super enthusiastic about this though, even if it ended up being powerful and useful
-At this point, we decided that Top lane might be a better fit, especially because some of the Xin Zhao parallels weren’t quite working out from the support role
-We were taking a bunch of inspiration from Erlang Shen and Guan Yu throughout development.
-Erlang Shen has a third eye, which is often known for being all-seeing and associated with enlightment/higher levels of consciousness in Hinduism or Buddhism and some other Eastern religions.
-So some of the ideas were related to these motifs.
-Squad5 tried some ideas like Ult makes him untargetable to non-targeted abilities (think Gwen W), but this only lasted a test (was very experimental)
-Also tried versions where he learned about his opponents while fighting them.
-Another version that was interesting was dodging attacks every X seconds (but that became kinda hard to use and was already similar to old Pantheon’s passive)
-Kind of late in development however, we had a pretty functional kit that was working well and was satisfying, but it still felt it was missing something, and August suggested adding the revive back as max stacks on the passive. That just immediately clicked in Playtest and so we kept it.
-Rek’sai was erroneously listed as a buff yesterday, sorry about that.
-For those watching Worlds, or playing high ELO solo Q, Rek’sai has been pretty pretty powerful in Top Lane, but we’re OK with her Jungle strength currently.
-In particular, she is sustaining too much, so we’re taking those aspects down.
-Skarner has been pretty heavily overnerfed, so we’re restoring a bunch of power to him this patch.
-Thanks to Faker for raising visibility on Mel, we’re making some relatively power neutral adjustments that move power out of some of her high frustration and lower counterplay builds (eg. E max) into other places with higher counterplay and interactivity (eg. Passive)
-The E max build in particular is pretty fire and forget and is looking quite a bit stronger than Q max in many situations
-This is relatively unintuitive to players and lower gameplay, so we’re making adjustments to it
-Recently, the team found a quite impactful bug where Mundo was getting max damage at 30% missing health instead of 70% missing health.
-While it didn’t result in a change in his winrates overall (he was still balanced around this), it did change his overall power budget, so the damage is being adjusted back up to compensate.
-Despite his recent rise to fame in several series’, we still think he’s overall pretty balanced, but just has pretty sharp success/failure cases which seems OK for now (might re-consider later).
-As one of the beneficiaries of the sustain nerfs in previous patches, Vlad has benefited quite a bit, so we’re tapping him down a bit and making him more vulnerable in top lane especially.
-ADC meta has been stale for a while, so we’re looking for a bit of a shake up here. Most of the changes here are pretty self-explanatory
-This patch, we’re looking at a lot of novelty oriented changes around adding new champs into the jungle (and some old ones)
-Many regions suffer from high jungle autofill rates and being able to play your mains when you’re autofilled we think is overall net positive.
-Some of these changes are more experimental (we’re trying Fizz in the jungle for example), but will be monitoring closely to see how they shake out.
League of Legends 25.21 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
Riot has introduced a new style of ARAM.
ARAM: Mayhem brings in elements from Arena and TFT into the Howling Abyss. You will receive four to five augments to power-up your champion. Augments become available at Levels 7, 11, and 15, and are available in 3 tiers: Silver, Gold, and Prismatic. Check out our Tier List for each augment tier below.
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 11th
ARAM Champions Tier List
Looking for the highest win-rate champions in ARAM for Patch 26.5? Check out our ARAM Tier List
League of Legends 25.21 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
Patch 25.21 brings a new style of ARAM.
ARAM: Mayhem brings in elements from Arena and TFT into the Howling Abyss. You will receive four to five augments to power-up your champion. Augments become available at Levels 7, 11, and 15, and are available in 3 tiers: Silver, Gold, and Prismatic. Check out our Tier List for each augment tier below.
Check out our ARAM Mayhem Tier List
League of Legends 25.20 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
U.GG and Theta unveil first interactive AI agent powered by over 30k decentralized GPUs offering champion builds, tier lists, and live stat checks
October 1st, 2025 – Theta Network, the leader in decentralized cloud infrastructure for AI and gaming, has joined forces with U.GG, the premier League of Legends analytics platform trusted by millions of monthly players around the world. The partnership is set to launch a next-generation AI-powered agent for gamers, starting with League of Legends and expanding to further games. Powered by Theta EdgeCloud Hybrid, U.GG’s new AI agent delivers instant, data-driven champion builds, up-to-date tier lists, and real-time stat checks, all accessible directly from U.GG’s website and Discord.
Millions of League of Legends players can now engage with the U.GG AI agent 24/7 to receive the latest champion build recommendations (including runes, skill priorities, and itemization), discover which champions are dominating the current patch, and access in-depth champion statistics like KDA, pick rate, and ban rate. The AI agent also provides direct links to comprehensive champion pages on the U.GG website, driving deeper engagement and helping players level up their game with the most accurate and timely information available.
“U.GG’s mission is to give players the most reliable tools and data-backed insights for League of Legends and other competitive games,” said Ben Evans, General Manager of U.GG. “Through our partnership with Theta Network and leveraging their EdgeCloud Hybrid technology, we can now deliver real-time, AI-powered insights straight to players. Whether you need the right build before a ranked match or want to track rising champions, our new AI agent makes that information instantly accessible.”
Chris Egan, Senior Director of Product at Enthusiast Gaming, added: “At U.GG, our focus is on building tools that make players better, win more, and ultimately have more fun. With the Theta Network, we’ve been able to quickly add a fun new layer of AI-driven engagement to the platform, helping us explore fresh ways to enhance the U.GG experience while staying true to our core mission.”
Launched in 2024, Theta EdgeCloud is the first hybrid cloud-edge AI computing platform, powered by over 30,000 distributed GPU nodes. This robust infrastructure enables U.GG’s AI agent to provide highly scalable, always-on access to the latest League of Legends meta and champion data, ensuring players are always one step ahead of the competition.
“Thrilled to welcome U.GG and millions of League of Legends players to Theta’s AI-powered blockchain Agent seamlessly integrated into U.GG’s website and Discord server,” said Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of Theta Labs. “The tech is built on EdgeCloud Hybrid offering high-performance NVIDIA A100/H100 GPUs and cost-effective community run NVIDIA 30-40-50 series GPUs recently launched in Theta’s decentralized GPU marketplace. We’re now able to deliver real-time analytics and champion insights at scale to U.GG’s data-driven, passionate community.”
U.GG users can start interacting with the AI-powered agent today on U.GG and in the U.GG Discord community.
About U.GG
U.GG is a leading data-driven stats and analytics platform trusted by millions of gamers to provide the most accurate real-time recommendations, builds, rankings, and performance insights for League of Legends, Valorant, World of Warcraft, and more. U.GG holds itself to the standard of having the best user experience and offering easily digestible, actionable insights that players need during each of their gameplay sessions. By aggregating in-game data from millions of matches, U.GG delivers optimized builds, tier lists, and player analytics that help players make quick decisions, allowing them to focus on what’s most important in gaming, having fun.
About Theta Labs
Theta Labs is the leading provider of decentralized cloud infrastructure for AI, media and entertainment powered by a global network of 30,000 community-run edge nodes and a native blockchain. Backed by Samsung, Sony, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Creative Artists Agency, Theta is among the top AI tokens on Binance.com and DePIN blockchains by market capitalization on Coingecko. Theta’s enterprise validator and governance council is composed of global market leaders including Google, Samsung, Sony, CAA and Binance.
Theta EdgeCloud is the first hybrid cloud-edge computing AI platform offering over 80 PetaFLOPS of GPU compute power combining enterprise-grade NVIDIA H100/A100 GPUs, community-run NVIDIA 30/40/50 series, and AWS’s next-generation AI instances, Inferentia and Trainium custom silicon. The platform now counts over 50 global customers including 4 of the top 5 South Korea universities, Stanford, Syracuse U, top professional sports teams including France Ligue1’s Olympique de Marseille, NHL’s Las Vegas Knights, NBA’s Houston Rockets and global esports teams Cloud9, Gen.G, among others.
Website | Twitter | Medium | Discord | Developer Portal | Github
