LoL Classic Patch 1 Explained

The first real patch for League Classic is here, it is bigger than most people expected, and buried in the middle of it is the single most interesting thing Riot has said about this mode since it launched.

Patch 1 lands as 26.16 on August 12, and from here the mode moves to a patch cycle roughly every two weeks, the same cadence as modern League. Phreak delivered the rundown in a video that runs well over an hour, which should tell you how much is in here. Note that everything below comes from that preview, so treat the numbers as preview values that could still move before it goes live.

Here is what actually matters.

Three New Champions, All Ionian, All Energy

The first post-launch wave is Akali, Kennen, and Shen. Not one mana champion between them, which is a genuinely bold first choice for a mode where resource management is already much harsher than modern players are used to.

Each arrives on a specific historical kit rather than a modern port.

Akali, from June 2012

Her earliest version, and the furthest apart from her modern self of the three.

• Passive: spell vamp from bonus Attack Damage, and on hit magic damage from bonus Ability Power.

• Q: single target nuke that marks the target for 5 seconds. Attacking the mark deals bonus damage and refunds energy.

• W: the circular Twilight Shroud. Throws smoke, grants invisibility, Armor, and Magic Resist, and slows enemies inside. Vision Wards can reveal her.

• E: a simple spin dealing physical damage, scaling from both Attack Damage and Ability Power.

• R: single target dash and damage, storing up to three charges.

The design note is the interesting part. Riot deliberately did not use the version where E procs the Q mark, because this Akali is meant to be incentivised to auto attack rather than play like a mage. That is the whole philosophy of the mode expressed in one decision.

Kennen, from July 2013

Much closer to his modern form than the other two.

• Passive and Q are effectively the same as modern, including stacking three marks for a stun.

• W: passively, every fifth basic attack deals bonus magic damage on hit and applies a mark. Active damages marked targets and adds another mark.

• E: percentage movement speed plus bonus Armor and Magic Resist, and colliding with enemies marks and damages them. The resistances are the notable difference from the modern version.

• R: summons the storm, zapping enemies at random inside it up to a per target cap, with zap frequency scaling by rank. Champions only.

What that ultimate actually changes: it bursts faster in a one versus one, and it is less reliable when you are trying to hit several people at once. That is a meaningfully different champion in a teamfight from the one you know.

Shen, from April 2013

• Passive: the next basic attack deals bonus damage based on bonus Health and refunds energy, on a 9 second cooldown that attacks reduce by 1 second each.

• Q: single target damage and a mark. You or your allies attacking the marked target heal over time. It works on minions, and last hitting with Q grants a third of the healing.

• W: a shield that scales with Ability Power. While it holds, the passive cooldown refund is doubled.

• E: dash that taunts enemies you collide with, reduces physical damage taken for the duration, deals damage, and refunds energy.

• R: the ally shield and channel, teleporting to them if the channel completes and they are still alive.

Shen's Q and W are where the real distance from modern Shen lives. This is a support-flavoured Shen who heals through allied damage.

The Map Changed, and Almost Nobody Noticed

The sun has been moved back to its historical position. That single change shifts the lighting and colour temperature across the entire map, and it is the sort of thing you feel before you consciously notice it.

A full texture pass for Summoner's Rift is planned for Patch 2, aimed at getting the map closer to its actual 2013 appearance. Champion visual effect updates are also coming to bring them nearer their true classic forms, though no patch has been attached to that yet.

System Changes

This is where the patch is quietly at its most aggressive.

• Gold: passive gold income increased, gold per creep score reduced by 1. The stated goal is to slow snowballing slightly and give supports more income.

• Homeguard: removed entirely for the first 15 minutes. Phreak notes it is genuinely needed late and is considering increasing its movement speed bonus to compensate.

• Respawn timers: between 1 and 2 seconds faster until level 7.

• Turrets: plus 500 Health.

• Jungle camps: monster Health per level increased, scaling from 0 up to 25%.

• New runes: flat energy glyphs, energy regeneration seals, and both flat and regeneration quintessences. Obviously aimed at the three champions arriving in the same patch.

• Blank runes buffed from 66% to 80% effectiveness, so new accounts without a full rune collection are less punished.

• Health regeneration quintessences: a minor buff of 0.05 per 5 seconds.

The gold and Homeguard changes are the ones that will actually alter how games feel. Removing Homeguard for fifteen minutes makes early deaths cost more real time, while the gold adjustment pulls in the opposite direction. Read together, they look like an attempt to make the early game matter without letting one lane end the match.

Champion Buffs

Olaf is the standout. Making his ultimate's Armor Penetration passive, removing the bonus AD ratio from E, and cutting the minimum range on Q is not a tuning pass, it is a redesign of how he is meant to be played.

Champion Nerfs

That Tryndamere Q change is brutal. Cutting maximum bonus Attack Damage from 40 to 24 while lengthening the early cooldown removes a large chunk of what makes him oppressive in lane.

And yes, Warwick got hit. The build still works. The clear is marginally slower and that is the entire cost.

The Part That Actually Matters: Riot Told Us Who Is Strong

Here is why this patch preview is more interesting than a normal patch note.

There is no public data for League Classic. Riot is not exposing match history through the API, and has asked the community not to aggregate game data. That is deliberate, and it is why the mode does not have the ecosystem of statistics sites that modern League does.

Which means Phreak explaining balance changes puts Riot in an awkward position. Justify a nerf with specifics and you effectively publish the data you chose to withhold. So he did something better: he gave loose, unqualified verbal assessments of where champions actually sit.

Paraphrasing the ones worth knowing:

• Twitch is the best bot laner in the mode.

• Tryndamere is straight up overpowered, strong in both top and jungle.

• Heimerdinger is one of the best solo laners in the game, in both top and mid.

• Janna is one of the best supports. Jarvan is one of the best junglers. Nasus is one of the best top laners. Katarina is one of the top performers.

• Amumu is doing very poorly. Dr. Mundo and Skarner are among the worst champions in the mode. Lux is in a terrible state. Veigar is bad.

Phreak also said the thing I have been arguing since the mode launched: the popular perception of what is overpowered is, in some cases, wildly wrong.

I wrote a piece recently about why League Classic tier lists are worthless, and the specific example I used was a published list that put Twitch in the bottom bracket as one of the worst champions in the mode. Riot has now said, out loud, that Twitch is the best bot laner in the game.

I take no pleasure in this. None whatsoever.

The broader lesson stands, though, and it cuts both ways. The community was confidently wrong about Twitch. It will be confidently wrong about the next champion too, because there is no data to be right with. What Riot has here is internal numbers and a mode where nobody outside the building can check the work.

Also worth noting: most of this patch consists of reverting changes from old patches rather than inventing new ones. Riot is balancing this mode by walking back through its own history.

What Is Coming Next

• The Council. Riot is writing questions now, with the first vote expected in Patch 2 or 3. Reporting suggests the first round is scheduled for 26.17 on August 26, with a second round in 26.19 on September 23, and that eligibility is likely to favour older accounts with clean conduct records.

• A player survey, with no date announced. Riot wants feedback from outside the usual social channels, potentially covering game pacing, gold income, game length, and trinkets.

• Patch 2 brings the Summoner's Rift texture pass.

• An IP boost weekend, probably double.

The Read

This is a bigger and more confident first patch than I expected. Three energy champions plus dedicated energy runes is a coherent package rather than three random additions. The system changes show Riot is willing to touch fundamentals like gold and Homeguard rather than only nudging champion numbers. And the balance philosophy, which is mostly reverting old changes rather than designing new ones, suggests they intend to keep this mode historically honest rather than gradually turning it into modern League with old models.

The one thing I would keep an eye on is the data situation. It is the right call for the health of the mode, and I have argued exactly that. But it does mean the only person who can tell you what is strong is Phreak, once every two weeks, in a video.

Want to actually use a patch like this while everyone else is still reading about it? Read our guides on climbing the Summoner's Journey and leveling to 30 fast.

Stay tuned. Hollow, out.