Best Champions to Play in LoL Classic (Old & New Players)

People keep asking me the same question since PBE opened up: "okay, but who should I actually play?" And honestly, that question has more than one right answer, because League Classic rewards completely different champions depending on who you are. A brand-new player looking for the easiest champions in LoL Classic needs a different answer than someone like me who's been chasing this exact meta since 2009.

So I broke it down properly. This is my personal list of the best champions in LoL Classic, split by who you are and what you're trying to get out of the mode, plus a section that's honestly the most fun to write: the builds that made old League feel like a completely different game.

Best Champions for New Players

If you never touched League back in Season 1 through 4, start here. These are the best beginner champions in League Classic because their power comes from simple, readable mechanics instead of precise execution.

• Garen. No mana bar, no combos to memorize, just a spin and a true damage execute. He was a great teaching tool in 2013 and he still is now.

• Annie. One stun, one big nuke, one bear. The whole kit fits in your head after a single game.

• Ashe. Her passive slow does most of the work for you in lane, so you're not relying on landing tricky skillshots to trade.

• Veigar. One clean stun on your E, a straightforward burst rotation, and a stack-scaling ultimate that makes it obvious when you're actually getting stronger. Easy to pick up, satisfying to watch scale.

• Warwick. Built-in sustain and a passive that tracks low-health enemies across the map makes early jungling far less punishing while you're still learning to path.

Best Champions for Returning Veterans

If you already know this game, you don't need training wheels, you need champions that let you flex the muscle memory you never actually lost. These are the strongest champions from the Season 1 to 4 era, the ones that rewarded the exact kind of game knowledge veteran players still have.

• Katarina. Reset chains into a Deathfire Grasp burst combo. If you played mid lane in this era, your hands will remember this before your brain catches up.

• Sona. Passive aura buffs that just make your whole team stronger by existing. Simple to execute, but veterans know how to actually use the extra tempo it creates.

• Urgot. Old-school hybrid AD marksman whose ultimate, Hyper-Kinetic Position Reverser, suppressed the target and then swapped their position with Urgot's, right before slowing them and fearing everyone standing nearby. If you remember pulling someone from their backline straight into your team, you'll remember exactly how to punish people with him again.

• Graves. One of the best ADCs this game has ever had, full stop. The combo timing and the movement, especially if you've got the old Mafia Graves skin, are exactly as satisfying as veterans remember. (He's confirmed for one of the post-launch waves rather than day one, so keep an eye out.)

Hardest Champions

These are not the champions I'd hand to someone on their first night in League Classic. High skill cap, high mechanical ceiling, and genuinely punishing if you misplay them.

• Lee Sin. Still one of the highest skill expression champions in the entire game, and jungle pathing in this era makes his early game even less forgiving.

• Nidalee. Constant shapeshifting between spear poke and melee pounce, on top of an item and mana economy that doesn't forgive wasted resources the way modern League does.

• Ryze. Old Ryze rewarded mana itemization and combo sequencing in a way that's genuinely unintuitive if you've never played this specific version of him before.

• Twisted Fate. Card management, roam timing, and global ultimate coordination are simple to explain and very hard to actually execute well. Old-school players used to count the seconds in their head to track which card was about to come up. You don't actually need to do that. Turn your game volume up a little and you can hear the cards ticking in the background while Twisted Fate cycles through them, which means you can always work out exactly which card you're about to throw just by listening.

Champions That Feel Completely Different

This is the section I actually wanted to write. If you only remember modern League, some of these builds are going to sound made up. They were not made up. We played them. Here's what to expect:

AD Sion, Top. Stack Phantom Dancers and a Bloodthirster, hit level 16, pop your ultimate, and you can walk into the enemy fountain and kill every single unit standing there without dying. It sounds like an exaggeration. It isn't.

AP Sion, Mid. One of the most fun flex picks I ever ranked with. Deathfire Grasp into your stun, with the shield detonation layered on top, was an honest-to-god insta-kill combo on squishy targets. I still remember the exact feeling of pulling this off in ranked and watching people not understand what just happened to them.

AP Master Yi. One of the most disgusting builds that has ever existed in this game, full stop. While Highlander is active, every kill or assist refreshes your other abilities. If you're patient enough to wait for the perfect teamfight window, you can just spam Alpha Strike and clean up an entire team by yourself.

AP Ezreal. A genuinely fun build that could one-shot an enemy mid laner or ADC with a single ultimate. Not the poke marksman most people remember, a real burst mage hiding inside a marksman's kit.

Twitch, especially now. Riot brought back his actual old Q, which was true invisibility, not the camouflage-style stealth the reworked version uses. Stack a Hydra with Runaan's Hurricane and you get cleave damage on an assassin who can walk up to you completely unseen. It's just as nasty as I remember.

AP Tryndamere. A weirder one, but very real. Nashor's Tooth and on-hit magic damage items on a champion everyone assumes is a pure crit duelist. It never became meta, but it was absolutely a thing people played, and it's exactly the kind of build League Classic exists to let you rediscover.

AP Warwick, Jungle. People forget this one existed, but old Warwick's abilities scaled with spell vamp instead of just lifesteal, so stacking AP and spell vamp items turned him into a sustain machine that healed off everything he touched, not just basic attacks.

Soraka, Jungle or Top. Everyone remembers her as a support, and sure, Astral Blessing (her W) keeps allies topped up and Infuse (her E) can hand a teammate free mana. But her real hidden potential in this era was never lane support, it was Jungle or Top. Starcall, her Q, heals Soraka herself whenever it hits an enemy, and the AoE damage was strong enough to melt a full minion wave or a jungle camp almost instantly. Spam Starcall on cooldown and you get sustain and clear speed most players never associate with her at all.

Old Graves. If you never saw what Graves used to look like, this one is an absolute must-play. He was one of the best ADCs in the entire game, and his combo and movement, especially on the Mafia Graves skin, felt genuinely newbie friendly while still having real depth. I still remember him being one of my very first mains. He's not in the launch roster, he's confirmed for a later wave, but when he lands, play him.

Old Urgot. One of the coolest champions of the era, and also one of the hardest to actually play well. Even Challenger players struggled to pilot him properly. His ultimate suppressed the target and then swapped their position with his, which meant you could yank an enemy carry straight out of their backline and into your team, or throw yourself into the enemy's. He was one of the more interesting old-school ADCs, but mana was a real problem: it wasn't unusual to fire off a couple of Qs and have to walk straight back to base afterward.

Champions Riot Completely Changed

Some champions in League Classic are going to feel like entirely different characters if the only version you know is the current one. Worth calling out specifically:

• Sion. The champion above literally does not exist as a kit anymore on live servers. Current Sion is a completely different character with different abilities.

• Warwick. Fully reworked years ago into the hunter-passive version most current players know. The old spell vamp identity is gone from retail League entirely.

• Twitch. His Q went from true invisibility to camouflage stealth in a rework, which sounds small but genuinely changes how he's played and how he's countered.

• Urgot. Went from an old-school hybrid AD marksman whose ultimate suppressed and then swapped positions with his target, to a completely different juggernaut bruiser on live servers. These two champions barely resemble each other beyond the name.

• Ryze. Has been reworked so many times across League's history that old Ryze plays almost nothing like current Ryze in terms of combo structure and mana management.
  

Champions You Must Experience Again

If you only have time to try a handful of champions before deciding whether League Classic is for you, make it these. Not necessarily the strongest or the easiest, just the ones that best represent why this era of League was special.

• Fiddlesticks. A long-range fear-and-drain ultimate that could delete an unprepared team from off-screen.

• Kassadin. You can actually feel why he had a 98% ban rate in ranked back in the day. Silence on his Q and an absurd range on his ultimate make him genuinely stressful to play against, and genuinely fun to finally play yourself.

• Nunu. Consume-fueled early jungling into an Absolute Zero teamfight ultimate that actually mattered, back before ultimates were this common across every kit.

• Miss Fortune. Her AoE ultimate against a grouped, uncoordinated team is still one of the most satisfying power fantasies in League's history.

• Soraka. Global heal sustain that genuinely broke the rules of what lane phase was supposed to look like.

That's my list. If you're new, start with the beginner section and don't feel bad about it, everyone who's good at this game now started somewhere. If you're a veteran, go relive the builds that made you fall in love with League in the first place. And if you only try one thing from this whole article, make it AD Sion at level 16. Trust me.