Poppy LoL Classic Top: Ultimate That Makes Her Immune

Poppy arrives in League Classic on September 10 with patch 26.18, and she is the champion of this wave that people are going to talk about for months.

Her original design is widely regarded as one of the hardest balancing problems in the game's history. She spent years cycling between being permanently banned and being invisible, with very little in between. That design is coming back essentially untouched.

She is not live yet, so this is built from the PBE tooltips rather than played games, and the numbers may still move. But the two abilities that made her a balancing nightmare are both intact, so the shape of the champion is not in doubt.

Planned approach: max Q, then W, then E, with R at 6, 11, and 16. Build bruiser statistics rather than pure tank, because Devastating Blow scales with your own damage as well as their health.

The Kit

Why This Champion Was Impossible to Balance

Two abilities, and they push in opposite directions.

Valiant Fighter halves every meaningful hit she takes. Anything above 10% of her current health gets cut in half. Small hits go through normally, big ones do not. That means burst does not work on her, assassins do not work on her, and the harder something hits, the less efficient it becomes. Note the wording is current health, not maximum, so as she drops lower the threshold drops with her and more damage qualifies for the reduction.

Diplomatic Immunity makes her immune to everyone except one person for up to eight seconds. Not resistant. Immune. You pick a target, and the other four members of their team functionally do not exist for the duration while you also deal up to 40% more damage to the one you chose.

Put those together. She is extremely hard to burst down under normal conditions, and for eight seconds at a time she cannot be touched by four out of five enemies. Balancing that is not a numbers problem, it is a design problem, which is exactly why she oscillated between permaban and irrelevance for years.

The Third Thing People Underrate

Devastating Blow deals 8% of the target's maximum Health, capped between 55 and 275 depending on rank.

Percentage maximum health damage on a 4 second cooldown at rank 5 is what lets Poppy threaten a tank, and it means she does not need to build a full damage item set to be dangerous to the enemy front line. Note the cap, though. Against a very high health target the percentage stops climbing, so this is a tool for handling ordinary bruisers and tanks rather than a health stacking counter with no ceiling.

And Paragon of Demacia gives you Armor and Attack Damage at the same time. Ten stacks of up to 3.5 each is 35 Armor and 35 Attack Damage from a single ability, and the active hands you all of them instantly plus movement speed. That is an offensive and defensive button on the same key, which is why the bruiser build below makes more sense than a pure tank one.

The Planned Build

Start. Doran's Shield and a Health Potion. Your passive already blunts large hits, so surviving the early levels is about the small repeated damage that Valiant Fighter does not reduce.

1. Trinity Force. Sheen procs off Devastating Blow, health, movement speed, attack speed, and the on hit slow. Poppy casts constantly and has no reason to hoard mana beyond her own pool, so Sheen uptime is high.

2. Boots. Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi depending on the lobby.

3. Frozen Mallet. Health and a permanent slow. Heroic Charge already carries people into walls, and the slow is what stops them repositioning away from terrain before you press it.

4. Randuin's Omen or Spirit Visage. Randuin's against attack speed, Spirit Visage against magic damage. Both are correct at different times.

5. Sunfire Cape or more resistances. Health is doing double duty here because Valiant Fighter's threshold scales off your current health.

6. Guardian Angel or Banshee's Veil. Whichever the enemy composition is demanding.

Skill order: Q, then W, then E.

Q first for the damage and the cooldown dropping from 8 seconds to 4, which is a doubling of how often you can threaten someone.

W second for the Armor and Attack Damage stacking, which is the closest thing this kit has to a free item.

E last, though take one point early. The stun does not scale into anything you need urgently, but a 1.5 second stun into terrain is a gank tool from level 3 and it is the reason your jungler will want to path top.

Runes and Masteries

Proposals rather than a settled page.

Marks of Attack Damage or Magic Penetration. Devastating Blow and Heroic Charge both deal magic damage, so penetration is a genuine argument here. Attack Damage is the simpler choice and it feeds your basic attacks and the W stacks.

Seals of Armor. Melee top lane, and it stacks with what Paragon of Demacia is already giving you.

Glyphs of Magic Resist. Standard.

Quintessences of flat Health or Attack Damage. Health is interesting on her specifically, because Valiant Fighter's reduction threshold is calculated from current health.

Masteries: 9 offense, 21 defense. Poppy is a bruiser whose defensive layer is her passive, and defensive statistics compound with that passive rather than duplicating it. If you would rather play her aggressively, 21 offense and 9 defense is defensible.

How It Should Play

Terrain is your entire lane. Heroic Charge is a stun only if the target hits a wall. Top lane is full of walls, and the difference between a good Poppy and a bad one is knowing which direction to charge from. Learn the angles from your side of the lane, from the river brush, and from the tri bush.

Valiant Fighter rewards fighting people who hit hard. Against a champion whose damage arrives in large chunks, you are effectively taking half. Against sustained small hits, you are not. Pick your fights accordingly and know which category your lane opponent falls into.

Diplomatic Immunity has two totally different uses. Offensively, ultimate the enemy carry and walk through their entire team to reach them. Defensively, ultimate the person diving you and everyone else becomes irrelevant while you deal with them.

The counterplay is that everybody knows who you picked. For up to eight seconds you have declared your target publicly, which means competent teams will peel that one person and let the other four disengage entirely. Choosing well is the skill.

What Beats You

Sustained small damage. Anything that chips you under the 10% threshold bypasses your passive entirely.

Being kited. Heroic Charge is your only gap closer and it needs terrain to be worth much.

Percentage health damage. Your defensive plan is health and a reduction, and percentage damage undercuts both.

What Changed From Modern Poppy

Everything except the hammer.

• Valiant Fighter halves large hits. Modern Poppy's passive is a shield generated by her hammer.

• Devastating Blow is percentage maximum health magic damage on an empowered attack. Modern Q is a ground slam with a hammer projectile.

• Paragon of Demacia is a stacking Armor and Attack Damage buff. Modern W is a wall that blocks dashes.

• Heroic Charge carries a target into terrain for a stun. This one survives in spirit as Modern E.

• Diplomatic Immunity is the immunity ultimate. Modern Keeper's Verdict is a charged knock away.

The immunity ultimate is the reason people are excited and also the reason it never survived into modern League.

The Honest Caveat

She is not out until September 10, these numbers come from PBE tooltips, and this is the champion in the wave most likely to see changes between now and release given her history. Treat this as a plan and check back after a week of live games.

Want to be ready the day she unlocks? Read our guides on climbing the Summoner's Journey and leveling to 30 fast.