Quick Answer: League of Legends Classic gives you 60 champions on their Season 3-era kits. New or returning? Start with champions whose kits barely changed in 13 years — Annie, Ashe, Garen, Malphite, Amumu, Sona — because your instincts still apply. Approach the pre-rework kits with fresh eyes instead: old Sion, old Taric, old Warwick and old Fiddlesticks play nothing like their modern versions. This page covers the old role system, the best beginner picks, what the extinct kits do, and matchup basics. For rankings see the tier list; for what to buy, the builds guide.
Version note: Written on the July 29 launch roster (patch 26.15), updated August 11, 2026, the day before Classic's first content patch. Roster and kit-version facts come from the official League of Legends Wiki's League Classic page, linked inline. Pre-rework kits are described qualitatively with no in-mode numbers, since Riot may tune values inside Classic.
Champion select, 2013 edition — note the Runes & Masteries panel bottom-left: your build starts before the game does. (Screenshot: Riot Games / League of Legends, via the official League of Legends Wiki)
Getting Started in LoL Classic
Three things to internalize before your first lock-in. The mode basics live in our League Classic hub.
- Set up runes and masteries before you queue. They add real stats and count as part of your champion: armor Seals, MR Glyphs, damage Marks and Quints, plus a 21/9/0 or 0/9/21 mastery spread (details in the builds guide). New Classic accounts grow into this via Classic Levels, exactly like 2013 accounts did.
- Slow down in fights. Fewer dashes, longer cooldowns, less damage per rotation. Win on positioning and cooldown tracking rather than mid-exchange outplays. Trades you'd escape in modern League will kill you here, and trades that would kill you in modern League are survivable.
- Buy a ward every back. There are no trinkets, so vision is bought. One ward per player per back is the single biggest team-level edge available in early Classic lobbies.
Champion Roles in S3
The role map of 2013 mostly resembles today's — top, jungle, mid, ADC, support — with different expectations per seat.
- Top is an island: long lanes, teleport-or-nothing rotations, sustain wars into splitpush or frontline duty. Bruisers (Jax, Olaf, Wukong), tanks (Malphite, Dr. Mundo, Singed) and oddballs (Nidalee, Kayle) live here.
- Jungle is item- and route-driven, with meaningful counter-jungling. Engage tanks (Amumu, Jarvan, Skarner, Nunu), skirmishers (Lee Sin, Olaf), and farm-to-carry picks (Master Yi with Feral Flare dreams) all function.
- Mid is the roam engine. Twisted Fate, Katarina and Ahri turn lane advantages into map advantages; artillery and control mages (Lux, Anivia, Karthus) turn it into siege.
- ADC carries harder and later than in modern League. Hypercarries (Vayne, Kog'Maw, Tristana, Twitch) are genuine win conditions with the right protection.
- Support is an economy-and-vision class built on gold-generation items and Sightstone. Engage (Leona, Blitzcrank, Alistar, Taric), enchanters (Janna, Sona, Soraka, Lulu) and utility mages (Zilean, Morgana, Lux) all work in this system.
Top 10 Champions for Beginners
Chosen on two criteria: simple to execute, and close enough to their modern kit that nothing you know is a lie.
| Champion | Role | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Annie | Mid | Point-and-click burst, stun management teaches trading windows |
| Ashe | ADC | No escapes forces positioning discipline — the ADC fundamentals teacher |
| Miss Fortune | ADC | Strong lane, simple teamfight job: find a line, press R |
| Garen | Top | Sustain, tenacity, no mana — survives lane-learning mistakes |
| Malphite | Top | Armor lane bully; one of the game's clearest engage ultimates |
| Amumu | Jungle | Forgiving clears, and his ult teaches teamfight timing better than any champion |
| Warwick (old) | Jungle | The classic first jungler: sustain covers routing errors, point-and-click ult |
| Master Yi | Jungle | Teaches farm-to-carry pacing; just accept the deaths as tuition |
| Sona | Support | Auras and poke with minimal mechanics; teaches back-line spacing |
| Soraka (old) | Support | Pure sustain support — bans no mechanics, teaches map awareness |
Two of these, Warwick and Soraka, are pre-rework kits — but simpler than their modern versions, not stranger.
Pre-Rework Kits: What's Different
Champions in the launch roster whose kits were later reworked out of modern League include Sion, Taric, Warwick, Fiddlesticks, Nunu, Dr. Mundo, Pantheon, Soraka, Kayle, Evelynn and Gragas. Here is how each one actually plays.
- Old Sion is the roster's biggest museum piece: no unstoppable charge, no revive-march. The era's Sion is a stun-and-shield champion whose AP build detonates his shield for burst — an assassin-shaped zombie modern players have no mental model for.
- Old Taric is the "gems are truly outrageous" Taric: point-and-click stun, armor aura, heal. Engage support logic with none of the modern skill-shot dance.
- Old Warwick has no camouflaged pounce from fog. He's a sustain jungler whose ultimate is a point-and-click suppression — simple, and still a lesson in flash timing for his target.
- Old Fiddlesticks plays the same horror-movie ultimate game, crowstorm from fog, but with a channeled point-and-click drain and a silence instead of the modern effigy mind-games.
- Old Nunu is objective control incarnate: consume the camp, control the buffs, channel the map's scariest "get off the Baron" button.
- Old Dr. Mundo hurls cleavers and regenerates through entire team rotations. The purest stat-check top laner of the era.
- Old Pantheon is all-in lane bullying with a point-and-click spear-stun setup and a cross-map ultimate drop.
- Old Soraka is the infinite-sustain lane battery the modern rework deliberately killed: starcall spam, mana battery for the ADC, global heal.
- Old Kayle is a hybrid attack-speed skirmisher whose intervention ultimate is unchanged in spirit — the best "you can't kill my carry" button in the roster.
- Old Evelynn is the S3 stealth assassin, applying map pressure just by existing, which is why Vision Wards (see builds) spike in value the moment she's locked.
- Old Gragas is a bruiser-mage hybrid with body-slam engage — closer to a diving wrestler than the modern barrel zoner.
If a kit above sounds alien, that's the pitch. These play patterns ran for years, were competitive, and are learnable in an afternoon.
Counters & Matchups
Draft by principle here. Week-one Classic is too young for anyone to honestly publish per-matchup data, and Riot publishes no match data for the mode at all.
- Don't force kills into sustain. Dr. Mundo, Warwick and Soraka lanes bend but don't break. Win them by denying farm or roaming instead.
- Point-and-click beats stealth and dodging. Old Taric, Warwick and Pantheon ignore your juking. Conversely, mobility (Lee Sin, Katarina) devalues skill-shot-dependent picks (Blitzcrank, Lux, Morgana).
- Hard engage beats poke; disengage beats hard engage. Amumu, Leona and Jarvan comps run over siege teams. Janna, Gragas' old body-block, Zilean speed and Shurelya's actives unwind the dive. That triangle is the S3 meta in one sentence — draft the answer, not the mirror.
- Close the game before 40 minutes against hypercarries. If you can't end against Vayne, Kog'Maw, Tristana or Nasus comps, you eventually don't. Kassadin and Twisted Fate (see tier list) exist to keep the game from getting there on your terms.
- Account for the banned-by-absence effect. Several kits' historical counters (Thresh's lantern against dive, Zed against immobile mages) aren't in the roster yet, so expect matchup wisdom to shift with each roster wave.
The first wave arrives August 12, 2026: Akali, Kennen and Shen, taking the pool to 63. All three are Ionian, all three are old kits — Akali's from June 2012, Shen's from April 2013, Kennen's from July 2013 — which means the pre-rework caveats above apply hardest to them. Old Akali is the energy-and-shroud assassin with spell vamp on her passive, not the modern resource-juggling version; old Shen carries the original Stand United, a targeted ally shield followed by a three-second channel before the teleport lands, so it telegraphs in a way the modern ultimate does not. The official wiki moved all three into the roster list on August 10, ahead of the patch.
Advanced Tips by Role
- Top: track the enemy jungler's start side from leash timing, because long S3 lanes make ganks lethal. Buy an early Vision Ward for the river bush — it stays until killed.
- Jungle: your first clear decides your first gank. Counter-jungle only with lane priority. Old camps are lean enough that a stolen camp genuinely hurts.
- Mid: push and roam — that's the S3 mid's job description. Wave-clear speed is worth more than raw kill pressure.
- ADC: drill last-hitting under tower and kiting without modern dashes. Classic's slower combat rewards clean orb-walking more than modern League does.
- Support: own the vision economy with Sightstone charges, Vision Ward sweeps and Oracle's on a lead. Your gold-gen items mean every ward you place was, in effect, free.
One Hit Kill Guides' League Classic coverage was created under Riot Games' "Legal Jibber Jabber" policy using assets owned by Riot Games. Riot Games does not endorse or sponsor this project.