Patch 4Phreak
Patch Previews
Official Classic balance videos from Phreak. New uploads land here as they go live.
Last checked for new previews: 2026-09-26.
- Patch 3Phreak
Our Biggest Patch Yet! Patch 3 Preview | League Classic
- Patch 2Phreak
League Classic | Patch 2 Preview
Summary
Champions
- No new champions in this patch. The next drop comes in Patch 3 as another thematically linked batch; the ninjas (Shen, Akali, Kennen) set the pattern.
- Riot moved from limiting the roster to building it out as fast as it can; champions close to their live kits arrive sooner because they need less art work.
Council
- The first Council vote ships with roughly seven or eight questions, among them whether trinkets improve the Classic experience and a question on game pacing.
Progression & runes
- IP gains rise to roughly 2.5× and Classic XP doubles; every account gets two additional rune pages.
- Every minor rune gets cheaper to buy.
Map
- Another texture, decal and prop pass moves the Rift closer to its 2013 look, the larger map pass the Patch 1 preview promised.
Balance & swaps
- Nine champions buffed and nine nerfed; item changes touch Innervating Locket, Feral Flare and Wriggle’s Lantern.
- Champion and role swapping returns to champion select.
- Patch 1Phreak
League Classic | Patch 1 Preview
Summary
Art & map
- Artists moved the sun back: Classic had cloned live Rift lighting without noticing that live’s sun position and color temperature had drifted, so lanes look wrong; this patch corrects that.
- A bigger map texture pass aimed at feeling closer to 2013 is planned for Patch 2 (ETA, can slip).
- More champion VFX work continues toward classic looks.
New champions
- Akali (June 2012): hybrid passive: 10 bonus AD unlocks spell vamp, 20 total AP unlocks %AD on-hit; Q mark + auto for energy refund; W shroud (pink/vision wards and turrets reveal); E energy dump; R three-charge dash. They kept the AD/AP rune break points and E not popping the Q mark so she stays auto-driven.
- Kennen (patch 3.9 / July 2013): close to modern: mark stacks to stun + energy return; Q skillshot; W passive on-hits + active detonate on marked; E dash with resists (on E here, not R); R random zaps that prioritize 1v1 DPS over teamfight certainty, champions only.
- Shen (patch 3.6 / April 2013): health-scaling empowered autos refund energy; Q marks for ally heal-over-time; W AP-scaling shield that doubles passive CD refund while up; E taunt dash with reduced physical damage taken; R ally shield + teleport. Meaningfully different from live.
Player voice
- Council / first community vote targeted for Patch 2 (.17) or Patch 3 (.18).
- More official surveys coming: pacing, gold income, trinkets, etc. Reddit/Twitter are not treated as the whole player base.
IP & runes
- Early-play missions grant about 6,000 IP across four games so free-to-play players can fill two real mark pages by the time marks unlock, then seals/glyphs/quints without feeling stuck on placeholders.
- Further IP boosts planned (ballpark: roughly double generic IP gains) so building out more pages isn’t a grind; funky pages (crit damage, etc.) can stay a deliberate choice.
- Ninja patch adds flat/regen energy runes: regen on seals, flat on glyphs, both on quints (secondaries TBD).
- Blank/placeholder runes jump to ~80% efficiency so early jungle and incomplete pages hurt less; tiny HP-regen quint rounding buff (+0.05/5).
Systems
- Jungle: from first respawn onward, basic camps (wolves, wraiths, red/blue, not Dragon/Baron) get more health; Phreak’s modern level-scale math was wrong late game (up to ~25% at theoretical level 18).
- Gold: early passive gold up ~4 gold/min; last-hit gold down ~1 per CS, a mild anti-snowball; supports ~+200 gold; laners who farm ~200 CS roughly break even.
- Homeguards disabled for the first 15 minutes (Baron spawn / midgame): early Homeguard felt wrong for 2013; late Homeguard may even get stronger later.
- Respawn timers ~2s faster at levels 1–3 (then tapering) as the real early-game comeback lever instead of base MS.
- Turrets: +500 HP on outer/inner/inhib (~15%): period-accurate turrets felt too paper for today’s players who dive better.
Balance approach
- About 19 changes; almost all are reverts of 2010–2013 buffs/nerfs from old patch history, not modern kit invents. Phreak thinks buff targets are right; 1–3 nerf targets could have been swapped.
- No public win-rate tables; he stays vague on how hard each change hits.
Buffs
- Alistar (support-skewed ally heal; WQ buffering under investigation), Amumu (MR shred + duration, Q damage, 2012/13 reverts), Mundo (W DPS, tenacity, R heal, early 2012 reverts).
- Garen (passive/base regen, R CD, a safer top pick), Lux (worst common mid/support: +10 MS, R AP ratio + CD reverts), Miss Fortune (W stack damage up, R AD ratio; not full 45% R revert yet).
- Olaf back toward early Season 3 (Q pickup/slow, W uptime, E loses bonus AD ratio, R lethality always on). Note: they call flat armor pen “lethality” for clarity; still flat pen, not modern scaling lethality.
- Skarner (was hugely bugged with illegal on-hit; post-fix looks terrible: Q slow, W CD, E missile width back to ship values), Soraka (support-skewed armor buff + longer duration; tooltip may still say 3s), Veigar (can’t rewind further, so Q mana cost + AP instead).
Nerfs
- Blitzcrank (R/W/Q CDs and damage, 2011–12 reverts), Heimerdinger (top/mid outlier: W cost/damage, E CD, light Q; W felt too free vs energy champs), Janna (best support with Blitz: −3 base AD, higher R mana).
- Jarvan IV (best junglers: armor/level and shield; E mana scales with rank), Katarina (bug: R was 12 daggers, should be 10, so ~20% slower R DPS after the first hit).
- Nasus (Wither mana 80→100, early lifesteal down; protect late stacks), Tryndamere (top + jungle outlier: Q AD/stack 5→3, Q/E CDs; keep AP Trynd Q≤8s for ult weave).
- Twitch (best ADC: early AD, W missile speed, E cost, R missile speed: early nerfs, late hypercarry intact), Warwick (~5% AS; itemization like Feral Flare makes this kit stronger than in 2012).
- LaunchPhreak
League of Legends Classic | Launch Patch Preview
Summary
What Classic is
- Season 3 as the foundation, curated as a “greatest hits” of early League, not a single frozen patch, meant to stay a live service for years, not a two-week nostalgia queue.
- Framed as a strategy game with action (vs modern League’s action-first feel): sharper consequences, longer cooldowns/mana, slower missiles/dashes, more readable fights, plus undodgeable tools where that’s the point.
- Phreak full-time on Classic since March (part-time before); systems design, some champ authorship, and ongoing balance ownership.
Systems coming back
- Classic runes (marks/seals/glyphs/quints) with familiar break points and a raised floor on weak options; masteries are Season 3 trees (no keystones): Summoner’s Wrath/Resolve/Insight style spell links, plus Promote/Rally mastery hooks.
- Nearly all summoner spells; items from early years with room for discovery (e.g. Banner Heimer).
- Preseason-4 trinkets (no blue trinket, Clairvoyance exists; no paid upgrades/scaling). Sight/Vision wards and Sight Stone still buyable; trinkets start on CD so people actually ward; zero vision made jungle run the game in playtests.
- Empty rune slots get ~2/3-power placeholder AS/armor/CDR so new accounts can jungle; default mastery page (10/10/10) until you can edit after a few games.
Map, progression, live service
- Early Summoner’s Rift layout with readability work (lighting/textures/shadows): nostalgia plus playable clarity.
- Influence Points, Classic Levels, Summoner’s Journey (pseudo-ranked), and ongoing patches so the mode keeps changing.
- Easter eggs sourced from many communities; some already found on PBE, many not.
Launch roster
- 60 champions at launch; more roll out over time at a classic-era cadence.
- Kits aim for the most distinctive / fun historical version of each champ (often Season 3 Worlds, sometimes earlier or a kit-of-parts), not always the latest 2013 snapshot.
- Long champ-by-champ pass covers quirks (examples: Ezreal W heal era with WE self-heal allowed; Fiddlesticks Season 3 Worlds kit; red trinkets not revealing Teemo shrooms; etc.).
- Balance intent: keep cast times and mana pressure classic; future patches buff/nerf from old patch history rather than inventing modern kits.