Watch @TSMTheOddOne and I relive the good old days as boomers
League Classic Tip #7: Supports make a conscious choice between scaling and early game. Against a kill lane, trade your scaling for armor, HP, and less damage taken per auto.
When you can get away with scaling, go for scaling. But if you're playing against a kill lane and you need that extra tankiness, these are the pages I run on my tank supports.
The rune page: flat HP seals + armor quints. Armor seals are weaker in Classic than they were back in Season 3, so put the HP in seals and the armor in quints.
The numbers side by side:
HP seals + armor quints: 20.1 armor, 72 HP, 12.6 MR Armor seals + HP quints: 20.5 armor, 52 HP, 12.6 MR
The second one is a trap. Half a point of armor for 20 health. Just like the rune combos in Tip #1, the order you slot your stats in matters.
The masteries: 0/14/16 or 1/13/16, alongside the standard 0/9/21 from Tip #2. Going 14 into Defense gives up some of the utility scaling, the move speed and CDR, which isn't as valuable early. In exchange you get a lot tankier: Unyielding reduces damage from champions by 2, and Block reduces champion basic attack damage by another 3. That's 5 damage off every single auto, and in the early game that's a lot of damage.
The 1/13/16 version puts one point into Summoner's Wrath: an extra 5 AD and AP while Ignite is on cooldown, or minus 10 armor and MR on your Exhaust. A lot of value from a single point.
When to run it: you're into Blitzcrank or anyone with early kill pressure, and you want to win the earliest skirmishes. You're not scaling for anything. You win the 2v2 from level 1 to 6 and snowball from there.
League Classic sucks. And that's the whole point.
Classic was never meant to be a polished version of the game that everyone would love. If it was, modern League would still look like this. The point of classic is that it's the old game, outdated and in a lot of ways less fun. Supports had no gold. You got one shot by point and click abilities you couldn't dodge. Modern League removed all of that for good reason.
Or did it?
What's special about Classic is that for the first time, Riot has handed players something close to a blank slate. Most people haven't put this together yet, but it isn't a new idea. It's the Old School RuneScape formula in League of Legends. Release the old game in a barebones state with the original champions, set up a council system where the players who actually play get more voting power, and let the community dictate where the game goes from there.
Classic was never going to be a huge success at launch, because everyone has a different version of classic. I love this version. I recognize every champion and every item, and I know the ward system like the back of my hand. But most players started after me, and for them this isn't their classic, it's just an old game. The launch was always going to be a nostalgia bomb that fades. That part was priced in.
The interesting part is what happens now that the reins are loosened. We could end up with a version of League that players vote for things that would never fly with a mass audience. More complicated drafts. The ability to ban a champion for an entire season. Forcing a marksman mid meta or a mage bot meta just because the council wants to see it. Modern League can't do any of that, because modern League has to appeal to everyone. Classic only has to appeal to enough people.
I started thinking about all this because of one of my games. A couple of my teammates had never touched old League, so I asked why they were playing Classic. They said it's more fun and more simple, and in their words, there are no bullshit champions. That stuck with me, because you can't delete Ambessa from modern League. What's done is done. But in Classic, she was never released, and nobody ever has to release her. You have the option to just never add the champions with five dashes and three resets, the ones that are super fun for the person playing them and change the game forever for everyone else.
That doesn't mean Classic should stay frozen either. Some modern ideas deserve to come back. I don't think supports should be forced to buy 16 wards and boots as their only purchases in the first ten minutes. That's really how the best teams in the world played in the early seasons, and it wasn't good for the game. Classic right now is the most classic it's ever going to be. From here it's a separate timeline. It's not going to replay seasons 4, 5, and 6. It'll take some things from modern, refuse others, and the balance, champions, and gameplay will head somewhere League has never been, decided by the people actually playing it.
And I think Riot sees this too, because whatever works in Classic feeds back into modern. If the council votes something in and players start drifting over from modern to get it, that tells Riot something they can't learn any other way. Classic isn't a League killer. It's where League gets to test what it could have been.
So if you don't enjoy Classic right now, don't play it. Why would you spend time on a mode that does nothing for you? But if you love this MOBA and feel like the modern game is drifting somewhere you don't enjoy, keep an eye on Classic. Same game, different timeline, different rules. All I'm saying is, be ready for the day you catch yourself thinking there's something about Classic that makes it better.
If that ever happens, Classic is a success.
League Classic Tip #6: The best gold per 10 item is Sightstone
The best gold per 10 item in Classic doesn't generate a single gold. Almost 75% of you got my poll wrong.
Yesterday's poll asked which gp10 item generates the most gold over a game. 2,344 votes:
All are the same: 27.8%
Heart of Gold: 26.9%
Sightstone: 25.4%
Philosopher's Stone: 19.9%
The answer is Sightstone, and only about 1 in 4 of you picked it.
Sightstone costs 800 gold. It holds 3 wards, refills every time you recall, and keeps 2 on the map at once. Every ward represents gold: greens cost 75 each, so a full restock is up to 225 gold saved per back. It doesn't hand you gold, it saves the gold you were going to spend anyway. After about ten or eleven wards, roughly four backs, it has fully paid for itself, and everything after that is pure profit plus permanent vision.
The gp10 items give 5 gold every 10 seconds. That's 30 a minute, 300 every 10 minutes. A Sightstone user who backs a few times and places their wards is matching or beating that, before you even count what the vision is worth. This is why pros back in Season 3 rushed Sightstone over any gp10.
The caveat: if you don't place wards, none of this applies and the gp10s genuinely give you more value. And that's what I'm seeing in my games. Philo into Heart of Gold, Sightstone delayed until third item. Some people finish a full item before Sightstone. That's super bad.
Support is the only role that's really meant to buy a ton of wards. Buy them, use the vision, and you control the map way more aggressively than the enemy support. You roam better. You see the jungler at all times. It's just overall better.
I've been saying this since 2012 (check out the relic I quoted):
Sightstone is the answer. Buy it early, place your wards, and let everyone else wonder why their two gp10 items aren't winning them the game.
Tip #18: Sightstone is actually a gp10. Each ward you don't buy is 75 gold saved... Stop asking me why I don't get gp10s while streaming -.-
League Classic Tip #5: Pink ward Baron please
Pink wards on Baron: nothing has changed from live to Classic. The moment Baron is up and the game is close, there should be a pink in the pit, same as you'd do on live.
If anything it matters more here. Pinks are invisible on this version and reveals every green ward, so one pink at Baron both gives vision and allows you to clear theirs.
League Classic Tip #4: Summoner spells seem the same as live, but are much different.
Barrier beats Heal
A lot of players, especially ADCs, are still taking Heal out of habit from live. Barrier is the better spell.
Heal in Classic is an AoE around yourself, which in theory should be strong. The problem is the cooldown: 5 minutes on Heal versus 3.5 minutes on Barrier, a full 90 seconds longer. Barrier also shields for more.
The ADC should be selfish
In Classic, the correct target to focus is usually the ADC. ADCs typically start with a Doran's Blade and no potions, which leaves them very open to getting poked out of lane. The support, if they're running the consumable-heavy start from Tip #3, has five potions and will sit near full HP for most of the laning phase despite the smaller health pool.
This is the opposite of live, where sustain is everywhere, HP pools are larger, and the support is often the one who ends up low. In Classic, the ADC is the one who needs saving. That's exactly why Heal's AoE is wasted value here: your support is not the one you need to save. Barrier protects the person who matters, on a shorter cooldown, for more. I recommend it in most games.
Exhaust and Ignite for kill pressure
When you want more kill pressure, Exhaust or Ignite are worth considering. Exhaust in Classic is incredibly strong, especially early game. The slow is heavy enough that it works almost like a snare: the target can barely move, can't attack effectively, and deals less damage. Upgraded through the mastery (first point in Offense tree), it also shreds their armor and MR. Summoner's wrath is worth taking any time you run Ignite or Exhaust with the Offense tree; it adds more damage than people give it credit for.
For supports specifically, Ignite and Exhaust are far more powerful picks than Heal. There's less HP in the game overall, so both spells hit way above their weight, and Exhaust is really, really strong.
Why not Cleanse
Cleanse is normally a premium summoner, but it loses a lot of value in Classic. Champions have much less HP, so you feel every hit, and most of the big CC spells deal a ton of damage on their own. Sion's stun, Annie's stun, TF's gold card: if one of those lands on you, the mage's follow-up will probably kill you whether you cleanse the stun or not. The real answer is positioning, playing out of range of the big CC, not a summoner slot. Add in how hard it already is to survive lane as a squishy, and Barrier simply does more for you.
Teleport
Teleport is very strong in Classic and will eventually become the meta. Right now, though, the priority in solo queue is kill pressure and winning your lane, so Ignite is generally better. If you're committed to a scaling pick like Anivia or Kassadin, Teleport is definitely an option. But for now, my recommendation is simple: take whatever setup wins you your lane, win it, and snowball the game.
Clarity, Rally, and Clairvoyance
You won't see much of these, at least not by the end of Classic, because of the laning power the other summoners give you. If you need Clarity, you're better off running more mana regen runes and taking a combat summoner instead. Clairvoyance was actually the meta very early on, in Season 1 and early Season 2, but it phased out quickly once people realized how strong an extra Ignite is in lane. Gold per ten runes followed the same arc: they were good, but as people learned to punish lanes harder, if the enemy team took aggressive summoners and early game runes and you didn't, you were just weaker and struggled to survive lane. Clairvoyance does nothing for your lane. It helps you track the jungler, but wards on their camps do that job fine.
At the end of the day you can run what you want. This is just my recommendation.
League Classic Tip #3: The optimal support starting items is a ton of consumables.
4 health pots, 1 mana pot, 1 pink ward, 3 green wards, red trinket (sweeper)
This start looks a little unusual and requires 0/9/21 with Wealth (see Tip #2), so you walk out of the fountain with 550.
First, the wards. Until you have a Sightstone, wards cost a lot. Greens are 75 gold each, and pink wards are incredibly strong right now. Starting with this many means you don't have to worry about wards for a while. When you have some time and you're walking through their jungle, you can drop wards down, and in general you just keep vision up for yourself. You do have trinkets, but if you have control of the lane, you can deny their vision with your pink ward or your own sweeper while your wards stay up.
Second, and this is the big one: sustain. Laning is a super important part of Classic. There's no honeyfruit, and recalls take a long time to get back into lane. Having more sustain than the enemy bot lane lets you play way more aggressively, take better trades, and eventually force them out of lane. And if you've noticed, towers in Classic are essentially paper. They go down super quickly, and it's very easy to take one in a 2v2. But you can only do that if you have enough sustain to stay and hit it.
Why not Faerie Charm or Rejuv Bead?
A lot of players go all sorts of starts, like Faerie Charm or Rejuv Bead. Take Faerie Charm: it gives 3 mana per 5, which means it takes about three minutes just to equal one mana potion. With the 180 gold other people are spending on it, I get five potions instead. Each HP pot is 150 HP and each mana pot is 100 mana, so I'm essentially going to lane with an extra 600 HP and 100 extra mana.
Yes, the regen start gets you your first gold per ten item a little faster. But I'm going to be able to punish you, because I have 600 more HP than you. If you're starting a Doran's item, a Rejuv Bead, any of those on a support, you're essentially betting that an enemy support who went the optimal start can't punish you with an extra 600 HP. If you're good enough to pull that off, more power to you. I like to be the one playing aggressive and punishing the enemy support, or the whole enemy bot lane.
Keep in mind the ADC only has a Doran's Blade, and a lot of the time no potions at all unless they went biscuit. So with all the extra HP, I'm punishing literally both of them, trading my HP even in a 1v2. If they lose 15 HP and I lose 30, I'm still winning that trade. That's how ridiculous it is.
This start will change
I'll adjust this start later, especially as more people buy wards and start taking sweeper more. Right now almost no one does. Sweeper is a lot weaker on this version because it doesn't follow your character, it just sweeps a static spot, so it can't cover nearly as much. Pinks are invisible in this version, and they completely counter any green ward. So a pink is just super good if you know the enemy support is going to bring wards.
League Classic Tip #2: You almost always want to go 21 points deep into one tree (Offense, Defense, or Utility) and put the last 9 into a second tree.
The 21/9 split is so strong because the first 9 points of each tree hit really good breakpoints:
- Offense (9): Weapon Expertise and Arcane Knowledge are really solid scaling options. 8% armor pen and 8% magic pen is strong.
- Defense (9): Veteran's Scars is really strong at 9 points.
- Utility (9): Runic Affinity is usually the other big one. It's for champions that really need their buffs: junglers who want to keep buffs longer (especially carry junglers), and even ADCs late game who want red buff to stick longer. Alternatively, Biscuits is a great option for an extra potion in lane, especially for Doran's Blades users who typically start with no pots.
The Utility tree in general is really strong, especially the first few tiers. Meditation gives you up to 3 mana regen per 5 seconds and is pretty much one of the most important masteries.
AD bruisers, assassins, and tanks: 21/9/0
Generally also 21/9/0. Same as ADCs for the most part, just a focus on defense for fighting 1v1 top.
For tanks, 9/21/0 is an option if you're scaling for more tankiness. Fair warning though: tanks in Classic are a lot weaker than you'd think. It's really hard for them to actually tank for a long time, there are just so many things that melt tanks. So 9/21/0 is an option, but don't expect to tank the way you do on Live.
0/21/9 for the tanks that need a bit of extra mana.
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