League Classic brings back the early days of League of Legends with the original Summoner’s Rift and a mixed roster of 60 characters, plucked from their Season 1 to 5 game states.
Old items, runes, masteries, and mechanics are also back, allowing you to experience the game close to what it was during Season 3.
Quick Summary
Back then, League of Legends was a much more difficult and less accessible game: you had to know trade patterns, mana management, jungle routes, and much more.
This is why we created this starter guide for beginner-friendly champions in each lane to help you get acquainted with the old game more easily.
| Role | Champion |
|---|---|
| Top | Pantheon |
| Jungle | Warwick |
| Mid | Annie |
| ADC | Miss Fortune |
| Support | Sona |
- Pantheon is a classic lane bully that teaches you to spread your lead to other lanes.
- Warwick is a champion that can sustain through the old jungle well and remain healthy for unexpected ganks, especially with his point-and-click ultimate.
- Annie is midlane’s ultimate teacher: by picking her up, you learn all the fundamentals a League player had to learn in Season 3 to effectively play mid.
- Miss Fortune is a great no-nonsense ADC who can turn entire teamfights around with one lucky Ultimate.
- Sona is the perfect pick for the games where resources are hard to come by for supports, doing a lot with her auras and teamfight-defining Ultimate.
Table of contents
Best beginner top laner in League Classic: Pantheon
Pantheon is the best beginner top lane pick in League Classic because his gameplan is incredibly easy to understand and execute. He’s a major lane bully and wants to trade early, punish weaker laners, and use his reliable point-and-click stun to set up ganks.
Pantheon is very mana-hungry, so a Crystaline Flask or several Mana Potions at the start is not out of the question. Black Cleaver and Last Whisper are his core items, along with Lucidity boots that reduce his cooldowns.
His gameplay patterns also teach one of old League’s most important lessons: winning early only matters if you use that lead. Pantheon falls off in the late game, so you have to utilize your pressure somehow. Help with the objectives, move first from top lane, and use his global presence when a fight starts elsewhere. Simply banging your head against the enemy toplaner will not bring you success even if you kill them over and over again.
Best beginner jungler in League Classic: Warwick
Warwick is the easiest jungler to play in League Classic because he has enough sustain in his kit to carry even the non-junglers through early full clears.
Jungle in Season 3 was a hostile place where everything was out to get you. Camps were durable and hit hard, you didn’t get a free pet to deal damage for you, and you had to actually make a choice between farm and ganks.
Warwick removes this choice by managing to sustain through his clears and having enough health left to actually help his laners out. This, along with his point-and-click ultimate that deals excessive damage in his on-hit build makes him a perfect candidate to acclimatize yourself with the old jungle environment.
Unlike the modern, post-rework Warwick, the old one was fairly useless without his ultimate up, as he was very susceptible to being kited. Still, if you manage to surprise your opponents, or have your ultimate ready, there’s virtually nothing they can do to be safe from your engage.
Best beginner mid laner in League Classic: Annie
Annie is the easiest to pick up midlaner in the modern League, just like she was thirteen years ago in Season 3.
She has all the attributes you need to actually learn how to play mid: a great last-hitting tool in her Q, incredibly long auto attack range to harass your lane opponent whenever they go for farm, and a very reliable, virtually unreactable engage with the Flash + Tibbers stun combo.
With Annie, you don’t have to think about landing skillshots; you only have to maintain a favorable lane state, not fall behind on farm (which is very easy with your Q), and simply follow up on your jungler’s engage, or vice versa.
Annie scales really well into the late game, as her AP ratios are very good. Add Deathfire Grasp to this equation, and she can delete virtually any midlaner, ADC, support, or half the jungler roster, and massively chunk any toplaner.
Her biggest weakness is her relatively short ability range, so she can struggle against the likes of Lux or Morgana.
Best beginner bot laner in League Classic: Miss Fortune
There aren’t very many ADC champions in League Classic, and the title of the easiest to play is a toss-up between Ashe, Tristana, or Miss Fortune. We went with the latter because of how much value her ultimate can bring in an uncoordinated setting.
Miss Fortune doesn’t need any complex mechanics or mobility to function well in any team composition. She just wants to position safely, ideally in a front-to-back teamfight or a skirmish, and unleash Bullet Time when the enemies are grouped or, ideally, immobilized.
Just like any ADC aside from Ezreal, she’s very susceptible to hard engages and hooks, so you will still need to learn the basics of the role to contribute; there’s no getting around this.
But Miss Fortune is actually an excellent champion to learn old League’s spacing, lane management, and long-range poking with her Q. Her Ultimate ability can win any teamfight; you just need to learn how to position yourself properly.
Best beginner support in League Classic: Sona
Sona is the only answer to the “best beginner support” question. In fact, she might be the easiest champion to play in the entire game.
Back in Season 3, supports had a much lower overall gold income, so they had to make do with what they got and extract the most usefulness from their kits and item purchases. Sona’s Auras are always useful, and back then, her healing was quite noticeable as well.
Her ultimate was also much easier to hit, and without the modern game’s huge mobility creep, it could quite literally turn entire games around.
Sure, Sona’s not the most exciting champion to play, and she’s super fragile, so a bad game could compound on top of her “unfun” factor, but there’s no other League support who’s able to do as much with so little.
Which beginner champion should you try first?
Start with the role you actually want to learn, then pick the champion from that lane. Familiarize yourself with the way Season 3 League functioned, and from there, you can branch out into different picks. Here are several alternative easy champions to play if you’re bored with the ones we picked:
| Role | Champion |
|---|---|
| Top | Garen, Malphite |
| Jungle | Nunu, Wukong |
| Mid | Malzahar, Lux |
| ADC | Ashe, Tristana |
| Support | Janna, Soraka |
Ultimately, though, League of Legends is most fun when you find a character you resonate with the most. With only 60 characters at launch, you can easily try them all out and find the best pick for you.
