We counted every buff and nerf across 219 patches going back to 2013. Ten champions have dragged Riot back to the drawing board so often it still doesn't know what to do with them.
Riot has touched the average champion 17 times. Everyone on this list has taken at least 30. And the champion at number one has flip flopped so relentlessly you can see the pattern from orbit.
Top 10
Hardest Champions for Riot to Balance
We counted every buff and nerf across 219 patches going back to 2013. Ten champions have dragged Riot back to the drawing board so often it still doesn't know what to do with them.
Riot has touched the average champion 17 times. Everyone on this list has taken at least 30. And the champion at number one has flip flopped so relentlessly you can see the pattern from orbit.
Where these numbers come from
We've written up League patch notes since 2013, and this year we pivoted every single one by champion. One page. 219 patches. 169 champions. Search anyone and read every buff, nerf and rework they've ever taken. Every number below comes straight out of it.
One word to know first. A reversal is a buff that follows a nerf, or a nerf that follows a buff. It means Riot changed its mind. Change counts tell you a champion gets attention. Reversals tell you nobody's solved them.
#10: Karma, Who Riot Keeps Trying to Rescue
Twenty buffs. Ten nerfs. Karma's the only champion here Riot has spent more effort rescuing than restraining.
Mantra is why. It supercharges one spell instead of Karma herself, so every buff means choosing which single ability becomes the answer. Make it generous and she turns into an unkillable poke lane. Make it fair and nobody picks her. Thirty changes across mid, support and briefly top, and Riot's still hunting for a version worth playing instead of a version worth banning.
#9: Kassadin, Nerfed Before He Was Ever Buffed
Eight of Riot's first nine changes to Kassadin were nerfs. Patch 3.13 through Patch 5.4, almost nothing but punishment.
The problem hasn't moved an inch. Riftwalk makes him uncatchable, so Riot keeps his laning phase miserable to pay for it. Soften the early game and he hits the point of no return every single match. Keep it brutal and nobody wants him. Thirty one swings later, the matchup's still just survive until sixteen, for both players.
#8: Maokai, the Most One Sided Record on the List
Eighteen nerfs against nine buffs, and Maokai earned almost none of it himself.
He breaks when something else changes. Riot nerfed him six times between Patch 6.11 and Patch 7.24 and buffed him once, across jungle plants, a tank item overhaul, and a support meta that suddenly adored a champion who roots two people and strolls away. Jungle, support, top, it makes no difference. The system moves and Maokai lands on top of it without Riot touching him at all. You can't nerf a champion out of a problem that lives outside his kit.
#7: Caitlyn, the Ruler Riot Measures Everyone Against
Caitlyn owns the longest range of any marksman, which turns her into the yardstick Riot measures every other bot laner against.
Too strong and her rivals all look unplayable, because they have to walk into her range just to exist. Too weak and the lane becomes a coin flip. Riot can't park her anywhere except almost exactly right, so it recalibrates her every time item economy shifts, crit scaling changes, or a new support makes her traps mean something different. Twelve reversals, and hardly any of them are really about Caitlyn.
#6: Lucian, Who Waited Two Years for a Single Buff
Riot nerfed Lucian six times before it buffed him once. His first buff didn't arrive until Patch 5.16, roughly two years in.
Lightslinger is the culprit. Every ability cast turns into extra autos, so Lucian scales with attack speed and on hit effects rather than raw damage. An item change aimed at somebody else lands on him twice. Add the supports that turn him into an early game bully and you get thirteen reversals: Riot fixes him, the item meta moves, and he needs fixing in the other direction.
#5: Gragas, Buffed and Nerfed in the Same Patch
Eighteen reversals out of thirty one changes, the highest rate here. Patch 4.6 explains it in one line: Gragas appears in the buff column and the nerf column of the same patch notes.
He's spent his entire life playable in four positions at once. Body Slam into Explosive Cask is a jungle gank, a top lane all in, a mid lane roam and a support engage, and those four jobs demand four different sets of numbers. Buff the damage for mid and the jungler becomes a duelist. Trim the durability for top and the support stops working. No other champion here yanks Riot in four directions at once.
#4: Akali, and the Shroud Riot Can't Stop Rewriting
Ten changes between Patch 8.18 and Patch 9.24. Eight of them nerfs. One of the longest sustained beatdowns in the whole archive, and nearly all of it aimed at one ability.
Twilight Shroud grants no damage and no tankiness. It removes Akali from the enemy team's ability to click on her, and a champion nobody can click on is either fine or completely broken with nothing in between. Riot has rewritten what the shroud does under towers, how long she stays hidden, and what reveals her. Every rewrite launched her from unplayable to oppressive and back again. Thirty three changes in, half the playerbase thinks she does nothing and the other half thinks she can't be fought.
#3: LeBlanc, Either Unplayable or Unfair
LeBlanc has no middle setting, and thirty four changes haven't built her one.
Her entire game is a combo that either deletes you or accomplishes nothing. The gap between not quite enough damage and erasing a carry from full health is a handful of base points. Riot nudges her by five and she rockets from unpicked to unbearable, because surviving the combo is the only counterplay and there's no partial version of surviving. Riot buffed her through Season 11, buffed her again in Season 13, buffed her again this year, and squeezed nerfs in between. Every number that makes her playable makes her unfair about a week later.
#2: Ryze, Sixteen Buffs and Sixteen Nerfs
Sixteen buffs. Sixteen nerfs. Four reworks on top. Thirty six changes, and Riot has moved Ryze precisely nowhere.
No champion in the archive has a record that perfectly balanced, and the cause is the oldest problem in the game. Ryze scales off mana and ability haste instead of raw power, so he wins by casting more rather than hitting harder. That makes him nearly worthless in a chaotic game and terrifying in a coordinated one. Riot has rebuilt him more times than almost anyone in League specifically to escape that trap, and every rebuild dropped him back in the same hole. Nobody's touched him since Patch 13.12 in 2023, which after thirty six attempts might be the smartest move available.
#1: Azir, Reversed Twenty One Times
Thirty nine changes. Twenty one reversals. The most rewritten champion in the entire archive, and it isn't remotely close.
Then there's this. From Patch 9.7 to Patch 13.5, Riot alternated between buffing and nerfing Azir nine times in a row without ever going the same direction twice. Buff, nerf, buff, nerf, buff, nerf, buff, nerf, buff. Four straight years of changing its mind.
He does this because he's two completely different champions depending on who picks him. Azir's soldiers reward precise spacing and setup, so a coordinated team turns a wall of soldiers and a Shurima Shuffle into a fight that ends before it starts. A solo queue player gets a mid laner with no burst, no reliable escape, and a standing appointment with the enemy jungler at level six. Every buff meant for the second Azir arms the first one. Every nerf meant for the first one buries the second. Riot has sat trapped between them for a decade, and the patch history is the receipt.
The Full Count
| Champion | Changes | Buffs | Nerfs | Reversals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Azir | 39 | 20 | 16 | 21 |
| 2. Ryze | 36 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| 3. LeBlanc | 34 | 19 | 12 | 11 |
| 4. Akali | 33 | 16 | 13 | 12 |
| 5. Gragas | 31 | 15 | 14 | 18 |
| 6. Lucian | 31 | 13 | 14 | 13 |
| 7. Caitlyn | 31 | 18 | 11 | 12 |
| 8. Maokai | 31 | 9 | 18 | 10 |
| 9. Kassadin | 31 | 12 | 17 | 10 |
| 10. Karma | 30 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
Buffs plus nerfs won't always equal the change total, because we count reworks and adjustments that went both ways at once separately. We ranked by total changes, breaking ties with reversals and then nerfs.
How We Counted
These numbers come from our own patch notes archive: 219 patches, from Patch 3.0.1 in February 2013 through Patch 26.15 in July 2026. That's not literally every patch Riot has shipped, and coverage runs thinner in 2024 and 2025, so treat this as the most complete public count of champion changes we know of rather than a perfect one. A champion counts once per patch per category, so a patch that adjusted four of Akali's abilities counts as one nerf, not four.
Conclusions
Three problems built this list. Azir and Ryze are split between what a coordinated team can do with them and what you can, so Riot has to pick a side and loses either way. Akali, LeBlanc and Kassadin each own one mechanic so binary there's barely a range where they're merely good. Gragas, Maokai, Lucian and Caitlyn keep getting shoved around by item reworks, jungle changes and new supports that have nothing to do with them. Karma's the outlier, the only champion here Riot has fought harder to save than to contain.
Want to know where these ten sit right now instead of across thirteen years? The solo queue tier list has the current read. Want to check your own main? The patch notes history hub has all 169 champions.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment or leave a message :)