< League of Legends < Characters

League of Legends/Characters/Four


This is part of the character sheet for the game League of Legends. Check back often, as new champions are added regularly. This page contains all champions beginning with the letters P through S.

Pantheon the Artisan of War

"I was hoping they had more reinforcements."
—Pantheon, standing amidst the pieces of a brutalized Noxian battalion.

A member of the Rakkor Tribe, Pantheon was one of the many members who are trained constantly in the Art of War, preferring to fight when their enemies outnumber them at least ten to one. Scoffing at the so-called peace maintained through the League and armed with his Rune Spear, Pantheon entered the League to show the others a thing or two about war and to finally meet his equal.

Pantheon is a fighter/assassin-type champion armed with a spear and shield which split his abilities. His spear can be thrown at enemies or stabbed in a flurry of strikes in a cone that deals double damage to enemy champions. His shield protects him from one attack every time he attacks or uses an ability four times and can be used with a jumping strike to stun opponents. For his ultimate, he vaults himself in the air and smashes down far away, dealing damage and slowing enemies.

Pantheon's alternate skins include Myrmidon Pantheon, Ruthless Pantheon, Perseus Pantheon, Full Metal Pantheon and Glaive Warrior Pantheon.

Associated tropes:

  • Always Accurate Attack: There are other abilities that are guaranteed to hit the target aimed at, but they tend to be magical in nature while Pantheon does this with a spear toss.
  • Blade on a Stick
  • Blood Knight: Natch.
  • Critical Hit: If a target is at 15% of their total health or less, Pantheon's basic attacks are guaranteed to Critical Hit against them.
  • Crutch Character: Strong early game, falls off hard late game.
  • Death From Above: His ultimate also doubles as a free teleport.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: His Heartseeker Strike active ability is much less precise than the name implies and mostly consists of a bunch of strikes made very quickly over an area.
    • On the other hand, it's Heartseeker Strike's passive effect that causes Pantheon's normal attacks to automatically critical on any enemy with low HP, so it sort of fits.
  • Difficult but Awesome: Pantheon has a bit of a bad reputation amongst the fanbase because a lot of people assume his ult is like Twisted Fate's. If you use it to jump into a fight or to gank someone, most of the time it doesn't work due to the fact they get a pretty obvious warning.
  • Expy: FOR SPARTA! His moveset is that of the Dragoon class from Final Fantasy.
  • Finishing Move: His Heartseeker Strike passive makes his autoattack critically hit against opponents at 15% health or less and causes his Spear Shot to do extra damage.[1]
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: His passive fully blocks any attack that does more than 40 damage, including tower shots.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Boy howdy...

Pantheon: They are privileged to die at my feet. They disgrace the art of War!

Poppy the Iron Ambassador

"Poppy may be small, but Whomper -- or her will -- is not."

A Yordle who used to work at her father's smithy. When her father was killed en route to deliver a helm commissioned by the local general, Poppy took it upon herself to finish her father's delivery. The general was so impressed with her iron-willed determination he sent a recommendation to the king who instituted her as ambassador of the Yordle Kingdom.

Poppy is a fighter-type champion whose abilities are geared laregely towards going after and quickly taking out a single opponent of the enemy team, making her a very bulky assassin. Her abilities include a tackle that deals extra damage and stuns the target if they're is smashed into a wall, a passive that grants armor and damage whenever she is hit or hits an enemy and boosts her speed on activation, and a smash attack that deals damage based on her target's max HP. Her ultimate negates all damage and effects from all sources except her target and boosts Poppy's damage against that target. Finally, her innate ability halves any applied damage that exceeds 10% of her current health, giving her great resistance to bursts of damage and making her very tanky when she gets low on health.

Poppy's alternate skins include Blacksmith Poppy, Noxian Poppy, Lollipoppy, Ragdoll Poppy, Battle Regalia Poppy and Scarlet Hammer Poppy.

Associated tropes:

"Let me demonstrate 'hammer diplomacy'!"

  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: This is your Poppy. This is your Poppy on Chinese art.
  • Badass Adorable
  • Best Served Cold
  • Cute Bruiser
  • Drop the Hammer
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Her 'Heroic Charge' ability will knock back even champions twice her size.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her Scarlet Hammer skin is actually quite menacing, largely due to these.
  • Good Is Boring: Poppy doesn't have a joke or a dance, even though MC Hammer would suffice for her.
  • I Call It Vera: "Whomper".
  • It Only Works Once: Poppy's role is essentially to use her ult to brutally beat to death one member (usually the most deadly) of the enemy team very quickly and efficiently; however, she might not survive the getaway after the enemy is dead.
    • Or you could target the least threatening person on their team, ignore him/her completely and make to smash in the enemy carry with invulnerability.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Her Paragon of Demacia skill makes her pretty darn speedy.
  • Magikarp Power: Has a bad early game due to her atrocious farming, but becomes an unstoppable force of destruction capable of winning an entire game on her own once she gets her core items. A common joke is that Poppy doesn't farm minions, she farms champions.
    • Changes to the meta over time have made Poppy's early game issues less significant. She is a passable jungler and a strong solo top vs most AD top lane champions. Farming has become a lot less about how many creeps you can sweep up in a few moves, and more about beating your opponent to death in the lane, therefore preventing him from getting farm while you take the creep waves free and clear. Poppy is, if anything, really good at fighting, even in the early game.
  • No Sense of Humour

"Jokes? I don't know any jokes."

  • One-Man Army: A Poppy focusing on attack damage or a mixture of attack and ability damage can easily butcher the entire enemy team single-handedly and essentially eliminate even the basic concept of a teamfight come endgame. And, unlike other melee carries, she's FAR harder to shut down.
  • Fighting is Serious Business: One of her lines. Of course, if any action has a legitimate claim to that label, fighting definitely does.
  • Take Up My Sword: Well, hammer anyway.
  • Technical Pacifist: She wants peace, and makes some references to diplomacy. Of course, there is none in the game.
  • You Killed My Father: Noxian spies killed her father, and so she joined their rival, Demacia, to fight.
    • The general who gave Poppy's father his last commission was named Florin.

Rammus the Armordillo

"I've seen a lot of things, but this... this is a first."
—Ezreal, after first meeting Rammus

Rammus is an armadillo from the desert, highly mutated via wild magic into a bipedal, sentient, turtle-like creature with a set of heavy armor and sarcastic streak. Rammus is a tank-type champion who can convert part of his physical defense stat into attack damage, roll into a ball to speed across ground and ram into foes, increase his defenses by withdrawing into his shell, provoke enemies into uncontrollably attacking him, and cause tremors beneath his feet.

Rammus's alternate skins include King Rammus, Chrome Rammus, Molten Rammus, Freljord Rammus and Ninja Rammus.

Associated tropes:

  • Achilles' Heel: Rammus is an excellent tank against anything that uses Attack Damage... but against AP, he's pretty mediocre. This is largely because of all the buffs you get from Armor and not only are MR items limited in selection, you gain no attack boosts from them. Thus, a good counter to Rammus is to fill your team up with AP champs and make the Rammus player cry as he lives through his worst nightmare. On top of that, Rammus can even have his weakness punished against a team of supposed Attack Damage bruisers: abilities don't trigger his defensive ball curl OR thornmail, and a decidedly non-zero number of Attack Damage champs have an ability that scales off of attack damage, yet deal magic damage anyways (meep). It's not entirely bad though. Rammus' W; Defensive Ball Curl, raises his MR so it's some comfort. And Taunt makes them pretty much abandon hitting you with their spells and is still going to keep them there while you have Tremors up and the rest of your team is nearby. He's still got a problem with AP champs though... which is probably Riot's way of balancing him out. One weekend on the old test servers, Rammus was buffed so that his Magic Resistance contributed to his Ability Power stat as with his armor/AD, but this was axed for ostensibly 'not fitting the lore'.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Speaking of the aforementioned Achilles heel, it's entirely in the player's hands whether they want to engender Rammus's aforementioned weakness by going overboard with armor and not enough health or magic resist, but most usually see it best to do so anyways.
  • Dishing Out Dirt
  • Expy:
    • Of Bowser. A special skin given to closed beta players even emulates Bowser's color scheme.
    • On that subject, his Powerball ability has him curl up into a ball and his movement speed increases. hmmm....
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Well, he's not all that threatening though... odd, but not threatening.
  • I Shall Taunt You: Better Than It Sounds. Sure, the enemy is forced into attacking you for up to three seconds, but that means he's attacking you, unable to use skills, unable to change targets, and unable to run away. Meanwhile, you and any of your teammates in the area still have full faculties and control, and three seconds is not an unrealistic amount of time for a competent kill. Totally worth taking some damage. There's also the fact that as long as the enemy is attacking the damage-mitigating Rammus they're not attacking any of his Glass Cannon teammates. Better yet, another one of Rammus' abilities causes his defense to sky-rocket and deal damage back to anybody attacking him (from close or afar), which can stack with the Thornmail item. If Rammus taunts you, its because he wants you to kill yourself by trying to kill him. Finally, Rammus has the arguable best of the three taunts in the game: Galio's taunt is channeled as part of his ult, meaning it has a very long cooldown, and he is immobile while doing it, while Shen requires a manually-targeted dash to pass through people, putting him on the other side of them and making it quite possible to miss. Rammus needs only click on an enemy to trap them, and can subsequently run back towards his team or a friendly structure, dragging the hapless enemy along.
  • Lightning Bruiser: While rolling. Joke videos have been made where a full team with speed buff abilities have taken advantage of the game's lack of hard caps for movement speed to film a Rammus crossing the entire map in a matter of seconds. In Dominion, Rammus is classified as 'Ninja' for this specific reason. He is also often banned by anyone with a brain and without someone who wants to play him. A good Rammus can zip across the map and steal points like there's no tomorrow.
  • Memetic Sex God: In-universe, according to the Journal of Justice volume 1 issue 9.

"It appears that he is a bit of a sex symbol to the armadillo community (which looks really weird now that I've actually written that out)."

  • Mighty Glacier: Until he uses Powerball.
  • Odd Friendship: He's friends with Blitzcrank. Averted with Twitch: the Journal states that he was interested in the rat as firsts of their own kind, but that they never hit it off.
  • The Quiet One: He has four lines, all one syllable each. As they're lines that he says in response to commands though, his words don't carry extra weight. The most anyone has heard him say is "Shut up".
  • Schmuck Bait: His ultimate kicks up an earthquake underneath him that deals periodic damage in an surprisingly large area, meaning a LOT of combined damage in a teamfight. Basically, a writ-large "hit me!" sign. See above for more on "hitting him".
  • Single Specimen Species: The only sentient specimen of his species, though he aspires to remedy this.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Minus the villainy. But considering his title, he needs spikes!
  • Troll: It's said he verbally rips into his opponents while taunting. Then again, who wouldn't get a bit mad after getting absolutely reamed by an armadillo?

Renekton the Butcher of the Sands

"My brother has become hollow. Full of rage, but empty."
—Nasus

Nasus' brother, he was a gatekeeper to a "Great Library" in his home where he judged who was worthy to receive Nasus' teachings. Over time, he was enraged by the evil many visitors would hold in their hearts, to the point where he relentlessly butchered them to quell his anger. He was saved from Nasus' righteous defense by a summoning spell, but was thrown into limbo. Resurfacing in Valoran, he is captured by the League when he interrupts a match with the intent to destroy Nasus.

Renekton is a fighter-type champion who uses the Fury resource system, gaining a small amount of Fury every time he attacks that decays when he's out of combat. His abilities normally have no cost and include a whirling blade attack with lifesteal, a combo of blows that stuns the victim, a slashing charge that can be repeated if it connects, and a self-empowering ultimate that boosts health, deals magic damage around himself and causes him to automatically generate Fury. When he has more than 50% Fury, each of his non-ultimate abilities will consume Fury to increase their effect. Renekton generates more 50% more Fury if he's below half health.

Renekton's alternate skins include Outback Renekton, Galactic Renekton and Bloodfury Renekton.

Associated tropes:

  • Ax Crazy
  • Badass Boast: "As I live, all will die!"
  • Berserk Button: Nasus. God help you if you're between the two.
  • Blood Knight
  • Cain and Abel: Renekton versus Nasus.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Was mentioned in Nasus' lore, and concept art of his design was already created before the game's release. A year later, he was released.
  • Crutch Character: Absolutely terrifying early and mid-game and is basically an unstoppable force of destruction at that time; once the lategame phase hits, he needs to be EXTREMELY fed to be able to do much beyond soak up damage due to his poor scaling.
  • Death Seeker: Longed to be free of the pain of his madness, only to have Nasus plucked away at the last moment.
  • Determinator: In his League Judgement, it takes the strongest turret in the game to stop Renekton from killing Nasus.
  • Did Not Do the Research: Riot actually did this to their own character lineup. In Renekton's initial preview they mentioned the large number of sibling couples already in the League (Garen and Lux, Katarina and Cassiopeia) and pointed out that Nasus and Renekton were the first to actually be antagonistic towards each other. Overlooking... hmm, who was it again...? Oh yeah! Kayle and Morgana!
  • Egyptian Mythology: His concept came from Sobek. By the time he reached release, the resemblance has slipped a fair bit (Sobek has a crocodile's head on a man's body; Renekton is simply a bipedal, anthropomorphic crocodile).
  • Face Heel Turn
  • Freudian Excuse: The sheer amount of wicked men who came to the library to gain knowledge for their own evil ends eventually drove him into a permanent rage.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Strongly averted in the Judgement, where Renekton interrupts a battle in progress.
    • The forested battleground is clearly Summoner's Rift, and Renekton falls to a "bright ray of light"... the fountain turret.
    • Miss Fortune, Alistar, and Rammus all make appearances.
    • Nasus is shown using Spirit Fire to farm minions, Flash to avoid an attack, and even dies... only to use Revive and respawn instantly.
  • Hooks and Crooks
  • Lightning Bruiser: Incredibly fast and powerful, but can take a pretty good beating once he has his ultimate and a bit of armor.
  • Missed the Call: When Renekton and Nasus were fighting, the League summoners tried to summon the bloodthirsty crocodile instead of the calm dog. Though, they still got him afterwards.
  • Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe Example. His Brother, Nasus, believed him to be beyond Redemption when Renekton went insane.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: His rage has driven him insane to the point where his only thoughts revolve around slaughtering everything he can get to.
  • Retcon: References to Renekton in Nasus' lore painted him as a treacherous tyrant who attempted to enslave their people. By the time Renekton himself was released, his backstory was changed to a good guy who served as the gatekeeper to Nasus' great library until perpetual contact with evil men drove him insane and sent him into a permanent killing frenzy.
  • The Reveal: Renekton was the one the League wanted to summon, but they got Nasus accidentally.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Originally labeled Renekhton in his concept art and in an earlier issue of the Journal of Justice.
  • Unstoppable Rage: It's essentially his default setting. Using lots of combat abilities makes his combat abilities stronger.
    • "Lavish brutality!"

Riven the Exile

"There is a place between war and murder in which our demons lurk."
—Excerpted from the poem, "Scarlet Shon-Xan"

Riven was a high-ranking soldier in the Noxian army, devoted to the uncompromising Noxian ideal of Social Darwinism. In recognition of her zeal, she was given a massive and powerful Runic Broadsword as heavy as a kite shield. However she was nearly killed during the Ionian invasion, when Zaunite chemical weaponry was used to kill both Ionian rebels and Noxian soldiers. Disillusioned with the ruthlessness of her army's actions, Riven broke both her weapon and her ties with the corrupt Noxian government and now wanders the earth seeking atonement.

Riven is a fighter-type champion whose moveset is explicitly designed around a system of combo attacks and cancels that can be combined in a variety of ways. Riven can damage and stun nearby foes, dash forward and shield herself from harm, and make use of a series of sword dashes in rapid succession, dealing a knockback on the third cast. Her ultimate recreates her shattered weapon, giving her more range, a power boost, and access to a long-range cone attack that deals extra damage to enemies who are missing health. Her passive stores up a charge every time she uses an ability, expending one charge with each standard attack to deal extra damage.

Riven's alternate skins include Crimson Elite Riven, Redeemed Riven and Battle Bunny Riven.

Associated Tropes

  • The Atoner: Exemplified with her Redeemed Riven skin.
  • Badass Normal: Like Garen and Katarina, she lacks a mana bar and is cooldown dependent.
  • BFS: Usually broken, but her ultimate reforges it temporarily to show it in its gigantic glory. Even in broken form, it's still quite large.
  • Broken Bird: Character concept, underscored by her first ability being called "Broken Wings" and by her dialogue.

"The blade reflects its owner".


Rumble the Mechanized Menace

"Ugh, it’s gonna take forever to scrape your face off my suit!"

A blue-furred, short-tempered yordle with a genius for invention, Rumble scorns Heimerdinger and his kind as sell-outs who give superior yordle technology to humans while being secretly laughed at. He joined the League in his home-made Mini-Mecha "Tristy" to prove the superiority of yordle genius over humanity.

Rumble is a mage-type champion adept at dealing and taking damage in short bursts at a time. His abilities are a a flamethrower which toasts the area in front of him for a few seconds, an short-lived shield of scrap which also gives him a speed boost, a Harpoon Gun which slows the enemy and can be fired a second time immediately if the first shot hits, and a volley of missiles which can be drawn in a line anywhere within ranged, burying themselves into the ground and slowing and hurting and slowing enemies who linger near them. None of Rumble's abilities cost mana; instead they all generate heat which dissipates over time. If he goes above 50 heat all his abilities are more effective, but if he exceeds 100 his mech overheats, temporarily preventing him from using his abilities and making his physical attacks deal extra damage for a few seconds until it cools down.

Rumble's alternate skins include Rumble in the Jungle and Bilgerat Rumble.

Associated tropes:

Ryze the Rogue Mage

"There is no doubt. Ryze is no longer a mage -- he has become a creature of magic."

A traveling mage and hermit who acquired forbidden and dangerous magic from around the world. Ryze is covered in magical tattoos that make his magic more potent, and carries a dangerous scroll on his back containing forbidden knowledge he seeks to protect from the world.

Ryze is a mage-type champion who can shoot a ball of highly destructive energy, encase enemies in a cage of runes, and shoot a ball of lightning that bonuses between enemies. Additionally, each of his abilities deal damage based on his maximum mana in addition to his ability power, allowing him to build tankier than most mages without losing much damage. His ultimate ability briefly supercharges himself, giving him movement speed and spell vamp and causing his spells to deal extra damage in an area around the target, and his passive reduces the cooldown of his spells whenever he casts one.

Ryze's alternate skins include Human Ryze, Tribal Ryze, Uncle Ryze, Triumphant Ryze, Professor Ryze and Zombie Ryze.

Associated tropes:

  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Has purple skin for some reason.
  • Button Mashing: His passive reduces his cooldowns by a one second every time he uses an ability. His ability Overload has a very short cooldown, and passively grants more cooldown reduction. With a cooldown-reducing item or two, this short-cooldown ability becomes even shorter and the other two become fairly short. And keeping in mind that as his cooldowns get shorter, his passive triggers more often; using Overload, something else, using Overload again, and something else, rinsing and repeating, allows him to cast his abilities over and over.
  • Captain Ersatz: Of Rhasta the Shadow Shaman.
  • Human Notepad: Easily the most obvious part of his character. He's tattooed himself with spells from head to toe. The term "living conduit of magic" comes up in fluff pertaining to him.
  • Humanoid Abomination: He's not evil, however.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: He stole the scroll on his back from his teacher (and implied lover) Lilith, claiming she would have brought ruin on the world if he hadn't. He's clearly bothered by the act and how his "betrayal" upset Lilith.
  • Insufferable Genius
  • Jerkass: He's kinda unpleasant in his lines.

"Unpleasant? I'll show you unpleasant!"

  • Power Glows
  • Power Tattoo: The key to his unknown magical abilities.
  • Pure Energy: He even has abilitites that scale off of his mana, rather than AP.
  • Squishy Wizard: Averted hard. Because he powers up his spells with Mana as well as AP, he can get away with building tons of items made for tanks. It is possible for Ryze to be the single toughest person on your entire team if you don't have a true tank.

Sejuani the Winter's Wrath

"Freljord provides for the few. For the others, 'peace' means only death."

Princess of one of the three great tribes of Freljord, Sejuani was prophesied to be the one to unite Freljord as one people. She trained her entire life, pushing her physical boundaries beyond that of any of her tribesmen, until she was finally ready to take the throne as queen, only to discover that her distant cousin and fellow princess Ashe had already taken the role. Sejuani joined the League with her massive boar mount to prove on the world stage that she is the rightful ruler.

Sejuani is a tank-type champion who uses excessive slows that are applied on her basic attacks and her charge attack. After she slows her enemies, she can summon a whirlwind around herself dealing extra damage to her slowed targets and deal burst damage to all her slowed targets at once while drastically increasing the slow effect. For her ultimate, she throws her weapon, which explodes when it hits an enemy, stunning them and every nearby enemy, and also applying her slow to all targets.

Sejuani's alternate skins include Sabretusk Sejuani and Darkrider Sejuani.

Associated tropes:

  • An Ice Person: Her attacks inflict frost on her opponents. She also summons an arctic storm.
  • Bare Your Midriff: And almost everything else.
  • Determinator: To an absolutely terrifying degree; her lore states outright that no one should have been able to survive the things she's powered through.
  • Epic Flail: Her weapon of choice, and boy is it huge.
  • Exposed to the Elements: She makes Ashe look like a nun. Explained in story as being part of her Training from Hell.
  • Foil: Another "relationship character", to Ashe this time. Dour and cruel to Ashe's confident and regal, unable to let go of a grudge in the face of Ashe's bids for unification and peace, short-ranged Ao E to Ashe's long-ranged strikes... and most importantly, a beefy, implacable tank to Ashe's fragile Ranged DPS.
  • Full Boar Action: She rides one into battle.
  • Glacier Waif: She's a pretty small woman; nonetheless, she wields a gigantic flail with ease and can take a massive beating.
  • Master of None: There's a degree of dissension in the community about this, but most players generally admit that Sejuani is pretty unexceptional at everything she does, with her only real standout move being her incredible ultimate.
  • Not So Different: Both Sejuani and Ashe have a stunning ultimate and more than one way to apply slows.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: Subsequently, she's considered a very low-tier champ as she can only really jungle and most other junglers do it better than her. She's most obviously overshadowed by Amumu, who has a similarly devastating ult for initiation but is tankier, more flexible and puts out more damage.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: She trained for 20 years in a frozen wasteland to be ready for her queenship.
  • Stripperiffic: She doesn't believe in making any concessions to the weakness of her own body, least of all bundling up because of the cold.
  • Throwing Your Weapon Always Works: With a 2-second stun to her target and a 1-second stun to other surrounding units, this seems to be the case.
  • Training from Hell: Tortured herself into her current physical condition through little other than force of will.

Shaco the Demon Jester

"Whatever you do, don't tell him you missed the punch line."

An entity from another world that takes the form of a murderous clown, he hires out his services as a mercenary, killing people with deadly toys and gadgets. Shaco is a fighter-type assassin champion who can deal extra damage when attacking foes from behind, teleport and become invisible, plant deadly jack-in-the-boxes that become invisible and cause enemies to briefly run around randomly when they're triggered, wield and throw poisoned daggers that slow enemies, and create a duplicate of himself to increase his damage and cover escapes.

Shaco's alternate skins include Mad Hatter Shaco, Royal Shaco, Nutcracko, Workshop Shaco and Asylum Shaco.

Associated tropes:

Shen the Eye of Twilight

"The Eye of Twilight sees not the despair of its victims, only the elegance of equilibrium."

Shen is the final member of the Kinkou ninja. Shen's willpower manifests from his intense childhood training, chosen to be the judge of those who threaten the balance of Valoran, unhindered by emotion. Shen is a tank-type champion whose attacks periodically deal extra damage based on his health, the ability refreshing quicker if Shen continues to attack. He can throw his sword at a target to grant health to any ally that attacks them for a short time, give himself a health shield that makes his passive strike charge up faster while it's active, and dash through targets to taunt them into attacking him. His ultimate puts a shield on an ally and then teleports to their side, regardless of where he is on the map.

Shen's alternate skins include Yellow Jacket Shen, Frozen Shen, Surgeon Shen and Blood Moon Shen.

Associated tropes:

"You're already dead. You just haven't caught up yet."

Shyvana the Half-Dragon

"I have the blood of dragons in my veins. I am fear to all who oppose me."

Old Lore: The offspring of an ascended dragon in human form and a human woman. After her mother died, Shyvana found herself alone and at the mercy of an angry mob until she was rescued by Jarvan IV, who she followed into the military and eventually into the League.

New Lore: The offspring of a dragon in human form and a human woman. Jarvan IV found her weeping over the corpse of her dragon father who was killed by another dragon. Jarvan and his men helped her avenge her father before returning to Demacia. Grateful for his kindness and with nowhere left to go, Shyvana followed him to the military and became one of the elite guard, where she reveled in battle with normal humans. When Jarvan joined the League, she was quick to follow.

Shyvana is a fighter-type champion with powerful abilties for fighting single targets. She can slash an enemy twice with her claws, briefly boost her movement speed while releasing a burning aura, and shoot an armor-melting fireball. Her passive gives a bonus to her abilities whenever she hits an enemy: a cooldown reduction to her double-slash, an increase to the duration of her burn, and bonus damage against targets of her fireball.

Shyvana's signature and most devastating mechanic is her ultimate ability: once the ability becomes available, she begins gaining Fury passively and every time she attacks. Once she gains 100 Fury, she can activate her ultimate to dash to a location in a fiery wave, transforming into a dragon. While in dragon form Shyvana's double-slash and fireball moves affect a wider area and her burning aura lingers on the ground while she walks. She remains in dragon form until her Fury bar runs out.

Shyvana's alternate skins include Boneclaw Shyvana, Ironscale Shyvana and Darkflame Shyvana.

Associated tropes:

Phreak: Shyvana is a melee fighter who scales particularly well with attack speed. Her playstyle revolves around sticking to a target and destroying its health bar. Also, she turns into a dragon.

  • Lightning Bruiser: Dragon's Descent gives Shyvana passive armor and magic resistance (a bonus that's doubled while she's in dragon form), and she was made to get into your team and knock the living hell out of you.
  • Not So Stoic: Mentioned on the last line of her background from her draconic heritage showing.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: About 15 feet long with a very bat-like in structure and small wings on the forearms. There were some fans who insisted that Shyvana was not a dragon, but a wyvern because of this.
  • Parental Abandonment: In her old lore, her (dragon) father didn't stick around to raise her, and the family she grew up with her mother were stated to have "perished in disaster". In her new lore, her mother goes completely unmentioned and her father is killed by another dragon for producing offspring with a human.
  • Playing with Fire: Even in normal form, she'll fling fire at you or surround herself in flames like it's her job. Which it kind of is, since she's a dragon.
  • Power Fist: She attacks with her hands, which have large gauntlets shaped like a dragon's head on them.
  • Stripperific: Her default skin shows quite a lot of flesh, as does her Boneclaw skin. Her Ironscale skin, however, largely covers her like a suit of armor would.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: She can turn into a dragon. However, doing so and staying in that form requires fury.
  • Wreathed in Flames: Her Burnout essentially does this, giving her a speed boost while active in addition to harming enemies close by.

Singed the Mad Chemist

"My deadliest dose shall bear my patron's name!"
—Singed, having just christened the Insanity Potion

Singed is a mad scientist and alchemist who was the student of Warwick until he was turned a werewolf. Now Singed is a mercenary who concocts all manner of poisons and toxins he unleashes in battle. Singed is a tank-type champion whose health increases as his mana increases. In battle, he can leave a trail of poison gas behind him, throw enemies behind with his shield, shoot out a pool of slowing glue, or chug insanity potion to increase his speed, defense, and ability power temporarily.

Singed's alternate skins include Riot Squad Singed, Hextech Singed, Surfer Singed and Mad Scientist Singed.

Associated tropes:

  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: His poison. It doesn't deal a lot of damage, but it's surprisingly deceiving and by the time you've realised you've underestimated it, it'll eat away three quarters of your health and leave you screwed since if there's one thing Singed can do really well, it's stopping you from escaping and exposing you to more poison.
  • Difficult but Awesome: While not as difficult as other champions, he tends to be underplayed because his damage isn't great, his skills aren't conventional and have a learning curve and his character often encourages a completely counter-intuitive game style and strategies compared to all other champions. A bad Singed will be slightly annoying, but fairly useless. However, a good Singed will absolutely wreck your day, being essentially unkillable while he constantly flings, slows and outruns you in his poison.
  • Eyes of Gold: Though pretty much averted with personality connotations since he's not supernatural, he probably got that way from messing with many potions.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: In the form of flinging the enemy behind his back, where they are happily met and befriended by Singed's team.
  • Genius Bruiser: An incredibly talented chemist who also happens to be a hulking juggernaut.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom
  • Hope Spot: Very good at stopping enemies from running away. Those fleeing often find themselves slowed and then thrown to their deaths.
  • Implacable Man: Once Singed gets going, you are NOT going to be able to stop him; attempting to do so means you'll get flung into a puddle of glue and some poison. And Singed? He'll just happily go about his normal business while you're choking on poison.
  • The Juggernaut: Once Singed has popped his ult, there is pretty much nothing you can do to stop him.
  • Laughing Mad: His /laugh soundbites stand out amongst the rest of his languid, casual dialogue for some reason.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: But the magical enchantments on it do...
  • Mad Scientist: When Singed refers to his "patron" in his quote above, he's not talking about Warwick...
  • Poisonous Person: More in terms of his arsenal than natural powers, although he is said to have a vastly improved physique due to all his chemical tests.
  • Professor Guinea Pig
  • Psycho for Hire
  • Psycho Serum: His most powerful concoction is literally called the Insanity Potion. Upon imbibing it, in addition to the many positive effects, he begins foaming at the mouth. The foam in question is green.
  • Schmuck Bait: Go on, chase Singed. He'll almost always be faster than you, but he'll turn back around eventually after you've obliviously dwindled away your health chasing him through his gas cloud and you're completely at his mercy.
  • Shield-Bash: And he uses it as a weapon anyway.
  • Shields Are Useless: He carries a shield around, but it does not offer any explicit defensive benefits.
  • Shout-Out:

Shaken, not stirred.

To shake or not to shake?

Mix, mix, swirl, mix...

  • Troll: Singed, like Shaco, seems to revolve entirely around pissing off the enemy team as much as humanly possible.
  • Wicked Cultured

Sion the Undead Champion

"For Noxus, death is a promotion."
—Pantheon

Sion was an insane berserker and warrior of Noxus who was captured and executed by Demacian forces. His remains were stolen and he was brought back to life as a zombie/golem, adding dark magic abilities to his already formidable physical strength, to fight once more for his city. Sion is a fighter-type champion who is either built as a high-DPS attacker or a burst mage. His passive randomly resists a percent of damage taken from attacks, and his abilities allow him to stun an enemy with dark energy, create an explosive shield made of ghosts, increase his damage at the cost of health, gain permanent health whenever he kills a unit, and and go into a life-siphoning frenzy while simultaneously healing nearby teammates.

Sion's alternate skins include Hextech Sion, Barbarian Sion, Lumberjack Sion and Warmonger Sion.

Associated tropes:

Sivir the Battle Mistress

"Time and time again, Sivir proves that she has earned the right to call herself The Battle Mistress."
—Jax

A deadly mercenary who served under the nation of Noxus until they became power-hungry and started invading peaceful neighboring nations. Since then, Sivir has gone rogue, abandoning her former home to become a wandering mercenary. Her former employer has attempted to kill her for defection, but none of the assassins sent after her has survived. Sivir uses a unique weapon called the crossblade to fight. It is essentially a cross between a boomerang, a chakram and a shuriken.

Sivir is a ranged DPS-type champion who moves faster after she attacks an enemy champion and can cover herself in a spell-absorbing shield, cause her next attack to rebound amongst clustered targets, throw her crossblade in a straight line, hitting all in its path twice, and give off an aura that makes everyone around her move and attack much faster.

Sivir's alternate skins include Warrior Princess Sivir, Spectacular Sivir, Huntress Sivir, Bandit Sivir and PAX Sivir.

Associated tropes:

  • Action Girl
  • Boomerang Comeback
  • Boring but Practical: Sivir is an excellent farmer, one of the best tower pushers in the game and great support for her team, but she only has a single offensive skill and the most dull ability scaling in the game... even her ultimate is nothing more than an AoE buff. A really GOOD AoE buff, but compared to other characters who have ultimates that can blow half the enemy team to hell it comes off as a mite underwhelming. She's also very good at Backdooring. The remake mitigated this somewhat by changing Richochet to an active ability that added extra damage and reduced its cooldown as you ranked it, rather than a toggle that did nothing but add an additional bounce. Additionally, her new passive gives her much more scope for poking and kiting. She's now far more interesting to play.
  • Breast Plate
  • Captain Ersatz: Of Xena, especially the warrior princess skin.
  • Crutch Character: To a lesser extent compared to some other champions as she is still a carry; however, her lower attack range makes it a bit harder to function in teamfights compared to other carries. Sivir does have very good damage potential late-game even among carries, but it will be fairly difficult to make good use of your spell shield and movement speed advantages with an enemy team barreling to you.
  • Defector From Decadence: Although this was less to do with her objecting to the morality of Noxus invading Ionia than her objecting to the strategy they used to do so. More like Defector From Incompetence, at least in her eyes.
  • Difficult but Awesome: Her "E" skill is a shield that nullifies any one skill used against her in the next three seconds, which can block a lot. Her Boomerang Blade ability does a lot of damage and can go from a very far range - but it's tough to hit against careful enemies without a set-up for it with a large mana cost to make missing hurt.
  • Glass Cannon
  • Improbable Weapon User: An even-shaped humga munga... thing. Except they call it a glaive, like Warcraft.
  • Power-Up Letdown: Subjective, her Ult is merely an AoE buff, but it's a dang good one at that!
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang
  • Private Military Contractors: Sivir's mercenary activities have made her one of the richest people in Valoran.
  • Rings of Death
  • Stripperific: One of the most prevalent examples. No wonder she has such little armour at level one. She's not even wearing underwear!

Skarner the Crystal Vanguard

"The humans have not yet learned to control their magic -- what once was Kalamanda is now a crystal scar on the history of this world."

Skarner is a giant crystal scorpion and a member of an ancient and powerful race of crystal beings. When his people went into hibernation underground to avoid the devastation of the Rune Wars, Skarner was among those who slept near the surface to ensure that, when the time came, the world would be ready for their return.

Skarner is a fighter-type champion who was designed to get onto enemies and stay on top of them until they died. His passive reduces all of his cooldowns whenever he attacks, a feature that works well with his attack- and movement-speed increasing shield. He can shoot a shockwave that marks enemies, causing his next attack to heal himself, hit nearby enemies with a slashing attack that deals extra damage and slows if it's used repeatedly, and his ultimate stabs an enemy with his tail and encases them in crystal as Skarner drags them around.

Skarner's alternate skins include Sandscourge Skarner and Earthrune Skarner.

Associated tropes:

  • All-Natural Gem Polish: Both Skarner and the mines he awakened in have enormous, shiny, faceted, polished and colorful crystals all about, regardless of how sensical that may be.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: His starting (and scaling) attack speed is pretty poor, and his ability power ratios aren't terribly high, but good luck dislodging him once he's started his work on somebody.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: His awakening onto the scene in Kalamanda bears more than a passing similarity to Maokai's explosive first appearance. His league judgment shows that his entire species origin is more similar than first apparent too.
  • Hypocritical Humor: One of his jokes.

"Eeaugh! Bugs are gross! Ugh!"

  • Lightning Bruiser: EXTREMELY durable, but also terrifyingly fast and nearly impossible to flee from.
  • Magikarp Power: Terrible early game; once he gets a Sheen, he instantly jumps from "dead weight to his team" to "oh crap guys please don't feed Skarner if you want to win." A fed Skarner is NOT pleasant to deal with.
  • Pokémon-Speak: As a shoutout to his resemblance to a Pokemon, when Skarner idles in brush, he'll occasionally randomly trigger an Easter Egg voice clip of Skarner going "Skar! Skar! Skarner!".
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: His race's description says it right there: "As vicious as they are wise."
  • Scary Scorpions: Averted. He's ruthless, but not particularly more so then the average Proud Warrior Race Guy. Really, he just wants to survive long enough to see his friends and family awake.
  • Sealed Badass in a Can: Self-sealed, but otherwise fits.
  • Silicon-Based Life: While it's possible he's not entirely crystalline (his backstory suggests as much), what we see is a giant rock-and-crystal arthropod.
  • Spam Attack: See Death of a Thousand Cuts above: attacking reduces his ability cooldowns. Using his abilities enables him to stay close to his target and continue attacking. Further, his baseline attack damage is already very strong, encouraging him to focus on improving his attack speed.
  • Stealth Pun: Where have we seen a scorpion with the ability to drag his opponents towards him before?
  • Taken for Granite: His ultimate, Impale, does this. Whoever you hit is trapped as an crystalline block until the effect wears off, during which time Skarner can pretty much have his way with you (no, not necessarily that way).
  • Tractor Beam: ...but this way. Into your team, of course.

Sona the Maven of the Strings

"Her melody moves the soul, her silence sunders the body."
—Jericho Swain, after attending her concert

As a baby, Sona was found on the doorstep of an orphanage along with an unusual musical instrument. As she got older, it was discovered that she was mysteriously unable to produce any words or any sounds at all. She was eventually adopted by a wealthy woman who seemed to know something about the instrument's history and learned to play songs that touched all people who heard them. She's also Runeterra's biggest pop star.

Sona is a support-type champion whose three main abilities create auras to buff her and any allies in the area: one shoots magic missiles and increases offensive power, one heals allies and gives greater defenses, and one increases movespeed. Her passive charges her next attack after casting three spells, dealing bonus damage with a secondary effect depending on which aura she has active, either increasing the bonus damage, reducing the target's damage for a few seconds, or slowing them. Her ultimate is a wave of sound that causes targets to dance uncontrollably, stunning briefly.

Sona's alternate skins include Muse Sona, Pentakill Sona, Silent Night Sona and Guqin Sona.

Associated tropes:

  • Boring but Practical: Is considered to be the absolutely easiest character to play in the game by many. Her difficulty bar used to make an near opposite statement which was a popular way to insult the developers. Now though, she is the easiest champion in the whole game according to developers themselves.
    • Lampshaded by Riot in a set of April Fool's Day patch notes:

Sona: Now requires skill to play.

    • Her passive does add a bit of complexity: after every third spell, her next physical attack does extra damage and applies a debuff based on which aura she's currently running. But this is just a matter of being careful where you click, and it is completely possible to ignore it.
  • Brown Note
  • Clingy MacGuffin: Sona's etwahl was sold numerous times during her stay at the orphanage. It always found some way to return to her.
  • Conveniently an Orphan
  • Cute Bruiser: It is possible to build Sona as a very good damage dealer without losing too much in way of her support power. While perhaps unlikely to take down a strong character alone, this can make her exceptionally dangerous in team battles where she can be healing, buffing and attacking at the same time.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: While she isn't a dedicated damage dealer, her Hymn of Valor and its accompanying Power Chord do a surprising amount of damage and can be very effective for harassing opponents in lane.
  • Greek Mythology: Muse Sona.
  • Idol Singer
  • Impossibly Low Neckline: Woot! The fact that she was released directly after Miss Fortune caused something of an backlash on the forums about the sheer amount of bewbs being added to the game.
  • Jack of All Trades: Among the support characters. Instead of acting as a dedicated healer like Soraka or a dedicated crowd control machine like Alistar or Taric, her abilities bring a little bit of everything to the table.
  • Loophole Abuse: Crowd Control reduction doesn't work on Sona's ult, which is an incredibly potent disable. That's because it isn't technically a stun, suppress, or snare- it's forced dancing. CC reduction and tenacity don't cover that.
  • Magic Idol Singer: Though she's mute, and rather uncharacteristically plays metal music (not actually called that, of course) with Mordekaiser, Yorick and Karthus.
  • Magic Music
  • Musical Assassin
  • Odd Friendship: She's in a band with Mordekaiser, Yorick and Karthus.
  • Orphan's Plot Trinket: Her etwahl.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Expect to run into this trope. Her "Playing against" tips explicitly suggest killing her first in a team fight because of her healing.
  • Shout-Out: It's generally accepted that her standard skin was inspired by Hatsune Miku.
  • Spam Attack: The buffs don't last long, but still longer than the cooldown of the spells that imbue them. If you just keep hitting Q, W and E, you can keep Sona and her allies in a permanent state of powered-up (depletion of Mana Meter notwithstanding).
  • The Speechless:
    • Although she talks telepathically to her summoner (i.e. you).

"Only you can hear me summoner, what masterpiece shall we play today?"

Soraka the Starchild

"Though having fallen from grace, Soraka is nonetheless determined to once again be one with the stars."

Old Lore: A high priestess of Ionia, she was responsible for the rulership of the Ionians as it's source of guidance. When the Rune Wars came and ravaged the entire land with the Altairians invading Ionia. Soraka seeked the Institute of War's intervention in exchange for joining the League as Ionia's representive, commanding the entire cosmos to her aid.

New Lore: A lady of Ionia who learned to harness the power of the stars, tapping into the magic of the cosmos itself. Unfortunately, she lost most of her powers when, filled with rage at Warwick for slaughtering her people with his chemical weapons, she cursed him to his current wolfman form. Now she hopes that by doing her part for Ionia in the League she will regain the favor of the stars and return to her former glory.

Soraka is a support-type champion with a heavy emphasis on healing and sustaining her teammates. Her passive gives a small amount of magic resistance to all nearby allies. She can: repeatedly call down falling stars to hit every enemy in the area, shredding their magic resistance; heal allies while also giving them a massive armor buff; restore mana to an ally or damage and silence an enemy; and release a massive heal to everyone on her team, regardless of where they are on the map.

Soraka's alternate skins include Dryad Soraka and Divine Soraka.

Associated tropes:

  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: And then descend back down again.
  • Cherry Tapping: Starcall will do at best moderate damage, but the sheer frequency at which it can be cast combined with the magic resistance shred means that it can get pretty damaging if she continues to spam it.
  • Combat Medic: She deals considerable damage if built properly, and is much support-oriented now, using Starcall to weaken enemies and Astral Blessing to turn allies Immune to Bullets for five seconds.
  • Implacable Man: Most heroes have to retreat for healing by the time they've got about 1000 Gold, sometimes 500. With luck and care, Soraka can stay on-station into the 3,000s. Some players will only head back to base because they've got so much gold that they might as well spend it.
  • Improbable Weapon User: She appears to conjure magical bolts from a golden thing-that-resembles-a-scythe. The first part probably makes it more justifiable. The golden thing-that-resembles-a-scythe is a very large, ornate sickle. A popular joke is to refer to her sickle as the Banana Launcher.
  • The Medic: The most heal- and sustain-focused support champion in the game (and if you think she's bad now, be aware that there have already been a number of nerfs to her, like removing her ability to restore her own MP and doubling the cooldown of her heal).
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Fell from grace to punish Warwick for his atrocities in the Noxus/Ionia war. She turned him into a vicious, deadly werewolf and he likes it that way.
  • Palette Swap: Once she ascended, her white skin and blue hair traded colors.
  • Plant Person: Dryad Soraka, which is based on the titular wood nymphs from Ancient Greek mythology.
  • Purple Eyes: Well, she was practically a goddess at one point anyway.
  • Rapunzel Hair: In a ponytail going down below her knees.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Especially vulnerable to this. The second Soraka steps into a lane, she'll more than likely be targeted first to keep her from saving the carry.
  • Sideboob
  • Squishy Wizard
  • Stripperiffic: It's hard to tell with her basic skin because of her bluish-purple skin, but Soraka is half-naked. Her outfit is basically a narrow poncho with a belt and exposes her entire side. It's far more obvious with her Dryad skin. And the Chinese art.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Her standard skin.
  • White Magician Girl: The straightest example in the game.
  • You Gotta Have Green Hair: Her alternate skin. Apparently, her original form (Divine skin) had blue hair.

Swain the Master Tactician

"If you haven't yet lost the ability to ask, you may not yet ask for relief."

Jericho Swain is a mage and Grand General of the Noxian army, with no recorded past. He is followed by a strange, demonic raven at all times. His brilliance as a tactician is matched only by the mystery that surrounds both him and his "pet".

Swain is a mage-type champion who can have his bird fire a slowing beam, snare enemies in an area with magical talons, curse enemies to take additional damage from himself, and assume the form of a giant, six-eyed demon-raven to send his raven pets to nearby enemies, damaging them and healing Swain for a portion of the damage done. His passive restores some of his mana whenever he kills an enemy unit.

Swain's alternate skins include Northern Front Swain, Bilgewater Swain and Tyrant Swain.

Associated tropes:

"You're SERIOUSLY asking a GIANT DEMON BIRD for a JOKE?"
"Seriously? AGAIN? Just DROP IT!"
"Think logically for one sec-CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW CAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAW"

  • The Dog Was the Mastermind: Some speculate that the raven may be the one controlling him.
  • Eyepatch of Power: His Bilgewater Swain skin.
  • Feathered Fiend
  • Feel No Pain: His earliest appearance in any records was when he limped into an infirmary with a compound fracture in his leg. He gave no sign of pain, even as the bone was snapped back into place. He requested a spare crutch and hobbled away. The bird never left his shoulder.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: There isn't much known about Swain except for his meteoric rise through the Noxian ranks. No one knows where he came from, how he got into the army, or what the raven on his shoulder really is.
    • Reached its zenith as of the final Journal of Justice entry, which reports that Swain has officially become the Grand General of Noxus, the highest position in the state.
  • Handicapped Badass: He has a very noticeable limp from a severe leg injury from his youth. Despite Noxus' views about disabled people, he still managed to rise to Grand General rank.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Possibly.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Is really shaping up to be one of these.
  • Mighty Glacier: Slow and has nothing to aid his mobility, but can fry anything he encounters with his combo and has survivability sufficient to allow him to walk right into a mob and not have to worry too much about making it out alive.
  • Obfuscating Disability: Joked about in his dance, in which he carefully looks around him, then lets go of his cane and dances wildly.
  • Shout-Out: His form while using his ultimate is awfully reminiscent of a Lord of Change. His Tyrant skin makes this even more obvious.
  • Squishy Wizard: Averted. Extremely bulky for a mage; while not as ridiculous as Morgana, he can still take a massive beating with ease and keep on fighting. His ult also helps healing him.
  • The Starscream: Seems to be working with LeBlanc to assume control of Noxus. He's finally achieved that as of the latest Journal of Justice entry, though to what ends and at who's cost are yet unknown.
  • Stop Poking Me: While not quite clicking, a similar effect can be noted above from The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Swain does not take well to you repeatedly asking a giant demon bird to tell a joke.
  • Story and Gameplay Segregation: While in the backstory, he's almost entirely responsible for every political upheaval or underhanded Noxian ploy that wasn't caused by LeBlanc, ingame, his being a Master Tactician is not reflected in any of his abilities, which are fairly standard mage spells, although he is one of the most combo reliant mages alongside LeBlanc and Veigar, and his abilities are geared towards making fights more one-sided.
  • The Strategist
  1. ↑ Despite the ability's wording, Spear Shot does not truly critically strike and does not benefit from critical strike damage.
  2. ↑ To clarify, the maximum range for abilities tends to be a few hundred over 1000. The few abilities that outstrip the range of Pantheon's ultimate are magical in nature or are projectiles flying, no others being powered by two legs. The 5500 range is also around 25% of the distance of the opposite corners of the Summoner's Rift map.
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