Kayle’s rework is a huge success for Riot

Kayle and Morgana are the two newest reworked champions in League of Legends. The twins were never really bad before—both had decent winrates and were playable in multiple roles. But they were uninspiring, Kayle in particular, since not many people played her despite her solid numbers and relatively simple playstyle.

But since the reworks have dropped, it’s been a different story. According to League stats site Champion.gg, Kayle is the best top lane champion in the game right now with a playrate just under seven percent and a winrate over 51 percent. That makes her rework one of the most successful in recent memory.

Riot has been on a tear with these reworks over the last 12 months. Aatrox and Akali are finally interesting, and even Nunu & Willump fulfill their fantasy of a happy-go-lucky jungle duo that just want to roll snowballs around.

But most of those champions had a decent player base before their reworks. Sure, Nunu was useless, but he was always good for some memes. Aatrox got a big stat buff before his rework that made him into an auto-attacking wrecking ball—and he’s still that today.

But despite a decent subreddit community, people just didn’t seem to like Kayle. She was viable in a number of roles and maintained a winrate above 50 percent forever—last season, she was one of the most overpowered top laners in solo queue. And yet she was ignored by the vast majority of the player base.

The reason? She was boring. Her kit consisted of simple point-and-click abilities with low strategic value. She took the same runes every game, with Press the Attack and Transcendence being required. She was the definition of a stat-check champion.

Now, Kayle is being played in all sorts of different ways. It helps that Riot got her release numbers right—they’re a tad strong, but that was necessary to nip any complaints about her weak early game in the bud.

Players are trying all sorts of different rune setups, like Arcane Comet for poke, Fleet Footwork for sustain, or Kleptomancy for gold generation. And it’s not just runes. People are still using the old Nashor’s Tooth into Guinsoo’s Rageblade build—even after Riot removed Rageblade from her recommended items, players kept doing it until Riot put it back in. But there are AD builds out there now built around Blade of the Ruined King. In the AP tree, almost every item is being tested, from Wit’s End to Hextech Gunblade to Lich Bane.

There are almost daily build threads posted to the Kayle Mains subreddit now, and the variety of items and runes being tested is insane. And despite the constant experimentation from both new and old Kayle players, she’s performing at a pretty high rate in ranked games. Riot’s design team has to feel good that they created a champion that has both beginner and expert Kayle players enthused about her.

Last week, popular League streamer Michael “imaqtpie” Santana even took an entire day off from spamming ADCs in the bot lane to test Kayle. That was after an earlier stream of his focused on bot lane Kayle ADC. His most recent innovation was an AP build focusing on rushing Luden’s Echo. It produced some pretty fun moments, like this clip where he went from 1/5 to getting a Pentakill:

Even the most-criticized element of the Kayle rework—lackluster updates to her skins—are slowly being worked on. Aether Wing Kayle has some sexy updates on the PBE and Inquisitor Kayle looks absolutely amazing. Riot took some of the community criticism of legacy Kayle skins to heart and is working on some pretty amazing stuff.

All in all, Riot took an uninspiring champion that nobody wanted to play despite solid stats, and made it into the latest rage. Over time, some of the current enthusiasm for Kayle will wane, and Riot does have some tweaks incoming that will adjust her power level. But given where she was before, this has to be one of Riot’s most successful reworks in recent memory.