Old Graves return to League Classic demonstrates LoL’s harshest truth: Riot deletes champs all the time
Riot Games re-added the old, pre-rework version of Champion Graves to the League of Legends Classic this week (Wednesday, Sep. 23), and the addition revealed just how much we’re missing from the modern game.
Added to the game in a Bilgewater update that also added the original version of Fizz, Nami, and Nautilus, the OG Graves returned with kit no longer Jungler-fied and instead in its original, glorious ADC form.
Old Graves is back and it made me realise how much I missed this Champion
If you’ve only ever known modern Graves, the original kit is pretty simple: A triangle shaped AOE made of three separate projectiles, a dash which increased attack speed at the conclusion, a smoke screen which applied the blind effect, and then his ultimate, Collateral Damage, that shoots a projectile at a respectable range.
And perhaps crucially, his passive, which gives scaling bonus Magic Resist/Armor the longer you've been dealing damage, is the key to understanding what the playstyle of this champion is and was: An ADC who loves long protracted fights. A skirmishing brawler of a marksman that likes getting in close and crushing opponents. Snowbally, powerful early, sometimes weaker late.
To be clear, I loved this champ. This was my ADC of choice in ranked and just messing around with friends. It was something I picked mid if we had enough magic damage. Perhaps the best examples of Graves at his peak is how imaqtpie played him in the NA LCS. Or in the unforgettable compilations by dodgedlol.
This video alone really shows just how fun this champion could be. The dashes, the combos, it feels like everything Riot wanted from League of Legends. But for whatever reason, Riot Games decided ‘didn’t have a place.’ Riot sometimes makes these decisions. Some grand idea. And likely it was more tied to the fact that Graves was now being compared to Lucian, released in 2013, as a worse version of that Champion. His ult, too similar to Tristana but without the utility.
So in 2015, lumped in with the marksman update, Graves got reworked. And while the company has never deleted a Champion wholesale, the Graves rework was as close to a deletion as you could get. And new Graves, frankly, is crap. The New Coke of MOBAs.
This new Graves has really never had a place. Notionally a jungler, maybe a top laner, definitely not an ADC. And while older marksmen like Lucian, Tristana, Caitlyn have a place in the meta, this new Graves doesn’t.
There’s been other reworks and massacres of characters in other games (RIP Old Techies in Dota 2). But the Graves one is such a remarkable testament to the nearsightedness and unwillingness to admit a mistake that Riot Games often has.
In 2015 perhaps it made sense to rework Graves, because his lacked his own distinct gameplay identity versus another hero. But in 2026 in the world of Fearless Draft and 200 Champion mark visible on the horizon, it’s clear it was an absolute travesty to delete this champ, something League of Legends Classic is showcasing in vivid detail.
There's been some catharsis in League Classic, with all its weird anachronisms. For one its the first real fun I've had with the game for years. But it's also shown me how much we've lost. How much of the game just doesn't exist anymore, and how its been chopped back in the name of progress and game feel. And yet now so much of the game feels even worse. Sion, Yorick, Poppy, Karma, Graves, all these versions from the past gone, and with really nothing good replacing them.
Bring back Old Graves to regular LoL. Hell, rename this current Graves to something else, and retcon the lore to say that someone was impersonating him. And give him his cigar back while you’re at it, there’s no one who thinks anything about League of Legends is cool, so it can’t hurt.
