Continuing the trend of reworking older, outdated champions, Riot just announced their latest undertaking. We’ve known that both Kayle and Morgana were in the rework pipeline, but details were scarce — until now. This isn’t just a visual touch-up either seeing how Kayle is undergoing a few key changes. While it’s still too early to know for sure, these changes should push Kayle into the spotlight, and perhaps even make her into a competitive mainstay. So, without any further ado, let’s start our Kayle champion update breakdown!

Ability Breakdown

Passive:“Divine Ascent”

Kayle ascends through three distinctive forms before reaching her ultimate final state. The first form is Zealous (starts from level 1), and it grants Kayle’s attacks stacking attack speed. After she reaches the maximum number of stacks, she becomes Exalted and gains movement speed toward nearby opponents.

Her second form is Aflame (starts with level 6). When Kayle becomes Exalted, her attacks will launch flaming waves in front of her that deal bonus magic damage.

Her third form, Arisen (level 11), allows Kayle to evolve into a ranged champion, whereas her final form, Transcendent (reached at level 16), makes her permanently Exalted, giving her permanent bonuses and true damage.

In other words, the longer she fights, the stronger she’ll become. And even if she doesn’t fight that often, she will reach her final (and strongest) form eventually by leveling up.

Her final form sounds a bit overpowered, seeing how she’ll be able to dish out true damage from a considerable distance. Regardless, this aspect of her kit can be easily fine-tuned through micro changes every couple of weeks.

Q: “Radiant Blast“

Kayle shoots a flaming blade in a direction, shredding armor and magic resistance and noticeably slowing the target. The attack also explodes and affects nearby enemies. This is fairly similar to her previous Q, although it’s a fair bit powerful. The fact that it’ll now have a wind-up makes it a bit harder to land, but if you do manage to hit a target, you’ll be able to dish out a ton of damage in a short period of time.

W: “Celestial Blessing“

Kayle heals herself and an ally, granting both a noticeable burst of movement speed. Her W remained the same, and that’s a good thing, although it’s important to highlight that the movement speed increase seems much more potent.

E: “Starfire Spellblade”

Kayle’s E has two components, a passive and an active. The passive one grants Kayle’s basic attacks bonus damage, and it’ll scale with both ability power and attack damage. The active component makes Kayle’s next basic attack a ranged one, and it deals a portion of your target’s missing health as magic damage. After you reach Aflame (at level six), this attack becomes AoE (Area of Effect).

R: “Divine Judgement“

Kayle’s staple ultimate remained unchanged. She can grant an ally (or herself) absolute invulnerability for a couple of seconds. This time around though, swords will fall from the sky around the invulnerable target and dish out a noticeable amount of damage to any enemy in the area.

Her ultimate didn’t get overhauled, which is great seeing how it’s integral to Kayle’s identity. It did, however, become a more dangerous tool seeing how it’ll now deal damage as well.

Overall, the changes to Kayle are layered and nuanced. She was updated, but her core identity remains the same.

Playing as Kayle

Kayle, by herself, isn’t exactly a powerhouse, at least not in the beginning. You should always focus on farming up, and perhaps most importantly, reaching your ultimate form. The further the game goes, the stronger you’ll become. It doesn’t matter if you don’t start off on the right foot because sooner or later, you’ll be able to dish out tons of damage, especially when those hectic five-on-five team fights break out. If your opponents clump up, you’ll be able to damage multiple targets at once. And because you’re building both AP and AD, you’ll eventually become a force to be reckoned with.

You can catch up to your opponents; you can heal yourself and an ally, but also protect one target using your ultimate. You bring a ton of utility but also a deceptively large amount of damage that’s hard to itemize against.

Rune Choices & Itemization

While it’s still a bit too early to know for sure, it seems like Kayle’s basic rune choices and itemization aren’t getting changed. She will still benefit from an attack speed-oriented hybrid build, meaning you’ll still go for Nashor’s Tooth, Guinsoo’s Rageblade, Runaan’s Hurricane, and something like Rabadon’s Deathcap or Morellonomicon. Obviously, it’s all match-up and game-dependent, but things shouldn’t change much, if at all.

As for runes, Precision seems like the best and most logical choice for her primary tree, with Lethal Tempo and Press the Attack being the most optimal choices, along with Triumph (for additional healing in big, prolonged fights), Legend: Alacrity for bonus permanent attack speed, and Coup de Grace for additional damage to enemies that are low on health.

Her secondary tree will probably remain Sorcery, with Manaflow Band and Transcendence giving her all she needs throughout the game — bonus mana as well as cooldown reduction.

Overall, if you were a Kayle main, you won’t notice that big of a difference. You’ll have to adapt a bit in the laning phase as well as team fights, but you should be noticeably stronger and more impactful, perhaps even without an immense lead.

Along with the slight ability revamp, Riot released a bunch of new updated splash art, and they’re absolutely stunning. You can check them out by clicking here.

Finally, if you’re a fan of the written word and League of Legends lore, you can check out Kayle’s updated biography. She is currently up for testing on the Public Beta Environment (PBE), and she’ll be hitting live servers in a matter of weeks.