What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Alpha and Beta were pretty crazy times in terms of power level for champions because
most of their numbers were based off DOTA.
Add summoner spells into the mix and you’ve got a formula for an absolute bloodbath, and
that’s kinda what Alpha and Beta were.
A lot of this was down to overtuned numbers but a good quarter or so of champions were
insanely strong just because of broken mechanics alone, and they became really notorious in
this time period.
There always has to be someone at the top though, so we’ve compared the different
alpha & beta versions of each champion to bring you the Top 10 Most Powerful Champions
During Beta.
Keep in mind that we’re rating how powerful champions are during only the known patches
of beta and alpha, and we’re not including any champions that were OP because they were
bugged.
Starting out at Number 10 is Evelynn.
Remember how we made that video on visual counterplay that Riot has been adding into
the game lately?
Well back in the day that wasn’t really a thing.
If Rengar was released back then, he probably wouldn’t have the little exclamation mark
that kindly tells you that you’re about to die, and it was no different from Evelynn.
She had no indicator to let you know she was nearby, and unlike Rengar her stealth was
infinite.
If that wasn’t powerful enough alone, when attacking from stealth she had a 2 second
targeted stun.
So you’re just walking around, minding your own business, and then you’re locked down
for 2 seconds and destroyed.
It’s not really something we can call ‘fair gameplay’ but at least Riot learned from
these kinds of mistakes.
Coming in at Number 9 is the donger himself.
Heimerdinger is an interesting one because he has honestly not really been changed that
much since his release, with the exception of tweaks to his numbers.
Still, there were a couple of differences between his current and former self that made
him worthy of a spot on our list.
Mostly the fact that ar Rank 3, he could spawn up to 6 turrets at once.
That’s right, you thought 3 turret Heimerdinger was hard to dive, well imagine doubling that.
On top of that, his E would deal damage to towers, letting him burst them down pretty
quickly, especially with his turrets hammering away.
Don’t forget his passive gives him and his turrets health regeneration, so with that
many turrets out all gaining health, it’s really hard to kill them, especially for a
tower that can only hit one at a time.
It basically made Heimerdinger the king of siege, able to set up a fortress of cannons
and just destroy anything nearby.
Zilean is next up, and he was released during the League of Legends Closed Beta with an
incredibly broken Ultimate.
The way it works right now is that you put a protective rune on an ally, and if they
die within 5 seconds they are resurrected.
Now imagine if that duration was extended to 90 seconds, and you have Zilean’s Ultimate
at Rank 3 back in the day.
A full minute and a half of protection from death is pretty insane to think about and
basically let him give Guardian Angels to allies, without the resistances.
This wasn’t the only broken part of his kit tough, his E also originally dealt damage
to enemies, and his Q had a 1.1 AP ratio, meaning he gained a crazy amount of damage
on his Q when building full AP.
Essentially he was pretty much more powerful in every way - more damage, more damaging
abilities, and even more lifesaving power.
Of course Zilean’s Ultimate Chronoshift is still strong when timed properly, but back
then you actually use it and almost have it ready again before that buff would expire.
Pretty insane!
Number 7 is Tryndamere, pretty suited because one of the parts of his powerful kit in the
old days was his 7 second ultimate duration.
That’s a long amount of time to be unkillable, and it turned Tryndamere into a huge pain
to deal with.
That alone wouldn’t really make him broken though, but unlike some of the other champions
on our list, Tryndamere was so strong because of quite a lot of minor things that added
up together.
His passive for example gave him bonus crit damage, which is pretty insane if you think
about it.
Crits already do double damage, so at 100% crit Tryndamere would be able to do even more
than double damage with his melee attacks.
But he’d have to get that 100% crit and have a lot of attack speed first, right?
No problem, his Q gave attack speed and critical strike chance, stacking up to 40% critical
hit chance and 80% attack speed.
If that wasn’t insane enough, you could also activate the Q to heal him based on the
number of stacks, and it could heal for close to 800 with base values alone.
This was absolutely insane and meant Tryndamere was one of the most broken duellists in the
history of the game, able to deal both insane damage while healing crazy amounts.
He didn’t even have to worry about stacking up his Q passive though, because using his
Ultimate stacked his Q almost instantly, basically giving you a League of Legends God Mode.
Despite all that he’s only at Number 7, just to set the bar a little and give you
guys an idea of what we’re dealing with.
Ryze is a champion we talked about pretty recently because of his new rework, so it’s
kinda cool to be able to go back and reflect on how he used to be.
His Alpha version was probably his most powerful form ever, mostly because of his Ultimate.
At the time, his Ultimate was Spell Flux, the ability that later became his E. It had
one major difference though - it did an absolutely INSANE amount of base damage, and it could
bounce between targets and Ryze.
This meant his Ultimate alone would just instagib isolated targets with almost no way to counterplay.
The rest of his kit was no joke either though, his W was Mana Leech/Arcane Master which gave
him bonus damage and mana drain on basic attacks, which gave him a ton of power outside of spell
casts.
His passive at the time also gave him a bunch of ability power when he was at low health,
so basically if you ever encountered Alpha Ryze by yourself, you had almost no chance
to survive, and dealing damage to him would just make him kill you even faster.
Breaking into our Top 5 we have Sion, and his kit should be pretty familiar to any of
you that played him pre-rework.
His Q was cryptic gaze, a targeted stun that dealt magic damage.
This was frustrating to deal with before his rework, but in Alpha it was even worse.
The stun lasted 2.2 seconds at first, and it was a part of what make Sion such a terrifying
AP Bruiser to have to play against.
His W was also a huge part of this - along with high base damage it had a 200% AP Ratio.
Let me put that into perspective, at level 1 with a Doran’s Ring that would be like
15 damage, alongside the fact that it also gave him a massive shield.
Level 2 Sion was probably the strongest out of any champion in the history of the game
because of these two abilities in Alpha, and he didn’t drop off at all - he just kept
scaling up.
Sion just built tanky AP items along with cooldown reduction and absolutely crushed
everyone with his constant stun and burst damage.
At Number 4 we have Jax, probably one that most of you expected to see in here if you
watched our History of Jax video.
The core of Jax back in Alpha and Beta was using the dodge mechanic to avoid as much
damage as possible.
Jax got dodge stats really easily, and even could even reach 100% dodge, letting him avoid
every auto attack thrown at him along with shots from turrets, as these were also dodgeable
at the time.
His Empower was an AoE back then, so he could hit multiple enemies while avoiding all their
attacks, and it could even crit and proc on-hit effects so Jax could put out a stupid amount
of damage.
The big focus has always been on scaling for Jax, and his passive at the time gave him
the best scaling in the game, giving him bonus stats from item purchases.
He received more value out of every item than anyone else, could mitigate tons of damage
through dodge, and could deal an insane amount of damage in an AoE.
It made for a pretty damn broken champion, and one of the most dominant picks in the
history of the game.
Charging into our Number 3 spot today is Master Yi.
During Alpha and part of Closed Beta, Master Yi’s Ultimate was his Q, Alpha strike.
It was pretty much just a flat out upgraded version, able to hit up to 10 targets and
deal a ridiculous amount of damage.
It dealt no base damage, but it had 300% AD Scaling and it could still critically strike!
To put that into perspective, with 400 AD that would be 1200 damage that could then
critically strike to deal double damage, to up to 10 enemies, INSTANTLY.
He could literally one shot multiple targets without taking a scratch in the late game.
If that wasn’t enough to earn his position in our list alone, his Q was his current Ultimate
Highlander, only it could also cleanse snares as well as making him immune to slows.
We’re not quite finished though, his E was also pretty busted at the time.
Currently it gives him bonus damage, but back then it was a toggle that gave him both bonus
damage and attack speed.
It did drain his mana as he attacked, but you’d basically never turn this ability
off and everyone would be dead long before you’d run out of mana.
Our Number 2 pick is Kassadin, who is kinda like Tryndamere in that every part of his
kit was way stronger than it is now.
A lot of this came down to his damage, both his AP Ratios and base damages were insanely
high, so he could delete people way earlier in the game than he can now.
His Q had the trademark silence back then, making it really favorable for trading with
mages, and his Ultimate had a super short cooldown along with 900 range.
He was pretty much impossible to outrun and could kill anyone as long as he had the mana
available.
If you managed to survive long enough to stay alive and run him low on mana though, he had
a secret weapon - his W, Nether Blade, used to steal mana when it hit you.
Basically the biggest weakness of his kit was his mana pool, and he could just Riftwalk
up to you and drain your mana to use for himself anyway.
He gained twice as much mana as what he drained from an enemy, so timing his W properly meant
you would pretty much never run dry.
He was a little more attack speed based back them, as his passive Void Stone caused him
to take reduced damage from abilities and turn that damage into bonus attack speed,
but this pretty much just meant he could steal more and more mana from you to keep himself
topped up.
Combine that with his disgusting AP ratios and you’ve got one ridiculously strong champion.
And finally our Number 1 pick for today, Twisted Fate.
I can pretty much sum this up in one word - his current Ultimate was a basic ability.
His E was his trademark point and click teleport, and at rank 5 he could use it every 30 seconds.
There was literally no escape from Twisted Fate, no safe place to hide.
His Ultimate at the time was a global slow that revealed everyone on the map, and it
turned that E into an instant cast.
So if he knew where you were, he could channel a teleport over.
If he didn’t know, then he’d pop his Ultimate and then appear right next to you instantly.
Twisted Fate has been a snowball champion since he was created, but back then it was
just totally unfair to play against.
Every 30 seconds you would be dealing with a disadvantage because you’d be fighting
against your lane opponents and then TF would show up.
If that wasn’t bad enough already, his Gold Card wasn’t a single target stun - it was
an AoE.
He’d pop his global slow to stop your escape and reveal your team’s position, instantly
teleport next to you and then stun you all with his gold card.
Probably the most absurdly powerful version of a champion in the history of the game,
but honestly it’s really impressive Riot managed to find a way to balance this kit
without hurting Twisted Fate’s identity as a champion.
That just about wraps up our Top 10 Most Powerful Alpha or Beta Champions, this one was really
fun to make and I can’t help but feel it would be really cool if Riot made a gamemode
where you could try out all these broken kits from the history of the game.
Hope you all enjoyed our list and make sure you let us know your favorite in the comments
section.
That’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like, subscribe if you want,
thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!