Every Champion Buff in the Last Year RANKED!!

After taking a break for a year, Plarium are now back regularly buffing champions in RAID: Shadow Legends. In this article, Nub is ranking every single champion buff that has happened since they started again last year, breaking down which ones were appropriate for the champion’s fantasy, and which ones did not go far enough.

These were the best reworks which put these champion into the perfect position in the game. They don’t need to be the strongest champions, they just need to fit their theme, do something cool and unique, and be appropriate for their rarity and affinity.

MYTHICALS

• Ash’nar Dragonsoul: Amazing buff to both Forms, making his Base Form a powerful utility champion, and giving his Alternate Form very respectable damage. Build him as a booster, or a damage dealer, or even a fast Lazarius-style hybrid–he has loads of options now!
• Galleus Bloodcrest: Another top tier buff to both Forms, boosting his damage substantially in both, but emphasising his utility and control in Form 1, while going raw damage blasting in Form 2–very appropriate for his lore!
• The Calamitus: Once considered the worst Mythical, The Calamitus is actually very solid now. They gave big boosts to his damage in both Forms, smoothed out his cooldowns, and removed some moves having bonus C.RATE while others didn’t. He had a good concept on release but he was undertuned; this update fixed that.

AFFINITY LEGENDARIES

• Gamuran: While he’s not the most powerful champion now, his buff was still perfect, emphasising his “creepy priest” shtick and making each ability have a noticeable impact on the fight. Stealing and spreading all buffs is cool.
• Nobel: This is probably my most unpopular pick, but I think they did a great job with Nobel: he has a clear identity as a Fear and Turn Meter Reduction champion who can do good damage. I think it’s totally appropriate and actually quite unique.
• Opardin Clanfather: If you want healing: use Opardin! He’s a great champion now, pumping out tons of healing and turn meter boosting. He feels great to use now, fitting his badass stature in game.
• Skull Lord Var-gall: He was a decent champion before, but this rework made him a psuedo-Faction Unity champion, and I think that’s really cool. He has a clear identity that he wants to go in teams alongside other Lizardmen, which is a really cool idea that I hope gets used for other Factions too.

VOID LEGENDARIES

• Ailil: A simple but effective buff which gave a cool champion the only thing he really needed: more damage.
• Gurgoh the Augur: Great buff which gave him great ability to Freeze and to deal extra damage against Frozen targets.
• Jingown: YST said his name 5000 times and he got done… right! Jingwon now has fantastic control abilities and a lot of quirky defensive utility. He feels like a proper Void Legendary now.
• Little Miss Annie: Simple changes here and she’s still not the strongest champion, but she has a great theme and a much more useful kit now with far less conditional effects.
• Raglin: A recent buff and a really good one, Raglin went from a glorified 2-turn cooldown revive to an anti-lockout reviver. They made her A2 make sense as well, and she’s now a very useful champion with a cool passive–compared to not having a passive at all before!
• Togron the Conjoined: The most recent buff was a great one: Togron went from a meme champion to an absolute monster, getting almost every single ability turbo-charged in this buff. He’s a great all-rounder now who can fit in many teams. A welcome buff for Ogryn especially, since they’re probably the weakest Faction in the game.

I’ve split the GOOD BUFFS into two separate sections to indicate two different levels of decent buffs.

GOOD BUFFS

The GOOD section represents champions who got strong and appropriate buffs that put them in a good spot:

• Androc the Glorious now has an amazing Form 1, though his Form 2 is still a little awkward to use.
• Diamant Coppercoin is decent and has a very unique passive which swaps debuffs to buffs automatically.
• Elegaius is now where sher’s supposed to be, with the ability to lock out all champions of a single affinity.
• Greathoof Loriaca is a speed demon–are cows really that fast though?!
• Holsring is cool and now a strong multi-hit damage dealer.
• Khoronar got great changes, though his Block Debuffs buff clashes a bit with the Minaya buff from before.
• Mountain King has stronger single-target damage and his new Extra Turn helps him be much more useful.
• Warchief is a great Provoke champion now, compared to his old version which did basically nothing.

GOOD BUT BORING BUFFS

The GOOD BUT BORING section represents champions who got decent buffs but remain very forgetable champions.

• Supreme Athel‘s kit now functions, but she’s very disappointing as “hyped” version of a starter champion.
• Claidna got great buffs, but still feels like a Sand Devil champion who doesn’t work in Sand Devil.
• Wurlim Frostking has lots in his kit, but doesn’t live up to his “Lich King” aesthetic.
• Tramaria is solid now, but would it really hurt to give a Void Legendary a 24% SPD aura?
• Norog is acceptable but still very mid–he could’ve done with an A3 ability too.
• Lady of Ireth now has a spot thanks to cooldown reduction, but the rest of her kit is bland healing.
• King Garog does great damage but still gets lost in the mass of damage dealers in the game.

This is the sad part: champions who received buffs which simply didn’t do enough to power them up; didn’t fix contradictions in their kits; didn’t capitalise on their theme; or even over-buffed them. I’ve separated this into 3 sections to show 3 different types of BAD…

BAD BUFFS

First up, the champions who NEED MORE. Some of these reworks did have good ideas, but they didn’t go far enough.

• Angar is a great Provoke champion now, but he needs some threat to make his A1s mean something.
• Fortus has received many buffs and is still a mess. His scaling secret A3 doesn’t increase by 10% as described, and he gets bonus C.RATE on some skills but not all, meaning you get stuck building it anyway.
• Hakkorhn Smashlord got nice tweaks in general, but they removed his old unique HP-sacrificing A3 for a bland damage dealing one which feels really bad to build around–just revert it!
• Konstantin the Dayborn got some good damage buffs but he feels very tied to Vlad and lacks a unique identity without him.
• Minaya is a bit of a mess since she clashes with the Khoronar rework. She needs a further buff to be stronger and synergise better with Khoronar.
• Mezomel Luperfang got some extra damage but it needs to go farther, particularly for her Alternate Form.
• Frolni the Mechanist got good buffs to his Base Form, but his Alternate Form feels weak and doesn’t synergise well with his Base.
• Queen Eva has a good A2 but is bland otherwise– a big waste for such an important lore character.
• Ultan of the Shell got some really nice changes but has no place in the game due to being in a different Faction from Oella.
• Vitrius the Anointed is still very random and totally screwed by Stoneskin.
• Aphidus the Hivelord got some really nice buffs, but his two Forms still feel totally disconnected from each other.

VERY BAD BUFFS

There was one champion whose buff fell far short of my expectations, and she needs LOTS MORE love in the future:

• Blind Seer remains one of the most bland kits in the entire game. This is a huge disappointment for a Void Legendary; she needs the Raglin treatment, where she would get some unique passives or effects in her kit to give her a strong identity (such as Raglin fighting against lockout).
• BONUS: Fjorad Wolfheart just got buffed, and after my testing, I’d place him here. His Base Form is great, but his Alternate still sucks… Since this was the case before his buff, what was the point of it all?!

THE ONE TIME THEY WENT TOO FAR

Finally, there is only one champion in the history of the game who has been buffed TOO MUCH in my opinion:

• Siegfrund the Nephilim was a terrible Mythical on release and definitely deserving of a buff. Most of the massive buffs to him were warranted, but in my opinion they went overboard on his A3 in his Base Form: this attack now deals absurd splash damage on a tiny cooldown and has repeatedly broken every Event Dungeon, all the regular Dungeons, and is extremely annoying to fight in Arena as well. This is a consistent problem with all splash damage in the game (essentially, it double dips most multipliers, leading the “surplus” damage to exceed the original damage–which makes no sense!).

One thing that immediately struck me after reviewing my list: there are tons of champions that were not buffed enough, but only one that was buffed too much. This shows me that Plarium are cautious with their buffs–perhaps overly cautious.

Some key things I’d love to see in the future:

1. Buffs should give champions a strong theme (or a strong unique identity)
2. Go a bit further when buffing champions (especially if it’s the third or fourth time trying…)
3. Do buffs more often; they’re mostly good!
4. Consider buffing the odd epic or even rare as well