Is LoL’s Long-Forgotten Champion Aurelion Sol Back in Meta?

LoL Patch 12.6 was released on 30th March and has been up and running for over two weeks now. Players have been experimenting and testing out new builds and new champions in Solo Queue. In an interesting turn of events, one of League of Legends’ long-forgotten champions has made his way onto the highest win rate tier list. Star Forger Aurelion Sol was added to the lineup of League of Legends champions back in 2016 and went through a rework, after which his presence in the game plummeted significantly.

Riot Games describes him as: “Aurelion Sol once graced the vast emptiness of the cosmos with celestial wonders of his own devising. Now, he is forced to wield his awesome power at the behest of a space-faring empire that tricked him into servitude. Desiring a return to his star-forging ways, Aurelion Sol will drag the very stars from the sky, if he must, in order to regain his freedom.”

Aurelion Sol statistics

Currently, on LoL Patch 12.6, Sol has the following statistics, according to U.GG:

• Pick Rate: 0.8%

• Ban Rate: 0.2%

• Win Rate: 53.76%

Interestingly, in over 11K games that were analyzed, the champion has one of the lowest pick and ban rates, making him one of the least popular champions in League of Legends.

Notably, still, he is rated as an A-tier champion and has the second-highest win rate this patch (at the time of writing) following Soraka, who has a win rate of 53.86%.

How does Aurelion Sol work?

Aurelion Sol has lots of utility built into his kit and has good poke and wave clear. He can also have a lasting impact on side lanes, thanks to his roaming potential. It is also important to note that he may be a difficult champion to master and play. Players need to be constantly aware of the champion’s passive and also understand the right times to roam around the map.

Passive: Center of the Universe

Stars orbit Aurelion Sol, dealing magic damage when they hit an enemy.

Q: Starsurge

Aurelion Sol creates an expanding disk, which explodes to stun and damage enemies when it moves too far away from him.

W: Celestial Expansion

Aurelion Sol pushes his stars farther out, increasing their damage and speed.

E: Comet of Legend

Aurelion Sol takes off flying for a long distance.

R: Voice of Light

Aurelion Sol projects a blast of pure starfire, damaging and slowing all enemies caught in it and knocking nearby enemies back to a safer distance.

When was Aurelion Sol changed?

The last time Aurelion Sol appeared in a patch note was back when LoL Patch 11.21 was released. Riot addressed a bug with his Q - Starsurge. It wrote, “Fixed a bug where the visual effects would go out of sync from its hitbox as it grew.”

Talking about gameplay changes to the champion, in LoL Patch 11.19, the cooldown on Starsurge was increased at all levels to 12/11/10/9/8 seconds. Addressing this, Riot said, “He is toeing the line in Elite play, and he’s finally put his claw right over it. Slowing him down accordingly.”

In LoL Patch 9.17, he received changes to all the abilities in his kit. The main one was the mini-rework to his W - Celestial Expansion. The toggle on this spell was removed and instead, when Sol pushes his stars out to the Outer Limit, they gain increased damage and rotate at a high, but decaying speed. After 3 seconds or if Sol reactivates it early, the stars will retract and grant him movement speed, decaying over time.

Is Aurelion Sol going to be reworked again?

Early on in March, Lead Champions Producer Ryan “Reav3” Mireles talked about some of the upcoming champions and detailed the champion roadmap which is set to release in April 2022. Mireles also touched upon the mystery champion update and stated that this rework was different from a regular visual and gameplay update but did not want to share too many details just in case Riot decided to shelf it.

Following this, the community suspected that the rework could very well be Aurelion Sol. But, there has been no confirmation from Riot regarding this yet.