Poppy/Development

A New Champion Approaches: Poppy, the Iron Ambassador
By Steve 'Pendragon' Mescon

Prepare yourselves. The tiny but mighty has joined the League of Legends! This compact little warrior packs one mean punch with her mighty hammer,. Boasting a powerful set of abilities, Poppy is ready to pulverize anyone who thinks it funny to make a short joke.


 * Champion Type
 * Tank icon.jpg Tank


 * Abilities

I= Any damage dealt to Poppy that exceeds is greatly reduced.
 * Valiant Fighter

Poppy crushes her opponent, dealing her base damage plus a flat amount and as bonus damage. The bonus damage cannot exceed a threshold based on rank.
 * -|Q=
 * Devastating Blow


 * -|W=
 * Paragon of Demacia
 * Upon being hit or attacking an enemy, Poppy's and  are increased by a flat amount for 5 seconds. This effect can stack 5 times.
 * Poppy gains max stacks of Paragon of Demacia and her movement speed is increased 20% for 5 seconds.

Poppy charges at an enemy and them for a short distance. The initial impact deals a small amount of damage, and if they collide with terrain, her target will take a high amount of damage and be.
 * -|E=
 * Heroic Charge

Poppy focuses intently on a single target, dealing increased damage to them. Poppy is immune to any damage and abilities from enemies other than her target.
 * -|R=
 * Diplomatic Immunity

Champion update: Poppy, Keeper of the Hammer
'''Unfathomable feats of strength. Victory over impossible odds.'''

'''The hallmarks of a great hero are almost always obvious, especially to the person displaying them. Almost always. 's been tasked with delivering a legendary hammer to a hero who will become legend. Journeying through Runeterra, she uncovers a number of would-be wielders, but never suspects the hammer might have found the right person already. The power of the hammer, the responsibility of her mission. And a whole swath of new abilities to show off her true strength. Poppy's kit's designed to show off her might despite her diminutive stature; whether peeling for your allies by chaining CC like and, or plunging into the heart of battle to separate a carry from the crowd, Poppy shows that sometimes all you need in your toolbox is a really big hammer.'''


 * Abilities

I= Every several seconds, Poppy throws her buckler as her basic attack, gaining range and bonus magic damage. Once thrown, Poppy can pick up her buckler to gain a shield, but if an enemy walks over her buckler, they'll temporarily destroy it. If Iron Ambassador kills the target, the buckler returns to Poppy instead of falling to the ground.
 * Iron Ambassador

Poppy smashes the ground, dealing damage and enemies in a small area. After a moment, the crushed ground erupts, dealing the same amount of damage again.
 * -|Q=
 * Hammer Shock


 * -|W=
 * Steadfast Presence
 * Poppy gains bonus and . This bonus is doubled if Poppy is.
 * Poppy gains Movement Speed. While Steadfast Presence is active, she creates a magic barrier around her, enemy dashes and dealing magic damage to enemies.

Poppy tackles an enemy, dealing and  them forward. Poppy deals additional and  the enemy if they collide with terrain.
 * -|E=
 * Heroic Charge

Poppy charges up her hammer for a mighty blow, herself as she winds up. With the second cast, Poppy unleashes a massive hammer smash, creating a fissure that deals damage and all enemy champions in a tiny area an enormous distance towards their base. The fissure length and increase with channel duration.
 * -|R=
 * Keeper's Verdict



With a suite of potent CC, Poppy can combo her abilities to win trades and build towards her first major power spike with a completed offensive item.
 * Solo Lane

When she can set up her opponent near a wall, it generally means bad times ahead for the unsuspecting victim. Using to stun the enemy champion against the terrain, she sets up both hits from, dealing a burst of damage and leaving them open to additional basic attack harass.

While will often be used in team fights to keep opponents from diving her squishier allies, during laning, Poppy can use her  to keep enemies with dashes from evading the heavy end of her hammer.

Careful management of her is also essential to success in lane. You can use your to last hit minions, trading basic attacks with your opponent because of your shield when you automatically get the buckler back. Keep in mind that if the buckler hits the ground, you can pick it up for the shield, but if your opponent runs over it, they'll crush it out of existence (or at least until your comes back up) That interaction can turn into a mindgame with the opposing champ, because when you use the ranged attack for a bit of poke, you can set up  when they go to stomp on your buckler to fire both hits of the  off.

Unlocking at level six opens a number of new options for Poppy's dueling potential: quickly activating the  without channeling simulates a souped-up , while a fully channeled  can even up a 2v1 or turn the tide entirely with jungle support. And don't underestimate the length of the knockback: battering the enemy laner with a fully charged just as your wave is about to hit their tower means they'll miss a ton of experience and gold.


 * Jungle



Creeping around a forest crowded with monsters is considerably less frightening when you're wielding a giant mallet, and the Keeper of the Hammer is more than capable of heading into the jungle, harvesting gold from camps and ganks.

The tight confines of the jungle paths keep her well-stocked on walls to into should the opposing jungler wander in unwarily. Her innate and strong trading potential makes her potent in woodland duels, while her considerable crowd control makes the featherweight fighter a terror during attempted ganks.

Setting up a while hidden inside the brush can dramatically turn the tide when counter-ganking, because she can near-instantly transform 3v2s and 2v1s into a numbers advantage for her team.

When Poppy heads into the jungle, having allies who can help speed her up or combo with her crowd control will make for more effective ganks, but the tiny tussler is designed to be a powerful roaming jungle in her own right.

When it's time to transition to more teamplay, Poppy joins the frontlines as a strong tank. With the passive stats from, she's surprisingly durable while still capable of outputting damage in the right situation. In early mid-game teamfights, 's active effect will keep the backline from using dashes to flee as her team collapses on them. A well-timed can turn a 5v5 scrum into a 5v4 slaughter, but she'll have to pay attention to enemy crowd control. Because is channeled, it can be interrupted by opposing champions.
 * Teamfighting

As enemies acquire more armor and health, Poppy smoothly swaps roles to take on the responsibility of keeping her friends alive. stops enemy assassins from diving (as long as they don't use blinks - but blowing their might still be worth, depends on /all chat) while the threat of  will have even frontline tanks concerned they might be taking a trip back towards their fountain, far away from the fight.

One trick with is that the knockback effect is actually a very small AoE, not single target. If you can get the enemy team closely grouped together (with 's, perhaps) you could potentially knock more than one of them out of the fray. Then your team can either chase the weakened foes down, or secure one of those nifty objectives strewn about the map.


 * Synergy

Champion Insights: Poppy, Keeper of the Hammer
By fizzNchips



s champion update's been on the list since before there even was a list. With the Keeper of the Hammer making her debut on the PBE, read the story of how it came together.'

Design notes from Solcrushed

Narrative notes from JohnODyin

Art notes from Lonewingy



We started exploring Poppy more than a year ago. With her outdated visuals and awkward, imbalanced kit, she's long been a candidate for a champion update, but getting it right meant expanding on the limited things we knew about her (she had fewer than twenty lines in game) while finding a new gameplay design that would fit with her character and satisfy fans of the little-yordle-that-could.

Poppy's the Demacian yordle. That was clear from the beginning. But as a champion proud and loud about her love for Demacia, it was important to keep her from seeming like a mini-. So while she can fangirl for and kneel to, she has to stand out as her own yordle. Demacian in her own way.

The solution we arrived at was embracing the notion of an unaware hero. She was given a legendary weapon and tasked with finding the hero worthy of wielding it. She's an answer to the question, what would a hero be like if they had all of the strength, courage, and potential of legend, but no idea of it?



Poppy's the underdog, even when she's packing the biggest hammer in the fight. Poppy's a walking contradiction. Small, but unbelievably tanky. First into the fray, but last to believe in herself. She's earnest to the point where you can't quite trust her, but honest to the extreme that you know you have to.

Hammering home her personality keeps her identity distinct among the yordles, while showing off an alternate take on the traditional Demacian warrior. Whether defending a small village besieged by a nefarious, or a sidelane squishy under assault by a gank-hungry jungler, Poppy's coming to save the day. She just might apologize afterwards.


 * Like a giant Demacian hero, but yordle-r



Balancing the contradiction inherent in her character and then expressing it through gameplay, art, and story proved a unique challenge. At the same time we were puzzling out how to really put the hammer down in terms of her story, it was our chance to figure out how Poppy should look. Some champs are dark and grim like or horrifying like. And others have a snaggletooth. Unlike a champ like, Poppy's in-game visuals were outdated, but not far off from the way a yordle decked out in Demacian dress would appear.

The one thing that really stood out was the hammer. Her story, gameplay, and art all center around her weapon, but it wasn't always the biggest thing about her. So we re-rolled the drop. Now her hammer is twice the size of the diminutive yordle, representing the burden of her quest to find the hero of legend and the power she packs into a small frame.

To show off those unique sides of her that make her different from other Demacians (and yordles) we've played up the extremes of her personality in art and in-game visuals as well as the story and gameplay: she's introspective and full of doubts but also eager and full of energy. She shoulders the burden of her quest with pluck and courage, but her humility leaves her with a glaring blind spot. She can't see that she might be the Demacian hero she's been seeking the whole time.






 * Frontline Demacian juggeryordle



No part of a champion update happens in a vacuum, and while we explored different storytelling and visual possibilities for a pint-sized brawler, we were also experimenting with gameplay kits. When we first brought Poppy into the ol' update workshop, we had to deal with one of the most powerful, but least compelling abilities in the game.

Poppy's, , could render her immune from damage and crowd control from everything that wasn't trapped in a glowing gold cylinder of sadness. defined her kit, and pushed her play pattern towards 'assassinate the backline with absurd damage out of nowhere'. That squishy-squasher style didn't make sense given Poppy's original story or the direction we were taking her, and was so powerful, Poppy's entire kit had to be limited because of it.

After initial explorations, it became clear that straight up nerfing meant losing what made the ability cool and unique. Once we made the decision to remove it instead, we could play around with new signature abilities to anchor the kit around. After trying a few different themes, we circled back to her story and focused on one aspect of her character in particular - disproportionate power - which led to her. With the exaggerated hammer slap of in place, we found we were able to really push Poppy's strategic niche of tanky disruption to eleven.



Poppy's new unique gameplay identity embraces her small-stature/big-hammer duality. Despite being one of the smallest champions in the game, she brings a ton of crowd control that's perfect both for causing commotion in a big scrum and flattening bad guys one-on-one.

The Arsenal: Forging Poppy’s Hammer
By Rumtumtummers



Reworking was a chance to tune up her biggest, baddest character elements while giving her completely new play patterns. We knew the, her signature weapon, would be critical in solidifying her refreshed identity; like 's , ' , or 's , Poppy's hammer is an integral part of both her kit and her personality. We had to get it right for both to ring true.

In short, it was hammer time.


 * Small character; big impact

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 * Related Music