Champions

Champions are the playable characters in Paladins. Each one has their own unique abilities and fighting style. There are currently 59 playable champions in the game.

Champions are organized into 4 different classes: Front Line, Damage, Support and Flank.

Information

Abilities

Every champion has a unique weapon, 4 or more abilities, and a special ability called an Ultimate. Ultimate Ability are not subject to cooldown, but instead have a meter that must be charged before they can be used. This meter passively gains a 1% charge every 3.33s, but can be actively increased by dealing damage to enemies and restoring the missing health of allies. Landing a Killing Blow on an enemy with a high Killstreak grants an additional 10% ultimate charge for each kill streak after the 5th. Using an ultimate will deplete the meter fully, allowing it to recharge.

Deck Building

Each champion possesses 3 unique Talents. Talents grant access to different playstyles by providing strong boosts to certain aspects of the champion, with some talents even causing radical changes to the way their weapon or skills work, usually at the cost of some counterbalancing penalty.

Champions use Cards to increase their performance and enhance their skills, and Items to help them adapt to specific situations in every match.

Unlock Champions

New players start with 7 champions unlocked by default: Ash, Furia, Khan, Lex, Seris, Tiberius, and Viktor. Players also gain temporary access to 4 champions from a rotating free champion schedule. Every Wednesday at 08:00 AM UTC two champions will be changed that remain in free rotation for two weeks. Flank and Support or Front Line and Damage are always exchanged alternately.

Additional champions can be purchased for either Gold or Crystals. The majority of the cast costs 30,000 / 200 to unlock, while the most recently released champions cost 60,000 / 300 . A few champions (such as Buck and Grohk) cost 15,000 / 100 instead. Locked champions can be tested in the Shooting Range before purchase.

With the DLC bundles Starter Edition, Gold Edition, Deluxe Edition and the Season Pass players can unlock current and future Champions in the game through a real money purchase.

Mastery Level

Each champion has their own Mastery Level, which increases the more they are played. Achieving new levels with a champion grants special rewards and Cosmetic Items.

Access Ranked

Players are required to have at least 16 owned champions to access Ranked, champions in Free-Rotation do not count.

Champions

A List of Champions with publication date can be found here.

Front Line

These champions are the best at maintaining control of objectives and protecting their teammates through shields, personal force fields, or just by taking fire. Front Line champions gain 100% more Credits for standing near an objective.

Ash

Atlas

Azaan

Barik

Fernando

Inara

Khan

Makoa

Nyx

Raum

Ruckus

Terminus

Torvald

Yagorath

Damage

These champions can consistently deal high amounts of damage. Damage champions gain 100% more Credits for dealing damage to enemy champions.

Betty La Bomba

Bomb King

Cassie

Dredge

Drogoz

Imani

Kinessa

Lian

Octavia

Omen

Saati

Sha Lin

Strix

Tiberius

Tyra

Viktor

Vivian

Willo

Support

These champions offer a wide range of supportive utilities to the team, both offensive and defensive. However, they specialize in healing and causing chaos in enemy attacks. Support champions gain 100% more Credits for healing allies. They gain eliminations from healing a target that gets the killing blow on an enemy. Support champions also gain ultimate charge from healing done to teammates besides themselves. Healing that restores 0 Health (for example, healing someone who is at full health) won't provide ultimate charge.

Corvus

Furia

Grohk

Grover

Io

Jenos

Lillith

Mal'Damba

Moji

Pip

Rei

Seris

Ying

Flank

These champions excel in both damage and mobility to help them in combat as well as chase and confirm kills from the enemy's rear. However, their low health makes them vulnerable to getting overwhelmed by multiple enemies. Flank champions gain 30% more Credits from landing killing blows on enemies.

Androxus

Buck

Caspian

Evie

Kasumi

Koga

Lex

Maeve

Skye

Talus

VII

Vatu

Vora

Zhin

Trivia

• General
• Scrapped Champions

General

• All players that participated in the game's closed beta before April 7, 2016 were given all champions available at the time for free.
• The cost of numerous characters has changed throughout the game's lifespan. This includes Seris being changed from costing 60,000 or 300 to completely free in the A Tigron's Tale update. A large number of additional changes would occur with the RWBY update, similarly changing Ash, Furia, Khan, and Tiberius from originally being the same price as Seris, to similarly being made free. Meanwhile, Cassie, Jenos, and Ruckus would be changed from being free into costing 15,000 or 100 for the former two, while Jenos would now cost 30,000 or 200 .
• The various champion class icons appear as Steam emoticons, which can be viewed here.
• Many of the earlier champions have a distinct crystal encrusted in their weapons and / or outfit.
• Many champions originally had several additional skin recolors in the past, though these were eventually removed. The reason given for this was that multiple recolors made the store confusing and messy, cluttered skin equipping UI, and ran the risk of hiding content that could make money.
• There was a way to purchase Champion mastery levels with Gold (every 20 experience points costing 1 ). It was removed with the Sands of Myth update.
• Every champion whose name begins with the letter 'S' (even VII) all possess some form of Stealth ability.
• Early concepts reveal that Tiberius, Vora, and Saati were all originally intended to release during 2019, while Corvus and Yagorath were not initially planned.
• The Salt skin for Io was originally intended to be its own champion, but was eventually either replaced or changed into VII.
• The idea of potentially creating uniquely playable Echo Champions, has been brainstormed, with the idea being to use an already existing champion as a base, replace most of their art assets with a new character, and change their abilities a bit.
• Modern champion designs are based on two "archetypes", with those being "waifus" and "edgelords".
• Many designs suspected to be incredibly early concepts of Paladins characters (due to the presence of Pip's early concept) can be seen here. Though the exact extent of how much these designs show early Paladins concept art is unknown for certain.
• As mentioned here, even if a champion is killed off in the lore, they'll still remain playable. It's also worth mentioning that no champion in the present day of the lore has died so far, not even Lex or Yagorath.

Scrapped Champions

• Karne and Valera, the two most notable characters of the game's lore, were largely planned to never be made playable, with various reasons being given throughout the years (with said reasons being listed on their pages), which have ironically all become invalid. However, at one point, Paladins artist ThunderBrush pitched concepts for the two, which seemingly almost ended up actually being considered, with the two being planned to launch after Yagorath, but were ultimately cancelled for unknown reasons.
  • These concepts didn't progress much at all into gameplay, but one of the two would've been extremely similar to Octavia.
  • Karne's concept was never shown, though Valera's was, as well as a basic lore concept for her inclusion, which would see a future version of her come back in time from the Lost Future to destroy Yagorath, having turned her sword into an "uber-weapon of sorts". Though this lore makes little sense, most notably due to Valera being implied to have died in the lost future.
  • Prior to the two being cancelled, Vora was intended to have kill taunts for them, with said taunts largely just being her complaining about the Magistrate and Resistance, with how she views the two leaders as fooling themselves into thinking they're righteous.

• Many designs and concepts from Paladins' early development show a handful of champion concepts that don't appear to have ever been reworked into actual playable characters.

• ThunderBrush has apparently pitched numerous other champions and concepts throughout the years, sometimes numerous times; this includes:
  • An insectoid champion. Was "mercilessly shot down". One of these pitches was a "bumble-bee girl" that eventually became Betty La Bomba.
  • A "changeling" type character heavily inspired by Ivan Ooze from Power Rangers.
  • A skeleton gunslinger.
  • A "battle-bard", but the idea was shelved due to being unable to figure out how to best "transfer the experience to an FPS".
  • A "Frog Bard", but was seemingly deemed as too "weird".
  • A regular grunt foot soldier that apparently gets him laughed out of the room whenever he brings it up.

• Other scrapped and unused champions include:
  • A "gunlancer" frontline was intended to release at the end of 2022, but ended up cut either due to "tech-restraints" or time. They notably feature elephant imagery, something which was also seen on a banner in the A Conflict Reignited lore cinematic.
  • A Berserker with a "rage mode" ability that would allow them to change into a burning skeleton. Concepts for both male and female designs were created, but the concept was scrapped due to not resonating with the developers following the stakeholders's say.
  • A Pyre Acolyte was concepted around mid 2019, long before Azaan. This character would've been a weapons engineer that had infused regular Realm technology with Pyre magic.
  • A "muscle wizard".
  • A "cajun gator" named Bo "The Man-Eater", who would've used a magical fishing rod to reel in enemies to consume.
  • A type of magical martial arts master.
  • A bear with a gun.
  • Salt was originally intended to be her own champion rather than a skin for Io, but she was eventually either replaced or changed into VII.
  • Another female vulpin similar to Salt and Pepper known as Sugar, was "potentially" scrapped.