The history of Blitzcrank, The Great Steam Golem

Blitzcrank is the wholesome and beloved robot of every League player’s dreams (and nightmares). He’s an older support, he’s a key part of BronzeOdia, and, far more importantly, he hosted League of Legends’ first ever dating website. (The robot is horny, basically.) But Blitz is much more than that. He’s a handsome lad that strikes fear into the hearts of every player when he swaggers into lane. His pulls are deadly and his ultimate does so much more damage than it has any reason to.

So, with all this in mind, let’s take a look back at the lovable Great Steam Golem

Blitz’s Release History

Blitzcrank is one of League’s original champions, being added into the game only a month before it left beta. That was September 2, 2009, which is almost nine years ago. This was in patch V.0.9.22.16; the same patch that saw the release of Malphite, Janna, and Dr. Mundo. In case you had any doubt, Blitzcrank is old. Like, really, really old.

If you want some real League history, watch that spotlight.

Blitzcrank’s Lore

Blitz has what we like to call “old ass champion” lore, meaning that there are two versions of the same story. One with mention of the League of Legends, and one without.

Blitz’s actual story though is cute, in a Zaun kinda way. A bunch of college students built Blitzcrank, Facebook-style. Thanks to a breakthrough in steam automation, they were able to create a fully functional bot that could make snap decisions in order to help with toxic waste removal.

As all these stories go, Blitzcrank developed his own personality and free will. But then, also like Facebook, a legal battle over the real ownership began. On one side, the students. On the other, some random professor who claimed all the credit. Neither group had Blitz’s best interest in mind, so Blitzcrank asked the court if he could be his own master.

By this point in the story, Blitzcrank is a celebrity in Zaun, thanks to being a walking, talking robot and all. Because of public support, Blitz was able to gain his freedom. But this is where the split happens. In the old version, Blitz joins the League of Legends. In the current iteration, Blitz is a wandering robot desperately looking for a place to call home.

When you factor this in with the old Journal of Justice post that revealed the dating service Blitz created — which is called Blitzcrank’s Fleshling Compatibility Services by the way — this may be the most wholesome lore in the entire game.

Riot Games

How Blitzcrank has changed

For how old he is, you may be surprised to learn that Blitz’s abilities have changed very little since he was a beautiful, baby bot.

As we said earlier, Blitz was added in patch V.0.9.22.16, and he saw some pretty big numbers changes every patch for a few weeks. AP ratios were buffed and lowered, pull speed was increased, and the silence on his ultimate was removed and added back in.

Funnily enough, one of the major changes Blitz has gotten in the past few years was the slowdown on his W after it ends. This was actually part of his original kit and taken out a few patches into 1.0.

Other than that, Blitzcrank has barely changed over the past nine years. That means that the only changes he’s had have been to restore him back to his launch state. If that doesn’t speak to good champion design, I’m not sure what does.

Riot Games

Blitz’s skins

Over his years, Blitz has accrued quite a few good skins. At the time of this writing, he has six:

• Boom Boom Blitzcrank
• Piltover Customs Blitzcrank
• iBlitzcrank
• Battle Boss Blitzcrank
• Lancer Paragon Blitzcrank
• Lancer Rogue Blitzcrank
• Riot Blitzcrank

OK, let’s talk about these.

Let’s start with the worst of these. iBlitzcrank sucks and you shouldn’t use it. It’s bad and irritating and the hook is impossible to see. That’s all. Don’t do it. I’ll know if you do.

Now let’s talk the two Lancer skins. Listen, these things are very fancy and cool. The hook is a spear that flies out and impales stuff and that’s awesome. My problem with these skins is that they should be one skin. If they made one skin with a toggle that was a little more expensive, I would be way more into it.

Riot Blitzcrank is an OK skin. From a visual perspective, it’s nothing too special. In fact, I would go so far to say that it’s a downgrade from base Blitz. However, his unique particles like the siren when he casts W and his very good Inspector Gadget recall takes this skin from meh to passable at the very least.

Battle Boss Blitzcrank is another awesome skin. It has lots and lots of fun particles and looks pretty cute. The hook even has some weird-ass Mega Man effects or something and I love it. More importantly, Blitz has a SNES cartridge on his back and he blows in it when he recalls. I’m super into it.

Amazingly, two of Blitz’s best skins are his release ones. Boom Boom Blitzcrank gives you damn boxing gloves and Piltover Customs turns you legs into a damn car. That’s so good. For being nine year old skins, the fact that they’re still even usable is incredible.

UPDATE 5/1/18: Looks like we forgot about Riot Blitzcrank the first time around. We’ve since corrected that.