Understanding URF in LoL: The Best and Worst of Ultra Rapid Fire

When is URF coming back?

In the latest dev update, Welcome to Noxus, Riot Games confirmed that URF Blind Pick returned to League of Legends on the 23rd of January, 2025.

When is the next time URF will come back? We can't know for certain, but it's usually active yearly during April Fools event. This year Riot announced that there will not be long breaks between custom game modes such as Arena or URF so we can expect it to return more than once each year.

What is Ultra Rapid Fire?

Ultra Rapid Fire is a Featured Game Mode in League of Legends, where champions have a permanent buff that makes abilities have no mana cost and incredibly low cooldowns. It leads to constant fights and skirmishes throughout the entire match, with cheesy strategies and weird new picks made possible from the buff.

URF in LoL was originally introduced as an April Fools joke in 2012, and has since become the most popular game mode outside of Summoner's Rift and ARAM. However, unlike those other game modes, URF is not active at all times of the year. It's only rarely playable, and for a few weeks at a time at most. League of Legends players have been asking for years for the gamemode to become permanent, but as of now, it's unlikely it'll have a place in the game long-term.

Ultra Rapid Fire alternates between All Random (ARURF) and blind pick formats. In ARURF, players are given a completely random champion to play (with possible rerolls), whereas blind pick allows players to choose their champion after being given a single champion to ban from being picked.

Key Features and Modifications

All ability and energy costs are reduced to 0.

All champions gain 300 ability, item and summoner spell haste.

All champions gain +60 movement speed.

All champions gain +25% tenacity, and are automatically cleansed of CC if they've been affected by it for too long.

All champions gain +25% critical strike damage.

All abilities, items and runes grant 100% more attack speed.

All sources of gold grant +500% more gold.

Champions get free experience points every 30 seconds.

Turret plating disintegrates earlier.

Players can use a powerful cannon next to their spawn called the Champion Cannon to get to the action faster.

Balanced Items and Champions for URF

Some champions are naturally going to get more use out of shorter cooldowns and lack of resource management. Champions such as Karthus and Ryze that are meant to be gated by their highly mana-expensive kits are going to have an immediate power boost compared to every other champion, while ADCs that don't depend too much on their abilities like Kalista or Ashe will get less of a power boost from the buff than others.

And so, there are many adjustments to champions in the mode, and some items may be completely disabled for the mode. The specifics of these changes will vary in each iteration of the mode, but they're there to maintain the gamemode fun and balanced.

The Pros and Cons of URF

Pros:

Faster action and less cooldowns encourage aggressive play and grouping.

The buffs affect more champions than you'd expect— rarely any picks or strategies are completely non-viable in URF.

ARURF can get you to find new champions you wouldn't otherwise play, just like in ARAM.

Cons:

URF matches can be very snowball-y, and losing back to back can feel pretty helpless.

There's not really a ton of reasons to constantly farm and scale. Macro play takes a backseat to micro play, and it can become easy to autopilot through matches.

Players don't tend to take URF games very seriously, which can be frustrating if you're trying to sweat it out and win.

URF’s Place in the League of Legends Ecosystem

URF mode holds a unique position in the League of Legends ecosystem, offering a high octane, balls-to-the-wall alternative to the traditional Summoner's Rift experience. URF tends to break away from the strategic depth of most League of Legends matches, going for a more chaos-driven and explosive mode of play.

Beyond entertainment, URF can also be a great place to try out new champions in. The accelerated pace allows you to more clearly see your powerspikes, and casting more abilities in general will progressively make you better at hitting them.

However, the breakneck pace of URF can exacerbate balance issues and make for a very snowball-y experience. There's very little you can do against champions like Fizz or Master Yi, who get harder and harder to kill as the game goes on. It's not rare for players to feel like the game's already decided only 7-8 minutes in, but the shorter game length makes losses more bearable.

Best URF Champions

Master Yi: Yi is a rare case of a champion that immensely benefits from all the things URF offers— ability haste, attack speed and critical strike damage. Every item that Yi habitually builds gets twice the value it previously had, and he's quite adept at abusing uptime on his Alpha Strike (Q) to sneak in crits and autoattacks while being almost always untargetable.

Zed: His kit is normally balanced by the incredibly high energy cost of his abilities, along with limited ways of getting energy back during the middle of a fight. This is, of course, completely thrown away in URF. He can turn into a bruiser with Black Cleaver and Spear of Shojin, who can easily still go for assassinations with his ultimate. His shadows allow him to zone off entire chokepoints with 0 risk, and his ultimate also doubles as a way to buy time to get his Living Shadow (W) back up again, if he does commit a mistake.

Shaco: Boxes galore. Shaco can have himself a permanent clone at level 6, and is likely the hardest champion to actually kill on this list. His Deceive (Q) is already on an obnoxiously low cooldown at rank 1, and he can easily maintain a 100% uptime on his invisibility once he gets the ability to max rank.
There's sadly a limit to how many of his boxes he can put down, but it's high enough that you'll be easily able to fill an entire quadrant of the map with them. It's not rare for a full AP Shaco to kill people from 100% health with just two or three boxes.

Smolder: Terrain and walls are simply a suggestion for Smolder, who also enjoys enough ability haste to spam his abilities enough to super-scale his passive all the way to max level by the time he hits level 10. Just make sure to max his E first, since most of your damage scaling will come from stacks rather than levels, until you hit your item powerspikes.

Poppy: She has a consistent yet abusable toolkit. Her Q deals spectacular damage even if you build full tank, and it's at a comical cooldown. It's better to build full tank, purely to get more time to put more of these down in the teamfight. Her W lets her sit in the middle of a teamfight and invalidate a few dash champions, and her E can keep somebody stunned almost permanently, given that you hit them into terrain with the first one.

Veigar: Much like Smolder, he has the privilege of freely spamming his abilities to infinitely scale his passive. The main difference here is his unmatched burst, along with his cage, which is easily able to dictate the flow of a fight or lock down multiple champions at once. Just remember to build him tank— most of your AP will come from your passive and Rabadon's Deathcap, and there's little reason to getting more of it. Consider magic penetration, but that's about it.

Volibear: Voli just breaks entirely when you give him such high attack speed and ability haste, turning into a dueling and splitpushing monster. If he's on the enemy team, build grievous wounds ASAP, since the second hit of his Frenzied Maul (W) is likely to invalidate any damage you do to him after a certain point.

Morgana: She's able to keep somebody rooted 24/7 if she hits her first Dark Binding (Q), but this is not the only reason why she's great. In a mode where CC is constant and potentially infinite, CC immunity is extremely valuable. Her real threat is when she's paired with other champions who are countered by CC and kiting, such as Master Yi or Volibear.

Fizz: His Playful/Trickster (E) will become a problem for the enemy team very, very quickly. He also has access to items like Nashor's Tooth that can make him a nightmarish splitpusher and duelist, even if he doesn't hit his full combo. He's unlikely to land Chum the Waters (R) very often, but he doesn't really need to. He already has enough damage from spamming the rest of his annoyingly mobile kit.

Sylas: He's very similar to Volibear, with an easy heal attached to his W that can easily get ridiculous 10-15 minutes into the game, but add on top of that incredibly good AP burst, and the utility of his ultimate. His passive specifically greatly benefits from both the attack speed and ability haste buffs.

Vladimir: You just can't beat Blood Pool. Untargetability, healing and decent damage, all in a single ability that's usually balanced by its high health cost. Keep in mind that you can begin charging Tides of Blood (E) and have it go off in the middle of your Blood Pool.

Tips for Winning More URF Games

Group early, group often. You're passively given enough experience and gold to roam around the map as you wish after a certain point. Abuse this, and focus on teamwork rather than long killstreaks on your own.

Contest objectives. A lot of champions can even solo objectives while people are out fighting eachother.

Outdraft. Although many playstyles are viable, there's a pool of 15-20 champions during any given appearance of URF that completely dominate winrates. Seek these out through bans and stick to them if you want to win more.

Rush tenacity. The base tenacity you get from the gamemode buff added to Mercury's Treads and a single tenacity item can put you up at 70% tenacity, letting you ignore most of the CC spam that the mode is known for.

Abuse Exhaust. The summoner spell haste comes really handy with Exhaust in specific, especially since it's on an already low cooldown. In early 1v1s, 40% damage reduction will often win you the entire exchange, and it'll likely be up by the next time you fight. It's incredibly spammable and more likely to win you fights than Ignite, Barrier or any other combat summoner spell.

Give your wrists a break. Your wrists and fingers are doing triple the work they usually do when you play URF compared to regular League, and they'll probably start feeling a bit uncomfortable after only a game or two. Make sure to take breaks!