Ideal Champion Pools For Ranked Solo Queue

Climbing solo queue has always been more about preventing auto-losses than dominating games by yourself. Even the highest win rate champions barely break 54%, so the players who climb are the ones who never hand a game away.

The fastest way to hand a game away is to get autofilled onto a champion you've never played. Here's how to build a pool that survives that, updated with eight years of patch data we didn't have the first time.

Solo Queue Strategy

Ideal Champion Pools

Updated for Patch 26.15 · August 2026

Climbing solo queue has always been more about preventing auto-losses than dominating games by yourself. Even the highest win rate champions barely break 54%, so the players who climb are the ones who never hand a game away.

The fastest way to hand a game away is to get autofilled onto a champion you've never played. Here's how to build a pool that survives that, updated with eight years of patch data we didn't have the first time.

A note on this article

We first published this in 2015, pulled it when role select landed, and brought it back for Season 8 in 2018. It's still one of the most read things on the site, so we've rebuilt it again for Season 16. The advice hasn't changed. The champions have, and now we can actually prove which ones were worth trusting.

Why a Pool Beats a Main

Personal champion pools work best when they hold different sets of champions that fit different meta roles. Riot buffs and nerfs in cycles, so a well-rounded pool gives you a better chance of steady climbing than a single main does. That was the argument in 2018 and it's held up.

What's changed is that we can now measure it. We've spent this year pivoting every patch note we've ever written by champion, 301 patches going back to 2013, which means we can look up exactly how often Riot has touched anyone. That turns "pick champions Riot leaves alone" from a hunch into something you can check.

The Stability Test

Here's the part nobody tells you. The champion who wins you games isn't the one at the top of the tier list this patch, it's the one who was near the top last patch and will still be there next patch. Every hour you spend learning a champion is an investment, and Riot can wipe it out with one line in a patch note.

So we ran a simple filter: champions who sit in the top two tiers right now and who Riot has barely touched since the start of 2024. Those are the picks below. The average champion has taken 24 changes across our archive. The five we're recommending have taken one, two, two, two and five since 2024 respectively.

Check any champion yourself

Every number in this article comes from our patch notes history hub. Search any champion and see every buff, nerf and rework they've ever taken, going back to 2013.

Open the Patch Notes History Hub

The Pool, Role by Role

Each role gets one anchor pick, the champion worth actually investing in, plus two safe picks you can pick up quickly when you're autofilled and just need to not lose the game.

Top Lane

Renekton

2 changes since 2024

Archetypes to cover: tanks, bruisers, ranged casters, and the occasional split pusher.

Renekton is Tier 1 right now and Riot has touched him twice since the start of 2024. Both were buffs. That's the profile you want: a champion good enough to carry, boring enough that nobody writes angry posts about him.

His kit is the reason. Renekton wins by pressing buttons in lane rather than by exploiting an item interaction or a movement trick, so item reworks and jungle changes mostly float past him. He also solves the worst problem in top lane, which is losing the lane and becoming useless, because a Renekton who's behind is still a Renekton who can stun somebody in a teamfight.

Safe picks: Garen and Malphite. Both sit in our new player tiers, both are close to unloseable in lane, and Malphite's ultimate wins teamfights you had no business being in.

Jungle

Amumu

2 changes since 2024

Archetypes to cover: tanky initiator, assassin, hybrid bruiser. Tanky initiators get nerfed least, because there's less to complain about.

Amumu is Tier 1 and has taken two changes since 2024, both buffs. He's the clearest example of the whole argument. Nobody's asking Riot to gut Amumu, so Riot doesn't, and the time you spend learning his clear keeps paying out season after season.

He also fixes the thing that makes autofilled jungle miserable. You don't need to win the early game or read the enemy jungler's pathing. You need to hit two people with Curse of the Sad Mummy, and that's a skill you can learn in an afternoon and use forever.

Safe picks: Warwick and Nasus. Warwick is God Tier in the jungle right now and hard to punish, since his healing covers the mistakes a new jungler makes.

Mid Lane

Malzahar

2 changes since 2024

Archetypes to cover: AP or AD burst, ranged poke, and mages with a reliable escape or a way to say no.

We listed Malzahar as an easy pick in 2018, a champion you grab when you're stuck. He's God Tier now, and Riot has changed him twice since 2024. Both were buffs. Sometimes the boring pick just quietly wins.

Malzahar answers the two things that ruin a mid laner's game. Assassins can't kill you through the passive shield without spending real resources, and you never lose a wave, so a bad matchup turns into a farming exercise instead of a death sentence. His ultimate is a point and click suppress, which means it works exactly as well at 4am on your fifth game as it does when you're fresh.

Safe picks: Xerath and Veigar. Xerath is God Tier mid and Tier 1 bot at the moment, and he's had two changes since 2024, so he's arguably the single most stable pick in this whole article.

Bot Lane

Xayah

God Tier

Archetypes to cover: burst marksmen, poke marksmen, and anyone with a genuine escape.

Xayah was our marksman pick in 2018 and she's God Tier in 2026. Eight years, five changes since 2024, still at the top. If you want one champion on this page as proof the stability argument works, it's her.

Marksmen cycle harder than any other role because they live and die by item changes, so the ones worth learning are the ones who bring their own safety. Featherstorm is a full untargetable window on demand, which means Xayah survives the exact moments that delete other marksmen: a hooked engage, a flanking assassin, a bad teamfight position. She doesn't need a specific support to function either, which matters a lot when you're the one being autofilled.

Safe picks: Seraphine and Jinx. Both are in our new player tiers, and Seraphine is God Tier bot right now while being about as forgiving as a bot laner gets.

Support

Soraka

1 change since 2024

Archetypes to cover: tank, enchanter, and burst damage. Support is the most playstyle-driven role, so pick the one that matches how you like to play.

Soraka has taken exactly one change since the start of 2024, a buff in Patch 14.4, and she's Tier 1. That's the most stable champion in this entire article and it isn't close. Riot has effectively left her alone for over two years while she stayed good.

She's also the correct answer to the worst version of autofill, which is getting dropped into support with a bot laner you've never met. Soraka doesn't need coordination. She needs you to keep somebody alive, and healing works the same regardless of whether your ADC knows what they're doing. We called her an easy pick in 2018 for the same reason, and eight years later she's climbed the tier list rather than fallen off it.

Safe picks: Leona and Thresh. Both are God Tier and both sit in our new player tiers, which is a rare combination. Leona in particular has been on this list since 2018 and hasn't left it.

How Our 2018 Picks Held Up

This is the part we couldn't do the last time. Every champion the Season 8 version of this article recommended, and where they sit today:

Champion	Named in 2018 as	Where they sit now
Xayah	Ideal marksman	God Tier Bot
Leona	Ideal support	God Tier Support
Warwick	Easy jungle	God Tier Jungle
Malzahar	Easy mid	God Tier Mid
Ahri	Ideal mid	Tier 1 Mid
Jarvan IV	Ideal jungle	Tier 1 Jungle
Malphite	Easy top	Tier 1 Top
Soraka	Easy support	Tier 1 Support
Ashe	Easy marksman	Tier 2 Bot
Xin Zhao	Easy jungle	Tier 2 Jungle
Vladimir	Ideal top	Tier 4 Top
Sion	Easy top	Tier 4 Top

Tier placements from our Patch 26.15 solo queue tier list. The full 2018 list named nineteen champions; this table shows the twelve worth calling out.

Sixteen of the nineteen champions that article named are still Tier 3 or better in the role we picked them for, and four of them are God Tier today. That's a decent hit rate for advice written eight years and roughly a hundred patches ago, and it's the strongest case we can make for the underlying idea: pick champions whose power doesn't depend on the current patch, and your practice keeps its value.

Vladimir is the instructive failure. We called him the ideal top laner in 2018 because he did everything, and doing everything is exactly what gets a champion nerfed. Riot has nerfed him three times since 2024 alone and he's fallen to Tier 4 in the role we recommended him for. The champions who last aren't the ones who are best at everything, they're the ones nobody minds losing to.

How to Actually Build the Pool

Three rules, in order of how much they matter.

One champion per role is enough to start. You're not building a pro player's pool, you're building insurance. The goal is that no autofill result makes you groan, and five champions does that.

Learn the safe pick before you need it. A champion you've read about isn't in your pool. Play two or three normals on each of your safe picks now, while the games don't count, so that the first ranked game you play them isn't also the first game you play them.

Check the patch notes before you commit weeks to somebody. If a champion you're learning has taken six changes in the last year, you're learning a moving target. That's what the hub above is for.

Keep going

See where every champion stands this patch on the solo queue tier list, find out who to remove from your games on the best champion bans page, or look up your own main's full history on the patch notes history hub.

Have some more ideas on ideal and easy champion selections? Want to post your champion pool for feedback? Comment below!