League of Legends Solo Queue Tier Lists for Patch 26.15:
Patch 26.15 hits two of the five champions sitting at the very top of their role, and both cuts look deep enough to move them. Locke takes the heaviest package in the patch and should give up the mid lane crown to Fizz, while Mordekaiser loses the ultimate that carried him and hands top lane to Shen and a returning Garen. Support moves too, though not because of the notes: with mages taking over the bot lane, we expect Janna to give up her God Tier slot to Leona. Jungle and bot lane came through almost untouched and should hold.
SEASON 16 - PATCH 26.15 Changelog
Patch 26.15 Tier List Predictions
Predicted God Tier List
Highest Influence | Good In Almost Every Situation | Easiest to Gain LP With
Patch 26.15 Changes At a Glance
Buffs: Alistar, Kai'Sa, Maokai, Volibear, Zac
Nerfs: Locke, Mordekaiser, Naafiri, Riven, Sylas
Tweaks: Bel'Veth
Aegis of Valor also stops reducing LP loss and pays double LP on a win instead, and Season 3 starts July 29. Full patch notes recap here.
Where We Think Each Role Lands
Mid Lane
Prediction: Fizz takes over, Locke falls out.
Locke gets the single heaviest package in the patch. He loses 35 base health, his Q loses damage at every rank on both the single nail and the three nail payoff, and his W loses its scaling move speed entirely along with a chunk of grey health. Riot said outright they want to kill second maxing W, and they did. Any one of those alone would be a small nerf. Together they should be enough to push him off the top of mid lane and into Tier 1.
That leaves a vacancy, and Fizz is the obvious champion to fill it. He held God Tier through 26.14 without being touched this patch, and the assassin who was beating him to the punch just got slower and squishier. Xerath holds his slot for the same reason. Sylas losing damage on his Q first lash removes one more mid laner who could have contested the gap, so we expect Ahri to climb out of Tier 1 and take the third slot. She is one of the most played champions in the role and nothing in these notes touches her.
Top Lane
Prediction: Mordekaiser drops out, Shen inherits the lane, Teemo slides to third.
Mordekaiser is the other real casualty. His ultimate loses stat steal, dropping from 13% to 10%, and the bugfix alongside it closes a case where ulting a healthy target dealt up to double damage. The lower E cooldown is a genuine buff and Riot expects him net ahead of where he was in 26.13, but 26.13 is not the bar. He got to God Tier on the back of the 26.14 ultimate buff, and that buff is now gone.
Shen should be the one who benefits most. He held God Tier last patch, he goes untouched here, and his value never depended on who else was in the lane. Garen we expect back in second: he was trimmed in 26.14 and settled into Tier 1, and the champion who pushed past him is the one taking the hit this time.
Teemo is the interesting call, and we have him slipping to third rather than holding. He climbed into God Tier last patch largely as the answer to the juggernauts running top lane, Mordekaiser chief among them. If Mordekaiser is the champion falling out this patch, the specific problem Teemo was being picked to solve gets less common, and a counter pick is only as strong as the thing it counters.
The other half of it is who else keeps turning up in the lane. Top lane has been seeing more marksmen, and most of them out range Teemo outright. His 500 attack range is only an advantage against melee, and it stops being one entirely against a Quinn at 525, a Vayne at 550 or a Varus at 575, all of whom can sit outside it and farm. The blind still swings any fight he actually gets to pick, but he has fewer lanes now where he simply gets to poke for free. He stays God Tier because the kit is still miserable to lane against, just with less to feed on.
Volibear's lower Q cooldown is a real quality of life gain for the laning version of him, though a couple of seconds early is not the kind of change that carries a champion from Tier 3 to the top of the role in one patch.
Jungle
Prediction: no movement at the top, plenty underneath it.
Nocturne, Nasus and Briar all go untouched, and none of the junglers who did get nerfed were sitting above them. Naafiri loses damage on her ultimate and has its ratio moved onto bonus attack damage, which stings most in the exact pattern Riot called out, the back to back to back ultimate chains. Sylas loses Q damage in the jungle the same way he does in mid. Neither was holding a God Tier slot, so there is no vacancy for anyone to inherit.
Underneath, Maokai and Zac both pick up buffs aimed squarely at the jungle. Maokai's Q clears camps faster and scales harder, and Zac gets a full second off his E at every rank plus armor growth. Both should move, we just do not expect either to jump two tiers in a week.
Spotlight: What Actually Happened to Bel'Veth
Bel'Veth is the one champion in this patch whose changes are too big to summarize as a buff or a nerf, so she gets her own section. Riot took power out of her early game on purpose and paid for it at the other end.
Her early invade is gone. Q used to have one second between casts at every rank. It now starts at four seconds and only reaches one second at rank five. Her base attack speed drops from 0.85 to 0.67, her attack damage from 60 to 55, and her health from 610 to 580. The version of Bel'Veth that walked into your jungle at level three and took your buff does not exist anymore.
Her late game is genuinely frightening. True Form used to last 60 seconds unempowered and 180 empowered. It now scales with her stacks: 45 seconds at zero, 90 at forty, and permanent at eighty. Her R heal per bonus health goes from 100/150/200 up to 100/250/400, her attack range bonus becomes 25/75/125 instead of a flat 75, and her passive now applies on every attack instead of every other one.
Watch her W, because the build may change. It loses its bonus attack damage ratio entirely and moves to 150% ability power, up from 125%, with base damage going from 70/110/150/190/230 to 80/140/200/260/320. That is a large chunk of her damage that no longer cares about attack damage at all, on a champion whose E also converts on-hit effects. It is early to call an AP build correct, but it is now a real question rather than a meme.
Our prediction: she looks bad first, then good. First week Bel'Veth is likely to underperform her eventual placement, because the games she now wants are the long ones and solo queue rarely gives a jungler a quiet fifteen minutes to stack. We are leaving her out of God Tier for this patch and expect her to climb once players stop trying to play her the way she used to work.
Bot Lane
Prediction: all three hold.
Not a single bot laner appears in the nerf column. Senna, Seraphine and Tristana were the God Tier three coming out of 26.14 and nothing in this patch argues against any of them, so we expect the row to look identical when the data comes in.
Kai'Sa is the one to watch. Her passive scaling goes up at both ends, which is a real answer to the complaint that she never quite pays off the short range she plays with. It is a late game buff on a champion who has to survive to the late game first, so we expect her to climb out of Tier 2 without reaching the top of the role this patch. Yun Tal Wildarrows getting cheaper and faster helps the scaling crit builds generally, which is a small tailwind for the whole bottom half of the marksman list rather than a single champion.
Support
Prediction: Janna falls out, Leona takes her slot.
Support got the quietest patch of the five roles, and the movement we expect here has nothing to do with the notes at all. Janna earned her God Tier slot by being the best enchanter in the game at making an auto attack carry stronger. Her shield hands out attack damage, her passive pushes move speed onto whoever she is following, and her whole kit is built to keep a marksman alive and hitting things.
The problem is who she is standing next to. Bot lane has been drifting toward mages rather than marksmen for a while now, and a mage carry takes almost nothing from what Janna does best. There is no attack damage to amplify and no sustained damage window to protect. Janna does not get worse this patch, the lane around her just stops rewarding her, and that is enough to cost her a slot at the very top.
Leona is our pick to replace her, up from Tier 1. Lockdown does not care whether the carry behind it is a marksman or a mage, and it may actually be worth more next to a mage: an immobile bot laner with a long cast time needs someone to hold the target still far more than a marksman kiting in and out does. Thresh holds the top slot for the same reason and Rell stays put in second.
Alistar picks up 5 move speed, which Riot framed as compensation for a roaming support who has felt slow since Mobility Boots and Symbiotic Soles left. It is a real buff and it lands on a champion the current meta should already favor, but 5 move speed is not the kind of number that carries a Tier 2 support past three incumbents. Worth noting that Maokai's buff is jungle focused, so if he does move it is likely out of the support column rather than up it.
For the full, confirmed tier list across every tier and role, check the League of Legends Tier List.
- Everything above is a prediction made before any Patch 26.15 games have been played. The hub page gets the data backed rankings once they exist.
- The purpose of this list is for discussion and to provide a starting point for champion selection.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment or leave a message :)