Patch 26.15 Tier List Analysis: What Actually Changed

Patch 26.15 Tier List Analysis:

Patch 26.15 is settled, and it did not land where we guessed on patch day. Locke's nerf did what Riot wanted and Mordekaiser's did not, the jungle turned over completely, and bot lane produced the biggest riser in the game. This is the frozen record of where the patch ended up, how our day one forecast actually scored, and which duos are quietly winning and losing games underneath the rankings.

Season 16 - Patch 26.15 Analysis

The tier list hub gets revised in place all patch long, which is what you want from a page you bookmark and the opposite of what you want from a record. This post is the record. Everything below is Patch 26.15 as it finished, and it stays exactly as written once 26.16 arrives. We also grade our own day one predictions here rather than quietly moving on from them, and dig into the pairings a champion-by-champion ranking structurally cannot show. Read our full Patch 26.15 patch notes recap here.

Patch 26.15 At a Glance

• Our day one forecast landed 5 of 15 God Tier slots, but 5 of 7 directional calls
• Warwick and Shyvana took a jungle no patch note pointed at
• Mordekaiser survived his nerf in top lane and fell three tiers in the jungle
• Xayah is the strongest pick in the patch, and her designed partner is the wrong one
• The best duo in the game is a Tier 3 bot laner and a Tier 4 support

Patch 26.15 God Tier List

Highest Influence | Good In Almost Every Situation | Easiest to Gain LP With

Mid Lane

1. Malzahar
2. Viktor
3. Xerath

Jungle

1. Warwick
2. Shyvana
3. Graves

Top Lane

1. Mordekaiser
2. Garen
3. Tryndamere

Bot Lane

1. Xayah
2. Seraphine
3. Smolder

Support

1. Thresh
2. Leona
3. Seraphine

How the Forecast Scored, Role by Role

Mid Lane

SPLIT DECISION

MalzaharViktorXerathLockeFizzAhri

Mid lane went to the champions nobody nerfed

We called Xerath and he held. We also called Fizz and Ahri to inherit the lane, and neither did. Malzahar and Viktor took it instead, and the logic we missed is that Locke's fall did not reward the champions who survive an assassin, it rewarded the ones who beat assassins outright. Malzahar's suppression and voidlings make the dive that decides most mid lanes simply not work on him. Locke, for his part, dropped two tiers exactly as forecast: he lost base health, damage at every rank on both the single nail and the three nail payoff, and the scaling move speed on his W entirely. Fizz and Ahri are both still strong Tier 1 picks, just not the ones who took the crown.

Jungle

MISSED

WarwickShyvanaGravesBriarNasusNocturne

The jungle rearranged with no nerfs aimed at it

A clean sweep against us. We predicted Nocturne, Nasus and Briar would hold, and all three are still perfectly good Tier 1 picks, so none of them collapsed. The role simply reordered around three champions we did not name at all. Nothing in the patch notes pointed at Warwick or Shyvana, which is precisely why a patch-notes forecast could never have found them. What moved the role was the rest of the map getting faster, which rewards junglers who convert clear speed into objectives over the ones built to win one specific early skirmish. Graves is the exception to that pattern and the most reliable carry jungler in the game regardless.

Top Lane

CALLED IT

MordekaiserGarenTryndamereShenTeemoSion

Top lane is where the patch notes told the truth

Garen returned to God Tier exactly as forecast, and the lane still belongs to champions who win an extended fight rather than a single trade. Tryndamere came up two tiers to join them, which we did not call but which follows the same rule. Shen landed in Tier 2 and Teemo slid to Tier 1, so the shape of our prediction was right even where the names were not. Sion is the quiet casualty, down two tiers without being touched.

Bot Lane

MISSED

XayahSeraphineSmolderKai'SaSennaNilah

Bot lane turned over harder than any other role

Seraphine held, and that is the whole of what we got right here. Xayah and Smolder both climbed three tiers into God Tier and neither appeared in our forecast, because nothing in the patch notes touched either one. Kai'Sa climbed three tiers off her direct buff without quite reaching the top, which is closer to a hit than a miss. Senna dropped out of God Tier and Nilah fell three tiers. If you main this role, almost nothing you knew going into 26.15 still applies.

Support

CALLED IT

ThreshLeonaSeraphineRellXerath

Support barely moved, and that is the story

Our best role by a distance. Thresh held and Leona climbed out of Tier 1, both as called. Rell is the only miss and she is still a strong Tier 2 pick rather than a collapse. Thresh has now held the top of this role across four patches and two entirely different ways of measuring it. The one real shift is that the role keeps drifting toward supports who can reach a mage bot laner, which is why Xerath fell two tiers as a support while staying strong in the bot lane itself.

The Exception

TWEAK

Mordekaiser

The one miss we would defend

We predicted Mordekaiser would fall out of God Tier after losing the stat steal on his ultimate, and in top lane he did not. But look at his jungle role and the nerf did exactly what we said it would: he dropped three full tiers there. The same change gutted one of his two roles and barely touched the other, which is not something you can read off a patch note. The lower E cooldown is a genuine buff and it does more for his lane than the stat steal ever did.

The Duos Behind the Rankings

The Best Duo in the Game

SYNERGY

Lucian & Yuumi

The best duo in the game is made of two of its worst champions

Lucian sits in Tier 3 on this list and Yuumi sits in Tier 4. On her own Yuumi is one of the weakest supports in the game right now, far enough down that her solo results land in the same territory as the off-role picks we flag as actively throwing. Put the two of them together and they win more often than any single God Tier champion on this page manages alone. Nothing else we track comes close to that gap between what two champions do apart and what they do together. They solve each other exactly: Lucian's power lives in a short early window he has to survive to use, and a support who cannot be targeted, cannot be zoned off and never has to back is the cleanest possible answer to that. Yuumi's problem is the mirror image, since she contributes almost nothing unless whoever she is attached to converts her stats into pressure immediately, which most bot laners cannot do and Lucian can.

POPULARITY

Lucian & NamiLucian & Milio

Yes, we checked. The classic Lucian pairing is the wrong one right now

If that sounds wrong, it should. Nami has been the Lucian support for years, she is still by far his most common partner, picked more than twice as often as Yuumi, and she sits in Tier 2 on this very list while Yuumi sits in Tier 4. Every prior anyone has about this lane says Nami should be the better half. She currently is not. Lucian with Nami is losing more games than it wins and doing worse than what both champions should manage together, and Milio, his second most common partner, is in the same position. Three things convince us this is real rather than noise. It runs in both directions, since Lucian is Yuumi's best partner and Yuumi is Lucian's, in both cases by roughly double the margin of whoever comes second. It holds across several hundred games for each pairing rather than a handful. And it has a mechanism behind it: this bot lane has drifted toward range and disengage, which is exactly the matchup where a Lucian and Nami level two all-in stops being a plan, while a support who simply keeps him alive through a lane he cannot win outright still works. None of that makes Nami a bad champion. It makes her the wrong answer to this particular bot lane.

Other Pairings That Work

SYNERGY

Smolder & LuxZeri & ThreshCaitlyn & Braum

Three more pairings that beat the sum of their parts

Smolder and Lux is the one to know if you picked him up after seeing him in God Tier above: he needs to survive to stack and then needs targets to hit, and a support who zones with a root and finishes low targets from range answers both halves at once. Zeri with Thresh works because the lantern covers the exact repositioning mistake Zeri players make, and Caitlyn with Braum turns the longest range in the lane into a siege nobody can walk into.

Pairings That Are Losing You Games

ANTI-SYNERGY

Xayah & RakanEzreal & YuumiTristana & RellTwitch & PykeSamira & Camille

The pairings people lock in on reputation

Xayah and Rakan are underperforming as a duo. They were designed together, they share a mechanic, and they are the first thing most players think of when either name comes up. Xayah is the single strongest bot laner in this patch, and she is measurably better with Thresh than she is with her own partner. Ezreal and Yuumi is the other half of the Lucian story above: she is not a general purpose support, she is a Lucian support, and the same attachment that produces the best duo in the game produces one of the worst here. Ezreal's kit already solves being caught out, so a second safety net buys nothing and gives up a body in every fight. Tristana with Rell, Twitch with Pyke and Samira with Camille are all engage-heavy pairings built around committing first, into a bot lane that has drifted toward range and disengage.

PICK THIS INSTEAD

Xayah & Thresh

If you climbed onto Xayah this patch, change one thing

Thresh is the best partner Xayah has right now, and the gap between him and her designed partner is large enough to be worth a champion swap rather than a shrug. His hook creates the picks her feathers punish, and the lantern covers the one moment she is genuinely vulnerable, which is the window between throwing feathers and recalling them.

Looking Ahead

Bot lane is the role to watch into 26.16. Three of its five God Tier and Tier 1 slots changed hands this patch without a single line of patch notes aimed at them, which usually means the role is still finding its level rather than that it has found it. Kai'Sa in particular is sitting one tier below where her buff should have put her, and that gap tends to close in the direction of the buff. Support is the opposite case and the safest place to invest practice time: Thresh has now survived four patches and a complete change in how we measure the game.

Rankings on this page are frozen at Patch 26.15. The living version, updated every patch and revised within each one, is the League of Legends Tier List.

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