Patch 26.16 Tier List Analysis: What's Moved So Far

Patch 26.16 Tier List Analysis:

We're a week into Patch 26.16 and the forecast is mostly holding up. Nasus is taking top lane exactly as called, the mages are coming out of bot lane exactly as called, and support hasn't moved an inch. This is where 26.16 stands right now, how our day one predictions are scoring, and the duos winning and losing games underneath the rankings.

Season 16 - Patch 26.16 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 snapshot. Everything below is where Patch 26.16 stands right now, and it stays exactly as written while the hub carries on moving. 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 can't show. Read our full Patch 26.16 patch notes recap here.

Patch 26.16 At a Glance

• Our day one forecast is landing 12 of 16 God Tier slots, and support is a clean sweep
• Nasus is the best champion in the patch right now, and we called him on patch day
• Bot lane is going back to the marksmen, just not the three we named
• Graves is keeping the jungle we forecast him to lose, and that's the miss worth owning
• The same support is one of the best partners in the game and one of the worst

Patch 26.16 God Tier

This is the God Tier board a week into Patch 26.16, in the same layout the tier list itself uses. The League of Legends Tier List carries the full five tiers for every role and keeps getting revised for the rest of the patch.

God Tier List

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

Top Lane

1. Nasus
2. Garen
3. Malphite

Jungle

1. Nocturne
2. Briar
3. Shyvana
4. Graves

Mid Lane

1. Xerath↗
2. Fizz
3. Viktor

Bot Lane

1. Caitlyn
2. Jinx
3. Twitch

Support

1. Leona
2. Thresh↗
3. Seraphine↗

How Our Day One Forecast Is Scoring

Top Lane

CALLED

NasusGarenMalphite

Nasus was the call of the patch

We put Nasus in God Tier on patch day off his stack buff, before a single 26.16 game had been played, and he's the strongest champion in the game right now. Garen was called and he's holding. The half we got wrong is Malphite: we had him falling out on the Sunfire cost increase and he's shrugged it off, taking the third slot back from Teemo, who was our third name. Two of three, and the one that matters most is right.

Jungle

MISSED

NocturneBriarShyvanaGraves

Graves is keeping the jungle we said he would lose

Nocturne, Briar and Shyvana were all forecast and all are holding, so the shape of the role is right. The name we got wrong is the interesting one. We read the jungle pet scaling change as aimed squarely at Graves and handed his spot to Warwick. Warwick has climbed, but only as far as the top half of Tier 1, and Graves hasn't gone anywhere. The burst that makes him a problem doesn't come from the stats that changed, and we weighted a patch note over a champion who's been fine for months.

Mid Lane

CALLED

XerathFizzViktor

Two of three, and the third was already in the building

Xerath and Viktor were both forecast and both are holding. Malzahar was our third and he's slipped to the head of Tier 1 rather than staying up top, with Fizz taking the slot instead. That's a swap between two champions sitting next to each other the whole time, which is about as small as a miss in this role gets.

Bot Lane

CALLED

CaitlynJinxTwitch

Right about the lane, half right about the names

The forecast said the magic resistance and boot changes would push the mages out and hand bot lane back to the marksmen, and that's precisely what's happening. Xerath and Seraphine are both coming down out of God Tier there. Jinx and Caitlyn were two of the three names we picked and both are in God Tier now. Kai'Sa was the third and she's sitting a tier below, with Twitch in the slot instead. The lane's direction is the harder call and we got it.

Support

CALLED

LeonaThreshSeraphine

Three for three, and nothing moved all patch

Leona, Thresh and Seraphine were the forecast and they're the board, in a role the patch notes barely touched. Seraphine is the one with a question over her, since the same changes pushing her out of bot lane apply to her here too. They haven't. She holds God Tier support for a second straight patch.

What's Moved So Far

Two things are worth separating here. Some of these champions have moved because Patch 26.16 changed something, and some have moved because a week of games is saying something different from the first two days. Both count, but they aren't the same claim.

The Patch Did This

BUFF

NasusJinxTwitch

The buffs landed where the patch notes pointed

Nasus has climbed out of the middle of top lane and into first place on the back of the single biggest champion change in the patch. Jinx and Twitch have both climbed into God Tier in a lane that got handed magic resistance and better boots, after spending 26.15 below it. Those three are the cleanest cause-and-effect moves on the board, and all three are predictable from the notes alone, which is why we predicted two of them.

NERF

SeraphineXerathXayah

The mages lost bot lane, which was the entire point

Seraphine and Xerath both held God Tier bot on 26.15 and both sit in Tier 1 there now. Xayah has fallen further, out of the top of the lane and into Tier 3. Riot set out to make bot lane belong to marksmen again and the board agrees it's working. Seraphine is the footnote: she's given up the bot lane slot and kept the support one, so the change moves where she gets played rather than how strong she is.

The Data Did This

CORRECTED

MalphiteFizzSivir

Three reads that changed between the first 48 hours and the full week

Malphite and Fizz both looked like solid Tier 1 picks on the early read and both are in God Tier now that there are enough games to be sure. Sivir has gone the other way. She was the surprise of the opening days and the wider sample hasn't held it up, so she sits in Tier 2 now. That's not a champion falling off a cliff, it's a small sample being a small sample. She's still a balanced, perfectly draftable bot laner, just not one of the three best.

CORRECTED

JaxTeemoMalzahar

And three that came back down

All three have spent part of this patch in God Tier and all three now sit at the top of Tier 1 in their role. None of them got nerfed and none of them are worse than they were in July. They're the picks that were being carried by a couple of days' worth of noise, and Tier 1 is a perfectly good place to be. Jax in particular is still the pick we rate furthest above the wider consensus in top lane.

The Duos Behind the Rankings

A tier list ranks champions one at a time, which means there is a whole layer of the game it structurally cannot show you. Two picks that are each fine on their own can be a disaster together, and two picks nobody rates can be the best thing in the lobby. Everything below comes out of our own bot lane and support pairing data, and we only use pairs with enough games behind them to be worth acting on.

The Support Who Is Both

SPLIT

Tristana & YuumiJinx & YuumiCaitlyn & Yuumi

Yuumi is one of the best partners in the game and one of the worst

No champion we track splits harder than this. Put Yuumi with Tristana, Nilah, Lucian or Zeri and she's one of the strongest partners in the game, well beyond what her own placement on the list would suggest. Put her with Caitlyn, Jinx, Jhin or Miss Fortune and she's one of the worst, and two of those four are God Tier bot laners this patch. The line between the two groups is clean enough to draft off. She's excellent with marksmen who want to run at people and become untargetable while they do it, because that is exactly what she turns into, and she's bad with marksmen who want to stand at the back and be protected, because she can't peel, can't zone and can't put her body in front of anything. If you've been picking her as a general-purpose safe support, that's the habit to break.

SYNERGY

Twitch & NamiTwitch & SonaTwitch & Swain

Twitch climbed into God Tier, and he's picky about who's next to him

The sustain supports all overperform alongside Twitch, Nami and Sona and Soraka every one of them, and Swain does it too. The heavy engage supports all underperform, Nautilus and Rakan and Taric included. It's a consistent enough pattern to plan a draft around. Twitch needs to reach his item spike and then choose his own fight from somewhere nobody is looking, and a support who keeps him topped up in lane serves that far better than one who starts fights for him at level six.

Pairings That Beat the Sum of Their Parts

SYNERGY

Seraphine & Tahm KenchXayah & ZileanVayne & Taric

The best duo in the game is a mage bot lane the patch tried to kill

Seraphine and Tahm Kench outperform their expected result by a wider margin than any other pair we track this patch, which is a strange thing to be true in a patch written specifically to push mages out of bot lane. It makes sense once you look at what the change actually did: it made the mage bot laner easier to run at. A support whose whole job is eating that and walking away answers the problem directly. Xayah and Zilean and Vayne and Taric are close behind, and all three pairs are the same idea. A bot laner with a real payoff and a support who guarantees they live long enough to reach it.

Pairings That Are Quietly Losing You Games

WARNING

Samira & SorakaSamira & LuluDraven & Alistar

Samira with an enchanter is the one to stop drafting

Samira with Soraka and Samira with Lulu are both near the bottom of everything we track, on enough games each that it isn't noise. The instinct is understandable, since Samira dives into the middle of a fight and looks like she wants healing, but what she actually needs is somebody creating the crowd control she builds her combo out of, and neither of those two does that. Draven and Alistar is the same shape from the other direction. Draven wants the lane won early and Alistar's best work comes later than that.

Looking Ahead

Nasus is the obvious thing to watch into 26.17. A champion who takes the biggest buff in a patch and then sits on top of it is usually first in line for the correction, and top lane has three other names sitting close enough behind him to take over if it comes. Bot lane is the opposite case and should stay put for a while, because it's moving this patch for a reason that was written down in the notes rather than drifting on its own. The one read we'd still call unfinished is Caitlyn: she wins the lane in a patch where winning the lane is enough, and that is exactly the kind of placement that slips when the average game gets a few minutes longer.

Rankings on this page are a snapshot taken partway through Patch 26.16. The living version, updated every patch and revised within each one, is the League of Legends Tier List.

Agree? Disagree? Comment below!