Before we start off with the Tier List, let us introduce ourselves really quick for all of you who don’t already know us. Our team, started in 16th August 2013, is named “Arcane Rebirth”, and was formed and still consists of the same three members: Daza (Top-Bruiser), Koella (Bot-Mage) and Woder23 (Top-Support). As far as ranking goes we finished season 3 as the Rank 1 Team on the EUW server with 937 LP and a winrate of 78%.

In creating this Tier List, we all worked together to try and place every single champion in their appropriate Tier at a place where we think they belong. We tried to be as objective as possible while creating it and we think we did a good job at judging due to our long-term 3v3 experience, not only as individuals but also as a team. We feel our experience is valuable due to all the ideas we were able to gather in the many games we’ve played.

Tier Descriptions

Important: Before we start describing our Tiers more in-depth we’d like to say that just because a champion is not in God Tier or Tier 1 does not mean it is unviable. It’s also very important to think about possible counterpicks or what would fit your team composition better. For example, a Tier 2 or Tier 3 champion could fit better than a higher-Tier champion.

God Tier:
These are Champions that are mostly safe picks and outclass a lot of champions in their role. They’re also not vulnerable to counterpicks and often used as firstpicks to pick them away from your enemy.

Tier 1:
Generally pretty strong and safe picks that usually offer multiple options for your team and are guaranteed to have an impact on the game. You can firstpick them without fearing counterpicks too much.

Tier 2:
Decent picks, but be careful when using them. If you pick them too early you might get countered plus they might not fit into a lot of teamcomps you’re trying to build.

Tier 3:
The Champions in here are rather situational picks that fill specific niches. You should probably only consider using them as a counterpick or if you need them for a very specific reason in your teamcomp.

Tier 4:
Champions in this Tier either don’t fit the meta or are generally not really usable for any purpose. Try to stay away from them.

The Tier List

The Champions in their Tiers are sorted alphabetically. Bolded Champions will have an in-depth description further below.

God Tier:

Annie, Lee Sin, Morgana, Renekton, Shyvana, Syndra, Udyr

Tier 1:

Aatrox,  Cassiopeia, Darius, Diana, Gragas, Jarvan IV, Kassadin, Kayle, Leona, Lissandra, Orianna, Riven, Sion, Thresh, Trundle, Vi

Tier 2:

Ahri, Cho’Gath, Corki, Dr. Mundo, Elise, Evelynn, Fizz,  Jax, Jayce, Karma, Kha’Zix, Lulu, Nasus, Nocturne, Nunu, Olaf, Quinn, Taric, Vayne, Viktor, Volibear, Xin Zhao, Ziggs, Zyra

Tier 3:

Alistar, Anivia, Brand, Caitlyn, Ezreal, Fiddlesticks, Fiora, Gangplank, Garen, Graves, Irelia, Janna, Jinx, Kennen, Kog’Maw, LeBlanc, Lucian, Lux, Malphite, Maokai, Master Yi, Mordekaiser, Nami, Nautilus, Nidalee, Pantheon, Rumble, Ryze, Sejuani, Shen, Singed, Skarner, Soraka, Swain, Teemo, Tristana, Tryndamere, Twitch, Urgot, Vladimir, Wukong, Yasuo, Yorick, Zac, Zed, Zilean

Tier 4:

Akali, Amumu, Ashe, Blitzcrank, Draven, Galio, Hecarim, Heimerdinger, Karthus, Katarina, Malzahar, Miss Fortune, Poppy, Rammus, Rengar, Shaco, Sivir, Sona, Talon, Twisted Fate, Varus, Veigar, Warwick, Xerath

Champion Tier Explanations

Annie

… is currently by far the best AP support in the game. Why?

• She has good lane dominance and early level fighting potential especially because of the reliable stun and burst she gets from W, but also because of her poking potential from Q and long-ranged autoattacks.
• Synergizes well with every teamcomp you put her in and doesn’t have a specific counter.
• Her high base values enable her to pose a threat even though she has practically no items. Those high base values also make her damage scale incredibly well with cheap magic penetration items like Sorcerer’s Shoes or Haunting Guise.
• She can act as an Initiator with Flash in case you need one, but even if she’s not initiating her stun in general has a high potential of hitting multiple enemies.

However, she has the weakness of being quite squishy and close-ranged, which is why she isn’t just as good at being a mage as she is on support. That’s why we’d consider her being played as a mage on Botlane “only” in Tier 1.
Why doesn’t her fragility matter if she’s played as a support? It’s quite simple: If the enemies use their cooldowns to burst down the threatening support player, then they can’t deal with the true threat of the team, the AP player, and that could put the enemy in quite a bit of trouble. This is even more true if Annie manages to expel her full combo out before she dies.

Syndra

She was quite strong before the Season 4 changes anyways, but her role was mostly limited to a counterpick or niche-pick. Now, because of the rather huge Blackfire Torch (BFT) buff, champions that can burst a single target became extremely powerful.
Her laning phase is really good; she can outpush almost every enemy if she wants to or she can just last hit single minions and she can’t really get out-traded in a 1v1 situation.
From lvl 6 on she poses a big threat to any enemy that is within her vision due to her long-range engage and burst potential.

Also, Syndra can long-range stun you out of the fog of war when she’s missing, causing her to be a bigger than average threat while roaming or even just while she’s jungling.
Speaking of jungling, her clearing speed is quite insane from lvl 3 on.

Udyr

• In general there’s no phase of the game where Udyr wouldn’t be strong. He’s good in the early, mid, and lategame. We’d rank both Bruiser and Jungle Udyr as God Tier.
• His early game pressure is extremely high and he has a burst potential from pretty much lvl 1 on.
• Very fast lane- and jungle-clearing speed.
• Good mobility, which makes him hard to gank plus it also lets him be quite a good ganker himself because of his unpreventable stun and followup burst.
• Fits into a lot of team compositions and doesn’t have a lot of counters in the current meta (CC can counter him but mages like Lissandra that have the kit to do so aren’t necessarily the best picks at the moment)
• Is hard to kite if your champion doesn’t have the appropriate abilities in his kit, since the sustained damage from his Tiger Form make him a dangerous threat to squishier champions.

Gragas

• The BFT changes also helped him out a lot in terms of viability.
• The Movement Speed, extra burst, and CDR help him out a lot with his melee-mage kit.
• His laning is really safe and in teamfights his barrel is especially effective against attack speed-reliant bruisers. Not to mention his ultimate, which has not only a potential to screw pretty much the whole enemy team’s position over, is also quite a nice tool to disengage or in some cases even engage a teamfight.

Sion

• Once again, his champion viability rose due to changes in BFT.
• Sion gains huge benefits from pretty much anything that item offers to him and it’s the only reason why he is up so high in the Tiers. BFT together with his easily manageable safe laning phase makes him consistant enough to be considered quite a safe pick without too much counters. The burst in combination with the utility he gets from one single item is just insane.
• The only viable way to play Sion is therefore AP, as AD bruiser we’d consider him Tier 4.

Taric

• He’s able to put out quite a good amount of damage as well as utility for his team through lowered cooldowns on his spells.
• During the laning phase he can sustain himself and his ally. In later phases he can engage just by simply running into the enemy team and stunning the main target while being quite tanky and also dealing a good amount of burst damage. Additionally, he even decreases the target’s armor so he automatically enables your bruiser to inflict more damage.
• Following the nowadays common build path of an Iceborn Gauntlet first will increase his utility and damage potential even further.

Karma

During Season 3 she was a very competitive, highly contested pick and everyone knew her as a God-Tier champion. However, Season 4 changes hurt her really badly. Hextech Sweeper, THE core item on Karma, being absent from the game hurt her presence severely in Twisted Treeline.

Also, the meta on duo lane has changed quite a bit. Karma was always a team-utility-based mage that didn’t pose a huge threat on her own. Nowadays, ideally you want the mage to be a bigger threat than anyone else on the team so that the enemies really need to focus them. Karma can’t quite do that, as she doesn’t have enough sustained damage and the utility from Hextech Sweeper being “robbed” from her didn’t help that fact.

Nasus

The main difference between 3v3 and 5v5 with Nasus is that you can’t afford to play him on the lane. You won’t be able to just safely farm up and wait until the lategame. As a Bruiser you can’t really say he’s too viable on the Twisted Treeline.
Therefore, the only way to get some safe stacks on your Q is to jungle with him. Fortunately, he’s quite good in doing that due to his fast clearing speed, good early ganking, and dueling potential. And even though he won’t have a lot of items he will still be tanky and deal a lot of damage in the later game; he’s not supposed to be an early game-pick. Additionally, if it gets to the latest stages of the game, Nasus will become an insane pick that rampages through every enemy he sees, be it a turret, whole waves of minions, or an entire squad of champions. What also really benefits him is that he’s a hard counter to any AS-reliant bruiser which often forces them to build a QSS just to get rid of his Wither.

Vayne

If you start thinking about Vayne you instantly think about her insane lategame ripping apart every champion she sees. However, she already starts dealing a lot of damage in the early game and can out-trade most 2v2 lanes quite easily once she gets a point or two in Silver Bolts.
So what’s her weakness? She needs protection. Her team needs to synergize with her. A good example for a team with Vayne would be Thresh as support and Zyra as mage. Without protection she’s way too squishy and easily focused down by the enemy team.
Also, even if she is already quite nasty in the early game, she’s still quite susceptible to ganks from the duo since her only form of CC is unreliable and pre-6, you won’t have invisibility on your side. The BFT changes also left their impact on her: it made single-target burst mages like Syndra more viable which are the bane of Vayne’s existence.

Tryndamere

Even though popular belief would say otherwise, Tryndamere can’t be considered a great pick in the Twisted Treeline. His laning phase is quite bad as most bruisers just simply out-trade him. He also doesn’t have an effective way to sustain back up from lost trades. Before two core items, his damage output is quite pathetic which also makes his early jungling rather slow. His only gapcloser is predictable, doesn’t really get him over walls on this map, and can be denied or he can just simply be CC’d while trying to hit his targets. You can counter him extremely easily by just picking a bit of kite or CC mechanisms in your team composition, not even mentioning how devastating any kind of AS slows affect him.

Wukong

The monkey has several problems which all the Trees on this map sadly can’t quite account for. The meta revolves a lot around bruisers, which hard-counter Wukong just by simply being tankier than him. Additionally, they’ll always deal more damage to him than he can deal to them since he spikes in the early game and acts as an ult-bot as the game goes on. His ultimate doesn’t have a great impact before he hits level 11 due to scaling and even, then there’s the question of who exactly he wants to hit with it: the tanky frontline of a bruiser plus support that don’t really care about him or maybe the mage with Wooglet’s? If he’s being built as an off-tank bruiser he gets outclassed by pretty much all other bruisers and as a pure   he won’t do enough due to the reasons mentioned above.

Zed

Zed has, just like Wukong, several problems on this map. It’s also called the “assassin syndrome”. They don’t quite deal enough damage on Bruisers and they can’t all-in focus mages because of an early Wooglets.
Additionally, assassins are usually quite squishy and Zed is not an exception. A bit of CC and focused damage will usually be enough to deal with them.
Also, Zed’s earlygame without items is not particularly strong, which makes it, just like on Tryndamere, hard to even get to the point where you could be useful. You’re just too likely to get snowballed on through not being able to push advantages in the earlier stages.

Thoughts on the newest champion, Yasuo

The new champion, as cool as he might be, sadly doesn’t have a spot in the 3v3 metagame. Squishy melees carries have the hardest time on this map, and Yasuo is just like any other assassin: if he builds tanky, his damage suffers way too much, but if he builds damage, he doesn’t survive very long. In addition to that, his W usually doesn’t have such a great potential of doing epic plays since most enemy team compositions will be comprised of melee champions who typically don’t have abilities to block from Wind Wall.His early laning doesn’t add to his viability either as he loses early trades to most other common bruisers, be it 1v1 or 2v2 trades. Like Tryndamere, Master Yi, and Fiora, he fits best on Summoner’s Rift where he’s allowed the ability to farm for his Stattik Shiv and Infinity Edge and can be placed in an environment that he can exploit to the fullest with his kit.

We hope you enjoyed reading this and maybe learned a thing or two about the 3v3 Twisted Treeline meta. Again, we’d like to reiterate that these are just our opinions and our opinions are not the end-all to everything. If you’d like to discuss our choices or anything else about the Twisted Treeline, feel free to contact us at our Facebook, Youtube, or just leave a word in the comments below. Thanks again!