We have an Update! Check out the 4.12-early 4.13 tier list! (Click the picture)

Hello, my name is Baelbad and I’ve been brought on to the Cloth5 team to continue their already excellent series of Competitive Tier Lists.

My intention with these lists is to help shed some light on why certain picks have become popular seemingly without nerfs or buffs as well as which champions have risen to the top due to ability and item changes.

• S-Tier picks are champions that are currently the strongest in their roles and every team should be prepared to play.
• A-tier is full of champions that excel at what they are meant to do in the current meta and generally remain strong picks.
• B-Tier is comprised of champions meant to be counters to some of the stronger picks or prevalent compositions in the meta.
• C-Tier champions are wild cards that might be seen in cheese strats as well as picks that have fallen out of viability in the current meta.

TOP LANE	JUNGLE	MID LANE	AD CARRY	SUPPORT
Kayle	Lee Sin	Kassadin	Kog’Maw	Thresh
Jax	Elise	Yasuo	Lucian	Braum
Lulu			Twitch	Nami
TOP LANE	JUNGLE	MID LANE	AD CARRY	SUPPORT
Shyvana	Evelynn	Twisted Fate	Caitlyn	Morgana
Renekton	Rengar	Lulu	Tristana	Leona
Irelia	Jarvan IV	Syndra	Corki	Sona
Trundle	Nunu	Orianna	Jinx	Zyra
Gragas	Vi	Kayle
		Ziggs
		Fizz
TOP LANE	JUNGLE	MID LANE	AD CARRY	SUPPORT
Dr. Mundo	Skarner	Karthus	Vayne	Zilean
Ryze	Pantheon	Leblanc	Varus	Alistar
Lee Sin	Xin Zhao	Ryze	Draven	Annie
Aatrox	Kha’Zix	Zed	Ezreal	Karma
TOP LANE	JUNGLE	MID LANE	AD CARRY	SUPPORT
Rumble	Wukong	Pantheon	Sivir	Gragas
Vladimir	Volibear	Jayce	Miss Fortune	Soraka
Jarvan IV		Nocturne	Graves

Champion Descriptions

Top Lane

Kayle – Kayle’s dominance in the top lane comes from her ability to excel in both 1v1 and 2v1 scenarios as well as her excellent scaling with items. Trading with Kayle in a 1v1 scenario is dangerous as champions like Jax and Shyvana will most likely have to turn their backs on her at some point and take extra harass from her Righteous Fury.

In a 2v1 lane her Divine Blessing coupled with Intervention make her difficult to bully out of lane and an uninviting target to dive, allowing her to farm relatively safely under tower with Righteous Fury. Regardless of how well she does in lane, Kayle still manages to output a high amount of sustained damage during teamfights as well as providing much-needed utility to the hypercarries that are strongest at the moment with her Intervention.

Shyvana – Riot just can’t seem to keep a good dragon down. Although not as dominant as she was at the start of Season 4, Shyvana still remains the most versatile top laner in the current meta and her ability to dive is unparalleled. The flexibility afforded to her by her strongest build paths allow her to itemize to fit the situation during laning phase and transition into a mid-late game monster that you do not want to be flanked by.

Gragas – While even most pros seem confused as to what to build on the Rabble Rouser, the utility Gragas brings to a team is not to be discounted. Although he seems impossible to shove out of lane on his own, most of Gragas’s power lies in the synergy he has with the rest of his team, or lack thereof (Yasuo vs Orianna, for example). He seems to have found his home in pick comps as of late, hopefully bringing an end to the confusion surrounding his identity after his rework.

Jungle

Evelynn – Locking in Evelynn changes the entire mindset the enemy team is forced to play with. The sheer paranoia she invokes even at the highest tiers of play lowers the pressure on all of her lanes simultaneously.

The only option that early game champions and lane bullies have with an Evelynn lurking around is to invest in multiple pink wards and make a team effort to keep track of the Widowmaker’s map movements if they wish to play at their full effectiveness.

Even after the laning phase has ended, her flanking power with Agony’s Embrace punishes bad positioning by individual champions as well as teams that group together too closely.

Jarvan IV – I may not be shy about how much I love this champion but his position in A-tier has nothing to do with bias. Originally appearing back in the pro scene during the Masters finals in early June as a way for SKT to lock down Kog’Maw, Jarvan IV has started to rise back to prominence mainly for his ability to punish immobile carries with his Cataclysm. His high base damage coupled with Martial Cadence and Golden Aegis make him a scary frontline tank that enemy teams are forced to invest valuable cooldowns and summoner spells to deal with.

Rengar – The Pridestalker almost wasn’t included in this tier list due to the inevitable bugs that seem to accompany him and his subsequent global bans in many tournament formats. That being said, the games we have seen Rengar in have demonstrated his dominance with a bit of cooldown reduction.

While he remains a riskier pick than Elise or Lee Sin, Bola Strike allows him to lock down high-priority targets for his team to focus down. Thrill of the Hunt allows him to jump right on top of an enemy carry and almost guarantees a snare with the possibility of another after a few seconds thanks to the ferocity changes to his ultimate.

Mid Lane

Yasuo – Yasuo is currently the strongest melee mid laner in the game bar none. His primary weakness and the reason we don’t see him picked/banned every single game is because he requires a team to be built around him.

The pick potential and teamfight dominance he has displayed with champions like Gragas and Shyvana is terrifying, while he definitely falls short of his potential without another reliable form of displacement on his team.

Unfortunately for the wanderer, there are a lot of priority picks in mid lane across all major regions and waiting to pick a mid laner until second or third rotation is a luxury most teams cannot afford.

Twisted Fate – The return of the Card Master has been a long time coming, and while meta changes like tower buffs and the subsequent longer laning phases have definitely helped him rise back to the top, he seems to have finally hit his stride with the last of the AP assassins falling to the wayside.
The Ghost/Flash build popularized by dade minimizes the weaknesses of Twisted Fate by allowing him to quickly re-position during teamfights, dodging high-damage skillshots and avoiding crowd control that have previously been the bane of the Card Master.

Fizz – With the nerfs to snowballing and assassin champions in general one fish has proved too slippery to keep down. The Tidal Trickster is back as a lane counter to some of the more immobile mid laners, with players like Kerp demonstrating his effectiveness in creating picks throughout the game.
His roaming remains quite strong with Playful/Trickster serving as both an additional gap-closer and an annoying way to avoid large amounts of both area of effect and direct damage.

AD Carry

Kog’maw – Perhaps the scariest thing brought back by Patch 4.10 was the dominance of Kog’maw. With champions like Braum and Thresh peeling for him, the Mouth of the Abyss is able to shred through tanks and carries alike with his Bio-Arcane Barrage and poke freely with his Living Artillery.

The changes to AD carry itemization in 4.10 benefited him the most as attack speed has become cheaper and the proc damage from Blade of the Ruined King has increased. This Void monster is sure to hang on to his top spot in the meta as long as he has a team in front of him.

Lucian – Pro ADCs were split on the effectiveness of Lucian when the patch hit live servers. While the nerfs to the Bloodthirster have helped to curb some of his early game power, his build has mutated to prioritize Blade of the Ruined King and Youmuu’s Ghostblade. This leads to some scary Cullings mid game and have allowed him to retain his spot as a safe all-around pick.

Corki – Corki does almost everything Kog’maw does but worse. We have seen him played in 4.10 with the awkward item choice of Blade of the Ruined King after his traditional Trinity Force, itemization much more effective on auto-attack focused carries.

What the little guy has going for him is the extra mobility and disengage his Valkyrie brings to the table. He trades the ability to become a late game hypercarry for more siege potential and a safer laning phase thanks to the poke from his Phosphorus Bomb and Missile Barrage.

Support

Braum – The mustachioed menace has everything a hypercarry could need in his kit. He soaks up damage, he brings peel, he brings zone control, he brings cc, and his ability to re-position with Stand Behind Me make him a force to be reckoned with even after the nerfs.

The only champion that brings more utility to a team is Thresh, and these two are sure to remain dominant picks until the support champion pool deepens.

Nami – Nami has arguably the strongest disengage out of any support. Her poke and sustain from Ebb and Flow combined with her potent crowd control from Aqua Prison and Tidal Wave make her a well-rounded pick for any team.

While she definitely makes an appetizing target for the enemy team early game with her low base health and armor, she excels in laneswaps and scales well with a bit of ability power.