Disclaimer: It is important to note that this Tier List is meant for Competitive play, and as such, Solo Queue data and win rates have no bearing on it.

Baelbad here with another iteration of Cloth5’s Competitive 5v5 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. Every team should be prepared to play with and against these champions.
• A-Tier is full of champions that excel at what they are meant to do in the current meta and generally remain strong picks for their respective roles.
• B-Tier is comprised of champions meant to fit into a specific team composition and will generally only be seen as player-specific comfort picks or when better options are banned away.
• C-Tier champions have fallen out of viability in the current meta and will most likely only be seen as team-specific picks in prepared compositions.

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

Champion Descriptions

Maokai (S) – The most contested pick of 4.14 will undoubtedly be the Twisted Treant. His kit does everything it needs to in the current meta to fit the role of a top laner to a T. Compounded by the fact that he has very few unfavourable matchups and strong resilience against ganks, he has secured his spot as the alpha top laner heading towards Worlds.

His Sapling Toss offers insanely high base damage for a potent poking ability, even before completing his Rod of Ages, and the percent max health healing on his Sap Magic passive, combined with Vengeful Maelstrom, allows him to soak up incredible amounts of damage in a 2v2 or teamfight scenario.

Once he uses Twisted Advance to dive into an enemy team and toggles his Maelstrom on, he is able to disrupt front liners and carries alike by controlling the pace of the fight with his Arcane Smash. This treant has sunk his roots in deep, and even after the small nerfs in 4.14, he will likely be sticking around the competitive scene for an age as old as he is.

Alistar (S) – The changes to the League’s favourite minotaur have left him quite a bit overtuned.

The main change that catapulted him into the meta was the damage reduction increase on his ultimate. However, the reduction in his mana costs, as well as his ability to stay in lane and scale with the dominant Maokai, have left this mad cow stampeding across the Rift in all regions.

While he does have a safe laning phase against other popular picks, the real strength of the cow is his ludicrous roaming potential early-mid game that allows him to keep constant pressure up on the top half of the jungle. Like Maokai, he has great tools for disrupting fights in his kit and is a wonderful asset to have on your frontline in any team composition.

Jarvan IV (A) – While he has always filled a very niche role in any meta he has been a part of, Jarvan IV is an extremely strong all-around pick. He drops down incredible early game pressure with his Demacian Standard into Dragon Strike combo, with armor shred and a friendly attack speed buff providing hard-to-quantify utility.

One of the major reasons we see such little variation in the jungle is how much better champions like Lee Sin and Elise are at 2v2’s, and how little they have to invest to keep up constant pressure across the map. Unfortunately, after his initial engage, Jarvan’s dueling potential leaves a lot to be desired.

While a coordinated team can follow up on his engages better than those of Elise or Lee Sin, the opportunities don’t arise until later in the game, potentially past the time where junglers control the ebb-and-flow of the game.

All of that being said, he is still the most potent tank jungler in the current meta, and his synergy with popular control mids like Syndra and Orianna should not be discounted.

Vi (B) – Piltover’s Finest has by far the easiest hard CC to follow up on for a gank.

Assault and Battery telegraphs itself right where it means to go and does not stop until the job is done. With the return of some assassins to the mid lane, this is something that could be very valuable if given the opportunity to blow up their counterparts before the cc ends.

One of Vi’s biggest problems is creating those opportunities. Pre-6, she has trouble doing more than burning flashes, as her entire damage output is completely negated if Vault Breaker doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Her other glaring weakness comes from meta shifts, as control mid and top laners can prevent a team from following up on her ultimate, even if it does relentlessly hunt the target down. Mid-Late game, the most her ult might do for a team is lead her to swap places with a Maokai using Twisted Advance to also dive onto one carry.

Syndra (S) – The Dark Sovereign has the most single-target damage of any control mid laner, by far. Her ability to zone with Dark Spheres and the threat of Scatter The Weak allow her to bully her way through lane with very few problems once she gets her Chalice (or Blue Buff at the latest).

Even being hit by something as seemingly negligible as the slow from Force of Will allows her to follow up with a full combo and burst down many unsuspecting champions before they can even flash.

Syndra scales heavily with pure AP and cooldown reduction, which makes her a very intimidating champion to play against with current magic damage itemization.

Zed (A)  – The unseen meta shifts have proven to, in fact — be the deadliest, as Zed has returned from the shadows back to Summoner’s Rift (sorry professional Dominion players).

Contempt for the Weak combined with his Razor Shuriken have always allowed the masked menace to survive early levels in lane rather easily while keeping up in farm, so why did the Master of Shadows disappear from competitive play?

Fortunately for Zed, it was not balance changes. The dominance of utility mids like Lulu and Kayle, as well as Exhaust buffs, left him with few targets to assassinate, and his other strength of split-pushing was stripped away from him by  the rise of Ziggs and Mega Inferno Bombs.

The true ninja is once again rising to the forefront after small changes to Exhaust and quality of life changes on his Death Mark, allowing him to stick to targets and deal more damage. Any restraint in burning valuable Summoner Spells against Zed will certainly be punished as we see him return to the meta.

Corki (A) – It would be nothing short of sacrilege to tell you that the Daring Bombardier would not be a member of the strongest trinity of ADCs as we move closer to the World Championship. Corki has been in more than a few dog fights these past few patches, and his strengths remain the same.

He has a very specific powerspike that comes once he finishes Trinity Force, significantly earlier than the Infinity Edge/Statikk Shiv powerspike that comes for Tristana. His power spikes allow him to fill a different role than the hyper-carries of Tristana and Kog’Maw, but his poke is arguably the strongest of the three at all levels of the game, granting him a lot of strength in sieges.

While he still has some awkward itemization without Bloodthirster and does not scale quite as heavily as his two top-tier counterparts, this yordle is up to snuff and will be whistling all the way to the Summoner’s Cup.

Lucian (A) – What is dead may never die. The rework that was (somehow) expected to nerf Lucian into the ground only served to strengthen him. While he has since then been deemed ‘overtuned’ and taken a few more hits to his abilities, he has risen again, harder and stronger.

Teammates like Orianna and Alistar allow him to take advantage of his dramatically increased mobility and safely proc Lightslinger, even with his shorter range, and allowing him to Relentless Pursuit away between his teammates’ crowd control.

His ability to constantly reposition to fire off high-damage Piercing Lights, combined with absurd damage output with Blade of the Ruined King and Youmuu’s Ghostblade, make him a strong pick in a CC-heavy team composition.

Alistar (A) – Alistar fills largely the same role in the support position as he does in top lane: isolate high-priority targets, soak up damage, and control the pace of fights.

While the income of a support leaves something to be desired stat-wise compared to his top lane counterpart, his utility remains just as potent, and the 70% damage reduction from his ultimate is nothing to overlook.

The meta has shifted to give Alistar a specific role that he did not quite have before, outside of the infamous “Ball Delivery Cow.” Using him as a flex pick in the support position both denies him from the enemy team as a top laner and lends some doubt as to where he might go in the pick/ban phase.

Sona (B) – Sona has long been heralded as the quintessential counter to Nami. With the feminine fish flopping out of favour, it would be rare to see more than a few Sona picks in Regionals and Worlds.

She still fills the same role in a team composition, and Crescendo is still a powerful tool both for engaging with flash and counter-engaging. Her re-work was not a boon in terms of strength, but it didn’t hurt her either, in terms of competitive balance.

The Maven of the Strings might be seen as a fringe pick or Nami counter moving forward, but don’t bother crying out for more Sona play. She sure won’t.