Top Lane LOL Tier List 26.14 - KEY takeaways post MSI

Hey Friends,

Top lane LoL tier list update is here and the MSI has concluded. Congratulations to HLE and all the teams for an entertaining show. I wanted to take the opportunity today and talk about the meta development that occurred during this tournament. I already touched bot lane mages in the previous tier list post, but I wanted to talk a bit more about what Zeus did this tournament and how impactful that was for bringing them a tournament win, but more on that later in the post.

Top lane LoL tier lists have been updated according to the changes in the patch 26.14! The patch itself is quite small, so I won’t be rambling too much today. Strap in.

Azir W now applies on hits fully. For toplane this means that you will want to run Lethal Tempo or PTA- notably this might finally push the champion to be playable in the toplane in specific matchups that wouldn’t be able to punish Azir until level 9-10 when he starts becoming a real champion.

Garen R nerf cuts the base damage by 17–21% across ranks, but because the missing-health scaling is unchanged. In practice that’s a ~2 percentage-point shrink of the kill window (roughly “dead at 35%” becoming “dead at 33%”), so it’s a real but modest nerf rather than a gutting.

Jayce gains 10 less flat MS every time he switches stance. Not a big nerf, but it will definitely be felt in matchups he needs to kite or that can run him down in lane such as Olaf. He’s still going to be one of the best top laners in the game.

Mordekaiser got some compensation buffs to R and E because of the bug fixes to riftmaker that affected him negatively. Won’t change the champion much at all, though he will enjoy the durability gain from the rocketbelt changes.

Protoplasm Harness is mostly a nerf to jungle champions (Nasus) but some top lane champions like Singed, Ornn and Shen will feel it as well on the 3rd/4th item slot.

Hextech Rocketbelt has been the flavor of the year ever since Chovy started building it on every single mage. CD increased, more durability less damage is the TLDR- notably the build path is much worse now (with kindlegem in the build instead of the codex) which means a lot of champions will have to make real sacrifices if they want to unlock the dash which is the real reason why the item is so strong.

Top lane LoL Tier List Overview

MSI concluded and brought over some interesting topics to discuss regarding meta and champion picks. We also have EWC underway, so there will be more top-tier League gameplay to watch!

top lane lol tier list competitive high low priority 2614

Zeus was the major reason why HLE ended up winning the MSI, but not for the reason you’d initially think of, such as dominating the laning phase Zeus is known to do. Zeus displayed amazing adaptation to the meta game with Dr. Mundo and Swain pocket picks in multiple series against LYON and BLG in the games 4 and 5 of fearless.

These champions have traditionally been very niche or suboptimal, but the combination of the meta game (lack of dps overall=bot mages, more short range team compositions) and the systemic changes season 16 brought along (easier to survive lane) created a valid gameplay choice of picking “silver bullet” style champions in draft, especially in fearless draft.

Another thing that was notable during the MSI tournament was the fact that Sion did absolutely horrible which is ironic because the meta game would be perfect for him. Seems like the nerfs have done quite the damage to his laning phase. Unlike champions like Swain or Mundo, Sion does not scale well and his strength heavily depends if he can keep up with the game economy (he was quite strong in the laning phase before nerfs), so it’s quite interesting to see it underperform this much (only 10% win rate in 10 games).

The high-low priority competitive list is unchanged for the most part. As always- the bottom layer is quite interchangeable (low priority) and will heavily depend on the individual players, their meta read and comfort level on specific champions.