Patch 26.5
Champions
Nocturne buffed
Garen buffed
Lee Sin buffed
Varus buffed
Volibear buffed
Hey Friends,
First Stand is starting soon, meaning that we receive minimal changes across the board, bar the major outliers in other roles. Toplane isn’t seeing any major changes in 26.5, but there are some interesting buffs to discuss.
Nocturne and Lee Sin are primarily junglers and they will remain that way even with the buffs in 26.5. Buffs are nowhere near good enough to make them anything better than C tier average.
Garen is one of the weaker juggernauts in the game, so the buffs are definitely justified, yet they’re not that amazing to warrant a tier list placement improvement.
Volibear is in the similar boat to Garen. Riot walked back some of the previous nerfs, but overall won’t have much impact on the overall meta. What I will mention though, is that the mana cost reduction on both W and E are a great QoL change that will feel better than the win rate changes would indicate.
Varus on hit buffs are the most impactful toplane change this patch. W on hit now has an ad scaling, so we will have to be even more mindful, depending on the matchup, whether to build hexplate or DnD first. Overall, Varus is in a solid spot and you will have a great time when using him primarily as a counter pick.
High Low priority list unchanged.
All series have played out in the major regions. Let’s talk about the spice as the meta overall looks quite identical to the previous patch.
Brokenblade showcased some niche picks recently: Yasuo, Shen and Kled. In recent times, he’s been one of the most innovative toplaners. While Yasuo and Kled are his known pocket picks, I don’t have strong enough opinions about either of these. Kled fulfills a similar role as Yorick, but I do think Yorick just does it better overall in major cases (more stable early games, sidelane pressure…). The only upside Kled has is the ultimate which brings another engage button to a team composition.
Yasuo, on the other hand is better this season, compared to S15, but most players are not good enough on the champion to make it ever worth considering compared to other ad bruiser or dps style champions.
Shen is the most interesting one out of the three. First intriguing difference about Shen in season 16 is the itemization. Dusk and Dawn being the classic culprit once again. It provides desirable stats and Q synergy that slot nicely after the titanic hydra making him quite powerful for the first 20 minutes of the game. Another difference is related to the systemic changes introduced with the S16. With the introduction of role quests and homeguard changes to some extent, Shen’s biggest weakness: waveclear is way more manageable. Teams don’t seem to lane swap anymore to punish Shen’s bad waveclear and global influence. Still, I doubt many players will be rushing to pick up Shen in pro play. Shen fills a similar niche, kit wise as Poppy, but is just a worse champion overall in Pro play. His early game scaling curve also benefits him a lot more in solo queue compared to pro.
No major shake-ups in solo queue. Corrected Shen placement as I rated the champion a bit too low initially. Gwen, Jayce and Varus are hovering A tier and I will probably promote them in next patch if conditions remain as they are. In the higher elo brackets they are already A tier.
Until next time o7.