Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.22. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.22. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.22 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. How is Heimer S-tier in top, mid, and bot?

2. Why isn’t Qiyana on the normal list?

3. Did jungle Pantheon really fall that hard?

4. Why isn’t Olaf on the normal list?

5. Where is Braum?

Questions and Answers

1. “Explain to me how the frick Heimerdinger is s tier in top, mid AND bot.”
– Synn Ly (Youtube)”

• The main thing it comes down to is how flexible Heimerdinger is a champion. He provides so many different things for his team: waveclear, CC, consistent damage, pick potential, and split push potential.
• He honestly has so much flexibility in his kit outside of his lack of mobility. What this means is that if Heimer’s stat numbers are strong enough, he’ll be able to play multiple roles.
• Once the buffs to his turrets and grenade CC came in on 9.1,9 Heimer’s numbers were high enough for him to comeback into a meta that favors him do to all of the melee or short-ranged champions that are popular at the moment.
• The other bonus for Heimer is how consistent and easy it is for him to win lane, or at minimum, go even with very few matchups that he isn’t able to do this in. This gives Heimer many win condition options and a stable early game, making him an extremely optimal pick for climbing.
• Plus he beats Teemo!

2.  “May I ask why Qiyana is not on the normal list?” – Stewe119(Instagram)

• Qiyana, as shown by her performance at Worlds, is an incredibly strong roaming mid laner who can make insane outplays and 1v9 teamfights with her ult…so why would she perform worse at lower levels of play when her playstyle should suit it with the heavy roaming and teamfight ability?
• What it comes down to is mechanical ability. Although her combo in lane is pretty simple and easy to execute, it’s after that part of the game where she starts to fumble.
• In general, AD assassins, don’t scale well and are usually unforgiving in teamfights as 1 misstep can cause them to die.
• The issue with Qiyana, in particular, is how reliant she is on hitting a good ult. If she doesn’t, 1 of 2 things will happen: go in anyway and die or back off unable to contribute to a teamfight as it’s far too difficult for her to get in to do deal effective DPS.
• Think of her teamfighting like Evelyn. If eve doesn’t have ult she can only wait around to clean up it’s the same with Qiyana.
• With players being less consistent at teamfighting at lower levels of play and games dragging out longer so that the game often boils down to 5v5 in mid lane, lesser skilled Qiyana players just won’t outperform things like Malzahar or Anivia without proper flanking and mechanical outplays.

3. “Did jungle Pantheon really fall from grace this hard? I feel his E still makes him plenty useful.” – Alejandro.fm.radio (Instagram)

• Short answer, yes. The long answe is that his E makes him useful but it does not enable him to be useful enough to win on a consistent win rate.
• Regardless of the skill level, Panth’s jungles win rate falls below 47 percent and for good reason. From the jungle, his itemization is actually worse than in lane as he would much rather have a Ghostblade for the move speed over Warrior’s.
• Aside from that, after repeated nerfs, his early game farming and gank potential decreased. He can still snowball early on and dive towers with his E but he is god awful if anything goes wrong.
• He just ends up being a worse Xin Zhao as his early game dueling isn’t over the top powerful anymore so he can lose to common picks like Nocturne, Lee Sin, or even Vi as his early game numbers aren’t super high and his W post nerfs gives you a lot of extra reaction time.
• Panth is still a great top laner though and can utilize the E well along with getting a better item path.

4. “Why isn’t Olaf in any tier for low ELO?” – Mihac_pavlovic (Instagram)

• Olaf is a champion you’ll see in competitive play or even high-end solo queue hard stomping the early game with his insane dueling and clear speed.
• The reason why he doesn’t show up on the low ELO list anymore is actually for 1 simple reason – he’s possibly the worst scaling champion in the whole game.
• What this means is that if you fall behind on Olaf, or do not end the game by 30 min then your team has to play 4v5.
• At lower levels, where mistakes happen more often and people are less objective focused, either the Olaf themselves or the team will not close the game out quickly.
• This has been mentioned before but the average game time for lower levels is around or over 30 min, perfectly negating Olaf’ss primary strength.
• At higher levels of play, average game times are well below 30 min so Olaf’s insane early game can and is utilized more often resulting in him losing one of his major loss conditions as games are decided before 30 min anyway so the only issue he runs into is if he snowballed or not.

5. “Where is Braum?” – Hjawish2k (Instagram)

• Braum is in the shadow realm and for good reason. He has always been a staple in competitive play due to his peeling ability so he was continually nerfed to keep him in check despite his terrible solo performances over the years
• For solo queue specifically, what it comes down to is something similar to why support Tahm Kench sucks in solo queue and that comes down to Braum having teammate scaling.
• He not only needs to position well to peel for his teammates but then his teammates also need to actually stand behind him and auto-attack to proc his passive.
• His teammates actually need to work with him to have him effective at a base level which is never a good sign in solo queue.
• Not only that, but if that baseline is met, his engage potential is pretty weak, meaning its hard for him to make proactive plays on his own compared to something like Leona. Instead, he must rely on peeling for someone who might not be worth peeling for.
• Even compared to enchanters like Janna or Soraka, Braum just isn’t able to as easily deny the enemy team without the person he is peeling for working with him.
• He’s just too difficult to pull off with so little gain. Just pick Leona or Nautilus who are still tanky and can still peel but can actually make plays way easier on their own.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.22. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.22 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.21. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.21. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.21 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. What’s the bad matchup for Shaco support?

2. How the hell is Soraka in S tier for low ELO? She has no carry potential.

3. How’s Tryndamere A tier though?

4. Where is Gnar? He is OP?

5. Kha’Zix A tier seems a bit low for him, he goes electrocute and one-shots or conqueror and he heals so much while doing so much damage.

Questions and Answers

1. “What’s the bad matchup for Shaco support? – Free Gaming (Youtube)”

• With the ever growing popularity of this OP pick this is a good question. To find the answer, you need to look at why he’s strong in the meta.
• Shaco support works because he has the poke and all-in to kill mage supports and with his boxes, he can easily deny the popular engage supports.
• This leaves us with the enchanter class which does the best into him as they can sit back in lane and outscale him during the teamfight phase.
• Out of the main enchanters, we have Lulu, Janna, Soraka, Nami, and Sona, but the champions who do the best are the ones with heals to out-sustain his poke in lane like Nami, Sona, or Soraka.
  • Sona does the best versus Shaco statically but both Raka and Nami are higher up on the tier list our final recommendation would have to be Banana Girl Soraka.

2.  “How the hell is Soraka in S tier for low elo? She has no carry potential.” – Rizz1212 (Youtube)

• You are right that she doesn’t have 1v9 potential, but more importantly, she scales well in teamfight and has anti 1v9 potential.
• Contrary to popular belief, champions that do best at lower levels of play are not champions like Kha’Zix, Talon, or Thresh. They might make make highlight plays and 1v9 in high level solo queue but in fact, stable consistent teamfighters like Amumu, Malzahar, or Soraka are the most successful in lower ELO.
• This is because games tend to drag on allowing easy-to-execute champions who do well in the late game come out on top more often as it’s just straight up easier to do.
• For Soraka specifically though, she has an added bonus of being an anti carry. With her ult and silence, she is able to deny the enemy playmaker or diver a chance to carry, often causing them to overextend in a fight thinking they can secure a kill only to get denied.
• In short, she carries because shes a consistent teamfighter who denies the enemy a chance to carry.

3. “How’s Tryndamere A tier though?” – Svaban (Instagram)

• When looking at our internal data or even other stats sites, Tryndamere’s win rate isn’t amazing at lower levels of play nor is he difficult so he wouldn’t get a big bonus so it makes sense to question his placement.
• If you look into the stats a bit deeper though you’ll notice that most Tryndameres haven’t swapped over to the Essence Reaver + IE + Triforce style which is just significantly stronger stat wise than any other build style. You can add in a Tiamat as well.
• So with the build style increasing in popularity, we rank him as if he is using his proper setup instead of when he uses suboptimal builds, hence his placement seeming off compared to his win rate.

4. “Where is Gnar? He is OP.” – Luky.krusina (Instagram)

• Gnar is shadow realmed for solo queue as his win rate is pretty low at 48 percent. We do think the term overpowered is thrown around a bit too often lately as they should be reserved for champions that are so strong, they no longer lose to their intended counters, kind of like Season 3 Kassadin.
• Now you might have seen Gnar being picked at Worlds and doing well but that’s because he thrives in a competitive environment. In terms of drafting, he is often used as a safe early pick or counter to melee matchups, but more importantly, teams will play around his Mega Gnar form properly.
• In solo queue though, his potential as a champion is wasted as your team will likely not fight around your transformation and likely engage right after your Mega Gnar form ends it happens all the time.

5. “Kha’Zix A tier seems a bit low for him, he goes Electrocute and one-shots or Conqueror and  heals so much while doing so much damage.” – Tomasdelalic09 (Instagram)

• We get this kind of question a lot actually when it comes to assassin junglers. We totally agree that Kha is super versatile and strong, hence he S tier status on the high ELO list.
• However, non-teamfighting champions who are not tanky have proven time and time again, especially from the jungle, that they do not perform well on average at lower levels of play.
• This is because if they fall behind, they becomes useless and they often do not close out games quick enough before they fall off compared to champions like Mundo in terms of usefulness in a late game teamfight.
• Most of the time, what happens with Kha or Eve players at lower levels of play is they lack team fighting ability so even if they snowball they will throw a major fight, they will end with what looks like a good score.
• This will cause most people to remember how well they did but they won’t notice how they took all the team’s gold and then weren’t able to translate it into a strong teamfight performance to close the game out.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.21. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.21 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.18. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.19. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.19 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Why did Bard’s difficulty change?

2. Does Nasus deserve S-tier in low ELO?

3. Why is Volibear S-tier?

4. Why is Leona only A-tier?

5. Why is Nocturne rated so highly?

Questions and Answers

1. “I noticed that you changed Bard’s skill floor from “Severe” to “Hard”. Just curious, what instigated this change? – HiltCoW (Youtube)”

• This is actually something we had been tracking for a while. The average champs in the severe category do pretty poorly on the normal list as they require a lot of mastery to even reach a 50 percent win rate like Akali or Irelia for example.
• Bard though has been performing well on the normal list for quite some time so it made us rethink how difficult he really was.
• We then discussed if he’s performing well at lowers levels because he was too strong or if he really was just easier to execute than we initially thought.
• We understand he can be pretty troll with portals missed stuns or ulting people at the wrong time but with just autos and Q landing, he provides quite a bit of pressure for his team.
• Especially since he’s tankier in the early game now compared to past versions so we decided to move him to Hard difficulty to better match his mastery to LP ratio.

2.  “Isn’t the point of the S tier the fact champs you find in it are OP/godlike? Because I got serious doubts when I see more than 10 champs in S tier, Nasus S tier? Even in lower ELOs he doesn’t deserve an S.” – Solal Robinne (Youtube)

• This is actually something we’ve brought up during our tier list meeting recemtly as we have considered that we might have too many S tier champions and that we should potentially be a little more strict on who we let in.
• However, the core principle of this tier list is to help you climb and if a role has 10 S tier champs then all that really means is that role has a large difference in between its top end and lower end or that the role itself is just very strong currently in solo queue compared to the other roles.
• This kind of information I feel is more important to display to viewers rather than arbitrarily limiting S tier to a limited number like we did in the past as it feels like the integrity of list gets hurt if we do that.
• As for Nasus on our low ELO list, he does outperform the other A tier champions but he is for sure at the bottom of S tier and may fall out soon.

3. “Hi, please tell me why Volibear is in S tier? I have been seeing him there for a long time, but it’s not entirely clear why.” – Tsunami World (Discord)

• Currently, the jungle is in a very heavy skirmish meta which is something Volibear thrives in as he is both tanky (due to his passive in the early game) and provides a lot of damage while being very easy to execute.
• At lower levels of play, this kind of reliability is extremely valuable and his passive often catches people off guard allowing him to snowball even more consistently.
• Is Volibear some god tier champ though? No, otherwise he would be on the high ELO list as well.
• Think of him like the Garen of the jungle – a consistent champ that is good for climbing at lower levels of play in early game metas.
• If it’s a late game meta though. you better believe we are dropping him as jungler faster than TSM replaces their junglers.

4. “Why is Leona only A tier? She tanks pretty well, synergies early with a lot of ADC, and has a short CD on her ult.” – Julien Liou (Facebook)

• Leona has been rising in popularity for some time now and is a very solid A tier champ but what stops her from reaching S tier is something I mention a lot but it’s consistency.
• Leona as a champion is very linear since she can only really go in by design. This means if she falls behind or her team falls behind and she can no longer engage she runs out of options.
• Though this concept is true for many pick champs champions like Blitzcrank, Nautilus, they can at least look for picks from a safe distance, or in Naut’s case, he can use his Q for mobility to get out.
• Leona, on the hand, will engage looking for a pick, realize it won’t work, then waddle away and die as the rest of her team spams missing pings on her.
• She would need to be either too tanky or have very low CDs on her CC to overcome her current kit limitations to be consistent enough in solo queue to be S.

5. “Why is Nocturne so high, compared to others? Like Kha for example.” – davide.milan.27 (Instagram)

• Good question, this comes up quite frequently for our normal list. Nocturne currently has a very consistent and easy-to-execute kit, and thanks to the buffs he received a couple of patches ago, he has become quite a strong duelist even in the early game with a quick clear speed which is why we have his S.
• But why is Kha’Zix not also S tier on our normal list as he is considered by most to be OP and is S tier on our high ELO list?
• Well, that’s because if you scan the jungle list you’ll note how consistently tanks or bruiser champs have dominated the current jungle meta as they are either easy to snowball on, farm on, scale well, or are usful in some way from behind.
• Assassin junglers have almost none of those qualities, they aren’t consistent, require you to snowball, and require you to end games before they get outscaled in the teamfight phase which means the Kha player needs excellent knowledge on how to get picks.
• This means if you don’t have the skill level required to snowball games consistently and close them out quick that your win rate will be pretty bad on assassin junglers hence why they don’t do well on the normal list compared to the high ELO one.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.19. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.19 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.18. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.18. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.18 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Why is Teemo S-tier?

2. How is Jax “Average”?

3. Where is Ryze?

4. Why is Zyra “Easy”?

5. Why isn’t Renekton mid?

Questions and Answers

1. “Teemo S tier ? Good joke.” and “Teemo S tier. Now all the Bronzies will think that Teemo is OP and will play him. Why Mobalytics, why?” – 123123123123 and Johnny.50 (Youtube)

• We’re normally pretty happy when people say our jokes our good but this time, we’re being 100% serious about Teemo’s S-tier ranking.
• After his recent buffs, such as the increase to his R shroom charges, Teemo’s win rate increased from 51.61% to 53.12%.
• Combine that with his 9.2% pick rate and you have the highest win rate ratio out of any top laner in patch 9.18.
• He also happens to counter some of the most popular top laners in the current meta such as Garen, Darius, Pantheon, and Illaoi.
• His only noteworthy losing matchups are Yorick, Dr. Mundo, and AP Malphite.
• So yes, it’s a good thing we are letting Gold and below players know how strong Teemo currently is because he’s pretty easy to climb with right now.

2.  “Jax average? Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how hard it is to survive the early game as Jax?” – Unseen Spy(Youtube)

• Similar to champs like Kassadin, Jax scales very well with items, but unlike Kassadin though, he comes online after just 1 item and becomes insane with his 2nd item.
• As far as champ difficulty goes, a weak laning phase doesn’t really apply to learning a champion’s kit.
• For example, imagine that Nasus (who already has a bad early game), was hypothetically nerfed to 0 armor. His laning phase would be so bad, he’d be unplayable.
• Does this make Nasus’s kit harder to play? Should we mark him as Severe? No, because he’s very mechanically easy to execute and you could probably grasp his kit without reading his abilities and figure them out by the end of a single game.
• Bringing it back to Jax, although his laning phase is somewhat weak, by no means does it make him a hard champion because his kit is so easy and straightforward to use.
• Learning curve is how easy the kit is to pick up, tier list ranking is how easy they are to win and climb with.

3. “Hey, I’m obviously a Ryze main. Where do you guys put my boi on the tier list and why? What are his weaknesses and strengths?” – Ryze (Discord)

• As you know, you may have seen how Adam feels about Ryze from our streams.
• He’s been an advocate for Ryze being vastly overrated as a pro pick since he’s held negative win rates over the past couple years unlike actual OP champs like Qiyana, Sylas, or Akali.
• As for his actual strength, he is performing extremely poorly in solo queue because the current iteration of his kit performs worse than the last one which wasn’t doing well in solo queue either.
• He has seen some play in LCK playoffs as a flex pick with some decent success so bias aside, he seems to at least be playable due to his amazing waveclear, DPS, and scaling, but we recommend that you stay away from him in solo queue since he can be set behind easily and dies too often.
• He’s not Kalista tier but still bad.

4. “Why do you class Zyra as “easy”? She has no mobility or escape and is quite squishy, positioning is far more important than most other champs due to seeds, all of her abilities are skill-shots which have a delayed cast time so harder to land.

League itself lists her as medium difficulty, while they list Morgana (who you have as Average) as easy… 🧐” – @thepigletsquid (Twitter)

• To start off, we are finally almost finished with our difficulty rework and have moved her to easy in the revamped version.
• As for Zyra, to make a comparison, we have other squishy champions with no mobility that are skillshot reliant and easy like Lux.
• Zyra specifically is marked as easy because she is easy to pick up even without fully understanding the seed mechanic.
• A lot of times, Zyra doesn’t need to hit all of her skillshots without still contributing because her Q can miss but if it hits a seed, the plant will still deal a decent amount of damage.
• She’s forgiving enough that a new player can pick her up and still be effective in a short time without needing to play her optimally.
• The next thing you mentioned how hard it is to position with her in teamfights. This is true, she does die a lot more than more champs in fights.
• However, the initial burst and then the damage from the seeds afterwards can often still deal more damage than her ADC even when she dies. So again, even if she isn’t being played optimally, she still sort of does her job.

5. “Why isn’t Renekton a mid pick?” – Yungdietwater (Instagram)

• This is a pretty good question because he’s been seen a lot as a mid laner recently in competitive play.
• One thing to pay attention to is why he’s picked as a mid laner.
• Currently, he’s used to counter melee champions like Qiyana, Sylas, and Irelia, and can be used as a flex to follow the last two to either solo lane and smash them.
• To keep it short, he’s not a mid lane champion but he’s used as an option to counter mid laners and be used as a flex pick.
• He’s by no means considered to be a staple mid and is more so a symptom of the current meta.
• If you see that juicy melee assassin matchup, feel free to lock him in but there’s just too many ranged matchups for him to be viable as a blind pick.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.18. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.18 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.17. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.17. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.17 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Why is support Nautilus only A-tier and not S-tier?

2. How is Veigar great when he his bad matchups are popular?

3. Why isn’t Aatrox in the low ELO top list?

4. Why is Shen considered A-tier?

5. Does Ryze really not belong on either list?

Questions and Answers

1. “I still don’t get why Nautilus support is only A tier in your opinion since he only needs to land a hook to perma-CC someone and boy do that ultimate carry teamfights. He’s a durable kill lane tank with a strong all-in who works well with every ADC, he should be S IMO.”  – Stefan Ene (Youtube)

• Nautilus is an A+ champion and as you mentioned, he has a lot going for him and is easy to execute. Up until the recent patch he had been hovering around 50 percent win rate though for quite a number of patches. Interestingly enough, his win rate suddenly jumped up by 1.5 percent on the most recent patch without any direct buffs to the champion.
• This could be due to matchup reasons where Zyra, Thresh, Pyke, and Lux are all increasing in popularity and he wins winning matchups into them but it is pretty puzzling. If he is able to sustain this win rate and isn’t just a half patch cycle win rate variance we will strongly consider putting him up to S tier.
• I should mention that judging a champion solely on their kit and not the numbers behind that kit can make any champion seem good. For example, support TF is broken in theory. He has target CC on a low CD, poke, great roaming potential and can peel easily peel for his ADC. Then you remember that none of that matters since his targeted CC is short-ranged then gets all-ined and dies instantly or that his poke is actually pretty bad in terms of base damage.
• So when judging a champ like Nautilus remember to incorporate not just what his kit does, but also the numbers and win rates behind them.

2.  “How is Veigar great when every mid laner is a Fizz, Katarina, Yasuo or Zed ?” – Hatake Kakashi (Youtube)

• Right at the start, we’d like to mention that Veigar is actually considered a counter pick to Yasuo by Apdo. Moriarty also shares that opinion.
• That aside, the main idea here is how can he do so well in a meta with a lot of assassins when he isn’t strong versus them in lane?
• It’s mostly due to how he can stall out games and outscale them. It’s true that he loses to them in terms of pressure in lane and can get solo killed by things like Fizz or Zed but he outscales them and performs better in teamfights than them.
• At higher levels he isn’t given the time to do this hence why he doesn’t show up higher on that list but at lower levels of play where the assassins players struggle to close out games and play for objectives, he tends to be able to stall the game and then cage the assassins who bullied him early game and outplay them with R.
• So TLDR, at lower ELOs, Veigar can stall out a game and outscale assassins during teamfight phase since assassin players tend to have trouble closing out games where they don’t snow ball hard.

3. “Why isn’t Aatrox in the low ELO top tier list? I basically one-trick him top now in Gold 3 and I’ve had a great time climbing.” – thomase (Discord)

• The reason why Aatrox isn’t on the low ELO list is actually kind of like why GP isn’t. It’s not that people in low ELO can’t climb with him if they put in the time and 1 trick him.
• It’s just that his time investment to LP ratio is pretty bad. You could spend a lot of time to learn the micro behind Aatrox, then learn proper macro on him, then climb up slowly or you could just pick Malphite, hit R, and climb faster.
• Or, you could play against better players, even play versus some better Aatrox players, then learn from them see what they do and try out yourself. This second option will actually let you learn Aatrox faster and climb faster than if you mained him the whole time like in your current option.
• For example, Moriarty learned how to play Orianna after losing a bunch to Bjergsen, Jensen and even Faker’s Orianna. It meant that when he tried to pick her up he knew what she could do and what she should be doing so all he needed to do was practice execution rather than having to learn all that stuff on his own through repeatedly grinding games on her.
• This is the main premise behind not including Aatrox on the list along with his poor win rate of 48 percent across most brackets including Masters+ and Diamond.

4. “How does Shen get considered A tier when most of the S/A tier champs abuse him in lane?” – Tyleruntitled (Instagram)

• You’re completely right that he currently sucks in lane versus almost all the tier S tier champs and some of the A tier ones.
• This would of course matter more if he was a lane dominant champ to begin with which he isn’t. The reason he is winning despite poor matchups is his unique strength as a tank.
• He is the only tank top laner whose primary goal and specialty is to peel. This is particularly valuable in this meta as everyone is playing dive comps, but if Shen can peel properly and keep his Xayah or Jinx alive in a team fight, even if he down from lane phase, he will win that game. This is the real reason why he does well right now.

5. “Does Ryze really not fit anywhere on this list? I would of figured he’s at least B tier in high elo?” – Bakern4851 (Instagram)

• Ryze is in a pretty bad state at the moment. Since he lost his shield, people have struggled to position with his properly or even figure out what he should build.
• Should he go full AP? Some mana tank items? Go oldschool 3 ROAs? None of it really matters since he loses regardless of build.
• Jokes aside he is seeing some promise for high elo in top lane at the moment and has seen some competitive play in that role as well as mid. Is it enough for us to recommend him yet? Nope, not yet.
• We just don’t want to put him on the list yet until more people in high ELO start to play him. He is kind of like Leblanc, Lee Sin, or Thresh who are so popular in high ELO that if they are at all playable, everyone spams them regardless of stats.
• We are just waiting and scouting for that moment to happen before adding him to the list as that is the true test of his current power level.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.17. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.17 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.16. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.16. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.16 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Can I take Smite/Spellbook on Thresh?

2. Does Irelia + Taric bot work?

3. Why does the high ELO list suggest Kha’Zix and Rengar?

4. Why is Urgot good in this meta?

5. Why is Vel’Koz S-tier on the regular list and B-tier for high ELO?

Questions and Answers

1. “I feel like I’m crazy, but I keep wanting to take Smite (Spellbook) on Thresh support. I haven’t had the guts to take it into my Diamond ranked games, but I keep winning in norms.”  – Zaky-Bear (Youtube)

• There is some precedent here with melee supports taking Spellbook like Braum and Tahm Kench as it’s quite useful on support to be able to adapt and have so many Summoner Spell options when roaming.
• Since you’re starting Smite, you can even go for cheesy Baron steals or buffs steals. No jungler will have the mental fortitude to come back from a game where a support out-Smites them. It’s pretty much a free win, at that point the enemy team will probably flame them for it too.
• BUT the difference between those two champs and thresh is they have built in tools to protect themselves, thresh even has bad early game base stats due to having to stack souls but adam doesn’t he have latern to shield himself, yes but it’s terrible.
• Thresh, unlike TK and braum is also looking to engage or iniate kills more often during the laning phase so having the extra durability from aftershock or guardian suits him more. In conclusion spellbook isn’t bad but it’s worse than his current meta options.

2.  “Could Irelia and Taric bot work? The surprise stun with Irelia’s Dash and Taric’s E could be very powerful and then it’s super easy for Irelia to reset. And maybe double Targon’s?” – Masukee Gaming (Youtube)

• This combo should be fine due to a an easy double stun and tower dive potential – I would try double Targon’s for it personally. In general, I like these melee all-in combos with Taric as it can snowball and punish poor laning very well.
• Irelia, Yasuo, Rengar, Ekko, and Pyke are all able to pair up well with Taric to get easy stun combos into an all-in and are perfect for punishing champs like Jinx who have no way to stop this kind of aggression. I also highly recommend trying it into supports like Sona or Brand who are known for chain feeding if the laning phase doesn’t go well.
• All you need to do is ban Morgana so Black Shield doesn’t stuff your engage attempts and you can look to punish bad laners extremely hard with this combo.

3. “I wanna know why the tier list for high elo suggests Kha’Zix and Rengar. What makes them so good in the right hands?” –
jerbear (Discord)

• Despite community perception, this comes from the fact that assassin junglers do a lot worse at lower levels of play.
• People tend to remember negatives more than positives so they remember all the times Kha’Ziox/Rengar got fed, and not the times they got fed and lost or didn’t get fed and were only useful as a heat source due to all of the flame coming out of them in chat.
• Let’s be real here people, Kha and Rengar 1 tricks who fall behind are not very pleasant. The reason for this is because those champs are not strong late game unless super fed. They don’t teamfight well and they are terrible from behind to begin with so the assassin jungler player would rather go next then be a team player.
• You can kind of see now why they don’t work as well at lower levels since they need to snowball reliably on champs who aren’t amazing pre 6, and then close the game out quickly before it gets too late in the game while also having great mechanics to pull off picks and outplays mid to late game.
• The window of power that they have is small but in high elo that window is strong enough that the Rengar/Kha player and their team can normally close the game out without too much issue.

4. “Why is Urgot in the meta?” – _ma.x.eto_
(Instagram)

• Urgot is a champion that wins lane versus alot of popular melee champions such as Garen, Darius, Panth. Is that it? Is that all he’s good for? Yup pretty much but it’s enough.
• He so consistently wins lane versus melee champs that he becomes a reliable source for pressure in most of his games. Not only that, but he’s tanky enough and easy enough to execute that he can often 1v2 ganks and run over teamfights with a lead if the enemy team doesn’t have a lot of range champions, which is common in this meta.
• Think of him like ranged Illaoi in terms of his strengths and why he’s meta but without the tentacles. He was picked in competitive during his prime for the same reasons. He consistently won lane and had decent teamfighting, so expect him to stay top tier on the normal list for a pretty long time because the only thing that matters in top lane is if you won lane or not because it’s too hard to impact the game if you didn’t.

5. “What makes Vel’koz S tier in the regular tier list and just B tier in the high elo?” – Anouar Saadaoui (Facebook)

• Let’s list his strengths: Easy safe laning phase due to how well he can push and farm, strong poke, very good burst, strong siege teamfight and scales well.
• Pretty standard for an artillery mage but he has some weaknesses, skillshot reliant, poor roams, can be picked off or flanked easily.
• At lower levels, the pace of the game plays well into his strengths as most players aren’t proactive enough to beat Vel’Koz in lane and then he outplays them in NA Aram style of just grouping as 5 and taking a stroll down mid lane which is very common at lower levels.
• At high levels, the mid meta is all about high mobility assassins and heavy ganking junglers so Vel’koz normally gets camped and struggles to deal with this level of early game aggression.
• He can still do really well in certain matchups like versus Orianna or Azir for example but these matchups don’t appear as often in solo queue. He normally just ends up going up against Fizz + Jarvan IV and gets dove at his tier two tower.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.16. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.16 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.15. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.15. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.15 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Why is Zed trending downwards?

2. This tier list is inaccurate, how is Vlad only B-tier?

3. Why isn’t Anivia as good in high ELO?

4. How is Shaco the same tier as Lee Sin, Sejuani, and Kayn?

5. Does Caitlyn deserve better?

Questions and Answers

1. “Hey wait why is Zed going down? Not even gonna talk about him huh?”  – Κατερίνα Ξαγοράρη (Youtube)

• In Patch 9.13, Zed was doing extremely well in both Diamond + and Masters +. Zed throughout his career has been very meta dependent when it comes to how strong he is.
• Once 9.14 hit and then now in 9.15, he has declined in both the diamond+ and Masters + brackets. Normally using just one of these brackets isn’t enough to come up with a concrete trend but when both are on a downwards trend for multiple patches then it is safe to say that Zed is in the decline.
• This is likely due to the shift in support picks and the mid meta. After 9.13, most top tier supports (such as Rakan, Thresh, and Bard) can stuff Zed easily.
• In mid lane, matchups that he hates such as Swain and Qiyana are becoming more popular while matchups he used to win against, such as Cassiopeia, or some skill matchups like versus Fizz, TF, and Katarina are no longer severely in his favor thanks to new build innovations or kit changes.

2.  “This is the most inaccurate tier list, how is Vlad B tier?” – RealmKnights (Youtube)

• We get this about Vlad a lot since many other tier lists rank him higher. In our opinion, this is done just to appease the viewers and there is no real basis for thinking he’s some OP god level unbeatable champion.
• Yes he is annoying to lane versus, yes pool is annoying and yes he is very hard to stop when he gets ahead.
• HOWEVER,  he is a lategame scaling champion with no lane priority in mid lane who offers nothing from behind in a meta that is very fast paced and snowball oriented.
• Many of his most popular counter picks like Cassio, Malz, and Swain are also strong currently. Not only that but his winrate is usually hovering around 50 percent below.
• This is very much a case of game trauma where players tend to remember the Vlad who 1v9’s and not the other 7 Vlad games where he little to no impact, this tends to be the reason why Zed and Yasuo’s ban rates are extremely high as well.

3. “Hey, Anivia is A tier in low ELO and in high ELO she is B Tier. Can you explain why she isn’t so good in higher elo?” – Loldestroyer6.0 (Instagram)

• In low ELO, Anivia has some major tools that help her win consistently more games.
• The first is how safe she is due to her passive and overall defensive kit.
• The other thing that helps her out is macro play tends to involve a lot of 5 man grouping at lower levels so Anivia can easily stall the game until she reaches enough items to solo carry.
• The issue with her in high elo is that the mid meta is very skirmish and rotation oriented.
• Anivia isn’t able to keep up with this high movement based playstyle since she can’t pressure towers well nor can she roam well with how low her base MS is, so despite her ability to stall, the rest of her lanes will be too far behind for it to matter.

4. “Shaco is same the tier as Lee Sin, Sejuani, and Kayn? Are you people mentally functional?” – Nate Trace (Facebook)

• Shaco, Lee Sin, Sejuani, and Kayn are all around the 48 to 50 percent win rate marker for all ranks. Although we don’t take just winrates into consideration, all of these champions have good enough playrates that the stats can be reliable.
• We’re aware that Shaco has bugs and that Shaco mains claim he’s one the worst champ in the game and should not be compared to popular picks like Kayn or Lee but facts are Lee Sin and Kayn are popular because they are fun, but just like Ezreal and Lucian, they just don’t win that much when played by the avg player.
• The popularity of a champion does not = strength though it may warp your perception of it. In terms of numbers, Shaco is a B tier champion because despite how bad he feels to play and how much worse he is compared to before, he still wins just as much as Kayn and way more than Lee and Sej.
• Just imagine how good he’d be when his bugs are fixed.

5. “Cait deserved better PepeHands” – akalari_ (Twitter)

• Caitlyn definitely is not deserving of a better ranking or anything for that matter. She’s been in a good spot now for some time.
• Her ability to push consistently and dominate the laning phase in the current meta solidifies her place in A-tier.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.15. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.15 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.14. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.14. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.14 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Should Corki and Quinn be on the ADC list?

2. Can someone explain to me the “Nidalee Runic Echoes Triforce Hybrid” build?

3. Why is Xayah A in low elo but S in high elo?

4. Why is Singed suddenly in A-tier again?

5. Why is Swain not viable in mid?

Questions and Answers

1. “Corki and Quinn maybe deserve B tier in ADC at least if Yasuo is on your list lol.”  – Ayy ayy (Youtube)

• Corki and Quinn don’t deserve it for two reasons:
• The first is that we limit the tier list to champions above 1 percent play rate with some exceptions of course like Zilean because everyone hates playing him but he’s damn good.
  • This is done to make sure we suggest champions that have enough data and are popular enough to be worth investing into. Quinn and Corki combined don’t reach 1 percent playrate let alone Yasuo’s play rate in bot lane, which is around 1.5 percent (higher than Kog’Maw and tied with Kalista.
• The second reason is that they both have lower than 50 percent win rate as niche picks. Due to the lower sample set, you generally can’t trust the numbers.
  • Established niche bot laners like Sona, Taliyah, Vel’Koz, Veigar, Swain, Ziggs have the same play rate as Quinn Corki but have 51 to 54 percent winrates on patch 9.14 and roughly the same on 9.13.

2.  “Can someone explain to me the “Nidalee Runic Echoes Triforce Hybrid” build? I have never seen this sh%t and I want to know” – CAZADOR DE YORDLES (Youtube)

• Our team found out about this build when playing with Spica, one of the best solo queue junglers on NA who plays quite a bit of Nidalee.
• For runes, he mostly goes Conqueror with inspiration secondary for free boots. For items,
• He goes Chilling Smite, Runic Echoes, Triforce, tier two boots, and Zhonya’s as his core. He follows it up with Athene’s or Liandry’s normally but at that point, any AP item or tank item is usable.
• This build is meant to be more scrappy and early pressure oriented aiming to constantly force and outplay skirmishes with high tempo gameplay.
• This build is used in China but not as popular compared to the AP one and in recent games, Spica no longer uses this build.
• Personally, I would it is an option when versus heavy frontline heavy comps kind of like how Ashe has her Triforce build versus ranged comps and BORK vs melee comps.

3. “Why is Xayah A in low elo but S in high elo?” – Kyos (Discord)

• This happened because the high ELO meta suits Xayah extremely well. Not only is her favorite lane partner Rakan, a highly contested pick, but the high ELO meta at the moment is very dive heavy which is perfect for a champion like Xayah who is amazing at kiting back and self peeling.
• Note that these things are not valuable at a lower level of play hence her A tier placement. Due to her range issues and less mechanical proficiency at these ranks, she can run into positioning mistakes often during the teamfight phase at lower levels which is why she is not S tier.
• I’ve seen far too many Xayah players in my day die without hitting R then blame lag for me to believe that her skill ceiling would be low.
• To back up this trend, on Patch 9.13, Xayah’s win rate from all ranks  Plat + to Diamond + see a steady increase only to her jump up in Masters +, showing how she does better the higher you go.
• This trend can also be seen on 9.14 but to a lesser extent and with less data.

4. “So why is Singed suddenly in A-tier again? Some explanation would be nice as I’m a Singed main. ” – Alexander Barth (Twitter)

• It mostly comes down to favorable matchups coming back to the meta and his new Conqueror build. Outside of Conqueror, you’re looking at Resolve for your secondary for Demolish and Boneplating.
• For item build, it’s full AP with Rylai’s, Liandry’s, and Protobelt. For boots, take Sorcs, Mercs, or Tabis. Situational items include Zhonyas or really any tank item including things like Locket or Knight’s Vow.
• This build was not invented by GRF Lehends, but he did popularize and condone it for 9.14.
• For matchups, Singed is favorable into Riven, Jax, Morde, Renekton, Aatrox, Yasuo, Irelia, Kledd, Malphite, Vlad, Camille, Akali, and Poppy.
  • These champs are all be seeing a lot of play or increased play this patch.
  • Though the sample size for data on 9.14 is small it’s enough when combined with the 9.13 data to notice a trend of winning popular matchups for Singed, hence the poison surfer’s rise to A tier.

5. “Why is Swain not viable in mid?” – slimaneehm (Instagram)

• We had originally thought that due to his decreased ranged and less mana sustain, Swain would not be suited as for mid lane compared to top lane.
• The reason for this is that in mid lane, many more long-range zone style champs like Anivia or Vel’Koz exist. We were wrong though as currently, he is performing better mid lane compared top lane.
• Doing some research into his matchup data, I found that he does in fact, lose to zone control mages. It’s just that they are far less popular compared to mid range matchups like Twisted Fate or assassins like LeBlanc and Diana.
• He is a great counter pick to assassins who are popular at the moment such as Akali or Diana. Just don’t go against Katarina with that increased healing on her ult because she destroys him now.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.14. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below.

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.14 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.13. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.13. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.13 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Why is Rengar top on the high-ELO list but not the low-ELO one?

2. Why is Volibear an S-tier jungler?

3. Is Cassiopeia good now?

4. Should Syndra be S-tier after the buff?

5. Any opinions on Lissandra in Gold to Plat ELO?

Questions and Answers

1. “Why is Rengar top removed from low-ELO list but remains in the high elo one? I know you said he has bad matchups, but matchups and matchup knowledge should matter more the higher you go right?

So if he is removed from low-ELO tier list bc of matchups I don’t really understand why he stayed in high-ELO one, where mistakes matter much much more.” – シャドウ (Youtube)

• You’re right on thinking that matchup strength can matter more at a higher level because people will be able to punish these smaller advantages more. The difference in this particular case though comes from the difference in the burden of knowledge.
• For example, the TF versus Fizz matchup. At lower levels of play, the Fizz wins because the TF is required to know more about the game to survive Fizz’s all in. But once that level of wave control knowledge is reached, the TF side can actually be considered the stronger side of the matchup.
• This is the same for a lot of Rengars matchups in top lane. he is required to know a higher threshold about the game for him to start turning around some of his matchups.

2.  “Why is Volibear considered S tier jungle over some of the other picks in A tier? His early/mid game ganks are so difficult to pull off compared to some of the A tier choices and his late game presence never feels that much greater than say, Sejuani or Hecarim. Am I missing something?” – Bio 667 (Youtube)

• So you’re correct in thinking his late game is worse than those champions, but where he exels the most compared to those champs is in early to mid game skirmishes. He is quite literally a monster at lower levels of play when it comes to skirmishes due to his execute and passive healing. Everyone forgets about the deceptive amount of damage his ult brings.
• Due to how often these type of uncoordinated fights break out and due to the lack of proper kiting ability, Voli ends up running over the early mid game on his own most of the time.
• As for feeling like his early ganks are weak they shouldn’t feel like that, especially because his E can interrupt a lot of dash or jumps. One of his best tactics is just to hard camp a lane with no Flash as his ganks don’t require long setup like Amumu he just needs his Q.
• Try punishing Flash-less lanes a lot harder than you do now if you want to find more success on the bear.

3. “Is Cassiopeia good now?” – Kavilo (Discord)

• She’s seen a bit more play lately at higher ELOs but I still wouldn’t personally consider her an amazing pick. She struggles to impact the early game at the moment and has no way to impact side lanes in a bot-centric meta.
• Diana also needs a frontline to be an impactful champion and loses to long range mages like Lux or assassins if she doesn’t play perfectly. She requires a team to peel for her and let her scale.
• This makes her too conditional in a meta that is very snowball reliant. Now if the intended changes to RoA or Rylai’s go through on the PBE you could see her make a comeback where she is strong enough on 1 or 2 items to solo impact fights.
• Currently, she just isn’t able to come online fast enough to be considered a good solo queue champion unless you are some kind of snake lady god.

4. “Syndra should be S tier after the buff ” – KeilyanLord (Twitter)

• I’m pretty sure this person is just memeing but I will use this topic to talk about Syndra a bit. Though buffing her mana is nice it is not a strong buff overall for her as she isn’t really considered a DPS type control mage whose main job is to spam spells to get DPS in fights, she is more of a burst / pick mage. This means the extra mana feels nice but can be pointless a lot of the time.
• I understand why Riot did this kind of buff though and it’s because she is a tricky champion to balance. In the past, whenever they give buffs to her main spells like damage on Q, she ended up bullying lane too hard. In the right hands, she just snowballs the entire game with her insane solo kill and gank setup followed by roaming around the map with her lane priority.
• If you make her laning too weak though, she loses a lot of her identity in the early game. She lacks the godlike late game of champions like Viktor, Cassiopeia, or Anivia to back up the fact her laning is weaker. That’s why Riot did such a cautious buff to her.

5. “Any opinions on Lissandra in gold to plat ELO?” – smol_orianna (Instagram)

• Lissandra used to be the perfect autofill choice for mid lane due to how safe and consistent she was. Ever since the nerfs to Q’s CD and Aftershock, she hasn’t been the same and I would not recommend her as a main champion for any ELO.
• She lost what made her good which was her lane priority and ability to shove in any champion. Now, she can’t do that anymore and would get destroyed by a lot of champions who outrange her like Lux.
• She can be used as a counterpick still if you really like her. Try picking her into high mobility melee champs like Fizz, Akali, and Irelia as she can still bully them and deny them the chance to teamfight properly. 100 percent, make sure to avoid picking her into long range mages though as she will just get murdered in lane.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.13. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

The post Mobalytics Patch 9.13 Tier List Q&A appeared first on Mobalytics.

Every patch, our experts curate a predictive tier list for climbing solo queue. We created this Q&A series to address the most common questions for each individual tier list, this one is for Patch 9.12. If you’d like your question to be answered, leave a comment in our tier list article, in our Youtube video’s comments, or send us a message in our Discord.

We don’t answer every question but we do read all of them so you always have a chance! Note that some answers within this article may be slightly altered for readability.

If you want to know the best champs to climb with this patch, here’s our LoL tier list for Patch 9.12. If you want to know what our experts thought of the patch as a whole, check out our 9.12 Patch Breakdown.

Overview

1. Why is Ornn intense?

2. Why is Rengar an jungler S-tier for high-ELO every patch?

3. How are Garen and Yorick S-tier?

4. Where’s Ivern?

5. What’s preventing Fiora from moving to A-tier?

Questions and Answers

1. “Why is Ornn considered an intense difficulty champion to play? Besides the fact that most of his abilities are skillshots, I can’t really think of a reason why.” – Bill Nye The Science Guy (Discord)

• This one might seem weird as tanks, on average, don’t usually have high difficulty. Ornn, on the other hand, not only has a lot of skillshots but also a lot of unique interactions a player must get used to.
• A first time Ornn player will need to learn how to abuse his unique lane buying ability, how to properly use his W to dodge CC, what the timing on his Q + E combo is for the knockup, how to properly use brittle for max damage, the timing on the recast for his ult as well as having a strong engage sense with it.
• Another way to think about it is, would you rather have a first-time Malphite or Ornn on your team? One has point and click abilities and an easy-to-land ultimate while the other has a lot of room to whiff abilities and mess up.

2.  “I probably missed the video when they explained it but I’m kind of baffled as to why you have Rengar S tier jungler (high elo) every single patch. I can’t remember anyone else agreeing with the notion yet he’s like number one on the tier list every single patch.” – Sploosh (Discord)

• This one has been mentioned a lot and you did not miss the video on it, one of the main reasons he was initially placed in S was because he benefited greatly from the meta changes the new Scuttle spawn timer brought allowing him to power farm to 6 much easier.
• The other reason was that he was great into meta picks like Karthus in the past while also doing well into Sejuani as he can use his empowered W to break her CC.
• Simply put, the current meta where Rengar is allowed to consistently hit 6, has squishy champions that rely on CC to kill him, and enchanters like Karma, Yuumi, and Janna to empower him to get picks even easier is fantastic for him.
• We believe that he is just being undervalued kind of like Zilean, for example, who is also amazing with Rengar. I will admit that we could be wrong on this one and I will certainly continue to watch if he needs to be dropped to A tier.

3. “What a bad list, do you just take winrates or what? Garen and Yorick in S you can’t be serious.” – Gintoki (Youtube)

• We’re 100 percent serious about having Garen and Yorick in S tier. Do we only look at win rates for our list? Of course not, but in the face of such overwhelmingly high data samples and corresponding win rates, it’s hard to ignore their success.
• In the case of Garen, even if you think he’s a noob champ it’s hard to ignore his dominance in Gold and below. The list needs to be based on some kind of logic, not just feelings.
• Either you misunderstood that we have two lists which is surprisingly common, or you just so happen to beat Garen and Yorick warping your view on their power.

4. “I always watch these but I never see jungle Janna in the list anymore. Where is he? (Ivern)” – Frostfx1Frostfx (Twitter)

• Ivern has been on the decline ever since the Scuttle changes went through as he lost a lot of his early power and control over the game when the spawn timer was delayed.
• Because of that, his pathing became a lot more dangerous, especially at higher levels with monster early game champions like Elise and Olaf being popular he becomes too much of a risk.At lower levels of play where he is safer he is a team reliant champion who is getting outscalled by tank junglers who are able to provide ulity tankiness and engage in a proactive way while jungle janna currently is too reactive. He just isn’t able to proactively win the game atm while also being a champion mostly 1 trick use so he isn’t a strong recommendation.

5. “What is preventing Fiora from moving to A-tier? She has been underperforming compared to other champions, she should favor match ups against the current S-tier top laners.” – Francesco Causo (Facebook)

• You’re totally right about her doing poorly in matchups she should win right now. The thing about Fiora as a champion is that she has a major flaw in her kit.
  • The flaw is that even when she’s ahead to the point where she can win all duels, she has no way to force a fight. This means that she will struggle to find a win condition to close a game out.
• So unless she is so insanely broken or ahead that she can snowball lane into perma tower diving someone, she will not be able to consistently win games.
• From a balance perspective, this makes it so Fiora is in a perpetual state of, if her numbers are too high, no one can win 1v1 versus her or 1v2. If the numbers are too low, like they are now, she has no way to win games unless she outclasses her opponent and has a good matchup.
• She will likely need a small rework involving changing her R if Riot wants to fix this issue.

Thanks for reading and watching! We’ll see you next time for Patch 9.12. As always, you can reach out to our team on Discord if you have any questions or feel free to leave a comment below. 

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