League of Legends Patch 8.15 Tier List for Climbing Solo Queue

Whoops, looks like you’ve found an older tier list. Here’s the new tier list 9.4

Welcome to the Mobalytics Predictive Tier List for League of Legends for Patch 8.15!

This list was curated in collaboration with our analyst, Hewitt “prohibit” Benson, our Challenger Coach, Adam “Morïarty” Isles, and Kellen “Exil” Pontius. Unlike most tier lists, we publish ours before, or as a patch goes live, according to the predictions of our in-house experts.

Here are the Patch 8.15 notes for reference.

If you have any questions about our choices or process, ask us on Discord!

The Format and Methodology

If you’re wondering how we make our tier list, check out our video explanation!

One quick note is that our difficulty rating has been slightly reworked after much feedback. Previously, difficulty ratings were solely based on champion mechanical cap or ceiling. This is why cases like Lux and Aurelion Sol were in the same boat in terms of our old difficulty. Aurelion Sol involves more game knowledge and understanding and is by definition a hard champion, but Lux is also a champion with 4 skill shots, so we took that into consideration.

We appreciate your feedback, and we have now changed it from focusing on mechanical difficulty to “Learning Curve”. This will be much more designed around the philosophy of how hard a champion is to play assuming you are brand new to them, or the role itself. Just remember that difficulty and skill are always subjective!

Disclaimer #1: If a champion isn’t on our Tier List, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t climb with them. You’ll just have to put in more effort to get similar results as our Optimal, Great, and Good choices for climbing. 

Disclaimer #2: This list is meant to evaluate the champions that we believe are best for climbing Solo Queue. Although there can certainly be some overlap, we are NOT looking to name the champions that are the best in pro-play or organized, competitive 5 on 5. This is why champs that require a ton of team coordination such as Ryze, may not be included or ranked highly.

The Age of the Skirmisher continues! 

Key Commentary

Rising Stock

Tryndamere

• I can feel some of you cringing in anticipation of all the new AP Tryndameres that will be in solo queue after we publish this – sorry! Riding off the wave of buffs from a few patches ago, Tryn now has an obnoxious 2-item spike build involving Rageblade and Nashor’s Tooth, in combination with the Conqueror keystone. The transition from an AD early game to this build makes him incredibly hard to itemize against, he’ll be Optimal for 8.15

Graves

• Well, that didn’t last long. Your favorite outlaw is back into Optimal! Graves’s performance suffered a tad while Junglers searched for the right build (they found it). The combination of Press the Attack, Domination secondary tree, Warrior’s enchantment, and Stormrazer make him insane – try it out.

Ahri

• Ahri is pretty damn strong right now. Her recent buffs allow her to spam in lane without going OOM, and her more potent charm is a constant threat. Use a Corrupting Potion and the Tonic rune to make her early game better than it really should be. She’s one of those champs who’s supposed to be “weak” before six but that simply isn’t the case in her current form.

Wukong

• Boasting a high win rate at most elos,  the monkey has hit Optimal for mid lane. His kit allows him to thrive in the chaos of solo queue, giving him the ability to snowball when he’s ahead and still stay relevant if he falls behind. He’s one of the few champs that has the combo of Optimal and Simple, abuse him before it’s too late!

Jhin

• 1…2…3..4, BOOM! 8.15 is basically Christmas for Jhin since he’ll be hitting his spike much faster (700g earlier!). He was already strong but this patch is going to put him over the edge and into Optimal.

Sona

• As the meta has shifted toward poke being favorable in the bot lane, Sona has found a place in the Optimal spotlight once again. She scales incredibly well, is one of the best sustainers in a meta where sustain is lacking, and can blow up most of her peers when she hits 6.

Pyke

• Well, what do you know? It turns out that once people learned how to use him, Pyke is a beast. Similar to other Optimal champs, he does an awesome job of thriving in messy fights and snowballing to carry the game. He has built-in sustain so he won’t be as affected as his other melee counterparts in regards to the lack of potions – he’ll actually be benefiting since his enemies won’t be able to stay as healthy as they used to be able to.

On the decline

Aatrox

• At higher elos and pro-play, Aatrox has found great success. However, he’s been suffering across the board at lower tiers. Since we wouldn’t recommend him for everyone due to his difficulty, we’re gonna have to bump him down to Great.

Xin Zhao

• For whatever reason, Xin isn’t doing that well at lower elos for being a high impact champ with a pretty easy kit. This could be a combination of players not understanding how to build him or when to engage – either way, he’s falling to Great and we’re bumping his difficulty to Average.

Rengar

• Rengar is another champ that’s still very strong but is pretty hard for players to pick up and bring to solo queue. It’s one of those things where if you’ve been playing him for a while he’s Optimal but you can’t just pick him up and add him to your champion pool without some growing pains due to his difficulty.  If you’d had success with him keep going but we wouldn’t recommend investing the time to learn him right now.

Kindred

• The Jungle champion pool is incredibly competitive at Optimal – unfortunately, this means that the nerfs to Kindred are a big enough hit to drop them (yes, “them”) down to Great.

Anivia

• The ice bird has been losing stock as the meta has shifted towards poke combat. It isn’t rare these days to see team comps with four ranged champs so it really plays against Anivia’s desire for crowded battles. She isn’t a useless egg just yet, but she’s falling to Great for us.

Brand

• Brand wasn’t as successful as we thought the last patch. Our experts believe that this is partly due to players finally learning how to play against him (*cough* don’t stand clumped together *cough*). With Stopwatch’s return to being a staple in the bot lane, he just wasn’t as scary if he missed his spell rotation. He’s dropping down to Good.

Lucian

• Despite Lucian’s early bullying ability, he simply gets outclassed by his Optimal peers. For example, he gets abused by mages after they get their first item. Fear not, he’s still Great, but we wouldn’t recommend him as much as some other bot carries.

Fiddlesticks

• Like other roles, the Optimal slots for Supports are insanely competitive and oppressive. The nerfs to Fiddle this patch will be enough to knock him down a peg, although he’ll still be serviceable as a Great choice.

Special mentions

Lee Sin

• Look out, Lee Sin is Great! The buffs he received impact the parts of his kit that are easy to utilize (aka what our experts call, “braindead buffs”). We’re going to be keeping an eye on him to see if he’ll continue to rise, but for now, give him a shot if you had him in your pool in past seasons.

Rumble (mid)

• This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill. Shh, but this is one of our predictive picks. The Mechanized Menace is benefitting heavily from the current skirmish meta. Nullifying Orb makes Rumble’s shield nearly unbreakable for most mages and they simply can’t keep up with his push power. If you end up burning your Flash, it’s pretty much gg against him due to his reliable trade –> all-in pattern.

Crit ADCs

• This patch makes itemization much better for many ADCs that were struggling to keep up in the new meta. They still aren’t the alpha dogs in the current climate but they’ll be making more of a mark than they have had for the past couple patches.

Support: healers are trending up / melees are trending down

• The changes to Support itemization are directly impacting the sustain that was traditionally provided by potions. As a result, healers are going to be more of a commodity and melees are going to have a harder time keeping up against poke.

As always, we welcome all discussion and feedback. If you have any questions about picks that we didn’t expand on or would like to let us know how you feel about Patch 8.15 and our predictions in general, join us in our Discord! If you’re wondering how we make our tier list, check out our video explanation.