Hi everyone!
It’s been a while. A very long while. In fact, it’s been such a long while that I have decided I need to completely re-do... well, everything. This list is still really, really, rough and not everything--in fact, nearly nothing sits well with me on it. This is in part due to the fact that as the preseason has just begun, itemization is completely out of whack. The Blackfire Torch, which was the farewell torch has had it’s throne usurped by the Black Cleaver. Well, less usurped, and more combined. From what I hear, they’re going to get married in about a week.
What does that mean for us in this lovely, lovely preseason patch? Your defenses mean nothing! Armor, and to a lesser extent, magic resist, are practically meaningless. Not only are they more expensive, but the sheer amount of flat penetration available means that armor amounts in excess of 300 can be reduced to nearly 50. In fact, in most games, armor is a null stat until it breaches values of 100. This means that gold and item slots are literally being spent on nothing.
In conclusion, until our Riot Overlords strike down this new authoritarian regime, long live our lieges, the fair, the majestic, the Blackfire Cleavertorch!
Incidentally, this actually means that HP is the best defensive stat in the game right now. This means that characters like Lulu, who were already extremely powerful are able to contribute even more, and other characters, like Renekton, who was not viable because of his inability to effectively build up rage, have begun to weasel their way into the scene.
This is something of a catch-22, however. Because armor is worthless, magic resist is harder to get, and health is the new go-to defensive mechanism, this further empowers an already dominating item: the Blackfire Torch. For this reason, characters who are able to effectively apply many, many stacks of this foul item have perpetuated themselves into the highest tiers of desirability. A single mushroom from Teemo (though he has more recently become known as the God-King of Yordles), for example, can easily drop 1400-1500 health, at which point the poor victim becomes easy fodder for the rampant AD assassins like Kha’zix and Talon.
Thus, the optimal itemization path is clear: build damage. In some ways, Dominion has become more of a twitch based shooter than anything else for the damage values on absolutely everyone are so high. In many cases, the first player to begin inflicting damage will be able to win that duel, regardless of positioning.
Fortunately, in the next patch, itemization will be fixed. Until such a time, have fun with perhaps the most static itemization metagame that League of Legends has ever seen.
Top Picks / Bans - Teemo, Kassadin, Kha’zix, Jayce, Lulu, Pantheon, Wukong, Ezreal, Amumu, Poppy, Jax, Rumble, Darius, Xin Zhao, Nunu, Malzahar
Frequently Picked / Sometimes Banned - Maokai, Brand, Riven, Lee Sin, Jarvan IV, Singed, Blitzcrank, Olaf, Swain, Garen, Diana, Annie, Ahri, Zyra Malphite, Renekton, Rammus, Sona, Talon, Nidalee, Alistar, Yorick, Kayle, Janna, Urgot, Evelynn, Katarina, Elise, Miss Fortune, Rengar, Nocturne, Fiora, Morgana, Syndra, Hecarim, Mundo, Ryze, Fizz, Taric, Trundle, Ziggs
Sometimes Picked / Rarely Banned - Vayne, Le Blanc, Fiddlesticks, Karma, Leona, Orianna, Corki, Warwick, Nami, Kog’Maw, Cassiopeia, Lux, Twisted Fate, Vladimir, Varus, Gragas, Mordekaiser, Sivir, Shaco, Twitch Udyr, Akali, Skarner, Irelia, Gangplank, Caitlyn, Cho’Gath, Graves, Galio, Nautilus, Tristana, Shen, Master Yi, Soraka, Ashe, Anivia, Heimerdinger, Udyr, Shyvana, Karthus
Never Played - Tryndamere, Nasus, Volibear, Kennen, Xerath, Zilean, Draven, Sion, Veigar, Viktor, Sejuani
Stay Positive Tier - POOTERSS
HUEHUE Tier - Wawix, I love this guy so much.
Hard to Place on a Team - Elementz. Just kidding -- the king of the Bench returns! Grats, Cody, you’ve hitting harder than Rocky as of late!
I am actively looking for support and ideas in putting together the new, updated list for Season 3. The fundamental problem with any tier list in League of Legends, or any other MOBA for that matter, is the sheer number of intangibles. Thus, how does one quantify what is impossible to quantify?
In the current state of the game, nearly everything has a counter*. Thus, the inherent value of any one character is in a constant state of flux based on the team which you have assembled yourself, and the team which the enemy has assembled. Even if one were to eliminate that constraint, different styles of play mesh together in such a way that most things can still be beaten.
For example, an AoE team will any equal footed teamfight against a team that has opted to bring more single target damage to the field, provided they can drop down all of their AoE down at the same time. However, a team which opts to bring more single target damage will defeat an AoE team if they can pick people off with their high single target damage burst, or force the enemy team to expend some of their cooldowns in order to survive.
For this reason, in previous renditions of the tier list, Talith and I based as much as half of place value on how strong of a pick certain champions were: that is, tier-1 contained champions that rarely made it past the ban phase, and if they did, they were snatched up quickly. However, CaptnBuwberry, for example, was able to utilize characters like Swain to such a potential that many of those tier-1 pickups were unable to do their jobs.
Post-ramble, I suppose that I can condense of all of this down to a few sentences: Please comment on the following -
- What is misplaced?
- Given the multitude of intangibles and variables, what should the placement criteria be?
- Why am I a wonderful human being?
* “HAHAHA, ELALYA, WE ARE KASSADIN AND TEEMO AND WE MOCK YOUR STATEMENTS INDEFINITELY!”
-Kassadin and Teemo, OP Convention, Winter 2012.
And as always, if you have any questions for me about specific placement or general advice on anything, just shoot me a comment below. I get back to as many as I can.
Thanks for sticking with me and reading!
Elalya.
About the Author -
Elalya is a really cool cupcake. She plays for the Blind Pick Banditos in the DominateDominion tourney, hosted each Saturday at 1700 PST. She also enjoys cupcakes, kittens, and running track. She is currently attending UC Berkeley, and loves eating food. All in all, she is arguably the perfect human being.
The Blind Pick Banditos' DominateDominion Record -
- Dominate Dominion #02 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #04 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #10 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #12 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #13 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #14 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #15 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #21 Champions
- Dominate Dominion #26 Champions
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Posted 4/7/2013 5:38:02 PMI just went in a full of page of only playing viktor bot in 1st position. Got 3 losses, 2 of them i went legendary, so it wasnt really my fault the other was complete bullshit because we lost by 1 point due to the enemy team had TF and pantheon.
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Posted 4/11/2013 8:38:21 AMHey, I really like Viktor on dom, I think he is underrated by the most players. I beat the most champs with him bot, I just wonder what Items you get and how you skill him, mabye their is a better way.
Edit: Just saw that he is placed at lowest tier here, haha.
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Posted 3/1/2013 11:42:23 AMIs this still planned on being updated? I feel some champs are accurate and others have fallen off a lot. The tier list could use a rework.
A sig I guess.
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Posted 2/4/2013 3:24:58 PMHow do you feel about Cassiopeia? I've had great luck with her, since she's got poke, waveclear, strong 1v1 and teamfight presence (if she manages to survive, she just has to orbwalk/kite). IMO she's pretty good, not to mention scary aswell.
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Posted 1/27/2013 2:02:17 PMIf health stacking is so powerful, would a kog'maw not rend entire teams? AP kog is viable too, and cuts massive amounts of %health off everything each shot. He is viable bot, and I think anyone without stealth that can survive crossing his range deserves to kill him. Xin? Talon? 2 shots at most. I know these tiers are popularity, and I know his escapes are poor, but it takes Kass (and arguably kha'zix) to truly shut Kog down with no risk.
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Posted 1/27/2013 4:22:14 PMHealth stacking is actually a Summoners Rift thing.
Because Warmogs was removed from Dominion, it is a lot harder to stack health.
Instead, most people use resist items to increase survivability, and combined with resist/lvl runes it means Kog's W won't be doing nearly as much damage as it could be.
However, I personally think that Kog'maw is tier 1/2 in terms of power.He just isn't commonly picked because I think either people don't like to play him, or they just prefer to play Ezreal or Urgot instead.
Meh
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Posted 1/6/2013 1:22:26 PMI think Sejuani and kayle are misplaced.
Kayle just have to build full AP/AS with some HP to shatter enemies by herself. Dominion offer her a speed way to DPS build and she shine for this, and her great spammable ultimate.
Sejuani have been improved by the health lower cost/
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Posted 1/5/2013 4:39:12 PMI feel like Riven should be higher. She dishes out insane damage, naturally quite tanky, nice mobility and snow balls like a bitch. With the new BC it's harder to counter her and can pretty much 1 v 1 most people.
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Posted 12/21/2012 7:01:25 AMi agree with you that there are alot of factors, so i propose this. I would say rank champions based on the chance of them being countered/ utility they bring to the team. The lower the chance of being countered, the higher tier they are. The more utility ( being reasonable in whats considered utility e.g. kassadin can be countered by stacking mr but his ult makes him very useful and hard to deal with). I don't believe i worded this the best so let me give a good example.
lets use swain, lulu, and graves as our subjects and for the sake of the arguement not consider the items.
Swain is what i would call a ap bruiser. He can be built like a traditional ap carry but because of his skillset it is often better to build more on the tanky side using items with some/ little apwith items such as roa abyssal scepter frozen heart. Swains E skill adds a damage amplifier on the target of his choice. What does this mean? Even a build with non ap items can yield great damage with proper rune mastery setup. This being said, You could argue that swain is good vs a high % of targets and hence a high tier champ.
Graves is a mostly( if not all) physical burst damage adc. His damage being all physical is countered by armor... making him not so desirable if you don't consider armor pen items because if opponent manages to stack armor, it greatly affects graves ability to deal enough damage to burst his target down making him not as desirable to have on your team.
Lulu is a support, many of her skills are designed around helping/protecting her team. While she can certainly be built as a ad or ap her skills are useful regardless of who is on her team( although obviously some teamcomps will be much harder then others. So you could say that lulu is ranked high tier because of the great utility she brings.
I feel with a proper i think ranking this way would be a semi accurate portrayal of how champions add up in the dominion tiers. This method would also force you to have played agaisnt it... to fully understand/rate it but i Do feel with a unbiased view this method would reach semi-accurate results.
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Posted 12/23/2012 8:31:38 PMI think that it's something of an illusion that Kassadin can be countered simply by building MR-- for indeed any AP carry can be made less effective by itemizing for magic resistance, but at what cost? If you sink 1K into MR, then you've essentially used 10% of your available resources to survive a single champion, but you've done nothing to enable yourself to kill them or stop the rest of their team. In the particular case of Kassadin, this isn't even true itself since so much of his strength comes from the fact that he can lay down a gank on bottom, and then immediately relocate back up to top and be ready to teamfight (since you've been managing your ult stacks)--something that no other champion can do.
Utilizing the criteria which you have set forth has a fundamental problem: is Graves is "low-tier" because he has exclusively AD damage, which is "countered" by armour (a myth, as addressed above, especially due to the prevalence of penetration items), then do you suggest not having any AD, simply because AD can be countered by armour? Clearly, that is a fallacy and an illogical premise to begin with.
The problem with League/MOBAs, as opposed to fighting games, is that you need to look at things in the aggregate. It is not about specific champions, but rather compositions as a whole. Gragas and Janna do not synergize well, yet they are both incredibly strong champions in their own right.
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Posted 12/17/2012 11:40:18 AMI disagree with Draven's placement. Assuming this is pre-BC stacking, or even post-, his passive allows him to apply stacks well, with good reactions can cancel jumps from characters like pantheon and kha'zix with Stand Aside, and then can abuse BC extremely well with his high natural physical damage.
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Posted 12/17/2012 10:25:07 PMDraven's optimal itemization, much like Jayce, relied on crit: chunking people with axes is a lot better than just hitting them for true damage. BC abuse is good on him, but not as good as other carries like Ezreal.
Positioning with him to get his axes going is even harder than it is on SR.
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Posted 12/17/2012 10:16:23 AMThe Dark Era. lol.
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Posted 12/17/2012 6:19:01 AMFor me, Elise is top of the top tier. I only lose with her if my team is completely crap. Her kit is stupidly OP for dominion.
And as my main char, I play kennen a lot in dominion and he is not that bad. He's fast, so he can capture a lot, and his ulti is good to protect the points.
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Posted 12/17/2012 10:23:57 PMKennen suffers from long cooldowns and a poor itemization in that he cannot build CDR effectively. He has bursts of speed, but Lightning Rush cannot be be spammed due to energy constraints; even if he does, he'll be out of energy when he arrives to a skirmish.