League of Legends Patch 26.22: Best Champions Tier List

League of Legends Patch 26.22 went live on November 4, 2026, and it is a bigger patch than its number suggests. Riot used it to buff ten champions, nerf three, rework Mel's kit, and ship the long-planned split that moves Teamfight Tactics onto its own standalone client. Buried under the client news is a genuinely consequential balance pass for Summoner's Rift — the kind that reshuffles who is worth picking in solo queue this week. Here is how the current patch stacks up, tier by tier.

01What Changed in League of Legends Patch 26.22

Riot's own patch notes frame this as a round of buffs to "pro suppressed" champions alongside nerfs to the game's most-banned picks. Ten champions got stronger — Aurelion Sol, Corki, Kayle, Maokai, Naafiri, Rumble, Shen, Smolder, Viktor, and the new champion Zaahen — while Locke, Thresh, and Yasuo all took nerfs. Mel sits outside both camps with a full midscope adjustment that rebuilds her W from the ground up. Two item changes round things out: Doran's Bow lost a point of attack damage, and Overlord's Bloodmail gained base AD while its Retribution passive scaling was trimmed.

02S Tier: The Champions Patch 26.22 Unlocked

Corki gets the cleanest buff of the patch. Riot explicitly says it was holding him back heading into Worlds, and now his Missile Barrage (R) does more on every cast — base damage up from the 90/170/250 range to 100/190/280, and the "Big One" detonation up from 180/340/500 to 200/380/560. No downside was attached anywhere on his kit, so this is a pure power increase to a champion who was already strong enough to be watched at the top level.

Viktor is the clearest buy-back in the patch. His prior nerf cut harder into his scaling than Riot wanted, and this patch restores it directly: his ultimate's AP ratio climbs from 50% to 60%, and his health growth increases from 100 to 105 per level. Riot's own notes say they are "happy about the impact" of the early-game nerf, which means this buff is purely about late-game power — exactly where Viktor needs it to stay relevant into a 40-minute game.

Naafiri had quietly fallen out of both mid lane and jungle after a string of earlier nerfs, and this patch moves her back toward parity rather than just nudging her. Her Q heal rises from a 45-105 base (+40% bonus AD) to 55-115 (+45% bonus AD), and her W's bonus attack damage climbs from 20% to 22%. Both numbers stack on every auto-attack reset her kit is built around, so the net sustain and damage increase is larger in practice than either line reads on its own.

03A Tier: Reliable Buffs Worth Picking Up

Smolder did not get a flashy headline change — his W explosion damage rose from a 10-110 range to 25-125, a flat increase across every rank — but he also benefits from a change elsewhere on the patch: the Doran's Bow nerf below should push rival ADCs toward Doran's Blade, while Smolder's own kit scales independently of that item war. Riot calls this one a "generic buff," and that is accurate; it is not dramatic, but it adds up on a champion who was already in a good spot.

Rumble and Shen both get role-specific buffs rather than universal ones. Rumble's ultimate damage-per-second ratio increases from 175% AP to 200% AP, which matters most for players below the pro level who were not already squeezing every second of The Equalizer's uptime. Shen's Q monster damage modifier rises from the 100-200 range to 120-200, a jungle-clear buff that does nothing for his laning but makes jungle Shen noticeably faster to get online.

Maokai picks up a smaller version of the same idea: his Q's bonus damage scaling against a target's maximum health increases slightly at every rank, a change Riot says is meant to help his top and jungle presence without disturbing his long-standing role as a support pick.

04B Tier: Noticeable, Not Meta-Defining

Aurelion Sol and Kayle both got buffs aimed at specific player behavior rather than raw power. Aurelion Sol's Singularity (E) total magic damage rises across every rank because most players were maxing it second behind his weaker Astral Flight (W) anyway — Riot is rewarding the build players already preferred. Kayle's Q and R cooldowns both came down slightly, a quality-of-life buff to her early laning rather than a damage increase.

Zaahen, Riot's newest champion, got his Q cooldown reduced across every rank specifically to give him more to do in lane before his scaling kicks in. It is a tuning pass on a champion still settling into the game, not a signal that he is under- or overperforming yet.

05Mel: The Champion Patch 26.22 Rebuilt

Mel is the one champion this patch that defies a simple buff-or-nerf label. Riot calls it a midscope adjustment, and the changes genuinely rebuild her kit rather than tune it. Her base stats move power out of early game — health drops from 640 (+99/level) to 590 (+107/level), and her passive's bonus damage per bolt falls from an 8-30 range to 4-30 — while her scaling improves at nearly every other stat, including a faster attack speed curve and lower mana costs on her Q and E in the late game.

The headline change is her W, Rebuttal, which is a full rework rather than a tweak. The old reflect is gone. In its place, Mel now unleashes a nova that destroys enemy projectiles and shields in a 400-unit radius, then retaliates against whatever she destroyed for damage that scales down on repeat hits against the same target — up to seven retaliations per enemy. It also grants her and nearby allies move speed, and its cooldown now drops as she ranks it up instead of staying fixed.

Net effect: Mel should feel weaker in the first ten minutes of a game and stronger in the back half of one, win or lose on tempo to get there. That makes her hard to slot into a clean tier for this patch alone — treat her as a champion to re-learn rather than one to simply pick up or drop, and expect her true standing to only become clear once enough ranked games have been played on the new kit.

06D Tier: Who Got Hit Hardest

Locke absorbed the most thorough nerf in the patch. Riot's own notes say he has "proven to be a much deeper champion than we initially expected" and that high-level Locke players were still clearly too strong, especially early. His Q stack bonus damage drops at every rank — the 18/26/34/42/50 progression falls to 15/22/29/36/43 — and his maximum stack damage falls from a 75.6-210 range down to 63-180.6. His W's duration is also cut from six seconds to five. None of that is a small trim; it is a full-kit nerf aimed squarely at the deep, mechanically demanding play that made him worth banning.

Thresh takes his second consecutive nerf after Riot says he "remained at the very top of the support pecking order" despite the last round of cuts. His base attack damage drops from 56 to 54, and his ultimate's flat damage falls across all three ranks — 250/400/550 down to 200/350/500 at equal AP investment. Yasuo gets the lighter touch of the three: his Q's total AD ratio falls from 105% to 100%, a nerf Riot frames as the same treatment given to Yone last patch, aimed at crit-build Yasuo specifically rather than his kit as a whole.

07What This Means Going Into Worlds' Final Stretch

What To Do About Patch 26.22

1. 1Both get clean number buffs with no offsetting nerf — Corki's Missile Barrage (R) now hits for 100/190/280 base, and Viktor's ultimate AP ratio rose from 50% to 60%.3 min
2. 2Her Q heal and W bonus AD both increased, stacking with the auto-attack resets her kit already leans on — a real sustain and damage gain in both mid lane and jungle.2 min
3. 3Rebuttal is a full rework from a reflect into an AoE nova that destroys projectiles and retaliates for damage — her old muscle memory will not carry over.3 min
4. 4Locke's Q stack damage and W duration both dropped, and Thresh lost base AD and ultimate damage for the second patch in a row — both are weaker picks and bans now.2 min
5. 5Doran's Bow lost a point of attack damage, nudging marksmen back toward Doran's Blade for some matchups.1 min
6. 6Base attack damage rose from 30 to 40, but its Retribution missing-health scaling was trimmed — still a net buff for most users outside Sett.1 min

This list reflects only what Riot's own 26.22 patch notes confirm — no win-rate claims, no pro-play read, and no champion ranked here that the notes do not actually touch. Treat it as a map of where raw power moved this patch, not a guarantee of climb results; matchups, your own champion pool, and the meta pro teams settle on during Worlds' knockout stage will all still matter more than any single patch note.

Mel is the biggest wildcard heading into the next few patches. A full W rework is the kind of change Riot typically follows up on quickly if the numbers land too far in either direction, so do not be surprised if 26.23 brings a correction. The safer bets for now are the clean, single-number buffs — Corki and Viktor chief among them — because there is no secondary nerf hiding anywhere else on their kits to offset the gain.