League of Legends Tier List: Best Champions on Patch 26.20

01What Actually Changed in Patch 26.20

Patch 26.20 is Riot's last balance pass before Worlds 2026 begins on October 15, and it reads like a patch built for that stage rather than for solo queue alone. The official patch notes confirm buffs for eleven champions on Summoner's Rift — Diana, Kennen, Kindred, Lillia, Lucian, Mordekaiser, Neeko, Smolder, Swain, Tahm Kench, and Vayne — against nerfs for five: Ambessa, Ashe, Cassiopeia, K'Sante, and Yunara. Three items also moved: Hextech Rocketbelt, Experimental Hexplate, and Runaan's Hurricane.

This is an opinion piece, not a lab result. The ranks below are our read on how each numeric change plays out in ranked Summoner's Rift, built from Riot's own verified numbers rather than guesswork about the meta. Where a change is small enough that it probably won't move a champion's rank, we say so instead of inventing drama.

Lead designer Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison has described 26.20 as the patch Riot wants Worlds 2026 to be played on, which is why the notes skew toward a handful of large, deliberate swings rather than the usual spread of small nudges. That framing matters for how you should read this list: a champion landing in C-Tier isn't being deleted from the game, it's being nudged away from being the default answer at its position, which is exactly the kind of change competitive patches tend to make before a tournament rather than after one.

02S-Tier: The Worlds Patch's Clearest Winners

Tahm Kench (Support). His Q, Tongue Lash, had its base healing roughly doubled at every rank — 10/13.75/17.5/21.25/25 is now 10/20/30/40/50. That is the single biggest percentage swing in the whole patch, and it lands on a champion whose entire job is keeping an ADC alive through poke. Lane sustain against chip damage just got dramatically better, and nothing about his kit got riskier to compensate.

Mordekaiser (Top). Obliterate's late scaling rose from +5 to +7 per level between ranks 10 and 20, and Realm of Death's cooldown dropped from 140/120/100 seconds to 120/110/100 — a 20-second cut at rank one. He already snowballs isolated side-lane fights; now he gets to force more of them over a game, and his mid-to-late damage curve is steeper than it was last patch.

Smolder (ADC). Riot leaned further into his hyperscaling identity rather than away from it. Both passive stacks — Super Scorcher and Flap Flap Flap — gained value with Infinity Edge, and his ultimate's self-heal jumped from 100/135/170 (+50% bonus AD) to 100/175/250 (+75% bonus AD), on top of its existing AP ratio. A champion that was already terrifying at 20 minutes is now harder to all-in once he's ahead.

03A-Tier: Still Strong, Still Safe

Swain (Support). Vision of Empire's damage scaling improved (70/105/140/175/210 up to 70/115/160/205/250, still at a 60% AP ratio) and its cooldown dropped by two seconds at every rank. His base magic resistance also rose from 31 to 34, even as his base armor fell from 25 to 23 — a wash defensively, but a real upgrade to his signature long-range poke tool.

Kennen (Top/Mid). Lightning Rush's bonus attack speed climbed from 40/50/60/70/80% to 50/60/70/80/90%, a clean buff to his trading and wave-clear at every point in a game. It is a smaller swing than Tahm Kench's, which is why he sits here instead of S-Tier, but it is buff enough to notice in lane.

Neeko (Mid). Tangle-Barbs now hits harder at every rank (base damage up roughly 10-15 points per rank, still scaling at 65% AP) and its empowered root lasts longer at low ranks — 1.8 seconds becomes a flat 2 at rank one. Early poke and pick potential both improved, which matters most for a champion who lives or dies on landing that root.

Lucian (ADC). His attack damage growth rose from 2.5 to 2.9 per level, a pure late-game scaling buff with no early-game change at all. It won't be felt at level 6, but it widens his damage ceiling in a 35-minute game, and it stacks on top of whatever crit items he's already buying — a buff that gets stronger the longer the game runs, not weaker.

What ties this whole A-Tier together is that none of these four champions needed the help to be viable — they were already solid, patch-after-patch picks. What they get from 26.20 is a slightly wider margin for error: a poke trade that lands a little harder, a shield that holds a little longer, an ultimate that comes back a little sooner. That's a meaningfully different kind of buff than what S-Tier got, and it's why none of the four earns a promotion out of A.

04B-Tier: Playable, Not a Priority

Diana (Jungle/Mid). Pale Cascade's shield now scales off 14% bonus health instead of 11%. It is a real number, but a small one relative to her total shield value, and it doesn't change how she's played.

Kindred (Jungle). Wolf's Frenzy's monster damage modifier rose from 150% to 165%, which speeds up jungle clears, but Mounting Dread lost its small-monster targeting in the same patch — a genuine trade-off, not a pure buff, even with the slow duration stretching from one second to 1.5.

Lillia (Jungle/Top). Lilting Lullaby's sleep duration now ramps from 2.5 seconds at rank one up to 3 at rank three instead of staying flat at 2.5. It rewards investing in her ultimate but changes nothing about how she's drafted or played before rank 11.

Vayne (ADC). Tumble's mana cost is now a flat 30 at every rank instead of scaling down from 46, which helps her in the lane phase she's historically weakest in. Her health-per-level regen dropped slightly in exchange. Net positive, but not enough to climb higher on its own.

B-Tier is the largest group on this list for a reason: most of what changed here is a number moving by a few percentage points on a champion whose win rate was already fine. Play any of these four if you already know and like them — nothing about 26.20 makes a strong case for picking one up fresh.

05C-Tier: Toned Down, Pick With Care

Yunara (ADC). Cultivation of Spirit's on-hit damage was cut at every early rank (5/10/15/20/25 down to 3/8/13/18/23), and Arc of Judgement no longer stacks with other slows. Riot is visibly trying to calm down a dominant pick rather than delete it outright, and she's still viable — just no longer a default first pick.

K'Sante (Top). Path Maker's mana cost rose across the board (40/45/50/55/60 to 45/50/55/60/65) while its damage reduction fell from 30/75% to 25/70%. That's a direct hit to the tankiness that makes him worth drafting, and it's the clearest "toplane tank got worse" nerf in the patch.

Ambessa (Top), Ashe (ADC), Cassiopeia (Mid). Each lost a smaller, more targeted number — Ambessa's passive damage, Ashe's attack damage per level, and Cassiopeia's base health and mana. None of these are unplayable now, but each is a step down from where it sat in Patch 26.19, and none of them picked up anything in return.

The pattern across all five C-Tier nerfs is restraint rather than overcorrection — Riot shaved specific numbers rather than reworking any kit, which is standard practice for a final pre-Worlds patch where the goal is a slightly calmer meta, not a different one. Expect pro play to still feature some of these champions in the right comp; expect solo queue to quietly move on to the picks above them.

06Item Changes That Reshape the Meta

Hextech Rocketbelt traded ability haste (20 down to 10) for a much bigger active hit (100 base damage at +10% AP up to 135 at +15% AP). That rewards mages who want one big burst engage over mages who wanted to recast it constantly — a real shift in who should buy it, separate from any champion's own numbers.

Experimental Hexplate's ranged modifier dropped from 70% to 50% of its base values, which quietly nerfs every ranged top laner who leaned on it for attack speed and movement speed. Runaan's Hurricane also lost a little bolt damage, from 65% to 60% AD per bolt, trimming on-hit ADCs who build it as a core item rather than a luxury.

How We Built This Tier List

1. 1We matched every number in this list against Riot's own Patch 26.20 notes rather than early previews, several of which still listed changes — like Sylas and Varus — that didn't make the final release.
2. 2Champions with large percentage swings on core abilities, like Tahm Kench's healing or Mordekaiser's cooldown, were weighted above champions who only gained a few extra points on a stat.
3. 3K'Sante losing tankiness changes what he's drafted for; Ashe losing a fraction of a stat per level doesn't. We ranked the identity-level changes lower.
4. 4A build-path shift like Hextech Rocketbelt's haste-for-damage trade can matter as much as a kit change, so we considered it on its own rather than folding it into any one champion's rank.
5. 5This list covers Summoner's Rift ranked play specifically; Patch 26.20's separate ARAM and Classic mode changes were set aside since they don't affect the same meta.

07Final Verdict for Patch 26.20

If you only remember three things heading into Worlds week, make them Tahm Kench, Mordekaiser, and Smolder — the three champions whose patch notes read less like a tweak and more like a statement. Everything in A-Tier is safe and slightly better than before. Everything in C-Tier is still a legal pick, just one that now asks more of the player behind it. None of this is final — Worlds itself, starting October 15 on this exact patch, will stress-test every one of these numbers against the best players in the world.