League of Legends Tier List: Best Champions on Patch 26.21

Patch 26.21 is the first League of Legends balance update since Worlds 2026 wrapped, and it reads like it: the official patch notes confirm 11 champion buffs, 10 nerfs, and five further adjustments on Summoner's Rift, alongside changes to four items. After a patch cycle built around keeping Worlds stable, Riot used 26.21 to loosen the leash a little and go after the junglers and marksmen that dominated the climb to the end of the ranked split.

This is an opinion piece built from Riot's own numbers, not a lab result. We ranked each champion by how much their actual power changed rather than by vibes, and where a change is too small to matter in practice, we say so instead of inventing a bigger story. A handful of kit adjustments — Locke, Taric, Twisted Fate, and Varus — are flagged separately near the end rather than ranked, because their changes are closer to fixes and reworked numbers than straightforward buffs or nerfs.

01S-Tier: This Patch's Clearest Winners

Miss Fortune (ADC). Her E, Make It Rain, had its base damage pushed up hard at early ranks — 70 becomes 90 at rank one, a 28.6% jump — while her ultimate's crit-damage scaling went from +0.3% to +0.45% per 1% bonus crit damage on top of a base increase from 130% to 145%. That is two separate buffs stacking on the same champion: better poke before six, and a harder-hitting Bullet Time once she's stacked crit items. Nothing about her kit got riskier to compensate.

Ryze (Mid). Riot's own framing is that he "hasn't been rewarded enough for succeeding when he does scale," and the numbers back that up: his W damage ratio rose from 60% to 70% AP, his Q now grants up to 50% bonus move speed instead of 44%, and Flux's damage bonus caps at 100% instead of 90%. None of that helps him survive to 20 minutes, but all of it makes the back half of a long game hit noticeably harder once he gets there.

Taliyah (Jungle/Mid). Worksong's buffs stack in an unusual way for her: Seismic Shove's damage rose at every rank, its detonation damage rose too, and it now deals a flat 225% of its damage to jungle monsters. That last part is the real headline — it is a direct clear-speed buff that makes Jungle Taliyah viable in a way the midlane-only version of the buff wouldn't have been, since faster clears translate straight into more ganks and objective control.

02A-Tier: Real Buffs, Not Headline Buffs

Nunu & Willump (Jungle/Support). Absolute Zero's maximum damage climbed from 625/925/1275 to 750/1100/1450 — a 20% increase at rank one, tapering to about 14% at max rank. It is still a telegraphed ultimate that a coordinated team can walk out of, but the execute threshold on squishier targets just got meaningfully lower.

Orianna (Mid). Both of her core damage ratios went up — Command: Attack from 55% to 60% AP, and Command: Protect's shield-and-damage from 80% to 85% AP. Riot's own notes describe this as helping her "chunk a bit harder with her bread-and-butter combo," which is an accurate description of a champion whose entire identity is landing that combo over and over.

Xin Zhao (Jungle). His Q now deals 45% bonus AD per strike instead of 40%, and his E's attack-speed-per-stack scaling improved from needing 5% bonus attack speed per stack down to 4% — a 25% stronger scaling on a stat that was already compounding. It is a jungler buff that rewards exactly the aggressive, dive-first playstyle he was already built around.

Vel'Koz (Mid/Support). His passive, Organic Deconstruction, now scales at 65% AP instead of 60% and caps at 205 damage instead of 180 — close to a 14% increase at the top end. It is a passive-damage buff rather than a combo buff, which makes it quietly strong in any matchup rather than situational in a specific one.

03B-Tier: Noticeable, Not Transformative

Darius (Top). Decimate's cooldown at max rank dropped from five seconds to four, a clean quality-of-life buff for an already strong duelist, but it only affects the very end of his cooldown curve rather than his early trading pattern.

Sion (Top). His health growth per level rose from 87 to 95, and his ultimate's damage-increase window over the first three seconds was extended from a cap of +166.67% to +200%. Both buffs reward playing him as a slow, scaling tank rather than changing how he's drafted.

Azir (Mid). A mana growth increase from 40 to 50 per level is a sustain buff, not a damage buff — it lets him cast Shurima's Legacy soldiers more often in a long fight, which matters most in the exact late-game teamfights he was already built to win.

Zyra (Support). Grasping Roots' seed cooldown was trimmed at every rank, most sharply early — 18 seconds down to 16 at rank one — which speeds up her zone control in lane without touching her actual damage numbers.

04C-Tier: Toned Down, Pick With Care

Lee Sin (Jungle). Riot's notes are blunt about this one: his W cooldown rose from seven seconds to eight because "the extra flexibility... is a bit too much power," and on top of that, Dragon's Rage's kick damage and collision damage both dropped by roughly 14% at every rank. He is still a strong early-game jungler, just with a slower shield and a weaker kick to finish fights.

Qiyana (Jungle). Her Q's damage fell by 10 at every rank after Riot found the ability "a lot more impactful than we anticipated." Combined with the Bastion Breaker changes below, her early all-in burst takes a real hit.

Caitlyn (ADC). Her passive, Headshot, is her whole identity, and its crit-chance and crit-damage scaling both dropped from 1% per 1% to 0.8% per 1% — a real cut to how hard she snowballs once she's ahead on items. A small base damage increase on her Q doesn't come close to offsetting it.

Jinx (ADC). Riot pairs her with Caitlyn in its own notes, calling her "similarly dominant in the meta" even after last patch's Runaan's Hurricane nerf. Her base attack damage growth and base health both ticked down slightly — not a huge single number, but another nudge in the same direction as an item nerf she already absorbed.

Yone, Viktor, Wukong, Tristana, Nidalee, and Rammus all lost smaller, more targeted numbers this patch — Yone's Q bonus AD ratio, Viktor's base move speed and shield, Wukong's passive armor stacking, Tristana's early attack speed, Nidalee's Pounce damage and Primal Surge attack speed, and Rammus's bonus resistances on Defensive Ball Curl. None of these are unplayable now, but each is a step down from Patch 26.20, and none of them picked up anything in return.

05Item Changes That Reshape the Meta

Bastion Breaker lost Lethality (22 down to 18) and base Shaped Charge damage, while its Sabotage debuff duration went from 90 seconds to infinite — a trade of raw burst for permanent utility that specifically targets the lethality junglers this patch is already nerfing. Gluttonous Greaves' total cost rose from 1,000 gold to 1,100, a tax on the sustain boots that bot lane and sustain-heavy champions lean on. Dawncore's AP-per-mana-regen ratio improved from 10 to 15, buffing mana-hungry mages who build it as a core item, and Hubris now gives ranged users a separate, slightly lower scaling (10 base, 2 per stack) than melee (15 base, 3 per stack), a split that nerfs ranged skirmishers who were building it off-role.

Locke, Taric, Twisted Fate, and Varus all received adjustments this patch rather than clean buffs or nerfs — Locke's resource costs and shield values were rebalanced in both directions, Taric and Twisted Fate got targeted bug fixes around untargetable allies and enemies, and Varus's whole damage curve on Piercing Arrow and Hail of Arrows was reshaped rather than simply increased or decreased. None of the four is ranked above because the net effect on their win rate needs a few days of real games to show up clearly — treat them as worth testing, not worth assuming.

How We Built This Tier List

1. 1We matched every number in this list against Riot's own Patch 26.21 notes rather than early PBE previews, several of which listed different values before the patch went live.
2. 2Champions with large percentage swings on signature abilities, like Miss Fortune's early Make It Rain damage or Ryze's W ratio, were weighted above champions who only picked up a few extra points on a secondary stat.
3. 3Lee Sin and Qiyana losing numbers that define their early-game identity were ranked lower than champions who lost a smaller, less central stat, like Rammus's resistance scaling.
4. 4Item changes were considered on their own, since a change like Bastion Breaker's lethality cut affects a whole class of junglers rather than any single champion's kit.
5. 5This list covers Summoner's Rift ranked play specifically; separate changes to other modes were set aside since they don't affect the same meta.

06Final Verdict for Patch 26.21

If you only take three picks into ranked this week, make them Miss Fortune, Ryze, and Taliyah — the three champions whose numbers moved the most in one direction with nothing pulling the other way. Everything in A-Tier and B-Tier is a safe, slightly better version of what it already was. Everything in C-Tier is still legal to play, it's just asking more of you to make it work than it was two weeks ago. As always with a numbers-only read, the live meta over the next few days of ranked games will be the real test of how these changes actually shake out.