Wild Rift Patch 2.6a High Elo Tier List

Wild Rift patch 2.6a added small, but much needed balance changes. To help players understand which champions dominate and which fall off, here is a Wild Rift Tier List ranking the best and worst picks for each role. When considering the hierarchy of champions, this specific tier list assumes those utilizing the champions understand how to play them. In essence, this Wild Rift Tier List is for the high elo. The visuals provide the comprehensive list, with some noteworthy pick for each role explained thereafter.

[Related: Wild Rift 2.6 Low Elo Tier List]

The information was provided by Kerxx and Vindey of RiftGuides. Special thanks for their help.

Be sure to check out their channel by clicking the link below for a video version of the guide.

Baron Lane

Irelia

First up is Irelia as the pick of the patch! She hasn’t been touched in the recent patch but is a champion that has been flying under the radar for a bit too long now. She’s an insane champion for the middle and baron lane and can take over a game with absolute ease. For this all  make proper use of the minion’s HP bars and prepare them in advance. Now wait for the moment to strike – as soon as the enemy goes for a last hit close to those low hp minions, it’s time to shine. Dash on it – reset and run down the enemy champion.

To make sure,  the easiest way is to rush a Blade of the Ruined King. Trinity Force just doesn’t provide anything close to BORK’s bonus damage and overall utility – it’s just a bait – NEVER build it.

For runes go Conqueror, Brutal, Hunter Titan/Adaptive Carapace/Boneplating and Sweet Tooth. Irelia’s resolve runes depend heavily on her matchup – so for example against Renekton boneplating is INSANE whereas. In contrast, versus, Jayce, it’s completely useless.

Fiora

Next up comes Fiora. With the recent change to her second ability’s cooldown, every baron lane can finally catch at least some breath. Nonetheless it’s not going to be enough to push her out of the baron lane OR the jungle. If anything it’s only a real nerf to her baron laning power on very high levels of play. Now she’s not able to mitigate every single combo the enemy throws at her – which is quite the improvement from before. Nonetheless she’s still toxic in the way she trades so there’s that.

Especially once Fiora reaches the sheen spike, she becomes even more toxic. Her annoying pattern of just lunging into the target direction now deals almost double the damage and is done every few seconds. Have fun outplaying that one.

If that wasn’t bad enough already, she becomes absurd once Fiora completes her Trinity Force while running runes like Conqueror, Brutal, a matchup oriented resolve rune such as Hunter Titan, Adaptive Carapace or Boneplating in combination with sweet tooth.

Jungle

Jayce

For the jungle role, Jayce is the pick of the patch! This champion is absolutely insane. He can be flexed into three different roles. His clear is honestly quite okay – he can clear 3 camps before the scuttle crab spawns and is an absolute monster when it comes to skirmishes. The fact that he has access to 6 different abilities on level 3 makes him quite a problematic champion to deal with. 

Another nice thing about Jayce is his ability to choose which fight he wants to commit to. Being able to swap from ranged to melee and the other way around really grants him some extra flexibility for skirmishes throughout the game.

The same also applies to his item choices. He may go Manamune in the jungle role as well as Youmuu’s Ghostblade but both items serve a different purpose. Ghostblade is about snowballing the game as fast as possible while being everywhere on the map. Manamune on the other hand is a safer scaling option that will provide an insane damage boost once it evolves into Muramana. 

For runes take Conqueror, Brutal, Hunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace, Mastermind or Pathfinder!

Lee Sin

Next up comes Lee sin, who for some ungodly reason, got buffed. Some champions are literally not designed to have high winrates in certain elo-brackets. Riot cannot just enforce a locked 50% win rate on all champions in all elos – that’s not how it’s supposed to be.

Anyway – Lee sin has been a monster in the jungle for quite some time now. He’s healthy in the jungle and overbearing in terms of his presence throughout the early game. Seeing him on the enemy team basically means that allies are not allowed to play aggressive during the early game unless they secure certain wards.
However getting those wards down is a risk already.

So yeah…

Even worse is the combination of items and runes Lee sin can go for.

If he rushes a Youmuus Ghostblade he’ll be all over the map and terrorize every lane at the same time while Conqueror, Brutal Hunter Titan Adaptive carapace, Mastermind & Pathfinder grant him the additional power he wants to snowball every game.

Mid Lane

Diana

Next up comes our mid lane pick of the patch! Here, Diana makes her highlight. She’s an insane champion that has been picked or banned in most of the tournaments throughout Wild Rift’s competitive history. But what makes her so strong in comparison to other mid laners?

Two things: first, it’s her insane amount of mobility combined with the damage she deals while being so agile. Second, her tankiness is simply absurd for a so-called assassin mage.

Rod of Ages AND her second ability just grant her too much and therefore she gets away with murder WAY too many times.

Fortunately though some nerfs to Rod of Ages as it was really overtuned for its price tag. Nonetheless it’s still an insane item that will always provide the champions that love the item with more than enough value. 

So whenever playing Diana please just buy Rod of Ages. For runes go Conqueror, Brutal, Hunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace and Sweet Tooth.

Akshan

The next champion on the middle lane is Akshan. In the recent patch he’s lost 6 AD and some damage on his first ability so he isn’t as overbearing any more as before. Just joking – he’s still the true pain for all mid laners – next to Zed of course. 

His agency in lane is simply absurd and the ability to camouflage himself in order to rotate to other lanes makes him a true menace for a solo q environment. Remember when Evelynn was permanently picked and EVERYBODY hated it? Players would never really know if she was around or not – and the moment they found out, it was already too late.

The same goes for Akshan as he can lurk up and then swing in for a glorious execution. Once he gets someone killed he can just swing again and the team is in a whole new world of trouble. Oh, he can use his ultimate ability WHILE he swinging around. Yeah, really fun! What a lovely champion.

For the first item ALWAYS go for Blade of the Ruined King. Thanks to the double hit mechanic and 3rd ability’s on-hit conversion, the item is just too insane. In the rune department just go for Conqueror, Brutal, Hunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace and Sweet Tooth. Go these runes for the most success.

Duo Lane

Kai’Sa

In the ADC role, this list starts with another recently buffed champion: Kai’Sa.

This champion wasn’t necessarily weak, but as it is now a lot of ADCs feel rather weak when mages dominate the dragon lane. The main issue with those mages in the dragon lane is their ability to waveclear from relative safety. Consequently the most snowball heavy ADC will find it hard to abuse those mages in lane. Especially once the mages get their first recall in it usually looks very dire for conventional ADC unless the enemy makes a mistake.

Luckily though Kai’sa is kind of a different champion. She has the ability to instantly kill waves and camps all around the map thanks to her empowered first ability. With that she has one certain goal: get as fed as possible – as fast as possible.

In addition to that she also features unique traits no other ADC can display. Her mobility during a fight and her single target burst on squishy champions with the isolated Icathian Rain. The fastest way towards Kai’Sa’s first ability’s evolve! For that rush BF sword, executioner’s calling and a longword.

For runes take Conqueror, Vampirism, Tunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace paired with sweet tooth.

Varus

Next to Kai’sa is a champion that can take care of those pesky mages and is really annoying to deal with overall. He’s also flexible in a sense that he’s able to go either full AP OR lethality. And what exactly is the issue with this champion? It’s about his capacity to influence fights from outside of the field of vision. At the same time he’s also able to oneshot a tank with thousands of HP from 100 to 0.

Any dragon laner hates playing against Varus in any scenario as he makes lane living hell thanks to his poke. But there are also things to consider when picking Varus. The champion is immobile and an easy target, therefore smart positioning and vision something that Varus most desperately need. As long as he can see the enemy in front of him, they are nothing more than walking targets. But if they happen to get the jump on him while he barely has any tools to save himself, things are going to get bad real fast. 

Manamune is the best possible option for its insane AD value in combination with the massive amount of mana. For Runes take Conqueror or Aery – both work fine depending on what Varus wants to do. Brutal, Hunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace in combination with sweet tooth are the remaining runes.

Support

Alistar

Last but not least moving over to the support role and here is Alistar for the pick of the patch. He’s quite the durable cow and has been forgotten as a champion due to nerfs in the past. What people didn’t think about though is that his tankiness is still absolutely absurd. Not only that he’s also able to solo kill any adc apart from Vayne with ease thanks to that. Things get really funny once completes a Sunfire Cape on this champion – it’s just crazy in terms of damage.

But for the item, take Deadman’s Plate as the first item so Alistar can influence the map as soon as possible. Afterwards he can potentially use the other suggested item, but that’s truly up to the player and their individual playstyle.  

For runes take Aftershock, Weakness, Hunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace and Pathfinder or Packhunter

Nami

To add some variety to the max here is a broken enchanter support. In the not so distant past she received a minor nerf which overall didn’t do anything to her apart from slapping a nerfed label onto her forehead. 

Nami is still strong in all ways players can imagine. She also features something most other enchanter support champions don’t: the ability to engage a fight from very far away without putting herself at risk.

While doing so she offers a dominant lane as well as a lot of tools to disrupt the enemy team constantly. And if that wasn’t enough she’s also able to heal her allies constantly.

Doing so costs a lot of mana so be a bit careful on that end but if struggling a lot with resources, always go for a Staff of Flowing Water. Other than that Ardent Censer is also a valid alternative. For Runes take Aery, Weakness, Hunter Titan or Adaptive Carapace in combination with Manaflow to make sure to maximize mana.

In Conclusion

Though 2.6a wasn’t all that big of an update, the patch shifted the meta game every so slightly. Hopefully, this Wild Rift tier list helps organize the overall meta effectively. But keep in mind, every champion is viable in their own regard. Some simply provide more visible and abusable strengths than others, thereby their higher ranking in the list. As with any Wild Rift Tier List, treat this more as an opinionated ranking than a definitive hierarchy targeted towards a specific type of play. Of course, the informant ranking the picks is challenger so there’s definitely some credentials behind the opinions.

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