League of Legends: Preaseason support tier list for Patch 9.23
By Josh Tyler
The start of the League of Legends preseason arrived in Patch 9.23 and we’re here to let you know how the support meta has shaken out.
We’re starting anew here as Preseason 10 has hit League of Legends. Instead of comparing champion ratings to their past strength, with Patch 9.23 dropping huge meta changes onto the Rift we will be resetting our support tier list.
The sweeping changes to Summoners Rift, Elemental Dragons, multiple item and rune reworks have all thrown the meta into chaos. Knowing what is best to play less than a week after these major changes have come out is basically impossible. Thus, we’re going to do something very different for our tier list aggregations in Patch 9.23: instead of comparing champions to where they were last patch, we’re just going to give a breakdown of which champions are strong and weak.
Before we even get into the tier list, I’ll preface our picks by pointing out that the variance in opinion between the different sites is the highest it’s been at any point in Season 9 (which makes sense, given the breadth of changes in the preseason). As a result, I think these are the least reliable picks or rankings so take them with a grain of salt.
With those caveats out of the way, as usual, we will be creating our tier list based on the average standardized ratings of each champion from eleven different sites from around the internet. We standardize the ratings so that we can compare an A+ grade with a Diamond ranking between sites. You can find the raw data for our tier list here.
All rankings were based on players in Platinum and above. The resources that were used to create this tier list were:
The tier list
S tier: Nautilus, Thresh, Leona
A+ tier: Blitzcrank, Senna, Morgana
A tier: Janna, Pyke, Nami
B+ tier: Bard, Lulu, Rakan, Shaco, Soraka, Fiddlesticks, Zilean
B tier: Zyra, Vel’Koz, Swain, Brand, Xerath
C tier: Taric, Lux, Karma, Sona, Alistar
D tier: Yuumi, Braum
F tier: Shen, Gragas, Tahm Kench, Galio, Volibear, Veigar, Zac, Maokai, Neeko, Poppy, Malphite
Next. A review of the Pulsefire Thresh skin. dark
Observations
- There are eleven champions rated in our F tier in Patch 9.23, which is more champions than we have in our S, A+, and A tiers combined. What is more concerning is that all but two of these (Zac and Maokai) were in our tier list last patch. So it’s not as though a bunch of new champions got thrown into the meta and are looking to settle into their spot.
- Although she was released in the last patch, this is the first patch in which we’ve included Senna and she definitely seems to have landed in a strong position. Every single site that rated Senna had her in the A+ tier or higher.
- Otherwise, the top of the meta is fairly similar to how it was at the end of Season 9. Hook/engage champions like Blitzcrank, Nautilus, Thresh, and Leona are still dominant in the support role.
- According to LeagueofGraphs, right now the two most popular support starting items are Spellthief’s Edge and Steel Shoulderguards. Spectral Sickle is the least popular support starting item of the four “new” support items. Among the S tier supports, Steel Shoulderguards is overwhelmingly the most popular for two of them (Thresh and Leona) while Relic Shield is the popular starter for Nautilus.