League of Legends: Preseason mid lane tier list for Patch 9.23
By Josh Tyler
We continue to break down the League of Legends preseason meta by looking at the best jungle champions in Patch 9.23.
We’re still adjusting to all the changes that came to League of Legends in the preseason, but our tier lists shall never die! With the new season, though, we’ll be completely restarting our mid lane tier list in Patch 9.23 as we learn the Preseason 10 meta.
The sweeping changes to Summoners Rift, Elemental Dragons, multiple item and rune reworks have all thrown the meta into chaos. Though the bot lane hasn’t been quite as impacted with all these changes, the ADC role still has some significant shakeups.
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: Katarina
A+ tier: Fizz, Yasuo, Ekko, Ahri, Kassadin, Vladimir
A tier: Zed, Akali, Malzahar, Talon, Cassiopeia
B+ tier: Ryze, Syndra, Nocturne, Qiyana
B tier: Diana, Orianna, Twisted Fate, Zoe, Aurelion Sol, LeBlanc, Galio, Anivia
C tier: Lux, Xerath, Heimerdinger, Vel’Koz, Veigar, Viktor, Annie, Kled, Kayle
D tier: Swain, Pantheon, Neeko, Mordekaiser, Camille, Lissandra, Irelia, Rumble, Garen, Sylas, Aatrox
F tier: Tristana, Quinn, Ziggs, Lucian, Azir, Renekton, Zilean, Taliyah, Cho’Gath, Malphite, Corki, Jayce
Next. A review of the Pulsefire Thresh skin. dark
Observations
- There are a lot of big shake-ups to the mid lane meta at the start of Season 10’s preseason. Zed dropped to one of his lowest ranks in the last year, Ryze and Syndra are both considered very strong picks, and off-meta champions like Nocturne and Heimderinger are actually showing up as more than just niche picks.
- Some things have stayed the same, though, from Season 9. Control mages are not in a great spot right now, with Orianna being the highest-ranked poke/zoning mage. Champions like Cassio and Ryze have joined the highest-rated mages like Ahri and Malzahar and all of these tend to be very aggressive mages.
- Katarina is a very odd champion to have risen to become S tier in the preseason. One explanation could be that she is abusing the new Conqueror rune. It’s her most popular rune choice and the winningest choice.
- The winningest mid laner in Patch 9.23 at the moment is Aurelion Sol, with a 55% win rate. Most impressively, his pick rate is up to 1.8%, his highest in five patches. What’s most shocking, though, is that his best/most popular rune choice is also Conqueror!
- The champion with the lowest win rate in the mid lane, once again, is Sylas. He’s still sitting at around a 46% win rate. Even Conqueror, everyone’s favorite new rune, isn’t helping his win rate out significantly (it is his most popular rune choice).
- Speaking of runes, Omnistone basically has no presence in Patch 9.23 in the mid lane. We’ll have to see if anything changes to make Omnistone an actual, good rune.