Okay, so I decided to make my own tier list for top laners in League. I’ve been playing a ton of top lane lately, and I figured, why not share my thoughts? It’s not like I’m a pro or anything, but I’ve definitely put in the hours, and maybe this can help some folks out.
First, I jumped into a bunch of games. Like, a LOT. Ranked, normals, even some ARAMs just to get a feel for different matchups. I wanted to experience playing different champions and, importantly, playing against different champions.
I started taking notes after each game. Just simple stuff, like “Garen felt really strong against Teemo” or “I got destroyed by a Riven as Ornn”. Nothing fancy, just a quick recap of how the lane went and what felt good or bad.
- Played a ton of games.
- Took notes on matchups.
- Tried to play a variety of champions.
Then, I started grouping the champions. I didn’t really have any specific criteria at first, just a general “feel”. Like, who did I consistently do well with? Who did I dread seeing on the enemy team? Who felt like they could carry a game, and who felt like they were just along for the ride?
After messing around with different groupings, I decided that I wanted just three simple tiers. I wasn’t going to do some complex S+, A, B, C, D ranking, because let’s be real, that is for people who get paid to be good at this game! For simplicity, I made “God Tier”, “Good Tier”, “Meh Tier”.
I started sorting all of the champions into those buckets. For example, I found that Renekton and Garen were almost always stomping lane for me. I almost never lost lane with them, so I put them into my God Tier. Champions that I did well with, but wasn’t always winning, went into Good Tier, such as Ornn and Mordekaiser. Finally, champions that I always seemed to struggle with, I put into Meh Tier. An example would be someone like Kayle, she just gets stomped early.
It’s definitely not perfect, and I’m sure someone out there will disagree with my placements. But that’s okay! It’s just my personal experience, and it’s always changing as I play more and learn more. It felt very nice to actually do the work and come to my own conclusions, rather than just reading a tier list online.
