The Best League of Legends Champions, Part 3

Our ranking of every League of Legends champion continues with this third installment. If you missed it, read part one and part two first.

League of Legends has come a long way from the early betas. Champions have seen multiple reworks, items have been added and removed, and entire spells and maps have been changed to accommodate new shifts in the overall strategy of the game, or “meta.”

With a promising preseason patch just out and a number of changes on the way, we thought it would be nice to reflect on the game in the only way possible: ranking it! Through a complicated algorithm based on skills, emergent gameplay opportunities, design, playstyle, uniqueness and how good the author is with them (just kidding—I’m terrible with everyone), we’ve ranked every champion as of the addition of Kindred.

Here’s part three of our rankings of every champion in League of Legends.

1 of 26 77. Fiddlesticks: My first pentakill was with Fiddlesticks. The enemy team was all clumped up, and so I hit R, watched my champion start to charge up Crowstorm, and wiped them out in one fell swoop. That's the dream every time you play Fiddles, to get a perfect moment to take them out with your giant ultimate, and this scarecrow is certainly scary because of it. But he's also super-reliant on that ultimate—you either land the Crowstorm, or sit on the sidelines, draining enemies until your cooldown hits zero again.

2 of 26 76. Alistar: Alistar is the definition of lane bully, headbutting and stomping his enemies all around the map. A well-executed W-Q combo is one of the rites of passage for League's support players, and it's quite an effective initiation tool. His AoE heal is weird, though, and makes his laning phase rapidly jump back and forth between hostile and docile. You're rewarded for doing the right thing, but execute it poorly and there's little you can do besides watch your carry die while typing "srry lag" in the chat.

3 of 26 75. Jax: The champ himself, Jax's original lore is really badass. He's such a powerful warrior that the only way he would be let into the League is if he used a lamppost as a weapon—and he's still one of the toughest, most well-rounded top laners around. It feels really satisfying to duel people as Jax, as every attack becomes faster and more powerful like you're revving an engine, but the tradeoff is that Jax isn't much fun to play against. Once he has Rageblade and Gunblade, you have to constantly kite him backwards, or he'll just jump on you and start unloading.

4 of 26 74. Irelia: Another top lane star, Irelia is able to thrive in a solo lane where she gains all the experience and gold. Her kit checks off everything necessary—a dash, a stun, a little bit of healing and damage. What that results in is a champion that is really fun and easy to play, but feels at odds with her actual design. Irelia's ultimate is a throwaway, so much that blowing it in lane just to kill a wave of creeps is considered one its best uses. Irelia rarely feels like the queen of blades, but she's still the queen of bruisers.

5 of 26 73. Corki: The resident dual-damage dealer of the bot lane, Corki's strengths are his varied damage output. It's difficult to deal with the fact that most of his attacks do both magic and physical damage, and his whole kit revolves around keeping enemies in just the perfect place—out of danger for him, yet still in range of his missiles. Outside of the early game, though, his kit feels a little too poke-y, and he doesn't offer the same satisfying feeling of dealing massive single-target damage, even with his upgraded missile or the new "Package" upgrade, which he has to slog back to base to get every time it's up. Too much pew-pew, not enough "boom."

6 of 26 72. Master Yi: When Yi gets rolling, there's not a lot that can stop him. His Alpha Strike lets him dash between enemies, slashing them all for huge damage, and his Highlander ultimate gives him huge boosts to attack speed and movement. He's one of the best snowballing champions in the League, but when he doesn't get that kickstart, he's more like wet noodle than a deft blade. A Yi with no items is a recipe for a really sad game, so your mileage will vary greatly on how fun it is to play Yi.

7 of 26 71. Karthus: The Deathsinger is a really unique champion. One of the few that relies more on abilities than auto-attacks, his Q attack is his bread & butter skill for doing damage, killing creeps and zoning out enemies. He has a massive slowing wall, an area-damage aura and his ultimate, which damages everyone on the enemy team, regardless of where they are on the map. Karthus falls prey to mobility creep though, and he feels a little forgotten in this era, where burst assassins are favored over long-term fighters. He has the tools to be a great mid, but needs a little TLC to keep up with the new flock of mid-lane mages.

8 of 26 70. Mordekaiser: The heavy metal king of the mid lane has recently been relocated to the bottom lane, as Riot has decided to test out the concept of an AP hard carry with Mordekaiser. The result is often times a little broken and hard to manage, as the number of balance changes and perma-bans of Mordekaiser in competitive play since have shown. Morde is still fun to play though, and has kept his iconic metal theme, with all his abilities named after famous metal songs and his dance letting him air guitar with his massive mace. Keep rockin', Morde.

9 of 26 69. Nasus: Nasus is a champion of infinite possibilities, and one of the only champs in the game who can scale infinitely. Every time he kills something with his Siphon Strike it grows in power, gradually becoming a massive slam of his staff that can destroy towers in several hits and devastate champions with a single swing. He needs to close the gap to get there, as he's a slow melee bruiser without much speed, but once he gets to where he needs to go, one thwack of his staff spells doom for anything in his way. Also, he's an Egyptian-style god with a dog's face and has one of the best voice-overs in League.

10 of 26 68. Shyvana: Transforming into a dragon is pretty badass. Let's just get it said and done with now, there is nothing un-awesome about turning into a giant roaring dragon and running rampant on every foe in site. Shyvana can do this, and that makes her pretty cool. The bummer is that she isn't always a dragon, and not being a dragon as Shyvana isn't very fun. You're limited to a number of moves that are limited versions of your dragon moves, and you have to stare at that rage bar, waiting for it to build back up so you can go dragon again.