TJPuma spent over two hours of a four-hour stream building a 2XKO tier list live, character by character, in training mode, with a chat full of mains correcting him in real time. This is that list — and more usefully, the reasoning behind it.
Before any of it means anything, though, you need the two rules he set at the start. Skip them and the list will look wrong to you.
Rule one: this list is for Iron to Diamond
“If you’re in Masters or plus, you’re playing a different video game than people from Diamond below.”
That is the single most important line in the stream. A tier list built for Challenger play is close to useless if you are sitting in Gold, because the characters that punish Gold players are not the characters that punish Challenger players.
So this list answers one question: if you want to climb from Iron to Diamond right now, who should you be putting your hours into?
Rule two: difficulty counts as a weakness
A character who is theoretically strong but takes fifty hours of labbing to function is not a good climbing pick for someone with a job. TJ ranks with that built in, and says so plainly about the hardest characters:
“If you’re in the bronze area — iron, bronze, gold — just know that this is not going to feel S tier for you. These are probably going to feel like C tier for you. Just because they take so much time to pilot. It’s not even just a character — you have to learn the game.”
The other thing worth knowing before you scroll: he deleted the C, D and F tiers entirely. Not as a joke — as a statement about the patch. Nothing on this roster belongs below B right now.
The list
| Tier | Characters |
|---|---|
| S | Ahri, Akali, Blitzcrank, Braum, Darius, Ekko, Illaoi, Jinx, Teemo, Thresh, Vi |
| A | Caitlyn, Warwick, Yasuo |
| B | Senna |
Eleven characters in S is not a cop-out. It is the point he keeps making all stream: “Everyone in this game currently is super, super balanced. No matter how you feel, there is a way to beat everybody.”
You can see the live version, and build your own, on the 2XKO tier list maker.
Why each S tier is there
Ahri — too strong to nerf out of S
She took real nerfs and it did not matter. Air mobility, air dashes, and pseudo-dashes from her S2 give her an air game most of the cast cannot contest, and anti-airs in this game are inconsistent enough that being airborne is genuinely strong.
The tool that defines her is S2 on block: you are safe and pushed far enough away to reset neutral entirely. Whatever mix you just tried and failed, you get to walk away and start again. Most characters do not get that.
The honest counterplay, supplied live by Absolute, the resident Ahri player in chat: push block or retreating guard it. If they retreating guard the light-medium, the S2 does not connect and you get a free punish. Full breakdown in the Ahri guide.
Akali — S tier with the biggest asterisk on the list
Probably the hardest character in the game to pilot. Her pulse combos do close to nothing, so all of her damage lives behind jump resets you have to learn deliberately.
What buys the S is movement: the best forward and back dash in the game, wall clings, wall jumps, and a floaty double jump she can stall further with kunai. She also has the least health in the game, which is exactly the trade you would expect. See the Akali guide.
Blitzcrank — the low-elo cheat code
His down S2 command grab does around 250 damage from one button — as much as a full Akali combo. Land four and the round is over. As TJ puts it, all you have to do is guess right four or five times in a very simple, very fast interaction, and most players below Diamond cannot deal with that.
Two details that make him more than a gimmick: rocket punch nullifies projectiles outright, which patches the matchup a grappler is supposed to lose, and he is the only character with an air command grab. Steam then layers super armour on top of all of it.
Be aware this is the most rank-dependent pick here — S tier low, considerably harder the higher you go. More in the Blitzcrank guide.
Braum — “automatic S tier, I don’t even want to think about it”
He got buffed. The removal of the low-hitting projectile is not really a nerf — all projectiles now vanish when you get hit, which should always have been true — and the compensation left him stronger.
Unbreakable is the problem. With the blue shield up, every normal he throws carries super armour, including the second hit of 2H. Combine that with the staggered-hit meta below and he gets interrupts nobody else in the game gets.
His honest weaknesses: he is the slowest character in the game, and grabs beat the shield easily. TJ’s tip is to stop holding the shield like a wall — the recovery is long — and use it like a parry instead: quick block, quick release. See the Braum guide.
Ekko — S tier because he is easy
The community line is that the previous patch killed him. TJ disagrees: “He’s still mad good. He’s balanced now. He’s not broken.”
The reason he lands in S for this bracket specifically is accessibility. His pulse combos give you almost 300 damage for pressing one button — which matters enormously if you are Gold and not labbing. And his Time Winder is one of the best projectiles in the game precisely because it is slow: it lingers awkwardly, and parrying it requires a dash-parry most players below Diamond simply cannot do. See the Ekko guide.
Jinx — untouched, and everywhere in top eight
The patch did not touch her, and she was already in a good spot. Three Jinx players made top eight at CEO, and another won TNS.
The framing worth stealing is that she is not really a zoner: “people classify her as a zoner, but what she is is a rushdown trap user.” If you throw a trap and it hits immediately, you have wasted the plus frames. You want the trap lingering, so the opponent is dealing with two of you, then three of you, and then a missile on top. More in the full Jinx guide.
Darius — underrated rather than overpowered
“He’s so strong right now and people just aren’t using him correctly.” The key detail from chat: both versions of his hook disable defensive mechanics — and with the charged version you trade the follow-up for push on block. See the Darius guide.
The A tier, and why they are not lower
Caitlyn — S tier ability, A tier reality
This is the clearest example of the difficulty rule doing work:
“Honestly, what she’s worth, she’s worth S tier. Piloted to perfection, S tier for sure, guaranteed. But I’m putting her in A tier for you guys from Iron to Diamond because she is just way too hard to play.”
Every rifle shot in her combos has to be timed for full value, which means labbing — and as TJ points out, most of his audience are adults with jobs, school and kids. If you are eighteen with unlimited time, play Caitlyn. She is balanced enough that the patch changed nothing about her. See the Caitlyn guide.
Warwick — A below Diamond, and very beatable once you know how
He is strong at low elo for a simple reason: people do not react to the overhead or the 2M, and the range on that button is enormous. He also builds fury on block, which surprised TJ live.
The counterplay is unusually concrete, and came out of the chat:
- Anti-air his flip. Wait for it — Warwick players almost always go for it — and anti-air; your upper body is effectively invulnerable during the anti-air, so you hit him and he does not hit you
- Air grab him during the flip. Treat it as a reaction: he jumped, you grab
- He loses to projectiles in the air. With Jinx, a jump-in rocket catches him consistently
See the Warwick guide.
The fuse list: nothing is overpowered any more
The fuse rankings changed more than the character rankings did.
- Freestyle was overpowered before the nerfs. It is still S tier and still very good — it simply is not taking over any more
- Double Down is S precisely because Freestyle stopped dominating
- 2X Assist arguably has more potential than Freestyle right now, depending on your team — Illaoi players especially should be capitalising on it
- Juggernaut got double buffed and is now viable at tournament level. You can cancel supers into each other, you get your own push block off meter that pushes further and lets you recover, and limit strikes give more meter back. Absolute’s counterpoint from chat: losing the assist is still a real cost, so call it A if you prefer
- Sidekick sits alongside it, with brace — press a move while you are being hit and you take less damage
- TeamFight is the one exception: nerfed into being unplayable. TJ’s honest take is that it should never have been a fuse at all — it should be its own game mode
One patch note worth knowing if you play Juggernaut: cancelling a get-up attack with fury was removed last patch. If you learned that habit, it is gone. If you want the underlying mechanics, see how fuses work.
The timing matters: this is the last patch of the season
TJ’s read is that this is the final patch of Season 2, with maybe a small bug-fix patch before the season ends and Lux arriving in around two weeks. Riot are unlikely to shake up balance right before a new character.
Which makes this the window: “Last two weeks, grind time. Use everything you can to rank up.” The characters above are as strong as they are going to be for the rest of the season.
The short version
- This list is for Iron to Diamond. Masters and above is a different game
- Difficulty is treated as a weakness — Caitlyn is S-tier strong and A-tier practical
- No C, D or F tiers, because nothing on this roster belongs there
- Ahri survives her nerfs on air mobility and a safe, space-making S2
- Blitzcrank is a genuine low-elo cheat code and gets harder as you climb
- Braum’s Unbreakable super armour is the strongest single mechanic in the patch
- Ekko is S here because he is easy, not because he is unfair
- Jinx is a rushdown trap user, not a zoner — keep traps lingering
- Every fuse is viable except TeamFight
- Two weeks left in the season — grind now
Build and share your own version on the tier list maker — it is free and needs no account. Argue about the placements in the 2XKO Jungle Discord, where most of the corrections in this list came from in the first place, or book a coaching session if you would rather work on your own play than the meta.
