Lian Guide: The Empress of Auto-Aim
Lian, Scion of House Aico — the Magistrate’s empress, and the closest thing Paladins has to a champion that aims for you. Valor and Grace automatically strike their targets, and her passive, Death and Taxes, makes every non-ultimate ability count as a weapon shot: they trigger Life Rip, apply anti-heal, and slot between rifle rounds like extra bullets.
The result is a combo machine: Valor, shot, Grace, shot — 1600 damage in roughly 1.5 seconds, with nothing harder to aim than the rifle itself. She is the #6 most played champion in the game, and our tier list calls her exactly what she is: “forgiving auto-aim bursts with real lane pressure”.
Everything below is final-patch verified, with loadouts and talent winrates from recorded ranked matches. The data repeats a pattern we keep finding: the most popular talent is not the strongest one.
A hitscan rifle with just 8 rounds, fully effective to 125 units. The magazine is tiny by design — her abilities are also “shots”, and the kit wants you weaving them between trigger pulls.
A charged blast that automatically hits every enemy in front of you up to 425 units. No aim required — the definition of her “forgiving” reputation.
A 0.5s charge into a piercing 300-unit shot for 800. Her long-range answer: punish a corner peek two lanes away, through everyone standing in the line.
Dash in your movement direction and auto-fire a 400-damage shot at the nearest target to your crosshair (up to 425 units). A dodge and a finisher in one button, immune to knockbacks while dashing.
Channel for 1s with 50% damage reduction, then fire a piercing royal blast for 1600. A kill refunds 50% of the ultimate charge — finishing low targets turns one ult into one and a half.
Rifle hits stack +7% rifle damage on that target, up to five times — 574 per shot at full stacks. The statistical leader at 52.4% winrate and only 18.7% pick rate: the sleeper talent the community is only now discovering.
The most-played Lian loadout in recorded ranked matches: permanent speed, a bigger frame, and Valor feeding the magazine that Precision burns through.
- Commit to one target: stacks do not transfer, so switching mid-duel resets your damage curve.
- Weave abilities between shots — they keep the pressure on while the rifle re-chambers, and they hold your stacks’ timer.
- At five stacks you two-tap most flanks with headshots — the duel talent on the champion nobody duels.
- Best into tanks and points: big, stationary targets hold stacks forever.
Presence deals up to 50% more damage the farther it hits — 1200 at long range — and its cooldown drops by 4s. The most popular talent (44.7% pick rate): a piercing sniper shot every eleven seconds without a scope.
The second most-played ranked loadout: land Presence and Heraldry hands it back almost immediately — a 1200-damage poke on a ~6s effective rotation.
- Play her like a sniper without a scope: long sightlines, corner discipline, Presence on cooldown.
- The damage scales with distance — the shot you take from across the map is the one that hits 1200.
- Pierce is free value: line up the tank with the healer hiding behind them.
- Up close you are a base-kit Lian — hold Grace for the dodge, not the poke.
Grace hits every enemy in front of you instead of one, for a 1s longer cooldown. Every dash becomes a second Valor — the wave-clear and brawl talent of the three.
The highest-winrate Lian loadout on record (62% in a small ranked sample): Valor refunds Grace, Grace grants speed, and the dash range nearly doubles — a mobility loop the base kit does not have.
- Dash into groups, not away from them — a multi-target Grace plus Valor is 750 to an entire push.
- Cycle Valor → Grace → Valor: Swift Jade turns crowds into cooldown refunds.
- The extended dash is also her best escape in the kit — the aggression build ironically survives dives best.
- Take it into double-flank comps and brawl maps; swap to Precision when single targets matter more.
Her auto-aim is also her weakness: abilities fire at whatever is closest to the crosshair, including a waiting Zhin Counter or Androxus Reversal. With 2100 HP, a tiny 8-round magazine, and a 30-unit dodge as her only movement, committed divers make her burn everything just to survive. See where Lian sits in our tier list →
// COMMUNITY RESOURCES
Is Lian good in 2026?
A-tier, score 0.67 in our community-consensus tier list — comfortably above the comfort-pick trio, a step below the S-tier elite. Her auto-aim forgives mechanical mistakes, but it is her lane pressure that wins games: an 800-damage piercing poke and a burst combo that needs no setup.
Family note for readers of our Khan guide: Lian is the head of House Aico, and Khan is her personal bodyguard — the Magistrate’s power couple sit at #4 and #6 in the pick-rate rankings. And if Maeve has been ruining your backline: Lian is her hardest counter by community vote (+224), because auto-aim does not care about double jumps.
How do you counter Lian?
With her own auto-aim. Lian’s abilities fire at whatever is nearest her crosshair — including a waiting Zhin Counter or Androxus Reversal. Zhin is her hardest counter by an enormous vote margin (+177): she cannot choose to miss him, and Billow blanks the entire combo.
The other answer is commitment: 2100 HP, an 8-round magazine, and a 30-unit dodge as her only movement. Divers like Koga force her to spend Grace defensively — and a Lian without Grace is a rifle with a reload problem. Force the dodge, then take the duel.
FAQ
What is the best Lian talent?
Precision, by the ranked data — 52.4% winrate against 49.3% for the far more popular Eminence. It stacks up to 35% bonus rifle damage on a single target, turning Lian into a duelist. Eminence remains the pick for long-range poke maps.
Does Lian have auto-aim?
Two of her abilities do. Valor automatically hits every enemy in front of her up to 425 units, and Grace auto-fires at the target nearest her crosshair. The rifle and Presence still require manual aim — auto-aim forgives her mechanics, not her positioning.
How does Lian’s ultimate work?
Enlightenment channels for one second with 50% damage reduction, then fires a piercing blast for 1600 damage. Killing an enemy with it refunds half the ultimate charge, so finishing low-health targets effectively gives you extra ultimates.
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