Paladins Tier List 2026 — Best Champions Ranked
This is a consensus tier list: instead of one person’s opinion, we combined five community tier lists — four submitted by players to PaladinsGuru’s community tool and one editorial list from Zathong — and weighted the player-made lists higher. Four of the five were published after Paladins’ final balance patch (Update 8.1 “Wekono’s Wake”, 29 January 2025); the fifth predates it by three weeks. All five are listed, with authors and dates, under Sources below.
The best Paladins champions in 2026, by role: Azaan on Front Line, Imani on Damage, Androxus on Flank and Mal’Damba on Support — each tops its role on the consensus score. Azaan is the overall number one, the only champion all five lists rate S+.
Hi-Rez halted development in February 2025, and there has been no balance patch since — so no patch notes will reshuffle this list next month, which is more than the 2023–2024 tier lists still floating around Google can say. It is still a reading of player opinion, not a law of the game: as the player base thins and matchmaking widens, what wins can drift.
Champions marked ✦ are beginner friendly: simple, forgiving kits that let you learn the game before its mechanics — ideal picks if you are bringing friends into the game.
Eleven of fifty-nine champions hold S, and the roles do not split them evenly. Front Line owns the top: four of the eleven, on a role average of 0.58, where the other three read 0.51, 0.45 and 0.45. Damage is the deep one — three S and eight A, more top-band names than anyone else carries, and only five contested reads, the fewest anywhere. Flank holds three S names and both of the two lowest scores on the board. Support is the flattest, thirteen champions inside a 0.46 range, one S and no D at all. Strength and popularity barely overlap — six of those eleven S champions sit outside our pick-rate proxy’s top twenty, Omen among them, since he is missing from it entirely, and its three most-played, Tyra, Viktor and Seris, are one B and two C’s, none scoring above 0.43. No patch is coming to move it, so the bigger open question is whether the game is worth playing at all.
FRONT LINE TIER LIST
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- SAzaan — The only unanimous S+ across every source — oppressive dive, self-sustain, and an ult that wins fights on its own.
- SMakoa — Top point tank: one hook decides fights.
- SFernando — Immortal frontline anchor with the easiest kit among top tanks.
- SKhan — Overpower is still one of the most game-warping ults in Paladins.
- AInara — Unkillable point presence; sources range from B to S+.
- AAtlas — Rewinds fights on a per-target basis; unique and draft-warping.
- BBarik — One of four champions at maximum source disagreement — placements range from D to S+.
- CNyx — Newer tank with wildly split opinions — ranked lists range from D to A, the editorial one says S+.
Front Line’s top four all clear 0.85; no other role puts a single name that high. Azaan 0.92 carries a 0.14 spread, the tightest read of any champion all five sources graded. Makoa and Fernando tie at 0.88 on very different confidence — Makoa 0.40, Fernando 0.22 — and neither charts in the top 20 of our pick-rate proxy, where Khan 0.85 sits 4th and Azaan 16th. Then the cliff: Khan to Inara is 0.23, the widest gap between neighbours in any role.
Below it, eight tanks fit inside 0.21, five of them contested. Inara 0.62 and Atlas 0.61 sit 0.01 apart and invert: one ranked list has Inara B, Atlas S+; the editorial has Atlas B, Inara S. Ash 0.56 sits calmer than either at 0.40 spread: S, S, A- and A from the ranked lists, B from the editorial. Terminus 0.48 and Barik 0.47 are neighbours and nothing alike: 0.24 spread against 1.00, one of four champions at the maximum. Ruckus 0.46 and Yagorath 0.42 share a 0.67, both S on one ranked list, C on another. Torvald 0.41 closes at 0.35.
Two of fourteen tanks fall below B, fewer than any other role: Support three, Flank four, Damage five. Nyx 0.34 shares that 1.00 maximum: D, A, A and B across the four ranked lists, S+ from the editorial one, on 0.5% of our pick-rate proxy. Raum 0.23 is last of the fourteen without a grade below C: two ranked lists say A and A-, two say C, the editorial B. Two against two; the weighting decides.
Four names, then a 0.23 drop: the pick here is effectively binary. That single gap is wider than the 0.21 separating the next eight from each other. No other role stretches 0.69 from its best score to its worst.
DAMAGE TIER LIST
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- SImani — Frost/fire burst plus a dragon ult — the strongest damage pick on the list.
- SOmen — The final champion added to the game. The PaladinsGuru tool never added him, so his S rests on the editorial list’s single grade.
- SCassie — Fast, versatile hitscan-adjacent damage with strong dueling.
- ALian — Forgiving auto-aim bursts with real lane pressure.
- ASaati — Ricochet mechanics and a dueling ult with a high skill ceiling.
- ABomb King — Timeless blast damage with CC — a fixture of the roster since closed beta.
- AWillo — Anti-heal zoning that cripples sustain comps.
- ADrogoz — Aerial burst; punishes teams without hitscan.
- AKinessa — The sniper duel specialist.
- CViktor — The classic starter hitscan — simple, honest, outscaled.
Damage lands three champions in S on three very different amounts of evidence. Imani 0.84 takes SS from three of the four ranked lists, and the two dissenters — the fourth ranked list and the editorial one — both still say A. Omen 0.80 is second in the role on a single ballot: the last champion added to the game, rated by the half-weight editorial list and nobody else, so his 0.00 spread measures silence rather than agreement. Cassie 0.71 clears the 0.70 S threshold by 0.01, on one SS and one S+ against three A-grades.
Ten champions fill A and B between 0.67 and 0.43. Lian 0.67, Saati 0.65, Bomb King 0.62 and Octavia 0.60 sit inside 0.07 of each other; of those four only Lian reaches our pick-rate proxy’s ten most-played, and the other three miss its top twenty. Willo 0.55, Drogoz 0.52, Tiberius 0.51 and Kinessa 0.50 are packed into 0.05, though sources agree on Kinessa (0.17) far more than on Drogoz, whose 0.67 is the widest split in the role — four A-grades against one S+. Sha Lin 0.46 and Tyra 0.43 close the band, Tyra the most-played champion in our sample and 13th of eighteen by score.
Five sit in C and D. Strix 0.35 splits two of the PaladinsGuru lists, C against S-. Dredge 0.29 posts the tightest spread of the five, 0.18 — B, A, A-, A-, then an editorial C. Nobody rates him badly or highly, but on lists that run up to SS an A sits mid-table, so the rescaling leaves him low. Betty la Bomba takes D twice and A+ from Lernox; Viktor ties her at 0.25 on a single D. Vivian 0.23 is the only D; no ballot puts her below C — A, A-, C, B, C.
The sources argue least here: average spread 0.40, against 0.50, 0.53 and 0.56 elsewhere. No two neighbours sit more than 0.09 apart, so inside the top eleven the ranking barely commits — pick on comfort. Chain all seventeen gaps and you still fall 0.61, Imani to Vivian.
FLANK TIER LIST
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- SAndroxus — The highest solo-carry ceiling in the game — if you can hit shots.
- SVatu — Best-in-class mobility makes him nearly impossible to pin down.
- SVora — Sustain-heavy diver that snowballs out of control.
- AEvie — Sky-high ceiling — worthless in casual hands, terrifying in good ones.
- DKasumi — Last on our weighting: ranked lists place her B to D, the editorial source alone says S+.
Flank’s top three span 0.05: Androxus at 0.75, Vatu at 0.71, Vora at 0.70, exactly on the S cutoff. All three take four of five sources in the S band, so breadth settles nothing; what separates Androxus is grade weight — two of his five reads are S+, one ranked, one editorial, while Vatu and Vora take one apiece. Vora is the steadiest at 0.33 spread, Androxus 0.38, Vatu 0.44. Androxus and Vora both land inside the ten most-played on our pick-rate proxy; Vatu does not appear in its top twenty.
The step from 0.70 down to Koga’s 0.55 is 0.15 — the widest gap here, and the second-widest anywhere on the board. He and Evie, 0.51, are the entire A band, and the sources are far calmer about him: 0.36 spread against her 0.60, a line that reads S-, S, A+, C, B across the five. Beneath them five names span 0.08 — VII 0.47, Talus 0.46, Zhin 0.44, Maeve 0.41, Lex 0.39 — and three of the five clear 0.5 spread. Four Flank picks sit in our pick-rate proxy’s top ten; only two of them are S.
C and D take four of these fourteen. Buck 0.34 carries a 0.65 spread: ranked reads of S, A, C, B, and a C from the editorial list. Only Skye 0.24 charts at all — thirteenth in the same proxy — and at 0.33 she is the least disputed of the four. Caspian 0.20 and Kasumi 0.16 are two of the four at maximum spread, 1.00 — one editorial S+ apiece, no ranked read above A-. Kasumi’s is the floor of all fifty-nine.
The four best scores here are all reads the sources agree on, every one under the 0.5 contested line. Below them agreement stops tracking strength: the calmest of the fourteen, Lex at 0.27, scores 0.39 against a roster median of 0.48.
SUPPORT TIER LIST
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- SMal'Damba — The gold standard support: healing, stuns, and a fear that hits every enemy in a wide radius.
- AYing — Huge healing output with almost no aim required.
- AJenos — Heals through walls — zero aim needed for value.
- AFuria — Damage-support hybrid; placement varies wildly between sources.
- BPip — Casual queue menace, ranked question mark — sources disagree hard.
- BMoji — Reworked into support late in the game’s life; data is noisy.
- CSeris — Easiest support in the game — fine for casual, punished in ranked.
Support seats exactly one champion in S: Mal'Damba at 0.70 — no S score on the board is lower, and Vora matches him exactly. Drop him 0.01 and this role has no S at all. His five grades read S-, S+, S, A, A — spread 0.43, no source below A. No gap in these thirteen exceeds 0.07; his step down to the A band is one of two that size. Among role leaders only he is missing from our pick-rate proxy’s top twenty.
The A and B bands hold nine, spanning 0.27 of score: 0.63 down to 0.36. Ying tops them at 0.63 on a 0.21 spread, the tightest agreement of the thirteen; Jenos 0.60 carries 0.67, graded B to SS. Furia 0.55 splits two S grades against two B, spread 0.64; Lillith 0.52 draws S from three lists and B from one, spread 0.55. Corvus 0.48 leads four inside 0.05 — Pip and Moji at 0.41, Grover 0.37, Rei 0.36. Moji takes two S grades and two D from the same five lists; Grover’s 0.89 is the widest disagreement outside the four tied at 1.00.
This is the only role with an empty D tier. Seris is the awkward one: the most-played support in our pick-rate proxy at 4,906 matches, yet 0.35 and C on a 0.67 spread — D on one list, S- on another. No source puts Io 0.29 above A, and her 0.36 spread is the second-tightest of the thirteen. Grohk 0.24 closes it, exactly half the 0.48 roster median, with an A+ on one list and a D on another.
One name owns the top; seven of the thirteen clear the 0.5 contested line, and 0.56 average disagreement is the highest of any role. In the middle nine there is no wrong pick, only an unproven one — you are choosing which of five lists to believe.
✦ = BEGINNER FRIENDLY · CONTESTED = SOURCES DISAGREE BY MORE THAN 0.50 · CHAMPION NOTES UNDER EACH ROLE · CONSENSUS OF 5 COMMUNITY TIER LISTS, JAN 2025 – JUN 2026 · FINAL BALANCE PATCH 8.1 (JANUARY 2025)
How we ranked (methodology)
Each list was rescaled to 0–1 across the grades it actually uses — so an A on a list that runs up to SS counts for less than an A on a list that tops out at S+ — and the five were combined into a weighted average in which each PaladinsGuru list counts double the editorial one. A champion only some lists rate is averaged over those lists alone: Omen, missing from the PaladinsGuru tool, sits in S on the editorial list’s single grade. Scores are rounded to two decimals and cut into bands: S 0.70+ (the strongest consensus picks), A 0.50+ (reliably strong), B 0.36+ (solid, with clear counters), C 0.24+ (situational) and D below that — the bottom of the consensus, even where no single list rated a champion D.
Spread is the gap between a champion’s highest and lowest rescaled grade; above 0.50 we count the champion as contested, which is the CONTESTED figure under each role. We deliberately did not rank by popularity: popular champions are not always strong (and vice versa). Where the community genuinely splits — Barik ranges from D to S+ depending on who you ask — the champion notes under each role call out the biggest disagreements.
Our pick-rate proxy is not a measured pick rate: it is the number of recorded matches behind each champion’s top builds on PaladinsGuru, read in July 2026 — 135,562 matches across 58 champions (Omen is not tracked). It tells you what people play, not what wins.
Sources: the five tier lists
“Ranked Jan 2025” by geccc — PaladinsGuru community list, published in January 2025, three weeks before Update 8.1 (archived copy).
“actual diamond meta” by TøWåZ — PaladinsGuru community list, published in July 2025.
“Actual Meta” by heading2you — PaladinsGuru community list, published in October 2025.
“LERNOX FRENCH BAGUETTE TIERLIST” by LernoxFR — PaladinsGuru community list, published in February 2026.
“Paladins Tier List 2026” by Zathong — editorial list, published in May 2026 and updated in June 2026 (zathong.com); it carries half weight and does not rate Octavia or Tiberius.
PaladinsGuru lists are open to anyone with an account, and their authors’ ranks are not verified. The site has been offline since September 2026, and only the January list survives in the Wayback Machine; the other three are recorded here by title, author and date.
Who is the best champion in Paladins in 2026?
By consensus, Azaan — the only champion placed S+ by every source we aggregated. Behind him sit the frontline trio of Makoa, Fernando and Khan, and Imani as the strongest damage pick. If you main flank, Androxus remains the highest solo-carry ceiling in the game.
Best champions for beginners in 2026
Start with simple, forgiving kits: Fernando or Terminus on frontline, Ying or Jenos on support, Tyra or Viktor for damage. All of them are marked ✦ in the list above. Tyra and Viktor still need tracking aim — they are rifles — but they have no tricky abilities to learn, and the other four get their value from positioning rather than aim. Together they teach the game’s macro — positioning, objective timing, item buying — before its mechanics.
FAQ
Will this tier list go out of date?
Not because of patches. Paladins has not shipped a balance patch since Update 8.1 “Wekono’s Wake” in January 2025, so the champions themselves no longer change. What can still shift is how they perform as the player base shrinks and matchmaking widens — we will revisit the list if the community’s reads change or an unexpected patch ships.
Who is the best champion in Paladins in 2026?
Azaan is the consensus number one — the only champion rated S+ by every source we aggregated. Makoa, Fernando, Khan and Imani round out the top five.
Does the tier list matter in casual play?
Less than in ranked. In casual queues, champion mastery beats tier placement — a practiced C-tier main will outperform a first-time S-tier pick. Use the ✦ markers to find forgiving champions instead.
Where does the data come from?
From five community tier lists published between January 2025 and June 2026: four player-submitted lists from PaladinsGuru’s community tool (weighted double) and one editorial list from Zathong. One of them predates the final patch by three weeks. Roles are verified against the official Paladins wiki.
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