S15 Pro Meta & Key Picks Analysis (Part 2): PrioScore Top 11–20 Champions
October 2, 2025
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Aurora’s greatest strength lies in her flexibility as a swap pick between top and mid lane.
When she was first released in July 2024, Aurora’s heavy reliance on her ultimate made her a somewhat awkward choice as a primary champion. However, patch 14.23 changed the picture: her E range was increased from 800 to 825 and her Q range from 850 to 900. This brought her closer in line with traditional mid lane mages such as Orianna (825–925) and Syndra (900–950), allowing her to contest most mage matchups and firmly establish herself as a viable swap pick between top and mid.
As mentioned in the Trundle analysis, current mid lane AP champions cannot build Liandry’s Anguish as a first core item due to the lack of mana options. This has made it easier for top lane tanks to secure early to mid-game priority. In this environment, Aurora stands out in the top lane with strong early and mid-game laning power, while her AoE ultimate at level six provides decisive impact in the first skirmishes. Thanks to her W, she also has strong anti-dive potential in scenarios where top and bot lanes swap.
Her itemization is another notable point. Because her main damage tool, Q, has a short cooldown, she prefers hybrid builds with health options—such as Riftmaker or Hemomancer’s Curse—over pure burst builds like Luden’s Tempest into Shadowflame. These hybrid setups enhance both sustain in lane and durability in extended mid-to-late-game teamfights. As a result, Aurora has settled into the role of a teamfight-oriented AP champion who focuses less on raw damage output and more on shaping engagements. For pro teams, she is usually drafted not as the primary carry but as a secondary damage dealer who also provides initiation support.
Neeko is a support champion who leverages her W invisibility and movement speed to set up explosive engage combos, often chaining Hextech Rocketbelt into her ultimate. Like Brand, she sees more play in the support role than in mid lane. For both champions, their true value comes not from stacking raw damage but from hitting multiple targets. If they successfully land multi-target abilities in a teamfight, the fight can be won regardless of whether the team has additional damage sources from mid lane.
Originally, Neeko was a strong laner in mid but fell off in late-game value. By shifting her into the support role, teams preserve her early lane pressure while also benefiting from her ability to set up teamfights. Even after receiving a nerf in patch 15.12 that reduced her base ability damage by 20, her lane dominance in bot and initiation power in teamfights remain intact, keeping her a stable pro play option.
From a counterplay perspective, utility and poke supports such as Karma, Xerath, and Lux can out-range her and pressure her through wave clear and poke. However, at the professional level these champions are usually tied to specific ADC pairings—such as Ezreal–Karma, Jhin–Xerath, or Caitlyn–Lux—and drafting them also requires careful consideration of engage options and frontline durability from other roles. Because of these constraints, Neeko often ends up being the more practical and frequently picked choice.
Neeko also provides unique tactical advantages, such as disguising herself as a minion to draw tower aggro or assist with vision control. In the past, she even benefited from a bug that allowed her clone to grant vision, which made her a staple pick for a time before it was patched out. Even so, small base damage nerfs have not been severe enough to push her out of the meta. That said, if utility-heavy poke supports like Seraphine, Soraka, Lulu, or Karma receive meaningful buffs, Neeko’s pick rate could reasonably decline once again.
Ambessa plays a pivotal role in both dive comps and focus-fire compositions thanks to her ultimate, which directly targets the enemy backline. Her skill design is somewhat similar to Aatrox, with long cooldowns early on and power spikes that really come online at levels 9 and 13. If she avoids major losses before these breakpoints, she is highly likely to seize control in mid-to-late-game teamfights.
That said, she struggles against champions with strong early melee skirmishing. Darius, Renekton, and Kled are all considered natural counters due to their early power curves. Professional play data as of September 17, 2025, highlights her matchup record:
These numbers show that even if Ambessa loses early lane priority, she can recover through side-lane pressure after her first core item. Against Rumble in particular, she is often forced into early magic-resist items such as Maw of Malmortius before her first core spike, and even after that, Rumble’s fast wave clear makes it nearly impossible to hold lane purely through dueling—forcing her to rely on jungle pressure to regain control.
In summary, Ambessa is a champion who delivers high expected value in mid-to-late-game teamfights and side-lane play, provided she can make it through the early game without significant setbacks.
Rakan’s Q and W both have relatively high execution difficulty, which makes his lane pressure weaker compared to many other supports. However, his explosive initiation potential ensures that he remains a consistent presence in professional play.
When it comes to counters, the key lies less in early lane priority and more in mechanical interactions. Poppy and Bard are prime examples. Poppy can completely shut down Rakan’s dash with her W, while Bard can cast his ultimate on Rakan’s entry target, halting the follow-up fight. Both champions are weaker in lane overall, but Bard in particular secures lane priority more reliably than Rakan due to his ranged kit and strong mobility.
Interestingly, unlike most tank supports who tend to struggle against Braum, Rakan actually performs relatively well into him. This is because Rakan is not a support who locks himself in place after engaging. Instead, he can dive quickly and then retreat safely. In practice, this means Rakan can absorb Braum’s gank setups and disengage without being punished, creating a surprisingly favorable matchup dynamic.
Rell is a prime example of a champion whose matchups are defined almost entirely by mechanics. While ranged poke champions like Xerath can pressure her during the laning phase, the true question in both lane and teamfights is whether opponents can stop her initiation.
Rell’s passive allows her to steal armor and magic resist, and her Q breaks shields, making her especially effective into the tank-heavy top lane meta. As a result, the higher the frequency of tank picks, the more valuable anti-tank champions like Trundle and Rell become in ban-pick strategy.
Unlike Nautilus or Leona, who primarily lock down single targets, Rell brings reliable AoE crowd control to fights. This makes her a frequent choice in pro play when teams want a support who can provide both initiation and frontline durability at the same time.
Nautilus remains a consistently valuable support at the professional level thanks to his reliable initiation centered on his point-and-click ultimate. With crowd control built into nearly every part of his kit—Passive, Q, E, and R—he offers both strong engage tools and single-target lockdown. However, years of repeated stat nerfs have left his base numbers low, which limits his ability to secure lane priority.
His Q can be used defensively to interrupt enemy engages, similar to Blitzcrank’s Q or Leona’s E, but Nautilus alone often cannot generate early skirmish priority. Instead, he is primarily used to punish squishy ranged supports or to shut down key enemy carries with targeted lockdown.
Nautilus has two particularly dangerous counters:
Despite these weaknesses, Nautilus still plays a crucial role when paired with other initiators. He often shines in pick comps or dive comps, especially when combined with champions like Vi who share his single-target lockdown focus. However, the more a team relies solely on Nautilus as their primary engage tool, the greater the risk that he becomes the first target of counter-initiation. For this reason, at the pro level, he is most effective when drafted alongside another strong initiator rather than as a standalone engage source.
Sion has recently emerged as a core pick in the top lane tank role for professional play. As noted in the Trundle analysis, one of the main reasons is that key AP items such as Liandry’s Anguish no longer provide mana options. This change has made it easier for tanks to endure prolonged early-to-mid-game objective fights, and Sion, with his inherently stable laning phase, has become especially valuable in this environment.
In League of Legends’ defensive scaling formula, armor and magic resist are most efficient in the early to mid stages and scale less sharply into the late game. Tanks like Sion, who can dominate early lane and quickly secure one or two core items, maximize their combat efficiency during this window. Pro teams often draft Sion specifically to leverage this 1–2 item timing to control Rift Heralds, dragons, and other early objectives.
Pro play data further illustrates this pattern. As of September 18, his matchup records against key top laners were:
One notable trend is that Sion rarely falls far behind against other tanks. In fact, he often outperforms them in the early-to-mid 1–2 item spike window. Unless the enemy comp is heavily bruiser-focused, it is difficult to neutralize his advantages.
In practice, Sion is frequently drafted after banning strong early lane bullies such as Rumble or Aurora. Data also shows that instead of using another tank, the more effective counter strategy is to pick bruisers or champions with true damage and max-health percentage damage. For this reason, Sion is most highly valued in comps that aim to maximize early-to-mid objective control and when the enemy does not have oppressive early lane picks like Rumble or Aurora.
Xin Zhao is a jungle champion who combines strong early skirmishing with secondary tanking thanks to his ultimate. With W–Flash engages and his three-hit combo, he can act as a secondary initiator, while his level-one pressure already secures early priority. In teamfights, his ultimate blocks ranged damage for four seconds, allowing him to absorb significant pressure and serve as a frontline presence. These traits make him a flexible pick that fits comfortably into almost any composition.
His current rise in pro play is closely tied to the emergence of the item Sundered Sky. This item allows bruiser champions like Xin Zhao to achieve survivability on par with tanks while still maintaining explosive dueling and skirmish power. As a result, traditional tank junglers have fallen in priority, creating space for Xin Zhao to shine.
Recent pro data illustrates this clearly:
The most striking takeaway is his strong performance against Wukong, one of the most popular junglers in the current meta. This shows that even though Xin Zhao’s late-game value is somewhat limited, his ability to influence lanes before level six and snowball early fights is a decisive advantage.
Kha’Zix is often cited as a counterpick. From level six onward, Kha’Zix can reliably win 1v1s against Xin Zhao. However, Kha’Zix has weaker teamfight impact, and Xin Zhao can immediately nullify his engage with his ultimate, rendering his assassination attempts ineffective. For this reason, Kha’Zix appears more as a niche “specialist card” rather than a consistent answer at the pro level.
Sivir has maintained competitiveness as an ADC through a series of small buffs over time. The biggest turning point came in patch 12.13, when her Q gained a critical strike ratio and her E was reworked. This effectively ended her old lethality builds and firmly established her as a traditional crit-based marksman.
Sivir’s strengths and weaknesses are both very clear. With a base attack range of only 500, she struggles to secure lane priority. However, her W provides one of the strongest AoE damage cycles among ADCs, giving her top-tier late-game teamfighting carry potential. After long-standing lane bullies such as Kalista and Varus received consecutive nerfs, Sivir once again began to see consistent use in pro play.
Her greatest value in the pro scene lies in her wave clear. Sivir’s unmatched ability to instantly push waves makes her a perfect tool for lane swaps, fast pushes, and seizing objective control. Her E (Spell Shield) further enhances her reliability by blocking initiation abilities, while the tank-heavy nature of the current meta allows her to safely cycle additional W procs in extended fights.
Future meta shifts could heavily impact her pick rate. Sivir’s short range means that even without direct nerfs, she will naturally decline in priority if longer-ranged marksmen are buffed or if the frequency of tank picks decreases.
For teams facing Sivir, the key is to bypass her reaction window on E or to use abilities that her shield cannot fully negate. Instant engage combos like Alistar’s W–Q chain or zone-control ultimates from champions like Jarvan IV or Aurora are particularly effective counters, as they reduce or nullify the impact of her Spell Shield.
Corki returned to professional play as a poke-and-skirmish oriented marksman following patch 14.10, which moved him away from his older “package delivery”–centric identity. His base attack range of 550 is on the shorter side, but his E provides exceptional damage in close combat, and he has mobility options that help offset his range disadvantage.
Most champions who excel in short-range trades—such as Kalista or Draven—tend to fall off in late-game teamfights. Corki, however, maintains consistent damage output thanks to his passive, which converts 20% of his damage into true damage. This allows him to remain relevant and reliable in mid-to-late-game scenarios.
Pro play data shows that Corki holds relatively even win rates across most major ADC matchups:
His core build centers on Trinity Force and Muramana, which creates noticeable power swings depending on his item timing. After his first recall and into his first and second core items, Corki shows very strong skirmishing potential. However, due to recent stat nerfs, he has become weaker in extended poke wars and sustain battles, where his shorter range puts him at a disadvantage.
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