Rise of Immortals 5v5 Tier List

Rise of Immortals 5v5 Tier List by Trylobyte

The patches have come and gone and the metagame has had time to settle and take a definite shape. How do the various immortals fit into the current structure of the game? Who is good and who sucks, and why? I’m assuming all immortals to be using the most accepted artifacts and masteries, and to be level 50.

First, a comment on the current metagame. In three letters, AoE. To be more precise, the current meta relies very heavily on AoE control, the ability to hit multiple people at once with a lot of damage or some nasty status effects. This allows the designated DPS-dealers to do their work in relative peace while the enemy team can’t do anything, allowing for easy teamfights and fast pushes. Group-work and pack hunting are heavily encouraged. Carries are incredibly hard to use effectively, since a good team will either prevent them from building or will kill them before they can do their job; many of the best teams don’t even run true carries anymore.

Next, the tiers.
Tier 0 – These characters are fundamentally broken. There’s a line between being extremely powerful and being an absolute game-breaker and these Immortals have crossed over that line.
Tier 1 – These are the most powerful Immortals. They have everything anyone could want in a team member and should not be passed on.
Tier 1.5 – A credit to most teams, these Immortals are a step above the majority at Tier 2 but aren’t quite powerful enough to make it all the way to the top. Highly recommended for any competitive team.
Tier 2 – The bulk of immortals wind up here. These are characters that are good, reliable, and generally acceptable on most team compositions. They do what they do and they do it well.
Tier 2.5 – Limited usefulness. They have their niche, but that’s all they can do well and it hurts them.
Tier 3 – Either too specialized or too inappropriate to the meta to cut it in Tier 2, they’re nonetheless still viable, just not great.
Tier 4 – Reserved for the completely useless.

Tier 0

Azcadelia: Despite her recent nerfs, Azcadelia combines Vezin’s capacity for hard crowd control with a lot more sustained damage than Vezin could ever hope to achieve while having just as much burst capability and an even more powerful signature. She even has a skill that makes her untargetable, rendering her nearly immune to crowd control herself and allowing her to skirt past towers and temporarily ignore carries. All that on top of being fairly tanky adds up to one extremely overwhelming character. She is an absolute monster in the hands of even a competent player and extremely skilled Azcadelia players are effectively invincible as they float around the map killing whoever they feel like.

Tier 1

Ukkonen: The littlest changes can make a weak character overpowered. Netheurgist proved this once and Ukkonen is back to show the new generation how it’s done. A built Ukkonen is a death machine; he’s fast, has powerful AoE effects, and is more durable than some tanks while dealing the damage you’d expect of a late-game anti-carry with a caster’s abilities. Highly mobile, there’s no getting away from an Ukkonen that really wants you dead and his signature lets him appear very quickly in the most unexpected places.

Tatiana: Abilities are the key to success in RoI. Silence is powerful because it removes the ability to use them. Tatiana’s ability to reliably deny enemies use of their abilities in nearly every single fight while dishing out huge amounts of magical damage is absolutely devastating. With a powerful early game combo that scales well into late-game damage without giving up utility, the only things holding Tatiana back are her difficulties farming, easily solved by one item, her extreme mana usage early-game, and her tendency to explode if looked at wrong, which means she’s a big magnet for ganks.

Tier 1.5

Netheurgist: Death Rift, Necrotic Earth. I don’t need to say anything more. This is the most ludicrously overpowered combo in the game, and with AoE damage-dealing being the king, this incredible burst of damage that conveniently clusters all enemies in the middle of your team, ripe for a devastating signature or string of crowd control, is undeniably godly. Netheurgist also has great mobility with his spear teleport and is able to control lanes almost as well as Vezin can. With the size of his signature reduced he can no longer be guaranteed to grab a whole team, which means his combo is no longer the prelude to a full team wipe; this lets people defend against the following push with a great deal more success than they could before.

Vezin: With the most crowd control of any character in the game and all but one ability having an area effect, he remains the ultimate set-up artist, allowing the rest of his team to use their abilities to best effect. Sporting one of the heaviest tanks in the game despite his recent nerf, Vezin ensures nobody escapes a bad teamfight or a devastating signature. An ideal choice for holding a solo lane so someone on your team can jungle. Even bad Vezins can contribute meaningfully to teamfights.

Tier 2

Scorpix: A good Scorpix is nearly unkillable. With thousands of hitpoints, massive health regeneration, and the highest armor values in the game, his only weakness is Magic damage and few other immortals have the sheer power to deal with his hitpoints. He’s no slouch on damage-dealing either, and since almost all of his abilities have a powerful Slow he’s nearly impossible to escape from if he really wants you dead. He’s dropped a tier for two reasons; one is his lack of effective AoE aside from his signature and the other is his weakness to Magic damage, which is especially common right now. He’s still a formidable tank, but he doesn’t dominate the game like he used to.

Kyrie: Kyrie is back to the way she used to be, an anti-carry who differs from Tzai in her poorer early game and better late game. With shurikens no longer able to be spammed every five seconds for negligible mana, Kyrie actually needs to pay attention to her early game or be on the receiving end of a lot of headaches. If she can get built up she’s more useful against tanks than Tzai could hope to be due to her large amount of armor pen and she’s still not someone anyone not Ukkonen should 1v1, but she’s no longer a game destroyer.

Psychozen: Psychozen is an interesting case. A devastating single-target disabler with a long Silence, powerful slow, and a spammable single-target Heal, Psychozen runs into three problems that keep him from the top tier. The first is his terrible passive mastery; the amount of armor pen you get is so small as to be insignificant. The second is his terrible farming, being a melee support with no area-effect abilities. Third is his extreme fragility early-game, complicated by his farming difficulty. That said, his sig is incredible and can easily win teamfights by itself, dealing piles of damage, slowing, and silencing all enemies in an area while healing teammates.

Ichorr: Ichorr is fine once you realize he’s not meant to be a pure healer. He has some damage over time capability with his Thorn Barrier and Enchanted Grove that lets him hold and occasionally push lanes. His Ensnaring Vines are excellent. These are capable of doing immense amounts of damage to unarmored carries and can easily take off half their health or more if they’re forced to move. Enchanted Grove has a great deal of use covering and concealing immortals you don’t want the enemy to be able to target, such as a Kyrie charging her ultimate or a Vezin trying to get into position for Arena. More offensively-minded than Aislynn, he’s more or less a weak, tanky anti-carry that can heal people, and once you realize this you can start to see his true potential.

Trovoc: One of the best lane-pushers and possibly the best mid in the game, the few dedicated Trovoc players of RoI have shown he is actually a force to be reckoned with. While he’s terrible at low persistent levels, once he finally hits level 50 a great weight is lifted from him and he becomes a turret-destroying machine. With the potential for a massive tank, immense cooldown reduction, and no need for mana, he is capable of single-handedly holding lanes against multiple attackers nearly forever. His ultimate is the icing on the cake, being a large, long-lasting AoE push. His only problem is that his abilities are poorly-suited for offense and can screw up teamfights for his own team if there’s a lapse in communication; his sig can also be underwhelming.

Tzai: With Kyrie no longer the dominant character in the game Tzai can come out and be effective at his job more often. While his split damage types often mean he isn’t as effective against anything that is not a carry, he’s much more capable at killing a carry than Kyrie is due to his higher and more reliable burst capability. If you’re running a very soft team comp, Tzai is the scary black man that lurks in the shadows and beats you all to death when you’re least expecting it. Don’t expect a stellar performance against tanks or late-game casters though.

Kaos: Kaos is interesting for a carry. While carries normally shine late-game, Kaos is actually at his strongest in the mid-game where his Big Bullets does immense amounts of damage and he can push a lane almost as fast as Neth or Vezin while being very difficult to catch. This allows him to ramp up to the endgame faster than the other ranged carries, making his lower overall damage output forgivable since the game isn’t over by the time he’s ready to contribute. His signature is weak on its own but quite effective if used as a pushing tool or combined with crowd-control abilities like Vezin’s Arena of Death or Tatiana’s Elemental Nova.

Tier 2.5

Aislynn: Aislynn is the best healer in the game, bar none. A team with a good Aislynn knows that they will have a great chance of surviving any teamfight with most of themselves intact and she gives gankers problems whenever she’s in a lane. So why is she so low on the tier list? The problem Aislynn runs into is that everyone in the game right now is so tanky anyway that a team with an Aislynn sacrifices the crowd control and damage output of another Immortal for that healing, and the healing doesn’t mean anything if Aislynn is silenced or dead. The abundance of percentage magic penetration also means casters can generally ignore her signature ability. She’s mandatory if you have a Balak or Nysuss on your team, but nobody runs them anyway.

Pycon: Pycon makes a fine tank. He has a variety of abilities that help him out in a good array of situations, but once he hits level six he really specializes in ruining a carry’s day. Charging in from nowhere, knocking away his defenders, then smashing his face in with a mighty blow, Pycon is the enemy of people who main Balak or Nysuss. All the more frustrating is a well-built Pycon’s tendency to escape from this sort of abuse and live to do it again next fight. He’s okay against other people as long as his backup is strong; he won’t deal a lot of damage but he has good control. Too bad his signature is useless.

Balak: With his reduced ability to land critical hits, Balak has been hit rather hard. He’s not impossible to use nor is he weak, but with carries in general being poor in the current meta there’s little reason to have him on your team. He is effective at what he does, dealing a lot of damage if he can build up and get into a teamfight without dying, and his dynamite micro-stun is great for disrupting channeled abilities and catching slower targets. He does less single-target damage than Nysuss does now, making both ranged carries equally viable.

Nysuss: No longer the last word in late-game, Nysuss is still terrifying if she gets all the items she needs. The not-so-recent changes, however, means it takes her longer to reach the point that she can destroy an entire team, and she can no longer do so with the impunity that she used to. With a bug in attack speed calculations repaired, she’s no longer the machine gun she used to be, and while she’s still excellent at tank-busting and burning down single targets the fact she’s a one-trick pony has become more obvious and pushed her down on the list.

Lazarus: Lazarus is the god of the early game. He is probably the strongest character right off the bat and he ramps up very quickly, becoming ridiculously effective against almost everything… until about level nine. Once that Oblivion Missile is maxed out, Lazarus is doomed to a slide into obsolescence as he’s not going to be capable of doing much more as he levels up. He has a nice sig and a helpful team buff, but he’s pretty much a non-issue in the late game unless he’s been fed early.

Talia: Yes she sucks early, but a good Talia ramps up her ability to carry a team a lot faster than the ranged carries will because of her superior ability to jungle. Having the DPS of a carry and an anti-carry skill grouping means there’s pretty much nothing she isn’t effective against, her kit giving her astounding armor penetration for tank-busting, attack damage and speed boosts, and a pull for grabbing an out of position carry or caster. A well-played Talia is a scary thing with a competent group behind her. Her signature is very effective at the start of a teamfight when all the most powerful abilities are in the air. The only thing that holds her back, and it is a huge thing in the current meta, is her extreme fragility; if she gets prevented from life-leeching she drops like a sack of potatoes. She’s great if you can prevent the enemy from obliterating her the instant she appears.

Tier 3

Kavashiir: Later impressions did change my opinion on Kavashiir. While he’s great for burst damage, he’s fairly situational and only works with specific, coordinated team compositions. As a support, he’s also taking the slot that would ordinarily be used by a healer like Aislynn who is generally just as useful if not moreso. His abilities are still great, but the difficulty in using him well, the situational nature of his most powerful abilities, and his weak signature make him generally unimpressive, a far cry from first impressions.