imo, invulnerability is counterproductive to being a tank. If you're invulnerable, you're not absorbing damage because the opposing team focuses someone else.

You can't tier with categories because being the best champion ranked under "tough" doesn't necessarily make your champion great. It makes most sense to have a tier list without categories, because we're talking about the champion's overall contribution to the team. For example, a champion can take damage really well but offer nothing else to the table would be a great tank for one reason, but a horrible tank for the reason that he doesn't really provide a reason to attack him nor can he initiate for your team. Therefore, the theorycrafting side of tier listing has to look at all of the tools available to a champion.

Bringing something unique doesn't nececssarily mean you bring anything useful. If Annie lost all of her nukes and stuns but instead had the unique ability to grow flowers, she'd still be bottom tier, no questions asked.

To reply to the general sentiment currently being posted, the categories are there because this is a team game, not a 1v1. The tank category is made of champions you would put in a tank slot on a team, i.e. the guy you want to go in first to get hit. It's more based upon their playstyle role and the items you get on them, instead of their skills. However, they have these roles and you get these items because of their skills.

Even if a champion is "unique", it still boils down to fulfilling the role of DPS, disabling, or tanking. Some champions do fulfill their own role, like Kayle and Soraka whose main goals are to heal and protect, but they are the exception.

So I'm not judging Ranged DPS on the amount of damage you can put out at a range. I'm taking each champion whose goal is to deal damage at a range, and sorting them by how useful they are in a team setting. I hope that clears things up.

If you're going to keep it categorized by role, then really it should be more like "caster, carry, tank, support." Even then, you're not really covering every role. Most people want a tank and a carry on their team but also a certain amount of stuns, AoE damage, initiators, etc. Where do we draw the line between what deserves categorization and what doesn't? What about champions that play multiple roles?

Even if different champions are brought for different roles, you can still put them all on the same list for comparison in terms of overall contribution. If you want to hint as to why, you would list the name and then the reason they're good and what role they play.

If you insist on keeping those categories up, you need to change some of them. "Ranged DPS" and "melee DPS" play basically the same role in a game. "Multi-talented" refers to over half the champions and cannot be used as a way to compare someone like Teemo with Zilean - a better one would be "support" and to put TF into magic damage and Teemo into carry (even if he's kinda only 70% carry).

Having disables, and escaping and chasing abilities, are part of being a "good" champion. If a ranged character deals high magical damage, and can stun in an AoE, then it's a top tier Magical DPS champion (Annie). If it deals high magical damage, and can't stun in an AoE, then it's probably a tier 2 Magical DPS champion (Kassadin). If its enormous AoE damage outweighs the fact that it has no disables, it can still be tier 1 (Twitch vs. Ashe). Part of composing the actual team is picking a balance of power heroes, and heroes with disables, and getting a nice mix of roles (physical damage, magical damage, tank).

So, for example, using this tier listing:

Good Team: Annie, Twitch, Sivir, Alistar, Twisted Fate
Bad Team: Fiddlesticks, Nunu, Tristana, Sivir, Kayle
Bad Team: Ashe, Jax, Evelynn, Amumu, Warwick

The composition is up to you, but the tiers help you decide what to put in each role.

I've changed the last category to Hybrid so you understand my meaning better. Those champions can feasibly be built in more than one way.

Yet Twitch has none of those and he's a **** good champion. Corki can kinda chase, but not very well after Valk nerf and is still high tier. Being good or not-as-good doesn't just mean having a stun or not - for example Warwick has many characteristics of a good champion (stun, chasing ability, global group support), but ultimately he's one of the worst carries in the game. On the flip side, Tryndamere has great chasing ability but kinda sucks.

You can't really make a newbie friendly tier list, because they don't play at the level where high or even mid level tiers exist. For example, Evelynn is very strong at low ELO but bottom tier elsewhere. Therefore, the list doesn't need to be friendly towards people who don't know the basics of each champion.

If I'm building Tiers around champ popularity at my Elo it would be:

Top tier:

Tristana
Teemo
Corki
Alistar
Sivir
Cho'gath
TF
Malphite
Poppy
Udyr

Mid tier:

Blitz
Ashe
Annie
Katarina
Gangplank
Fiddle
Tryn
Karthus
Nasus
Shaco
Anivia
Nunu
Singed
Veigar
Kayle
Twitch
Taric

S.hit tier:

Jax
Yi
Warwick
Janna
Zilean
Rammus
Mundo
Eve
Soraka
Sion
Ryze
Nidalee
Morgana
Kassadin
Amumu
Heim



That's just from what I *SEE* popularity-wise. I assume I'm hopefully at the Elo where people are starting to get an idea of what wins and what doesn't.

^ Absolutely disagree with Sion, Kass, Morg., Amumu and Zilean, but everything else isn't too out of place.