Tian LoL: Career, Champions and Worlds 2026

Tian (Gao Tian-Liang, 高天亮) is a Chinese League of Legends (LoL) jungler who plays for Top Esports. He is best known as the jungler of the FunPlus Phoenix roster that won Worlds 2019, and for a career built on proactive skirmish junglers: Lee Sin, Xin Zhao, Viego and Vi are the champions most tied to his name.

His current stint with TES began on 4 April 2026, his second spell at the organization, after a season with Weibo Gaming. In 2026 he has played a tighter pool than the year before, leaned on bruiser junglers with a Conqueror build, and reached Worlds 2026 with a Main Event spot.

Tian’s 2026 is a clear step up on results. His 2025 season with Weibo Gaming ended at 70–80, a 46.7% win rate, while this year he holds a winning record, over fewer games so far since his TES stint only started in April.

The per-minute profile has shifted toward resources. He is farming more CS/min and earning more gold per minute than in 2025, and his damage/min is up, yet he takes a smaller share of his team’s damage and is involved in a smaller share of its kills. Read together, that points to a jungler spending more time on his own camps and tempo, while the rest of the TES lineup carries a larger share of the damage.

His KDA and his average kills and deaths per game sit close to last year’s, so the improvement is not a cleaner individual scoreline. It comes from winning more of the games he plays, alongside a vision rate that is up on 2025, which fits a jungler setting up objectives rather than chasing kills.

Jarvan IV is Tian’s most played champion of 2026 and one of his most reliable, with a strong winning record on a real sample. Vi is the standout: among the champions he has played regularly this year, she has the best win rate in his pool.

Lee Sin sits just behind them in games and still wins more than he loses, which matters because he is the champion Tian has played most across his career. Pantheon and Xin Zhao are the two heavily used picks that have not worked: both carry losing records this year. Pantheon gives him the most damage of his regular picks, but the results have not followed, and Xin Zhao, a career staple, has slipped below even.

Naafiri and Trundle are the promising secondary options, both with winning records, though on small samples. Skarner sits just above even on a similarly small sample. Qiyana, Nocturne, Maokai and Cho’Gath have too few games to judge, so treat them as pocket and counter picks; Qiyana stands out among them because TES trusted it in both the LPL 2026 Grand Finals and the Regional Finals.

The overall shape is a narrower pool than the 20 champions he played in 2025, built around engage junglers with reliable gank tools. That focus is a big part of why his results have improved: fewer experimental picks, more games on champions he wins with.

Across his career, Lee Sin, Xin Zhao, Viego, Sejuani and Vi are his signature champions, with Lee Sin the most played of all; Viego has not appeared in his games since 23 February 2025, and Gragas, a big part of his early FunPlus Phoenix years, was last played on 9 March 2020.

Tian builds his three most played champions almost identically. On Jarvan IV, Vi and Lee Sin, the core is Black Cleaver and Sundered Sky, with Guardian Angel the usual third item. That is a fighter’s build: armor shred to break frontliners, sustain for extended fights, and a second life for a jungler who expects to be first in.

The rune page is just as consistent: Conqueror in Precision with Triumph and Legend: Alacrity, then Inspiration secondary with Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight. The only change is the last Precision rune. Jarvan IV and Vi take Cut Down, since their fights are spent diving high-health targets, while Lee Sin takes Coup de Grace for finishing kills. Flash and Smite are fixed, and the stat shards are attack speed, adaptive force and health.

The build says how Tian wants games to go: long, messy fights around objectives where Conqueror stacks fully and Guardian Angel buys a second engage. Going Inspiration rather than another tree trades some early kill pressure for free boots and shorter Summoner spell cooldowns, which suits a jungler who wants his Flash available for every objective fight.

His latest games come from the LPL 2026 Grand Finals, against LGD Gaming and then Invictus Gaming, followed by a rematch with Invictus Gaming at the LPL 2026 Regional Finals on 17 September 2026. Across those series he reached well beyond his core trio, drafting Naafiri, Skarner, Trundle, Xin Zhao and Qiyana in the Grand Finals, then Pantheon, Qiyana, Lee Sin and even Cho’Gath at the Regional Finals.

That range is the useful read for Worlds: his regular pool is stable, and the edges flex with the draft. Results from the rest of the league sit in our esports coverage.

Watch his best Jarvan IV and Vi games below, both from MSI 2026.

Tian, born 24 July 2000, started with a brief stint at Young Miracles from 23 May to 4 June 2017, then joined Suning on 26 December 2017 and stayed until 8 April 2018. Neither spell produced a listed result; the next entry in his history is the one that made his name.

He joined FunPlus Phoenix on 14 January 2019, and his first year there was his best. FPX finished first in LPL 2019 Spring and LPL 2019 Summer, won the LPL 2019 Summer Playoffs and then won Worlds 2019. He stayed until 6 November 2021, adding a first-place finish in LPL 2021 Summer.

His first spell at Top Esports ran from 17 December 2021 to 2 November 2024 and brought the Demacia Cup 2021, first place in LPL 2022 Summer and second place at the Esports World Cup 2024. He moved to Weibo Gaming on 16 December 2024, a stint that ended on 21 September 2025, and returned to TES on 4 April 2026.

On paper, the Weibo Gaming season was the low point of his recent years, a losing record across a long 2025. The return to TES has turned that around, with more wins and a more focused champion pool.

Worlds 2019 is the result that defines Tian. He won the World Championship as FunPlus Phoenix’s jungler at the end of a year in which the team had also finished first in both LPL splits, so the title capped a full season of control rather than a single hot run.

His later results show staying power rather than a second peak of that size. First place in LPL 2021 Summer with FPX, then the Demacia Cup 2021 and first place in LPL 2022 Summer with TES, kept him among the top LPL junglers, and the runner-up finish at the Esports World Cup 2024 is his biggest international result since 2019.

Tian is at Worlds 2026 with Top Esports, which enters the Main Event as China #3. The team’s first stage is the Swiss stage, which starts on 23 October 2026. Follow every stage on the Worlds 2026 hub.