Boards›Esports

League of Legends Sabermetrics

LeKarpetron·3/15/2016, 6:17:06 PM·2 votes·717 views

Okay, so I have seen past posts on this but all of them devolved into nothing useful, so here I am.

For those of you who do not know, Sabermetrics is a form of new-age statistics used in baseball and popularized by the book and movie "Moneyball". These new statistics are meant to analyze the impact of an individual player on the team's overall success by looking at his individual contributions like Runs Saved or Wins Above Replacement (although WAR is an unofficial Sabermetric). This post is not a "do you think this is possible" post, it is a "do you have ideas for statistical categories" post. I know it is possible and I really want to take a crack at it. I am already considering categories like "mana efficiency" which will take into account skillshot hit rate and mana spent on the spell (obviously only on mana-based champs), and some other prototype ideas. However I would like some input from the League community. What are some categories you would like to see? If I see any suggestions I like I will work on finding a good way to calculate them. I already have a small team working on this so if you want to be a part of LCS history (hopefully), do not hesitate to throw out an idea. Remember, there are no stupid suggestions.

2 Comments

Akasuisei3/15/2016, 8:57:42 PM1 votes

This sounds like an interesting idea! Using your example of "runs saved" would LoL comparision be "Towers saved"? I think saving a tower would definitely have an impact on the game or at least be something uniquely contributed by a player. However, I am wondering how this would be measured. There is no stat of it recorded in the game so the only way I can think of it being measured is if someone goes through the game footage and checks, based on a pre-determined set of criteria as to what "saving a tower" entails.

Another metric that might be useful is gold efficiency, not how much total gold you have, but how efficiently you spend it. There has to be an ideal spectrum of how often a player should be buying items instead of hording gold without spending it. That's why when watching pro games and the casters are talking about "Gold Lead", i take it with a grain of salt, since earning the gold means little if you never spend it and get items quickly.