100 Ranked Games as a top main...

Hey guys, I'm a plat V player who mains top lane in ranked. For my own purposes, I decided to go through the last 100 ranked games in my match history and figure out what sorts of champions I was laning against the most. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the results here.

Keep in mind that my data pool is very anecdotal.

• The sample size is small
• I played from a very small champion pool. I'm sure the results were at least somewhat influenced by other players' attempts to counter pick me

I played top lane in the vast majority of my games. However, like any other player, I occasionally had to fill elsewhere. Since my goal was to figure out who was getting picked the most at my ELO, I counted both the enemy team's top laner and my own team's when I played another role.

Now, onto the results!

Champion popularity

• Despite the fact that I frequently banned him when I was team captain, Ryze ended up being the most popular champion overall by a relatively wide margin
• Nidalee was the second most popular ranged champion, followed by Swain
• Nasus was the most popular melee champion
• The runner up spot for melee champions was a four way tie between Riven, Mundo, Irelia, and Renekton

Ranged/Melee Overall, although several of the most popular picks were ranged champions, 69% of top lane champions were melee (and 31% ranged) I classified champions based on their auto attack. Gnar, Jayce, and Nidalee were all counted as ranged, since they usually spend the majority of their time in their ranged mode during the laning phase

Physical/Magic The physical/magic damage breakdown was much closer. Approximately 55% of the champions I played against dealt primarily physical damage, and 45% dealt primarily magic damage this stat is a bit harder to track, since a lot of champions deal pretty mixed damage. I generally tried to base the classification on their primary late game damage source. So I classified Shyvana as physical, even though she tends to do mostly magic damage in lane. I counted nidalee in both columns. When built AD, she still deals about 50% magic damage in lane, and I played against several AP nidalee tops as well. After some thought, I decided to toss Irelia into the physical pool, even though her damage is incredibly mixed. If you throw Irelia out of the physical pool, the AD/AP breakdown is even closer.

Anecdotal Conclusions

Again, I'd like to emphasize that these results are very anecdotal, and don't necessarily say a lot about the general population's experiences playing top lane.

At the moment, a lot of people are complaining that top lane is getting completely taken over by ranged champions, and that melee bruisers are losing their last solo lane bastion. In my experience, that claim did not hold true. As I said, almost 70% of the champions I played against were melee. Also, I was mostly playing a melee bruiser without a dash. So, if anything, I have to imagine that players were more likely than average to pick range against me, hoping to punish my selection. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if ranged becomes more dominant the higher you climb in ranked. I was able to scrape by against most Ryzes at my ELO, but I don't think a dashless melee bruiser would stand a chance against a really well played ryze.

I was surprised by how close the melee/ranged breakdown ended up. With so many popular AD mids in solo queue, a lot of teams I faced chose to send an AP top. Ryze and Swain were both very popular picks, with vlad also putting up respectable numbers . A number of tanks who deal mostly magic damage also influenced this stat. The M&M&M AP tank trifecta (maokai, malphite, mundo) put up a lot of numbers. Hell, even singed and Zac showed up in a few. I felt like I was back in S3.

Stray observations

• Looking back on it, I'm kind of floored that Nasus ended up being the most popular melee champion in my games. I'm never surprised when I see him in my games, but I also don't think of him as a go-to pick
• Damn Ryze sucks to lane against
• I main Gangplank. One time a guy picked WW into my lane. Lol.
• Renekton showed up in a decent number of games and almost always lost, regardless of whether or not I was laning top against him, and regardless of whether he was on my team or the enemy team
• Fiora showed up in a decent number of games and always either fed or hard carried (I guess that shouldn't surprise anyone)
• I was surprised by only one tryndamere in 100 games. He's a pretty solid pick right now if you're good at him.

Anyways, I don't know if anyone will actually find this interesting, but since I had the data anyways, I figured I would share it!