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Competitive Balance at Worlds

Neofederalist·9/30/2014, 4:48:16 PM·5 votes·1,664 views

After having watched the Worlds Group stage, and seeing some pretty fantastic LoL, I decided to run through the matches and see how many champions ended up getting picked. I personally don't necessarily think that the "picks or bans" metric is the best indicator of overall balance, so I stared off by only considering champions which were played by a winning team. Grouped by position, here they are:

Top Rumble Alistar Maokai Ryze Irelia Kayle Lulu Swain+++ Riven^^^ Nidalee

Jungle Kha'zix Lee Sin Rengar Jarvan Elise Evelyn++ Rammus^

Mid Zilean Yasuo Syndra Orianaa Talon Xerath Zed Katarina* Twisted Fate+ Ziggs+++ Fizz Kassadin Ahri Lissandra^^

ADC Tristana Caitlin Twitch Lucian Kog'maw Vayne Corki Graves+ Jinx

Support Nami Thresh Janna Braum Morgana Leona+ Zilean

Only tallying wins in: *SSW vs AHQ +AHQ vs DP +++SK vs TSM ++ OMG vs Fnatic ^Alliance vs C9 ^^Fnatic vs LMQ ^^^NWS vs Alliance

That comes down to 57 different champions (just under half the LoL roster) won games at the Worlds Group stage, and only 10 of those won only a single game (perhaps indicating the possibility of a niche counterpick or an outlier). Midlane has the most diversity, with 14 champions recording wins, and 11 of those winning more than once. Support and Jungle actually tied for the least diverse position, with wins on only 7 champions (6, if you discount Leona in AHQ vs DP, and only 5 junglers winning more than once).

I didn't find the bans on lolesports.com, but opening it up, let's also take a look at champions which were picked, but did not record wins: Sona Blitzcrank Dr. Mundo Nunu Ezrael Kayle (support) Pantheon Jayce Vi

Not surprisingly, 3 of these were support champions, and 3 of them were jungle champions, indicating that the weaker teams were able to get banned/picked away from their comfort champions and had to dig deeper into less common picks.

What about the best team? SSW has a pretty massive champion pool, picking 23 unique champions in 6 games. Put another way, out of 30 possible picks, only 7 of them repeated. I can't think of another tournament where the best team showed this much diversity, indicating that balance at the top skill level really is improving.

Takeaways

**Top lane and Mid lane have the best balance I've ever seen competitively. ** Right now, in top lane, you could see huge tanks (Maokai, Alistar, Dr. Mundo), AP carries (Kayle, Ryze), utility champions (Lulu), or bruisers (Nidalee, Irelia). Likewise, mid lane sees melee assassins (Fizz, Zed, Yasuo, Talon), utility mages (Zilean, Orianna), wave-clear mages (Xerath, Ziggs), and burst mages (Syndra, Ahri).

Jungle still could use some love Most games had either Lee Sin or Kha'xiz. If those were picked or banned, Rengar and Elise showed up, and that was mostly it. Jarvan saw some play, but he lost more games than he won, so there's clearly some more work to be done there.

**Support is the shallowest position ** With the power of laneswaps, lane-bully mages such as Annie or Karma have fallen out of style in support, support is still the weakest position with the fewest actual champions. The only true support champions not listed above are Soraka and Taric, the former getting a rework and the latter needing one. Support balance isn't bad so much as there just isn't much depth there.

Teams can be successful with just about every marksman Excluding Urgot and Quinn, who arguably don't count, it's pretty easy to make the argument that the meta just doesn't support the ADCs that aren't seeing much play. Ashe and Varus are low-mobility 'utility' ADCs who would get wrecked by midgame assassins and unable to burst the strong tanks. Draven has a skillcap that's not really proportionate with his power and only gets scary when he starts to snowball (not something you can count on when playing against the best teams in the world). Miss Fortune works best in wombo-combo team comps, and if you're going to build a team around an individual champion, you're probably better off building it around Yasuo. Sivir has short range and I suspect that the mobility benefit of her ult is currently being overshadowed by the prevalance of Tristana's ability to reset and speed boosts on other champions like Oriana, Lulu, and Zilean.

What are everyone else's thoughts?

9 Comments

The Red Warden9/30/2014, 8:23:36 PM3 votes

Anyone notice how support is the only lane completely taken up by the newest champions (Braum, Thresh, Nami) or the ones with barely any counterplay (Zil and Morg)

It just shows that most of the supports either needed nerfs or reworks. The new ones get used because they have everything the old supports had and more (why take Taric when there is Braum, Nami is able to do mass stuns more than so e and is nearly a match in healing) or just the badly designed ones (Zilean, no ability to not get bombed except staying out of range, and Morg who has cc that lasts way to long and a mini-Olaf ult you can give to allies)

The only supports that actually are somewhat decent balance wise and who don't just arn't better versions of others are Janna and Leona

We also need a way for melee tops to deal with all these mid-lane rejects without having to just pick tanks who sustain through their bursts. Tell me the last time you beat a ranged top as any melee bruiser

KSHarrison9/30/2014, 5:44:44 PM1 votes

SSW picking diversity isn't necessarily an indication of diversity in gameplay. They also have a vested interest in hiding their best picks and comps, and since they only needed to try in 2 out of 6 games, they could have used back up comps/picks in their other matches.

But cool collection of stats and interesting about the jungle and support roles' depth.

Nhifu9/30/2014, 11:02:47 PM1 votes

good read :)

MetalGearTeemu10/1/2014, 9:35:51 PM1 votes

You will never see good hero diversity in any slot until Rito stops enforcing their meta. A reason that TI4 had the vast majority of the game's cast picked is that there is room for strats, optional jungling, and roaming which simply do not exist in LoL.