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Best Bans by Tier in Each Region (Patch 6.11): A Statistical Analysis - Fizz Edition

Aqua Dragon··8 votes·5,369 views

Before going into this patch's usual analysis, a huge special thanks to /u/gribblurk for making Best Bans look super spiffy now! Get three programmers together and you get something that looks decent but not swell, an error now properly mitigated! Thanks!

The way people choose bans is based heavily in frustration, popular opinion, and potential power. But these often lead to inaccurate choices to maximize the chances of winning.

So /u/Jonnyy9, /u/warwickofwallst, and I decided to make www.bestbans.com to calculate a ban list for each tier solely based on winrate, pickrate, and banrate which is partially added to pickrate.

Nothing else.

"As a rule of thumb, optimal ban strategy i.e. the strategy that maximizes your probability of winning is to ban champions that are both high win rate and high play rate. In reality, ban rate is not only a function of win rate and play rate, but also of perception of power, transparency of power, frustration, and risk-aversion. A few months ago when LeBlanc held the title of most banned, she was a suboptimal ban outside of Master/Challenger. Janna, statistically one of the best bans in the game, was banned in less than 1% of games."

~Riot Jules

The pictures are data from North America, Ranked. Data for any region may be found at the Best Bans website, and adjusted at the top right corner.

####These are what should be banned, not what are being banned.

####Ban rate is taken into account.

####Always look at your team's pre-picks when deciding a ban; some compositions handle particular champions better.

Bronze

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Diamond

Full table of champions on www.bestbans.com

These pictures are only for NA. Data for most regions found on the site.

#Observations

Fizz arrives in three different tiers, ironically increasing in consistency as rank increases. Hey, remember this? And this? Somebody pick up the phone because I totally called it. Fizz has nerfs incoming on the PBE to increase the cooldown on early ranks of Playful/Trickers that will tune this down. It's interesting to see how these Influence metrics reveal the upcoming powerhouses, though Fizz is notable for how rapid the ascension was this patch, possibly a response to the outliers of the Mage Update finally being nerfed.

Swain was hit with a nerf this patch and it shows. They still appear in several top 12's and may require further tuning, though to be fair Swain's winrate has historically always been on the higher end.

Irelia seems to have benefited nicely from the Triforce update, now appearing in three different tiers (yes, three, for sure) different tiers. They don't take the top four in any particular area however, but if they don't receive any nerfs on the PBE, we may see them dominate next patch as Fizz gets nerfed.

Miss Fortune is the new ADC in town, with Lucian having lost their extremely dominant position after this patch's nerfs. Appearing in multiple top fours, Fortune is another caster marksman who can abuse items like Black Cleaver for earlier power spikes.

Blitzcrank.

Vel'koz is sneaking into Bronze after the latest change to their ult damage. Their winrate has increased noticeably, though falls sharply into Diamond.

Zed has found their lowest winrate yet in Bronze, though it's good to see that despite the nerf, their winrate hasn't tanked too much despite having lost a lot of their safe laning and poke presence.

Ekko has lost a huge amount of consistency, with all ranks kind of grouping together for a hug around the sweet -54 area (not top secret). It's tough to tell how much of this is an actual decrease in strength however; people are likely still building the former tank Ekko build and tanking Ekko's winrate (ha).

Volibear continues to trail alongside Blitzcrank has an undernoted power. Winrates of 54% and pickrates of 20%; on any other champion, it'd be considered insane. The meta continues to favor the bear and we will likely continue to see their dominance through the upcoming patch.

The list is what should be banned, not what is being banned.

Because the list is based on averages, the list is most useful when you know very little about either team or know little about compositions. Influence is defined as: How many times you will lose to a champion per 10,000 games compared to the average.

As with any bans, you only get the true benefit by making sure your team isn't intending to play the banned champion. Otherwise, you are denying the enemy team AND your team the chance of playing a consistent power.

The list does not show what is good, strong, or overpowered. It is an evaluation of which champions are the most consistent. To be consistent is different from being strong or good. It means a champion has both a good winrate and a good pickrate so that, on average, you will lose to the champion more often than you win against them.

Many champions are considered strong because their potential power is very high (Azir) but if people can't tap into that strength, then even a strong champ is inconsistent.

Similarly, even champions considered manageable or decent (Blitzcrank) can have extreme consistency that makes them worthwhile to ban.

#Why use these suggestions?

It bears repeating that the list isn't intended to replace specific banning, but is rather intended for use in an information vacuum. You should largely follow the list when you have little understanding of compositions or don't know what champions either team is running, a fairly common occurrence.

####Legitimate reasons for circumventing these suggested bans:

  • The enemy can pick a champion that counters a composition your team has planned

  • You know for sure yourself or your team is playing a champion that counters a suggested ban Zed isn't so scary when you know Malzahar is on your team

  • There's a high chance the enemy team has a champion specialist who will be much weaker if their primary champion is banned

####Reasons to circumvent bans that are not legitimate:

  • Because a champion is "overpowered." Bans should not be based on a champion's strength, but on their win consistency. Even if Tahm Kench could theoretically win 100% of the time with perfect play, that situation is so rare that it doesn't change that Kench wins only 46% of the time on average. Winrate reflects consistency, not strength.

  • Because your teammates will be annoyed. Let’s assume that your teammates get ticked off every time Tahm Kench is picked by the enemies. Even with this “buff” caused by annoyed teammates, Kench still only wins 46% of the time. Let your teammates be annoyed; avoiding the ban is still likely the most statistically advantageous chance of success. Reconsider only if it not banning a champion is very likely to put a teammate on extreme tilt.

  • Because a champion is annoying to fight. As annoying as certain champions are, if you're trying to maximize your winrate then it's still not a smart idea to ban them simply for being obnoxious. Most obnoxious champions have crippling weaknesses that cause their winrates and/or pickrates to be fairly low. Only if the frustration a champion causes is significant enough to impact your winrate should it even be a consideration.

  • Because you want to ban champions from your own team. If your teammate pre-picks a champion, you can always look up your own teammates and see if their history on the champion defies the average. If your teammate doesn't pre-pick, then you deny the enemy team the same chance of picking the banned champion which will work in your favor regardless. ...also, the champions you think you should be banning from your own team Yasuo, Vayne, Zed, new champions aren't the right choices anyway.

#Methodology

All information is compiled over a four day average from op.gg. In specific regions, Lolking provides more accurate pickrate data per tier, and data is used from Lolking in those instances. The data is calculated every day around midnight GMT-7.

Influence is defined as: How many times you will lose to a champion per 1000 games compared to the average.

The Influence calculation is done as follows:

10,000 x (WR - 50%) x (PR / (100% - BR)

Thanks for reading! I hope you will find this useful.

19 Comments

CerealBoxOfDoom2 votes

explain influence moar plox

Aqua Dragon2 votes

Sure. Influence is defined as: How many times you will lose to a champion per 10,000 games compared to the average.

The idea is that in a vacuum (assuming a person doesn't know their own team or even their own champions), we can only rely on statistics to tell us how often the person would lose to a champion compared to the average.

If Malzahar wins 60% of the time, and the player has 10,000 games, then the player will lose to Malz 6,000 times.

If we assume the average winrate is 50%, then we can say a player loses against Malzahar 1,000 more times than the average. We represent that with the equation:

10,000 x (WR - 50%)

But that's assuming a 100% pickrate isn't it? If we assume something else, like a 40% pickrate, then we get:

10,000 * 40% = 4,000 (Malzahar appears 4,000 times)

4,000 * 60% = 2,400 (Malzahar wins 60% of the time they appear.

This is how often the player loses to Malzahar compared to the average of a champion that wins as much as it loses.

10,000 x (WR - 50%) x PR

This is a great metric for evaluating consistency, even if not for evaluating strength. That's good for our purposes though! So now let's apply this to the past winrates and pickrates of two champions: Volibear and Maokai.

Volibear

10,000 x 8.22% = 822 games appeared in

822 x (55.48% - 50%) = 45.6 games lost to (compared to the average)

Maokai

10,000 x 19.26% = 1926 games appeared in

1926 x (51.83 - 50%) = 35.24 games lost to (compared to the average)

Over 10,000 games, you would lose to Volibear 45 times and lose to Maokai 35 times. This is despite Maokai having a significantly better pickrate.

So while Volibear is picked much less, they are still the superior ban because they have more consistency.

CerealBoxOfDoom1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Aqua Dragon,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=dvEjWF3I,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2016-06-05T13:42:55.813+0000)

Sure. Influence is defined as: How many times you will lose to a champion per 10,000 games compared to the average.

The idea is that in a vacuum (assuming a person doesn't know their own team or even their own champions), we can only rely on statistics to tell us how often the person would lose to a champion compared to the average.

If Malzahar wins 60% of the time, and the player has 10,000 games, then the player will lose to Malz 6,000 times.

If we assume the average winrate is 50%, then we can say a player loses against Malzahar 1,000 more times than the average. We represent that with the equation:

But that's assuming a 100% pickrate isn't it? If we assume something else, like a 40% pickrate, then we get:

This is how often the player loses to Malzahar compared to the average of a champion that wins as much as it loses.

This is a great metric for evaluating consistency, even if not for evaluating strength. That's good for our purposes though! So now let's apply this to the past winrates and pickrates of two champions: Volibear and Maokai.

Over 10,000 games, you would lose to Volibear 45 times and lose to Maokai 35 times. This is despite Maokai having a significantly better pickrate.

So while Volibear is picked much less, they are still the superior ban because they have more consistency.

Lots of reading.

currently looking for the part that shows how peoples own decisions vs fizz

mage update, picks mage, gets countered.

wrong site but weird results

http://champion.gg/champion/Fizz

correct site, what I'm looking for here is probably convoluted and wrong maybe. But look at the site knowing that in the topright corner you can change it to bronze+ or silver+ etc.

http://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/fizz

He's not played mid in the majority of diamond games, I wonder what I'll see if I look at your data again knowing what I see here

BloodyTompon2 votes

Thanks

Kyunsei1 votes

Mathematic is great. but you forget psychological ban.

When Master Yi was OP with the Feral flare, his winrate were insane so it was a good ban mathematically but also psychologically for most players.

BloodyTompon2 votes

Do you do this every patch?

Aqua Dragon1 votes

Yup!

BloodyTompon3 votes

Nice. I'll have to keep a look out.

Vicarious1172 votes

Hey would you look at that, Volibear is in every single fucking tier, AGAIN! But guess what, he still won't be nerfed like almost every other recurring champ on those lists will be! Why? I don't fucking know!

EDIT: Don't mean to down play the post though, this information is absolutely amazing, thanks for posting it :)

Tychusfindlay9192 votes

Can you stop referring to individual champions as "them" or "they"

It really pisses me off...

YJRBqwXJcS2 votes

so fizz was actually a problem?

Only Play Darius1 votes

What is the site?

Aqua Dragon1 votes

http://bestbans.com/ !

Angry Monster1 votes

i am not sure i buy what your site is saying. I have checked some other sites and the data is not matched. I pick volibear for my example cause i actually follow the champ and main him.

from op.gg on volibear Volibear Champion Ban Rate Ranking 23rd (4.12%) on plat and higher

compared to your site data

your stat Volibear 40.22 53.78% 10.63% 10.51% 9.51% your site is saying bane rate of 10%

Something is off, 1% difference could of been written off as margin of error. This a 2.5X difference, way the out side of your source site.

You mixing ban and play rate together is inflating the pick rate number is a way that is misleading, or at least i feel that is.

Why are you not pulling your own data from the riot API? are you a partner with op.gg?

Aqua Dragon1 votes

op.gg is weird; it seems to provide different numbers on the overall statistics page compared to the individual champion pages.

The ban rates with the pick rates provide the most accurate idea of how often a champion is picked when it's not banned.

So for example: let's assume a champion has a 50% banrate and a 20% pickrate.

Out of 10 games, the champion is banned 5 times. (50% banrate) Out of the 5 games not banned, the champion is played two times (20% pickrate)

In other words, when the champion is not banned, they will be picked 2 out of 5 times, which provides us an "Adjusted pickrate" of 40%. This is the "true pickrate" when a ban isn't used on the champion, and is the pickrate you see on all calculations.

The code for the site started off as just a data collector, so we haven't gotten around to making it gather our own individual data yet.

Angry Monster1 votes

The code for the site started off as just a data collector, so we haven't gotten around to making it gather our own individual data yet.

I wish you all the luck with your site. I personally prefer sites to mine the data themselves, it allows me to go to different sites and see what is common and different. I do appreciate the honesty of your site and how it is upfront about what you guys are using. So when you get your own data source going i will look in to your stats then.

The ban rates with the pick rates provide the most accurate idea of how often a champion is picked when it's not banned.

i disagree, most sites do not do what you are doing. You may be trying to do your own thing but it personally feels weird and misleading. It is not intuitive and requires someone to do math to figure out the actual pick rate. It would be one thing if you had pick ban and play, which allow people to see raw numbers and have an idea how the 2 are effecting play. But right now you only give a ban and then force people to remember how you system works.

Report sites should offer all the data they are using in a clear manner. If you are combining stats in some manner you should be informing people what the stats are. No one should have to guess that they are right about your formula. Also users of your site might find an error (so you can correct) if the data is up front. No one is prefect after all.

Again i wish you luck with your project and will be checking in to see how the site develops.

O i looked at personal bans but the data is a little skewed since i only rank for end season rewards. last time i played rank was before the mage update, so it has very little meaningful data. I wish i could comment on this section. I think it is a interesting tool and idea.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

its weird that shen and tf are nowhere on that list.

ive started banning shen recently, simply because it doesnt matter if youre winning lane against him. he tends to fuck over bot lane either way. plus its pretty much impossible to outroam shen with tp.

he ults bot into a 5 man dive, recalls and tps back into lane before you get the chance to deal actual damage to his turret. if you follow his ult with your tp, hes back top far sooner than you are and pushes your turret down. or he just saves his own tp for the next fight on bot when you cant follow.

hes one of the champions whos strong in organized premades. so he surfaces a lot in dynamic que. may just be my personal experience.

honestly, i find it far easier to deal with bruiser fizz or even swain than with shens map presence on almost any top laner.

Aqua Dragon1 votes

Twisted Fate is actually starting to rise up quite rapidly in Diamond, currently in second place. Their influence increases with rankwhich is probably why they don't appear anywhere else.

Shen's influence is fairly mediocre. As annoying as they are, the map awareness they require is probably just too high for most people to abuse enough for a much higher consistency rating.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Aqua Dragon,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=dvEjWF3I,comment-id=00070000,timestamp=2016-06-06T14:39:54.485+0000) Shen's influence is fairly mediocre. As annoying as they are, the map awareness they require is probably just too high for most people to abuse enough for a much higher consistency rating.

this would be true for solo que. but dynamic que with a lot more coordinated 3 and 4 man premades, i think his impact is much larger.

all it takes is the jungler on teamspeak saying "im coming in bot lane"

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