The Urgot Theory

I really like Urgot. He's a good top laner and a strong pick recently. I win most of my lanes and help my team out a lot. He's even seeing a bit of competitive play. Yet through all of this Urgot has been the poster child for a terrible champion. "Why is this?" I asked myself. I started thinking and after a lot of playing Urgot, hearing other peoples oppinions about him, and more thinking I developed a theory and it all comes from the ripple effects of one main factor. Urgot is ugly.

Urgot is a difficult champ to play. He is what I refer to as a “stylistic champ”. Meaning that many people either can be good at him or will never be able to overcome his weaknesses and abuse his strengths fully. They either have a play style that can conform and use Urgot well or they don’t. Other examples of stylistic champs include (IMHO) Udyr and Yasuo. You may disagree about my entire stylistic champs theory and that’s fine, but I digress. I’m here to talk about Urgot.

This does all tie in with my theory about Urgot being hated. It all comes down to Urgot being not popular from the begging of people’s opinions of him because he isn’t visually appealing to most people.

Let me start over with an example. Someone might start playing Zed. They start their first game with him exited to fly all over the map slowing and blowing people up because they saw pros do it. Their first game they will probably not be pulling off professional move though. They might do fine using the tips that they’ve seen from other people or that they’ve been given, but they won’t be the best Zed in the LCS after their first game. They’ve seen pro Zeds, though, and can’t wait to play another game with him and get better.

This is an Example of a popular stylistic champ. Zed is a champion that some, no matter how much they play him, will probably never be quite as good as someone who has the style of play that Zed needs. Even the people that have the style require knowledge and practice to be good. Urgot does not have people playing him much at all. Many people never even try Urgot because he is hated. Urgot is viewed as “trash not meta champ” and thus never played. Let’s look at another person trying out Urgot for the first time rather than Zed.

So the Zed player, eh, let’s call him Joe (Yes, very creative, I know), starts a game as Urgot. He is not quite as exited to play Urgot because he doesn’t really know anything about him. He goes top lane without the knowledge of what pro plays he might accomplish with the champ because he’s never seen pros playing him. He starts the game with low expectations and no motivation to become a good Urgot player. Urgot is trash tier. Even is Joe becomes that best Urgot player in the world he will still not be able to climb to Diamond with that, at least that’s what the meta tells him. So Joe drops a few E/Q combos on the enemy. Fails a few ults and gets himself killed, and overall decides that Urgot really is a terrible champ and never plays another game with him again.

See, the difference is that Joe has seen Zed played. He knows what Zed can do. He knows strategies, build paths and many other important things he doesn’t know about Urgot. His first game with Zed will be better because he’s not going in blind like he is with Urgot. He does mediocre with Zed using the tips he’s picked up but does rather poorly with Urgot because he doesn’t know what to do. He gets better at Zed but quits playing Urgot because he decides that Urgot must be as bad as everyone says.

Joe may go on to main Zed and never know that he could have been just as good at Urgot as with Zed simply because he gave up on Urgot due to the fact that Urgot wasn’t popular and stuck with Zed because he knows Zed is strong. 


I’ll boil it down to a Tl;dr. Urgot is not played much because people assume that he isn’t good because that’s what they’ve been told, that Urgot is ugly and terrible and you should never play him. They keep practicing the champs that are popular because they think they’ll be good at them. They give up on Urgot after the first game because they don’t know how to play him due to the fact that he isn’t played much. That play one game with him, perform poorly because it’s their first game and move on. Whereas, they stick with the popular champ because they did better the first game (they have seen how to play the champ beforehand) and strive to become better because they know that champ is good.

So what do you think about the whole thing? Do you agree? Do you have another theory? Do you just think I'm wrong? Do you think that Urgot is still a trashy champion? Whatever your thoughts are I'd love to hear them.

Anyways thanks for you time if you actually read the whole thing. Have a great day out on the Rift.