How Much Does
Champ Select Matter?
An Exploration of Champion Data at
the League of Legends World Championship
What is Worlds?
Throughout the League of Legends Esports scene, Worlds is the penultimate competitive tournament of the year. This annual tournament brings the best teams from around the world to compete in a multi-staged gauntlet to crown a world champion.
What are Champions?
Champions are the playable characters in League of Legends. Of the 169 champions in the game, teams draft their champions to ban 5 and select 5 for every match. These drafts crucial for success since they give you an in-game advantage through strategic counter-picks or mechanical comfort depending on the player.
What is the Goal?
This exploration aims to identify trends and community myths surrounding the selection of these champions and analyzing some of their performance metrics across years of Worlds competition. From presence rates to flexing across roles, there are many different champion statistics to reveal among the champion data.
Exploration 1: Are Newer Champions Must-Pick?
Since Worlds 2016, there have been 36 new champions added to League of Legends. However, how often do they appear in Worlds following their release? Are they always over-tuned and must be played? This tool aims to filter and visualize newer champions playable during that year of international competition.
Filter by year and role, and highlight champions using a tokenized search box. Click on suggestions to add them, and use the 'x' to remove.
Exploration 2: How Do Balance Patches Affect Champions Selected?
League of Legends is a constantly changing game. From new champion reworks to item changes, there are many numbers being adjusted in an effort to balance the game. This visualization showcases how balance changes to champions during the World's patch affects their tournament statistics.
Same highlighting feature as above. Add or remove highlighted champions at will.
Exploration 3: Discover Your Own Trends!
With all of the champion data collected, filter control the visualization and discover your own Patterns within the Worlds data! How did flexible champions perform across different roles? Which champions get the most kills / deaths? How well did you favourite champion perform across the years?
Now the metric selected filters champions by a threshold. Select Presence or Winrate and move the slider to show only champions above that threshold. Search a champion by name to filter further.
Filter Options
2016 2024
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