After Worlds Champion Analysis A-E

So Worlds just ended and we have a 2014 World Champion for LoL. The 16 teams from across the Globe faced each other over 78 games, over 5 weeks and across different locations in Korea. 8 teams were knocked out in Groups, 4 teams in the quarter finals, 2 teams in the semi finals and finally the winner was crowned in the finals with a 3:1 victory over their opponent.

Samsung White, the 2014 world champions, beat Starhorn Royal Club from China in a best of 5 with a 3:1 victory, losing only the 3rd game against their rivals. Losing only 2 games throughout the whole tournament, 1 against Starhorn Royal Club and the other against Western team TSM in the Quarter Finals, they destroyed all their opponents. Not dropping a single game in the Group Stages, they destroyed all teams in their group, getting out easily.

Their support, Mata, earned MVP with his mechanic and team mentality play that lead his team to victory. There are arguments for all the players earning MVP in this tournament with some of the best play from a team in League of Legends history. With a high arrange of champions that they can play, they were unpredictable in the pick/ban phase of the game. They would bring a new strategy every game and play it to perfection. It was even mentioned that they could of been playing inferior strategies some game to test what they could do, sometimes being exploited for it and sometimes coming out on top.

On to the articles in hand, I'll be demonstrating graphics for every champion in Worlds listing alphabetically. They will describe the pick and ban rate for every champion, the win rates, their most common lane opponents and a team they were played by most on a percentage or a team recognised with that champion. I'll provide a small story behind the champion's success/failure, reasoning for the champions presence and some videos of the champions in action at Worlds. The aim here is to describe the effect of the champions played in the tournament and grant an understanding.

Aatrox was one of two champions in the Worlds tournament that was never picked so in turn, had no win rate. The reason he's involved is the amount of bans Aatrox was involved in during the Group phase of the tournament. Third place EU team, SK Gaming was the reason for this, in particular, Fredy122. SK Gaming didn't have a good time in Worlds. Svenskeren was banned from the tournament for 3 games due to him being offensive in Korean SoloQ. Full report from Riot.They asked Gilius, a coke series Jungler.

SK Gaming were on a down spiral from there. Fredy122 was the shining member of their team eventhough their morale was on such a down low. Nearly every game, apart from 1, SK Gaming's Top laner got all 3 bans from the opposite team. Fredy's Aatrox was feared in the EU LCS splits and was one of his best champions. As one of SK Gaming's best mechanical players and a high proficiency on the champion, the opponent teams generally thought it was better to ban Aatrox out, choosing not to deal with it by doing that.

Fredy122 was the star of the team but he was forced onto some of his weaker (counter)picks so his full potential was never seen. To summarise, the reason Aatrox was involved in Worlds was due to the fact that SK Gaming's Fredy122 had a high proficiency on the champion and as a star member of the team, opponent teams decided that they would ban the champion from his pool so they didn't have to deal with it.

Ahri was insanely popular during Season 3 but due to a small kit change that put more importance into her "Charm", while reducing the base damage and AP ratios of her other abilities. She fell out of strength throughout Season 4 but certain teams kept her in their champion pools. They mostly came from teams in the EU LCS with players like Jezis, Xpeke, and Froggen. As assassins at the end of Season 4 came back into play with the Exhaust buff changes, Ahri became a reasonable pick.

Ahri has a reasonable laning phase with decent harass and possible early crowd control which can lead to kills with team members. Mid Game is where Ahri needs to take advantage of her kit with the strong pick potential due to the insane amount of mobility that Spirit Rush grants her. Ahri was Xpeke's champion choice for beating the infamous Korean team, Samsung Blue during the Groups phase.

Alliance's Froggen seemed to regard the champion highly in their short stay through the tournament. Defeating all of their opponents while he was playing Ahri. She seems to have a good time against AD Melee champions in the Mid lane like Zed and Yasuo. Overall, Ahri seemed to have most of her success with EU mid laners. Korea didn't really see much merit in the champion and the other Region's teams didn't seem as practiced on her as EU. Trending towards the Pick off Strategy that EU teams seems to love, Ahri was successful in these compositions, especially when played by EU players like Xpeke and Froggen.

Akali seems to be a recently discovered OP pick throughout all regions. When she gets rolling and reaches 6, Akali can be one of the hardest champions to deal with in the game. If played against correctly though, you can keep her in check. Locking her down with strong CC and keeping a Vision Ward in their inventory, you can kill her before she gets into the your team. Using the vision ward to keep her in check while she uses her Twilight Shroud.

Akali came out during the Semi-Finals where the two Korean powerhouses clashed against each other. With a load of different picks coming out during that series, Akali was the only successful one to work. Getting a strong early game in which she is weakest helped her dominate the rest of the game with her strong sustained damage that she provides.

Looper got through the Chronoshift and Intervention with ease, destroying the priority targets she needed to jump on. With help from his allies, he was able to get through the rough phase that Akali goes through which is important to help her succeed in a game. To conclude, Samsung Blue and White were trying to bring unconventional picks to throw the other off. Akali was the successful unconventional. Akali is a champion that needs her team to get her through the rough phases of the game. White knew that and worked cohesively to abuse Akali's power and defeat Samsung Blue.

Alistar rose to basically be the new Kassadin of the game when he got his buffs on Patch 4.12. While he got nerfed in Patch 4.15, the Worlds tournament was played on the 4.14 patch. Alistar was a scary option to deal with for any team during Worlds, so every team basically decided to not deal with it at some point. Alistar was involved in 100% of the games during the tournament.

Only picked in 5 games and banned in the other 73 games, Alistar was highly regarded. In the 5 games he was left open, he won 4 of them. In the one game where he lost, it was a David and Goliath game, this time Goliath didn't feel like going easy on David though. In that game, Imp got his first pentakill out of 2 throughout the tournament. In the 4 other games, he was played as a Top laner 3 times and as a Support once. With the insane stats he gets from his kit and disruption tools, Alistar is insanely hard to deal with. On the top lane he dealt with opposing super tank, Dr.Mundo which you can see would of been exceptionally boring.

Tank vs Tank. The other being super late game scaler Ryze in which Alistar can have a hard time dealing with due to his range and early harass. Overall, Alistar was the hardest to deal with champion throughout Worlds. His kit was too much to deal with and teams didn't want deal with it, so it was banned nearly every game. Rito nerfed him by taking out the automated auto attack after Headbutt was used. He's still a beast of a tank on the current patch, but he has a harder time of landing and keeping damage on his enemy.

Blitzcrank was picked by one player and 1 team during the whole of the Worlds tournament in the group stages. Ahq's Greentea found that using Blitzcrank was a champion that he could use and abuse to grab champions out of position and destroy them before they could have any effect in team fights.

Blitzcrank is one of the scariest level 1 opponents with his Rocket Grab and with well use usage of his skillshots, Blitzcrank can determine games. He can pick off enemies in the middle of team fights, in unexpecting places on the map and from under turrets and other objectives. That is the sole goal in the champion.

To be off any use in a team composition, he needs to land Rocket Grabs. With no close team fight potential apart from the small AOE damage silence that he gets from his ult, Blitzcrank is useless in large ongoing fights. Blitzcrank's aim is to bring in a priority target from the midst of the team and make it easy for his team to destroy the target so they're out of the fight. This pick in Worlds from a team which no one expected to make through Group Stages actually makes sense when putting it into reason.

By completely disabling a champion, they could force 4 v 5s a lot and run them over in pure number. Unfortunately, Greentea was forced to play against Threshs every time he was picked. With a well positioned Dark Passage, Thresh can pull the grabbed enemy from the midst of their enemies and save them. Alongside the fact Ahq were playing against monster enemies in Worlds, winners Samsung White and China's #1 seed EDG, the teams used their mechanical prowess and knowledge of the game to out manoeuvre Blitzcrank's singular play style.

Braum had varied success in the Worlds tournament. Coming out with winning half and losing half of his games. Janna and Thresh reigned as the Support King and Queen this tournament but Braum was one of the more successful supports when considering everyone apart from them 2. The game where you could see Braum's strengths was in the third game of the Finals with Samsung White battling against Starhorn Royal Club. The pick on its own made Imp, White's ADC, not play one of his best and favourite champions, Twitch.

Braum, like Yasuo, is strong against champions where they have a lot of directional damage and is integral to their success. Twitch is a prime example. Twitch's Rat-a-tat-tat is a directional piercing auto attack that goes double Twitch's normal attack range and hits enemies behind the intended target as well as the original. Twitch has some of the strongest 1 v 1 potential in the game, great pick potential and mass AOE damage. Braum can basically negate all of that with a good positioning of his Unbreakable.

In terms of Worlds, Braum was well used when trying to throw players of significant champions. With some strong resilience and amazing team fight potential, he can be a scary threat. Janna and Thresh. his most common lane opponents can actually deal with Braum easily as they have both have tools like better engage and effective disengage to deal with Braum. I've linked below a video of the third game played in the Worlds Finals to show you how Royal Club used Braum to defeat Samsung White.

Caitlyn was picked by one player during Worlds in the Group Stages of the tournament. Uzi from Royal Club used Caitlyns strengths through his matches to objectively control games. Before Lucian arrived, Caitlyn was basically the best ADC as she could win the laning phase easily, be great in both offensive/defensive siege situations and scaled really well into the late game. Currently, she's used primarily for her range to rotate around the map and destroy objectives from a safe range while doing it quickly.

At Worlds, we saw Uzi playing Caitlyn for the reasons mentioned above. He rotated effectively around the map to destroy turrets from the safe perimeter of her 650 range. That is her advantage at killing turrets which you could say is why she's the best at it. While champions like Jinx who have good objective destruction are also prominent with her attack speed steroid she gets from her Switcheroo, she has to be in 550 range of the turret which can make her vulnerable to enemy champions.

Caitlyn can stand 100 more range away from that and while she might not do it as quick, she gets it done more efficiently as its harder to catch her out of position. Caitlyn is also very team orientated based and needs to have the right allies to succeed. For example in the 2 games she was picked in the tournament. The mid lane and support was the changes in champions for both games and it showed. In one game, Uzi had Nami support and Orianna Mid which both work well to peel enemies away and increase her damage output. In the other game, he was allied with Janna and Fizz.

Janna is fine as she doesnt really have any bad synergies but the Fizz didn't make sense with Caitlyn. Cait is all about sieging quickly and whittling the enemy health bars down a little bit at a time. Fizz on the other hand is about going all in on one champion and picking champions off across the map. If maybe a Xerath or an Orianna was picked, I feel the match would of went differently.

Corki has always been an interesting form of ADC as his kit doesnt shout out that role. He's really hard to itemize against due to the mixed damage he puts out. With nearly all of his abilities dealing magic damage and having a portion of his attack damage on auto attacks dealing true damage, building armour can actually have the opposite intended effect. Najin White Shield's Zefa used Corki's interesting kit more than any other team during Worlds as his kit suited their play style more.

Corki has a reasonable laning phase and a reasonable late game as his damage needs 1 built item to start being strong. In the late game, his lack of auto attack damage makes him pale in comparison to champions like Tristana and Kog'Maw though. Corki hits his power spike in the mid game where he has his level 6 ultimate unlocked and has Trinity Force built. Around that point in the game, if the Corki can land all of his spells, any ADC has a hard time 1 v 1 against him. He can destroy and burst any other ADC in the game at that point.

Objectively, he can use his ultimate and Q ability to poke his enemy down behind the turret and force them back so he can then weave his auto attacks in between his spells to quickly take down turrets and other objectives. At Worlds, we saw this mainly by Najin's Zefa. He played the champion beautifully, understanding the restrictions and power spikes of the champion and destroyed multiple enemies he had to face.

Corki is really good at team fighting when his team has hard crowd control as he can capitalise on the lock down and burst the enemy down quickly. So hes reasonably good at all aspects of the game in regards to subjects such as sieging, pick potential etc. He just isn't the best at all of them so hes like a Jack of all Trades. The strongest part of Corki's kit is how hard it to build against nature. As his kit makes him this way, he can make it hard for players to decide their build path.

Dr.Mundo has always been present in the meta since the beginning. He was number one choice alongside Shyvana and Renekton at the beginning of the season and as it developed, with nerfs to his kit and masteries, he fell out of favour a little. He's still one of, if not the strongest, scaling tank in the game with items as he becomes insanely hard to deal with as a brick wall for his team. At Worlds, we saw Mundo when teams needed that brick wall to soak in all the damage the enemy team had. SK Gaming were unfortunately made to make Fredy122 play Mundo in nearly all of their games with the amount of bans aimed at him in the top lane.

His win rate in the tournament depicts how weak he is against some of the picks currently strong right now. With AP top laners coming out again like Ryze and Rumble, Mundo can itemize for them in the late game but due to either range or just pure damage, Mundo has a hard time in the early laning phase. The team needs to get Mundo through his weak laning phase and not particularly strong mid game. He needs 3-4 items before he becomes a terror to deal with as he runs to the back line, regenerating all of his health and knocking their health down with increased attack damage, percentage health on cleaver and AOE burn. If the enemy jungler just camps him though and delays that from happening, Mundo can become useless.

Fredy122 was forced onto this champion consistently during the Groups Stages as his other champions were banned out. He actually carried as Mundo in a lot of the games and was the only one doing well on his team, but that isn't enough in the end really. The only win came in the Semi Finals as Starhorn Royal Club faced OMG. Cola was able to tank all the damage alongside the Lulu mid lane pick for the 2 carries of his team, Uzi and Insec in the late game team fights. Understanding that Mundo excels in the late game team fights with 3-5 items really helped them succeed in that game.

Elise used to be insanely powerful ages ago in the season. She then had nerfs hit her hard in patch 4.4 which reduced the base damage on both forms of her Q, reduced her effectiveness in clearing the jungle and overall reduced her early game. She was buffed to scale in the late game with her utility but overall the pick became a lot weaker. She then had more nerfs hit her as the season went on which made Elise eventually a situational pick, not a priority pick.

Champions like Kha'Zix, Lee Sin and Rengar you see more of recently due to their specific skill sets being relevant at all points in the game. Elise played in a similar fashion to Lee Sin by ganking prominently during the laning phase with her high burst damage and crowd control then scaling into the late game as a tank. As the season developed and nerfs hit her, she had to start building more AP into her kit as she wasn't doing anything in the early to mid game in terms of damage.

Elise still has strong single target crowd control, especially when combined with champions like Ahri, Morgana and Thresh. She has become very team dependant though and needs her allied champions to synergize with her to succeed. Through Worlds we seen a reasonable amount of Elise and feel like this was for 1 reason. For the amount of familiarity players had on her. Players would of picked her throughout their seasons and so had a degree of skill on her. When priority champions were banned out, they had her for back up. Her win rate and low ban rate shows how much the pick has weakened through Season 4 and is now way near as dominant as it used to be.

Evelynn like Elise used to be a ridiculously strong pick (hated the champion) as she put so much pressure on the map by doing nothing, had really good jungle clear and had reasonably strong ganks in the early laning phase. Evelynn through Season 4 was built more to be an AD hybrid tank due to the ridiculous amount of mixed AD/AP damage she does in her kit, scaling of both as well. As she had a few tweaks changed on her kit overall ending up with the champion having no relevant place in the game. At Worlds she was picked in 2 games overall.

It was actually the Chinese teams that saw the pick as being at least good. Both OMG and EDG picked Evelynn in 1 of their games and won both of them. Evelynn with nerfs still has insane map pressure as it's really hard to pinpoint her on the map due to the stealth passive she has in her kit. Not knowing where the enemy jungler is can make players play very cautiously and have to play differently than they normally would. This normally leads into more investment in wards around the map and due to the fact that she only revels herself in the jungle when she's attacking camps, you need to put yourself in danger to ward effectively against her. This is all caused from Evelynn's passive alone.

In the Worlds Group stages where OMG played Evelynn against Fnatic, the strong early laners she had on her team and 1 item scaling made it so she could gank easily during the early -mid part of the game. The in the later team fights, she could rely on the scaling of her allies to deal damage while she landed strong AOE slows with her ult and soaked up as much damage as she could. Strong early pressure and reasonably effective late game tank scaling in team fights is where Evelynn lies now. Just lacks in the damage department so it can be said that Eve is weaker than other jungle choices.

Ezreal is a champion in nearly every ADC's arsenal of choices but never seems to be strong enough. He has some good poke throughout the game as long as he can land his abilities and can siege reasonably effectively with his 2 attack speed steroids. He's also the safest ADC in the game when you take into account the distance he can cover with Arcane Shift and its relatively low cooldown. His main problem is his lack of damage and continuous amount of bad match ups he has in his role.

As you can see, Ezreal didn't win either of the games he was played during the tournament. The teams who picked him were the teams said to be going out of the tournament so that could be the link but there was one game where two lower of the pack teams faced and the Ezreal pick up still lost. In both games him and his team both fell behind so Ezreal basically doesnt become present apart from clearing waves around the map and every now and then hitting people with his small amount of harass. The pick was reasonable in the pick/ban phase as he was trying to have a champion who could escape all the crowd control from champions like Janna, Thresh, Alistar and Kha'Zix.

By having the Arcane Shift up, he could easily avoid the damage and escape possible death. In the end though, the fact he fell behind his enemy laner and the rest of his team couldn't pick up any of the slack made it so Ezreal puts out no real consistent damage or burst to destroy any opponent champions. The reason for picking Ezreal right now is heavily overpowered by the reasons to pick other champions so unless he receives some buff or changes, you won't see Ezreal be a consistently prominent champion in any region.

"Continuing on with F onwards on a second article"