After Worlds Champion Analysis F-K

Part 2

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, one against Starhorn Royal Club and the other against Western team TSM in the Quarter Finals, they destroyed all other opponents. Not dropping a single game in the Group Stages, they beat all teams in their group, getting out easily.

Their support Mata earned MVP with his mechanics 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 plays from a team in League of Legends history. With a large selection 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 have been playing inferior strategies some games to test what they could do, sometimes being exploited for it and sometimes coming out on top.

On to the article in hand, I'll be demonstrating graphics for every champion in Worlds listed 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 champion's 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.

Fiddlesticks was played in one game during the whole of the Worlds tournament. Played in the Chinese all battle royale that was played during the Semi-Finals stages. Starhorn Royal Club's Insec played the terror that is Fiddlesticks against OMG. Played in the third game of the series, Insec surprised his opponents from 100-0 across the map with the terrifying champion scarecrow.

The composition played by Starhorn Royal Club suited the champion's play style incredibly well and suited the method of play that OMG were good at. With Orianna and Twitch for his Mid lane and ADC, the AOE damage from the champions alone can reduce the health bars of any enemy champions in their path in around 1-5 seconds. They also had Janna and Maokai for a Support and Top laner, granting them a method of effective disengage and a reduction of the enemy's damage by a percentage with Maokai.

Their composition worked with Fiddlesticks surprising the enemies from unwarded environments, killing numerous enemies and taking objectives after. Insec used this amazingly in multiple instances where he would catch multiple enemies with Crowstorm and decimate their health bars. Here's a video showing this:

Fizz increased in popularity as assassins became relevant again during the last few patches. With some strong single target burst, cc and mobility, he can be hard a champion to deal with. The fact that he can be invulnerable for a period of time and dodge potentially fatal abilities can be insanely annoying and life saving. In terms of comparison, Fizz could be counted as the best AP assassin in the game when you compare him to rivals like Ahri and Akali.

Fizz has a weak laning phase and can have trouble against some of the long ranged mages that he faces in the mid lane. Especially champions with a high amount of crowd control like Lissandra, he can be reduced to nothing if bursted quickly. Fnatic displayed that match up during Worlds as they faced LMQ in the Group Stages. Like other assassins, Fizz needs help in his transition to the later stages of the game so that he doesn't fall too far behind. Good warding to get unexpected picks of the enemy alongside allied champions who can defend against sieges effectively due to his lack of ability at that process.

His win rate actually finished in the negative regions due to the fact that multiple teams knew how to control him so that his late game didnt become too monstrous. LMQ was put into this graphic as they were by percentage the team that picked Fizz the most in their games. Fizz was played by all regions though, through his high burst, out-playability and mobility across the map, there was a chance teams could dictate the game through that champion pick alone.

Galio was thrown into the Semi-Finals series where the Korean powerhouses faced off against each other. We saw a few times the teams choose unconventional picks to throw each other off track. Galio was 1 of 3 picks played during this series. Played by Acorn, he played it against the dominant top lane champion Maokai to try and counter his abilities. By playing Galio, he could force the enemy team to deal with him like Maokai does with his kit. The only problem was, is that the choice of the Galio didn't succeed.

It did look like Samsung Blue were going to do well in this game as they got a very early kill on Dandy, Samsung White's Jungler. It even got on Ryze, the scaling mana mage who just wrecks in the late game. The main reason I believe the pick didn't work in this draft was because a high percent of the damage being dealt was AD. Galio's main strength is to build magic resist so he gets a quantity of ability power in return with his passive. Galio then fell behind a bit later into the game though as dragon agro was controlled really badly and he died to Jayce and Dragon damage, giving a free kill to Jayce. He then didn't get the Idol of Durand off on priority targets and didn't force anyone to put the damage onto him.

Overall the pick didn't work for the composition it was against in terms of what damage was being dealt, Acorn seemed to not be too proficient on the champion and his team didn't know how to react and interact with the oddball pick.

Gragas didn't have much involvement in the Worlds tournament which is surprising when considering his popularity a bit before the tournament. After having his kit changed in the mid season, Gragas became either a strong bursty top laner or a tanky disruptor. Gragas had no teams pick him during the tournament, he was only involved in 1 game where OMG banned him in the Group stages against Fnatic.

SOAZ was a reasonably good Gragas during the Summer split but it was never anything special as he seemed to be not doing as well this year. We actually don't know why OMG banned Gragas against Fnatic as it wasn't a standard ban and there were higher priority bans like Zilean on the field. There are two reasons for maybe why it was banned. One, OMG knew something about Fnatic from scrims that lead to a Gragas ban. Secondly, it could of have been used as a throw out ban to leave more of the strong picks open so they got a really strong pick which they could then build their composition around. There are multiple reasons for that ban and if it was or wasn't something that helped them win, they succeeded in winning that game.

Graves has never been a particularly strong ADC champion as he is lacking in a few areas. He has some strong burst potential as his kit defines him to play in that style of way. He also has reasonable AOE so he can hit multiple enemies in fights. With that though, he has to use his mobility tool offensively which can put him in a volatile situations. His lack of siege also hinders him as his attack range and lack of long ranged abilities makes him weak for objective destruction.

Graves fits in compositions that are all about brawling and fighting across the map. Catching targets in locations and destroying them quickly with CC and burst damage. He goes well with champions like Janna and Nami as he gets damage buffs to amplify his damage on a single target. He actually combos well with the more unpopular and unconventional supports like Blitzcrank and Leona as they match the focus of Graves, "to go in".

We saw this pairing the Group Stages as Graves/Leona was played by Ahq's bottom lane in their win against Dark Passage. Catching people across the map with other champions like Twisted Fate helped them get through the early-mid game smoothly and destroy their opponents in the late game.

Irelia was seen half way through the season when scaling fighters on the top lane were getting strong. With champions like Jax ruling the top lane for a little while with his insane scaling and damage, Irelia found her place as a strong mid game fighter who pulled out a lot of damage in that time frame and then built into tank stats. She kept with the meta and while not as dominant, has the potential to carry games on her back.

"Better Nerf Irelia". We all know the famous quote that was used when Riot couldn't seem to get the champion in the right place and was being changed continuously, a bit like how Kassadin was during this season. Her true damage on auto hit can make Irelia pierce through any opponent she faces and if she gets going, can annihilate targets. Wickd from Alliance, previously Evil Geniuses, previously CLG.eu, was known for his Irelia play and a signature champions of his. A priority ban on his head in some games as while he wasn't the most consistent and dominant top laner, other players would have a hard time when facing his Irelia in lane.

Irelia works in compositions that hit power spikes in the mid game. Champions like Corki and Ahri synergise with her as they can put out a lot of damage at this point in the game. Players at Worlds seemed to succeed in utilising Irelia's mid game damage spike to destroy carries and objectives then build into a tank fighter in the late game.

Janna was the expected hot pick of Worlds and while we didn't see much of Janna through the Summer splits in regions, we saw her a tremendous amount at Worlds. After Gorilla from Najin White Shield brought out the champion at the end of the Korean season, analysts like Montecristo thought that Janna would be the new champion to be brought out at Worlds.

Janna's main traits are the disengage tools she offers in her hit. With Howling Gale's possible knock-up on multiple enemies and Zephyr's ability to slow down one opposing champion, they can peel efficiently. The main tool she has for disengage is her ultimate, Monsoon. She casts the ability which will then knock away all opposing units in a radius and heal allies that are in the area. She has offensive options in being able to knock people up and slow them, but her kit shouts out disengage.

Janna, alongside Thresh, was a highly contestable pick in the bot lane as a lot of teams were starting to play assassins in the Mid lane and Jungle. Janna is really strong against these type of champions as she can just knock them away instantly. I think all teams played Janna at some point in their tournament stay but I'd say the strongest Janna player was Samsung White's Mata.

At Worlds, teams would utilise her AD damage buff granted by the shield which would help her ADC trade more efficiently while taking minimal damage. Then as the game progressed, Jannas would use their kit to disengage effectively in team fights, peeling the front line away from the priority targets on her team. Overall, the pick was successful throughout the tournament as shown through the stats. With her large pick rate into the high win rate, Janna was the Worlds pick that came out on top.

Jarvan IV has made a comeback over the last season as his potential opponents became weaker and the comparison between him and other champions isn't as much. With the small nerf he got to his E-Q combo by lessening the width in which he could cast it and the length he could go, Jarvan became a nonexistent pick at the end of season 3. He's made a small resurgence recently and was seen at Worlds in a few games.

Jarvan excels in a lot of situations and has many strengths which people can abuse. Jarvan has one of the strongest early games in the game with what his kit gives him. With just his passive, Q and E abilities he's given a strong knock up on potentially multiple targets. He grants a small attack speed aura with his Demacian standard meaning he can get more auto attacks off in a duel. He has long range harass with his Q and has percentage health damage from his passive which procs on the first hit of a unit/champion. So he has some strong damage in the early game.

In the later game fights, Jarvan excels at team fighting and initiating fights with his Cataclysm. He can block numerous enemies into a close confined area and force them to either use summoner spells or make it so his team can pick off multiple champions quickly. At Worlds, we expected Chinese teams like OMG and Royal Club to utilise the champion's strength as they love forcing team fights. He didn't appear to have much overall success though as his win rate shows. Picks like Lee Sin, Kha'Zix and Rengar just appeared to dominate and other picks didnt fare off too well.

Jayce became unseen in Season 4 as they changed Tear of the Goddess to not stack as efficiently and make it so the Transformation ultimate he has between the hammer and cannon didnt count towards stacks. This made it so it took too long for Jayce to get to a strong point in the mid game where he excels at damage on a target and sieging with his abilities. At Worlds, Jayce became the unexpected pick to come out with champions like Janna. The champion began his resurgence in the early group stages as Dark Passage faced off against EDG.

In the early stages of the tournament, Jayce had a relatively weak showing. It wasn't until the later phases of the tournament that he rose to dominance and became a hard to deal with champion. Jayce does exceedingly well in 1 vs 1 situations as he has potentially 6 spells that he can cast on one target. With Shockblast into Acceleration Gate that is then followed up by an all in from his Q-W-E abilities in hammer form, he can knock a few health bars off a target champion.

His laning phase is reasonably strong as he can trade and farm effectively. Then in the mid and late game, his burst picks up a lot of strength alongside his siege on turrets and other objectives. With the small attack speed steroid he gets and long range damage, he can push turrets quickly and push enemy champions off with ease. At Worlds, we saw Jayce have reasonable success in the Semi-Finals and Finals of the tournament. He started to come on equal terms with other champions like Syndra and Zed. Mid lane players utilised his strong long ranged damage, 1 on 1 potential and quick siege to out rotate and kill enemy champions

Jinx was a dominant pick in the West at the beginning of the season due to the amount of damage her Zap! was doing and how easily it was to navigate her damage with Switcheroo. Combined with champions like Annie, Jinx could blow up one or two opponents quickly with her mass AOE damage. Jinx after nerfs became a late game scaling ADC who excels in rotating for objectives around the map. With her Switcheroo Minigun form, she can annihilate turrets with immense speed and quickly escape with "Get Excited".

So throughout the season, Jinx has received nerfs and compensations to reduce her impact from what it was at the beginning of the season. Reducing the overall damage that Zap! does on a target and reducing the impact that her Flame Chompers can have. This doesn't mean she isn't useful in any manner of way though. She has a reasonably strong early game as she can use her Switcheroo to harass, push and farm efficiently. She needs her support to do well in some match ups but that's the situation a lot of the time anyways.

In the mid game, she's all about rotating around the map and using her strong AOE and pushing power to output a lot of damage in team fights and destroy objectives like turrets and dragon. Then in the late game as a strong scaling champion, she follows the same objectives but at this point she has a higher damage output, so does it better. The player needs to have really good positioning though as if he/she gets caught out, she can have a hard time dealing with front line champions.

Through Worlds, we saw a priority in the Jinx pick against Kabum E-Sports. Minerva has 5 out of his 6 games involved with the champion, either the enemy team banning it from him or him picking it. Some teams mostly decided they didn't want him on a proficient champion so forced him to pick another ADC. When he got the champions, he lost one game against Cloud 9 but prevented EU super team from having a plausible change of getting into the Quarter Finals by defeating them.

Kassadin, the champion we all love and recognise as the purple demon who ruined all of our games if he wasn't banned. As a champion of much debate and changes through Season 4 due to his oppressive kit with Riot, we've seen multiple instances of his kit. Eventually after multiple tweaks, they refined his kit to become efficiently bearable and have enough impact to still be present as a champion in the meta.

We've seen many iterations of Kassadin throughout the years, the more famous of the players being xPeke from Fnatic as he backdoored SK Gaming and destroyed the nexus solo. That play defined him as a player and defined the backdoor move through the games to occur after. Kassadin is now seen as a hybrid laner who can work in multiple lanes. Still a solo laner, he works to scale up into the late game where he becomes an incredibly mobile champion who can destroy squishy champions on the back line. He still has a weak laning phase and needs assistance to get him through the rough stages of the game. Then after he reaches 6, he needs to start putting pressure in his lane and using his exceptional mobility to put pressure on other lanes in the map.

On the top lane and mid lane he can do this. On the top lane he can use his teleport to gank other lanes or take objectives scattered among the map. In the mid lane, due to the position of the lane, he can easily navigate himself around the map well to gank other lanes. Successful teams at Worlds worked around his weak early kit to help him through the early phases of the game. Then they used his increased mobility to put pressure all over the map which would then work into him destroying weak champions on the back line easily. While the champion was half and half in terms of success, you could define the good Kassadin teams from the bad Kassadin teams at the tournament.

Katarina was an unexpected pick to come out of Worlds. The champion has a lot of weaknesses that teams can exploit effectively and reduce her impact on a game to a bare minimal. While it was unconventional and a pick that probably shouldn't work, in the right player's hands, with a correct team and thought about opponents, she can be successful. Samsung White delivered this champion to have a 100% win rate in the one game it was played at Group stages against Ahq E-Sports Club.

Katarina excels in team fights and depending on the opposing champion, in 1 v1 scenarios. She loses a lot of matchups where hard crowd control can disable her abilities. Older champions like Cho'Gath and Malzahar have been classed as dominant picks over the champion. In team fights, her goal is to clean up the left-overs with her insane mobility and strong AOE damage on multiple enemies. The problem is that a lot of relevant champions right now have some form of disruption to destroy that potential damage. In her single Worlds game, the pick made sense in the composition but her lane opponent made the pick confusing.

Twisted Fate has an easy time in stopping her mobility as he can just use the stun from his "Pick a Card" and stop her in her tracks. But as the match up was Korean World Champions SSW against Taiwanese Ahq e-sports, Pawn could make it work in his favour by being intellectually and mechanically better as a player in his lane. The reason Katarina worked in that composition though was due to the fact that the composition seemed to be all about fighting. With two champions who could reset and champions with multiple movement tools, Katarina fitted the "we need to fight everywhere on the map to win" goal. They would ward the map to know all their enemy's movements, then force fights. They would aim to have more deaths on the enemy side compared to theirs and destroy objectives to slowly but surely destroy the nexus with overwhelming numbers.

Kayle has jumped through the metas and the seasons as she's been changed in multiple instances and has been seen in multiple roles across Summoner's Rift. At Worlds, we saw Kayle against different opponents on the top lane. Kicked out of the mid lane as the season developed, Kayle jumped up on the map to be a different form of champion. We didn't just see Kayle in the top lane though. One player used her kit in a different manner. nRated used his pocket pick once as a support Kayle player. Unfortunately the game was a loss, but it was interesting to watch.

Kayle is actually reasonably strong throughout the game but hits power spikes at certain levels. As Kayle was progressively used in every region throughout their seasons, people started to abused her play style and take advantage of cooldowns. With her nerfs and compensations, Kayle was taken out of the mid lane as she wasn't dealing enough damage anymore. The nerfs to Lich Bane didnt help this fact either. The next time we saw Kayle, she was being played on the top lane, being used as premier lane bully who had reasonable follow up for ganks, mid game team fight potential on objectives like dragon with TP and then become a late game damage dealer. Intervention at all points in this game when it's unlocked, has the potential to change bad fights around very quickly and abuse beneficial scenarios.

At Worlds, we saw Kayle being played by multiple top lane players. Due to everyone's knowledge of the champion, I feel the pick was easily navigated around, in a similar way people can work around Lulu now a days. Still, exceedingly experienced players could utilise the champion's lane bully kit efficiently. Then in the mid and late game, teleport into essential fights and destroy opponents in front of her. Using Intervention to change fights and make it so her team comes out the strongest.

Kha'Zix was a highly contested pick at Worlds. Hell, he's been a highly contested pick all season. We saw high damage isolation Kha'Zix at the beginning of the season, which then evolved into tanky invisible Kha'Zix which was frustrating to deal with as he was damaging and tanky at the same time. Then in the final change, they made it so he had more sustained poke with his W. At Worlds, teams would fight over the champion to have his assassination tools in their composition.

Kha'Zix as an ending statistic had a negative win ratio. When you take into account how much Kha'Zix was played, you could say that this is one of the worst comparative stats to have appeared. You see this a lot with over-used champions. Teams and players alike will get used to the champion. The difference in how the pick works is how the player utilises the champion and how much he/she understands the champion's kit. Kha'Zix's main strength is that he stays relevant throughout the whole game in multiple different manners. He has an exceptional amount of mobility, relevant damage, the potential to get out of hand, long range harass, a way to stealth himself away from a situation and finally, has RELEVANT damage.

The fact that he fits into multiple compositions as well defines the champion. In pick compositions, he can burst people, in team fights, he has a way to reach the back line, in sieging, he can aggress and defend against them. He's a really efficient multi functional champion. Teams at Worlds knew this and saw the priority as jungler. In picks and ban phases, teams wouldn't be able to figure out anything about what strategy they're going for so no penalities would occur from picking him first. The main reason he got the negative win ratio at the end was due to the familiarity players had on the champion. As champions like Rengar established themselves and Lee Sin saw a small resurgence in his strength of play, Kha'Zix had a reduced effect as the pick was played more and more.

Kog'Maw is a scary champion if on the correct player and not abused for his lack of mobility. While Lucian and Tristana reigned supreme throughout Worlds, Kog'Maw was still a pick that some players kept in their champion list. We saw a lot of Kog'Maw play during the end of the split in every region, but with some small nerfs to his kit, his damage at time frames in the game was heavily reduced. Resulting in a smaller seeing of the champion during the tournament.

Tabzz from Alliance utilised the champions more than any other team's ADC during the tournament in terms of percentage amount. Facing mainly enemy Lucians and Tristanas. So Kog'Maw can have an easy time or hard time during the laning phase and it's mostly dependant on the support he's paired with. With supports like Nami, you play the exceptionally annoying bully lane where you force the enemy to lose lane unless they play exceptionally safe. Allied with all-in champions such as Thresh, you utilise the fact that he grants you a mobility tool and a way of piling all your damage onto the enemy with CC.

Overall, Kog'Maw has an average laning phase that's dependant on the champion he's facing. If he can take advantage of the attack range buff he gets, then Kog'Maw can win match ups. When champions like Caitlyn and Ashe can still out range him, then it becomes a little harder. At 6, he's granted even more poke and can deal a lot of damage on one or two targets very easily from a large distance. Then as he gets items and scales harder into the game, with his attack range, built-in armor/magic pen, away of face checking bushes easily and in built percentage health damage, he can become very strong.

Teams need to remember his exceptional lack of mobility and if caught, he's basically dead unless all allies go into peel mode. I feel his reduced win rate stems down to the small nerfs he got and the rise of champions like Tristana who scales better. The little bug has a hard time right now as assassins have become relevant again as well. They have a really easy time of getting to the back line and with no mobility, he gets blown up relatively quickly.