LoL Worlds 2019 Meta report: Group Stage edition

Worlds 2019 Group Stage kicks off soon and the champions brought to battle are on everyone’s mind. So far in the Play-In stage, 80 unique picks were present in just 43 games.

Even so, the most important picks still dominate the meta. Pantheon was banned for 42 of the 43 games and is the only champion with 100 percent Pick and Ban rate (PB) presence.

Right behind him is Syndra with 95.3 percent presence. Syndra takes on the role of a flex pick between mid and bot lane, making her incredibly valuable. Xayah and Qiyana both have 88.4 percent presence. Qiyana is also the second most banned champion after Pantheon, removed in 30 out of 43 games. Other than those four outliers, there is a lot of diversity among lanes.

Top Lane Turbulence

Top lane boasts 25 picks within the role. While Gangplank sees the most presence at 65.1 percent, Gnar won seven out of ten games he’s played.

Top lane is seemingly full of lane bullies, with Renekton, Kennen, and even Tristana having multiple games between them. As for bruisers, Camille, Kled, Aatrox, and Irelia all have at least 3 games played.

Overall, top lane is currently a heavy counter pick lane where certain matchups are heavily punished.

A Jumbled Jungle Pool

Jungle has 18 unique picks with a healthy spread over the top eight. Though Lee Sin has the most games played, 16 with a 68.8 percent win rate, Gragas is the true king of the jungle. Gragas shows the highest presence of a mostly jungle champion at 60.5 percent and boasts a win rate of 83.3 percent when picked there.

Qiyana enters as a mid/jungle flex pick, so her presence is naturally boosted. When she did go to the jungle, she won three out of five games.

When the mainstays are off the table, Elise, Rek’sai, Jarvan IV, and Nocturne get at least seven picks each. Their win rates are all average, hovering between 40 to 60 percent (except for Nocturne at 28.6 percent).

A Multitude of Mid Laners

The award for most unique picks goes to mid lane at 26. As expected, most champions are picked one to three times.

The real big players besides Syndra and Qiyana are the assassin pair of Akali and LeBlanc. LeBlanc has a 65.1 percent presence with 17 bans while Akali is let through more often. Despite the popularity of these two, their win rates don’t reflect it.

Akali sits at 41.7 percent and LeBlanc at 36.4 percent. Many wins in mid come from less popular picks, such as Tristana and Kayle who each have won both games they’ve been played. While Kayle is more of a Twisted Fate counter pick (who has 6 games played of his own), there are many underutilized mid lane picks that we could see in groups.

Bottom Lane Blandness

As for the bottom lane, both ADC and support lack diversity across the board.

Xayah and Kaisa alone account for half of all ADC picks, while Rakan and Thresh do the same for support. There have been mages spotted in the bottom lane such as Syndra when she’s open.

When initial options are removed, Ezreal, Lucian, and Ashe are all fine substitutes. For support players, engage is the name of the game. Aside from Rakan and Thresh, Nautilus and Leona have also appeared frequently.

Since bottom lane is fairly straightforward in terms of picks, there are no real win rate outliers to be found.

While we can speculate, no one really knows for sure what each team will roll out onto the rift with. One of the most interesting parts of month-long tournaments like Worlds is watching the meta evolve as the event goes on. Group Stage begins on October 12 at 7:30 a.m. EST. Be sure to tune in to watch all of the latest developments.

Written by Zakaria Almughrabi