Did champion priority shift as Worlds 2017 continued?

By William Dinh

A few weeks ago I did a quick interview with two of my buds and we briefly touched on the pro-scene’s meta. The 2017 world championships just ended this weekend resulting in Samsung Galaxy beating SK Telecom T1 with a series score of 3-0. It was a devastating lost for SKT, especially their mid-laner Faker. This week I decided to update my visual that I posted as an addition to the things that Kyle Tran and Peter Tran talked about to see if what they said reflected in the choices of champions that were selected. Here's a link to the previous visual if you haven't seen it.

Going from lane to lane, there doesn’t seem to be many differences in the champions that were often picked as the tournament went on. Trundle fell out of the pick list only resulting in being played 7 more times after the first week (which resulted in a 50% winrate). When it came to mid-lane, Galio became popular with an astonishing 70.6% winrate. He provided a lot of tankiness to soak up damage throughout teamfights and also has great roaming/ganking ability with his ultimate. Lucian fell out of the mid-lane picks, but it’s understandable since he wasn’t as strong anymore and didn’t fit into what the mid-lane needed to be. He was only played one time after the group stages (which resulted in a win). The only reason Lucian’s pick rate was considered one of the top picks is because of a small sample size and the fact that one specific mid-laner (Scout from EDG) playing him multiple times. Other than that, everything seems like it took its course in terms of what champions became priority picks. Three weeks ago, James Busby wrote an article about what would be the most popular picks at the worlds tournament and why they would be picked.

The list goes as follows:

Top-lane: Cho’Gath, Maokai, Galio, and Shen

Jungle: Jarvan IV, Gragas, and Sejuani

Mid-lane: Corki, Lucian, Syndra, Orianna

ADC: Tristana, Kog’Maw, Varus, Xayah

Support: Janna, Alistar, and Rakan

The one interesting detail of the tournament is that Kalista became 100% banned for the entire duration of the main event. She wasn’t picked once. This goes into detail and shows how much a priority pick becomes as the meta shifts and pro-players/teams deem that the other team shouldn’t get this champion. Kalista’s kit adds many things that teams don’t want to give over so the easiest thing to do is to just ban her. For example, she’s a very slippery champion because of her passive allowing her to hop after every auto attack she does. One of the most important things about her kit is the way she’s able to secure objectives over junglers. Her Rend ability lets her stacks spears on targets and upon activation deals damage and slows the target. In the meta of shielders and healers becoming a way to protect the ADC, Kalista’s ultimate gives the safety net for her own support and also gives those non-playmaking shielders an opportunity to have an engage as well.

To give some perspective on how much shielding really affects the game and why these supports are such a high priority pick with ardent censer being strong on patch 7.18 can be seen by this quick GIF from the final game between SSG and SKT.

 Ruler (Varus) flashed to root Faker (Karma) and they ended up killing him. What happens next is that Bang (Tristana) was able to put down damage on him as Wolf (Leona) stunned him with his ultimate. Ruler was almost killed during that brief period, but CoreJJ (Lulu) was able to shield and heal him, as well as Ruler using his barrier spell to give himself a shield too. Ambition (Sejuani) also activated Locket of the Iron Solari which also gave him a shield (CoreJJ built one too and probably activated it as well). The shield basically results in him having full HP again for a brief moment, just enough so that he doesn’t die. This sequence really shows how crazy the amount of healing/shielding these supports can give to help protect someone on their team. It’s also why I believe Janna has such a high win-rate of 70% in 44 games. If looking at Ruler's HP bar being filled with shields, take a look at Ambition (Sejuani), Crown (Malzahar) and CoreJJ (Lulu). They're completely full HP and also have shields applied to them. This essentially means that SKT would have to do enough damage to break through those shields before they could even do any damage to SSG's actual health bars.

In-case it’s a little hard to follow I’ve taken a couple screen shots of the moments where Ruler starts off at nearly full HP, takes damage, gets shielded, and then almost dies again. If you’re curious about the specific time it happened in the game, I’ve also linked the YouTube VOD here, courtesy of the LoLeventVODs channel.

Ruler (Varus) being full HP:

Ruler (Varus) being stunned and taking damage:

Ruler (Varus) being shielded for his entire health bar

by CoreJJ (Lulu) and Ambition (Sejuani):

Ruler (Varus) taking damage while 

being shielded which allowed him to live:

Worlds has ended now and the preseason is coming up. Ardent Censer was already nerfed and changes are still to come throughout the preseason. It'll be interesting how things will evolve and how players adapt as the meta shifts!



-P.S. For some reason it wouldn't let me embed James Busby's article where I wanted it to, so I had to opt for embedding the link into the list.