ah gotcha then.

OK - been a bit since the last contest.  Here's the prize - 1 mystery skin (immediate delivery if you are already on my pal list - delayed if you are not ofc).  Let's do whoever is my 16,500 viewer on the twitch stream.  Currently at about 14k.  I must be streaming when the 16.5 view occurs.  Screenshot and get a prize.  Participate if you like such things.  Without manipulation that's about 2 weeks or so out. 

Night everybody. 

edit - oh and no ranked play tonight.  My pal trick was not on when I was.  Just got into a bunch of normals, etc.  Nothing super exciting, but I was able to play with a bunch of different people including folks I don't usually get to play with.  Don't hesitate to ask me for help if you think I can help you hit your ranked goals for the season.  Preferable if you are gold trying to hit plat before EOS so I don't have to try to hyper carry ofc. 

I haven't done a stat pull in some time.  Here's where folks I tracked last season are currently sitting as of 10/7

• pacov - Plat V
• krazikarl - gold II
• Thundercleese - gold V
• hunnybadger - Plat V
• zodiark - gold V (brad wong took most of the season to get his placement matches done and ended up gold V - prob done for the season with that)
• bryff - gold III
• blackhathedgehog - gold I
• danknee - diamond V
• Thegameofthrows - diamond V
• swanvicious - gold II (looks like swan has been playing a ton of ranked - tis swan right?  If so, nice!)
• zengod - Plat III

yeah it's me... having much better luck in solo than duo... 

That's great, bro!  Grats on the solo climb.  Shooting for plat before end of season? 

So, current trends - past 7 days, ranked solo queue, Plat elo

Highest win rate champs

• Rammus 56.59% - 9% of all games
• Fiora 54.95% - 5.6% of all games
• Janna 54.42% - 25% of all games
• Fiddlesticks 54.25% - 7.01% of AG
• Sona 54.05% - 4.93% of AG
• Heimer 54.03% - 1.5% of AG
• WW 53.75% - 10.29% of AG
• Amumu 53.74% - 13.09% of AG
• Khazix 53.47% - 29.13% of AG
• Katarina 53.41% - 14.41%

I'd ignore the Heimer due to % of sample, but its notable that WW, Amumu, Kha, And Kat are all being picked >10% of AG

Most popular champs, Lucian, Thresh, Lee Sin, Kha, Cait, Janna, Zed, Vayne, J4, Leona.

Note that Kha/Janna are the 2 with higher win rates of those popular champs, but lucian/thresh is most common to see.

Bans -

• Trist - 78% of the time banned
• Yasuo - 72% of the time banned
• Kha - 62% of the time banned
• Zed - 40% of the time banned
• Morg - 38% of the time banned
• Lucian - 35% of the time banned
• Mao - 30% of the time banned
• Fizz - 27% of the time banned
• Braum - 18% of the time banned
• Zil - 16% of the time banned

Here we see kha.  Him showing up at a high win rate, a high ban rate, a high pick indicate current strength imo and indicates the nerf smackdown is otw.  If I was a better kha (was good once now smeh), this would be the time to pick him and jungle as much as possible imo. 

I think seeing braum bans are pretty silly at this point - I feel like he's dropped off a ton, but he does have around a 50.75% win rate - about even with Morg - also a common ban.  Compare that to Leona's 53% win rate.  I get the morg ban due to nuisance/team lock down, but Braum is just a bad ban now imo. 

I still see yasuo as a top tier pick due to carry potential, but there's actually quite a few things going on here.  1 - his ban rate is through the roof at 72%.  This means that public perception of him is that he's OP.  The kicker, when folks actually do get to play him, his win rate is at 50%... which generally indicates a balanced champ.  Also, those that have to play against him are generally more competent about countering him.  At any rate, still a super high up pick for me whenever he's available due to potential to either carry hard out of lane or turn a bit fight thanks to dmg + cc + initiation.  Anyway, on PBE, he took a HUGE nerf to base HP (was down like 60 hp or something drastic).  I think he's going to get nerfed into oblivion, then folks will get used to him being crap, not ban him anymore, then he'll get a buff and come out weaker than he is today.

yeah i want that plat.  long shot, but i think i can.  I've been pretty solid lately.  

I'd disagree with this.

Now let's say I suddenly decided that Yasuo was gonna be my ticket to Platinum.  I haven't played him much, but it's my understanding that he takes some practice and skill to use.  Sure, facerolling against Silvers in teambuilder might make him seem like the most OP champ ever but in Ranked it's probably good to be really dialed in against good Mid main players.

So here I am with a new "main" that's available to use in one out of four games.  So, IF I get to be mid and IF the enemy team doesn't pick him I get to play a champ that needs to be played often to be played well.  And he's a champ that goes better with a team full of knock up champs and an AP top if possible.

And he's still a 50% win rate with people playing him without being practiced in him, with forcing him onto non-ideal team comps all the time?

50% win rate under those circumstances is OP IMO.

hmm... maybe... provided my data re: yasuo was spot on and not from an aggregate... let's look at the actual stats now instead.

Past week - ranked solo, SR, Plat - note - my last stats were for ALL REGIONS - This is just NA

His ban rate in NA only - 55%

Diamond

• Pick rate - 11-12%
• Win rate - 44%

PLAT

• Pick rate - 9% (all stats combined his pick rate is about 28% with a 50% win rate)
• Win rate - 43-44%

Gold

• Pick rate - 10%
• Win rate - 46%

Silver

• Pick rate - 9%
• Win rate - 46%

Bronze

• Pick rate - 12%
• Win rate - 48-49%

Anyway, my bad for how I presented the yasuo specific data.  This is much more accurate.  Again, NA only, ranked solo queue on SR. You can see that he shines quite a bit at lower skill level's and is fairly well countered at higher levels of play.  Yet the perception is that he's super strong. 

Also - I just looked at the bottom 10 lowest win rate champs for plat.  YASUO IS ON THAT LIST (with urgot/azir).  To be fair, though, only at the plat level. 

He's strong for that initiation/cc/dmg potential, but I believe overrated by the community at large.  Yet - I'm still in the "ban yasuo" boat, so I'm still drinking the kool-aid.  I think the problem is how much potential he brings even if not doing incredibly well - and how he can fit into many comps because of his ult or q. 

Well, one thing that has to be realized is that running all AD teams isn't a substantial disadvantage right now.

Riot, in search of #lcstopplays, has nerfed defensive items into the ground.  The classic defensive items have just received so many repeated nerfs that they are horribly inefficient compared to offensive items.  This is why instead of seeing lineups with 2 bruisers+2 damage dealers+2 support, you generally see 1 bruiser+3 damage+support, or even 4 damage dealers+support.  And the best bruisers are now generally AP bruisers (Mao, Malphite, Amumu, Ryze, etc) instead of the more classic bruisers who would actually build the more classic bruiser items.

The theory nowadays seems to be to avoid tanking and initiating with bad items, and instead use evasion and the extreme mobility creep as pseudo tanking (along with a few examples of AP bruisers who can build decent items like RoA, Zhonyas, etc), and just go straight DPS.

Traditionally, "all AD" lineups had the weakness of being countered with armor.  Now, if teams stack armor against them, that team has bought crap items.  So they aren't really gaining an advantage.  Sure Yasuo would like his team to pick extra knockup, but he doesn't really need that much knockup to work.

Basically, I feel that people should feel free to pick AD mids without fear of team comp even in solo queue.  It just doesn't matter right now.

I'm pretty sure that we have had this conversation about statistics and highly banned champions a couple of times in the past.

Don't overinterpret stats in a simplistic way.  Thats not how stats or data analysis works.

Champions with very high ban rates, whether its Yasuo or pre nerf Kass or any of a number of other examples, tend to have somewhat low win rates.  Does this mean they are necessarily overrated?  Not necessarily.  You just have a lot of people who feel obliged to play the super-OP champion if they aren't banned.  But they don't know how to play the champion a lot of the time, and playing a strong champion badly usually doesn't work as well as playing a decent champion well.

The opposite happens with some very mediocre champions.  This has classically been Rammus for quite a while.  Rammus is always stuck at a very high winrate, but a low playrate.  Has Rammus always been super OP because of his winrate?  Not really - he is just largely played by Rammus specialists, which inflates his winrate.  (Also, Rammus winrate is going up since he does well in all squishy meta mentioned above, but thats a separate issue since his winrate has always been high).

Along those same lines, its a little crazy to assume that reduced ban rate = a big win rate spike, right? 

Here's the thing - we look at the stats and observe trends.  I find this sort of analysis beneficial if you catch on to trends before they are widely known (typically best to observe after patches having read the patch notes in detail).  The trend on yasuo is low win rate, high ban rate. I think I've accurately predicted what will happen re: yas (riot will nerf, people will still ban for a bit, then come around to not banning him - then minor buff).  His win rate will dip even lower if he gets the current proposed base health nerf on pbe.

What's interesting is a need to further nerf him to get him to a point where he might not get banned when he appears statistically weaker.  And we have no model other than assuming that if his ban rate declines, he'll be used by more experienced players and have an increased win rate... when it could also mean that he's available to more crappy players as well.  Balancing champs based on ban rate and not win rate.... hurm says me.  But I'm not sure of a better way to get people to allow yasuo more play. I'd argue (nonsensically) people are banning him to keep players on their own team from using him - such a low win rate certainly seems like its detrimental to have him on your team unless you like your carries in the <50% win rate land.

also - I wouldn't totally discount the buff rammus received re: his win rate stats.  I see an increase in wr on like rammus, I think what's changed with him, what's the current trend in meta, if there was a change, is his win rate related to him getting more play as people are trying out that change now, etc. 

Well, you're also forgetting one important statistic: P/B/W of the World Champs. Obviously the WCS are a whole different meta (Zilean is a 96% PB), play-style and entirely different planning. Also note that i don't actually put a huge amount of pressure on PBW, but since you're the one making the argument and WCS refutes it...

16th highest PB rate @ 38%

Of the 11 games he was picked, he went 7-4, with a win rate of 64%.

Of the 20 highest PB champs, only 7 had a win rate of < 50%: Khazix (47%), Lucian (48%), Nami (40%), Tristana (42%), Nidalee (20%), Syndra (30%), Fizz (33%).

Of those 7, all but 2 were picked at least 10 times: Nami with 5 picks, and Fizz with 9.

So there's a few things that we can """conclude""":

Apparently Kha'zix is actually a very balanced champion and not at all Freelo.

At the very highest level of play, Yasuo is incredibly powerful when team comps are built around him. This supports Thunder's statement about high ban rate on a mechanicallly difficult champion => lower win rate. In particular:

Means that there's a lot of people who think that Yasuo is their ticket to (diamond) and are not playing him to his full potential, while playing against people who are familiar with facing Yasuo. It's also important to recognize that a -50 HP nerf isn't actually that huge. He lost 200 HP at level 18 on his shield a few patches ago, and he lost his shield-on-dash around the same time, which made his ridiculous level 2 much more reasonable.

It'll hurt his top laning a bit, since bruisers can go toe-to-toe with him earlier. It also lets you bring Ignite to the lane a little easier.

My personal opinion on Yasuo was that they really made a big design mistake with him and allowing teammates to contribute to his R. It makes him very binary in lower Elo levels (he is way way easier to play if you have 2-3 knockups on the team). It's a problem in the Pick-Ban stages of the pro scene since he can be nearly impossible to deal with if champs that he synergizes with are also really strong (Lulu top being one of the biggest offenders a few months ago). 

It also would have made it so that a lot of these other nerfs could have been toned down. At this point, the design team has decided to keep the interactions with R, so i guess additional nerfs make sense. i just wish that they had removed the interaction a long time ago and perhaps he would have become a much less polar champion at all levels.

i think that it is important to the game to try to keep higher skill champions in the game that have the ability to carry teammates. Now, i don't mean like 1v5 carry alone to victory. But some champs should be be a lot scarier when 3-0 than others. Harder champs shouldn't necessarily be straight out more powerful, even when played to perfection, but perhaps they are more flexible or able to deal with a wider variety of situations

It's also important to note that like.... 8 months ago when Leblanc was all the rage, she was like the 2nd lowest win rate in the game, right above Urgot. She was still banned after the nerfs to her W and such. It wasn't until her silence was removed that she finally stopped getting banned. Despite being way weaker than she used to be, she's actually at 45% right now - that supports Karl's statement. As pick rate drops, win rates climb. That's because you get less and less people playing the champ "just because".

i'm disappointed you forgot Rumble. Rumble is the posterboy AP bruiser, espiecially since he also brings in that initiation. Another reason Yasuo is so powerful in pro scene is because Yasuo is able to prevent some of those ranged initiatoins (Nami, Rumble) while also being that "fighter" archetype that is "tanky" thru mobility rather than raw stats.

I doubt that you can meaningfully correlate changes in one parameter with changes in the other on a consistent basis.  The overall play rate, ban rate, and win rates on a given champion are insanely complicated (overall power of the champion, pool of players playing the champion, overall power of items the champion uses, meta, recent major tournaments the champion might have been featured in, power level of champions that counter the champion, etc).  Predicting the relationship between those variables based on some model that you pull out of nowhere is just not going to work well.

OK, first of all, a trend is a statement of what happens as a function of time.  So the fact that Yasuo has a low win rate/high ban rate is not a trend since it is only a snapshot at one point in time.

Now, I say this because I actually agree that genuine trends are more useful since they might be good at predicting the future.  If you see that Zilean has increased in playrate from "not at all" to "sometimes", you might reasonably predict that his playrate will continue to increase.  Thus, you might prepare to play against him, including looking at his counter.  This might net you wins as you encounter people playing Zilean for the first time (and not understanding the champion), while you have cleverly prepared a counter.

(I generally think its a better idea to understand how to counter a trend rather than try and jump on it - trying to jump on a trend is hard since you have to get around other people picking a champ or banning it)

Predicting the future in this way can be useful if done appropriately.  The problem is that there are sudden discontinuities in things like champion playrates (and winrates) as events like patches and major tournaments happen.

More people trying him out should reduce his winrate if he started out with a high winrate and low playrate.  I think you are probably right that his buffs pushed him up a bit combined with the meta continuing to shift toward squishiness (helped with the pros playing very squishy lineups).

I'd agree to an extent, but would argue that it does matter a little and that would vary at different levels of play.

Bronzies telling their team to build Thornmail to counter the fed Yi?  Yeah... good luck with that.

But I'm not convinced that building armor doesn't help against an all AD team anywhere near my skill level.  Yeah, the all AD team of Challenger players who have scary amounts of offensive items and the mechanics/positioning to maximize their DPS?  Stacking armor don't auto counter that.  But from Silver to Plat?  You don't need to perfect positioning/kiting/orbwalking/canceling autos with Tiamat/etc to make your Frozen Heart work to it's maximum potential.

Been watching a little Worlds here and there.  Seemed like they like to mix up the AP/AD, but that might just be because like you said, all the good bruisers are AP and you are likely to have a super carry Marksman like Tris/Twitch or a DPS jungle like Kha, so maybe balancing damage types isn't gonna ever be a huge issue with the competitive meta.

Also, did you see the game with the "Irelia Supertank?"  Damn Koreans stole my build: TF->Tanky tanky tanky.

TBH, Thornmail is actually really really good right now - far stronger than its been historically. Not against true-damage feral-flare Yi but...

Thornmail is really good against non-BT ADCs. ADCs that like to build BotRK (Kog, Twitch, Vayne) like to usually really stack up the attack speed (Phantom Dancers, Ghostblade, Stattik Shiv), and Last Whisper is often a negative DPS item on them against typical teamcomps. Unfortunately, you have to go LW against a TM or else you end up killing yourself with all the damage...

That is even more true against Trinity/IE builds since they really only have a dorans for a long, long time. Even more "castery" ADCs like Ez, Lucian or Corki still need to autoattack to access half their damage. 

In fact, if you look at when pros do actually build Thornmail and the types of games where Thornmail is really successful, the answer is when you're a toplaner against an AD laner and you build up a large early advantage. Thornmail is much cheaper than a Randuins, and it's extremely successful against "behind" laners who are AD and thus typically are very dependent on autoattacks.

Not to mention, Armor Pen is really not very popular on most top laners, except for Brutalizer, which doesn't really offer much. Thornmail does make you quite a bit more vulnerable to AP, however, so you probably don't want to do it against a fed Annie Support + Elise jungle, but it's still not a joke of an item anymore...