We now have seen the first third of the Hot6ix OGN The Champions group stages. Korea, and specifically OGN The Champions, have been held to the high standard of being the most competitive League of Legends scene in the entire world. Koreans are very prideful on being the best and the Chinese are the only other scene they respect (still calling them #2 though).

Before going into the stats for the first of three parts of the group stages, if you want to see the games in English live, you can go to OnGameNet’s Twitch channel. If you subscribe, you get access to the English VoDs and can catch up on all the games if you don’t want to wake up at 5 in the morning, depending on where you live.

You can also see the Korean games on the LoLEventVods subreddit and catch up on all the stats for OGN and all the other scenes on the Leaguepedia page!

The Banned

Twisted Fate

14 bans, 87.5% of the games

12 red bans, 2 blue bans

Who Didn’t Ban?:

KT Bullets (Red Side, Win) vs MiG Blitz

MiG Blitz (Red Side, Loss) vs KT Bullets

Jayce

14 bans, 87.5% of the games

13 red bans, 1 blue ban

Who Didn’t Ban?

CJ Blaze (Red Side, Win) vs JAG Stealths (Formerly Hoon Good Day)

MiG Blitz (Red Side, Loss) vs KT Bullets

I want to emphasize these two. If you have ever seen a cast of OGN, you know that Jayce and Twisted Fate are must bans on the red side, with MonteCristo and DoA even joking that red side was the “one-ban side.” The Koreans love these two champions and will be picked if they are open.

I’m surprised that KT Rolster Bullets didn’t ban Twisted Fate in their set again MiG Blitz. Even though they said, in the interview, that they have been practicing leaving him open, but with the level of play in Korea, why would you risk the loss? CJ Entus Blaze, in my opinion, is just a stronger team than JAG Stealths which is why they won that game.

Elise

10 bans, 62.5% of the games

9 red bans, 1 blue ban

The third of the Korean most banned. Typically in Korea, you have a top bans who are in every game, then every other champion that is banned is team specific, which are typically similar, but still hold a low ban rate. Elise is one that fits that mold. Not nearly as high as Twisted Fate and Jayce of course, but she is still highly valued in Korea, which we will see later with her 100% picked or banned rate.

Elise has great ganks and gank set up with her repelle and percentage health damage on her Q – “Neurotoxin” and execution with Spider Q – “Venomous Bite.” She works well with low farm, so in the situations where she is 2v1 in lane or in the jungle, she can still do her job.

Kennen

9 bans, 56.3% of the games

1 red ban, 8 blue bans

The biggest reason that Kennen is the fourth most banned champion in Korea is that he is one of the few lane dominating champions that scale well into late game. We see a lot of Kennen use Doran’s Blade to dominate in lane, but still build AP, like Zhonyas, to pump out the AOE magic damage and stuns in the team fight.

Kennen, although not used in this purpose as much as a team fighter, can slow push creating minion pressure in the lane, affectionately called the “Sixth Man” because Kennen is such a potent dueling champion.

The Desired

With the picks, I want to illustrate which champion is highly picked, not only in the amount of games they are in, but with which draft (when the teams pick them) they are picked in. Blue sides single first pick is the “first draft”. The following double red side picks are the “second draft” and the following double blue side pick are the “third draft”.

I believe that the first three drafts will give a bigger picture of how strong they actually are. If a champion is more often first picked than a champion who is more often second picked, it would mean that teams think that one champion is more desirable than another.

Thresh

13 picks, 81.3% of the games

5 blue picks, 8 red picks

2 first draft picks, 15.3% of picks

8 second draft picks, 61.5 % of picks

2 third draft picks, 15.3% of picks

The God Support at the moment. Thresh is an amazing support. Koreans believe that the supports you need to be competitive at the moment are Thresh, Nami (who you will see soon) and Sona. Thresh gets free stats, specifically armor, from his passive. This is important when you think about how effective health works. When you are a support, the only items you get (at least in Korea) are Sightstone and Philosopher Stone and effective health is based off of how much health you have.

There are better people to explain it than me, and you may see it on this blog in the future, but how effective health works is like this: If you have 1000 health and 100 armor, your health is increased by 1% per point of resistance you have, so you would have 2000 effective health. Giving Thresh free armor stats, then building a Sightstone (i.e. health), you get a pretty tanky support with no items.

Lee Sin

10 picks, 62.5% of the games

4 blue picks, 6 red picks

2 first draft picks, 20% of picks

5 second draft picks, 50% of picks

No secret that inSec and Diamondprox caused this Lee Sin domination in the Korean jungle. Using his Q – “Sonic Wave” to a minion, then using his W – “Safeguard” to a ward then using his ultimate “Dragon’s Rage” to kick the enemy champion back into your own team is often called the “inSec,” and Korean teams are coordinated enough to pull this maneuver off without having the Lee Sin die at the end (since he’s deep in the enemy team, sometimes under tower).

A small note to Lee Sin though, another reason why Lee Sin is picked so much in Korea is because of the Sightstone item. This is significant not only to pull off the inSec plays, but to heavily ward as the Koreans love to do. In NA and EU, only the support buys wards, let alone a Sightstone. Using a champion who also uses a Sightstone, like Lee Sin, results in clearly more map coverage.

Nami

10 picks, 62.5% of the games

6 blue picks, 4 red picks

1 second draft picks, 10 % of picks

2 third draft picks, 20% of picks

This champion is hard to talk about. She’s clearly a strong champion with 62.5% picked in all of the games with a 70% win rate. You see a lot of Koreans this past week land the infamous “Double Bubble” with her Q – “Aqua Prison” but for some reason, she’s not nearly as contested as some of the other supports, like Thresh for example. No first picks, only one second draft pick and two third draft picks. That leaves her final seven picks in the three drafts, and that doesn’t give her much justice.

Honorable Mentions:

Caitlyn (10 picks, 62.5% of games)

Zac (10 picks, 62.5% of games)

I want to mention them because they are highly picked, but they are pretty generic at this point. Both picks are a bit uninteresting. Caitlyn is used to shove towers and Zac is used to dive towers. Nothing new from any other region.

The Winners

All champions I list will have more than a single win. There are a lot of 100% win rate champions, and most of them are only picked once.

Vayne

6 picks, 6 wins, 100% win rate

3 blue picks, 3 red picks

I mentioned before about the God Support, now here’s the God Carry. Hitting 100% win rate with six picks is amazing. She was paired with a variety of different supports as well, ranging from Thresh three times, Nami twice, to Zyra once.

As everyone knows, just farm up on Vayne and you are good to go… except… not in Korea. Korean Vaynes not only focus on team fighting, their team’s give their ADC the kills if they know they won’t escape. Multiple times in OGN, the Vayne in the game got double and triple kills and snow balled from there.

Ryze

5 picks, 4 wins, 80% win rate

3 blue picks, 2 red picks

Hyper carry number two on the list. Strangely enough, they were actually played mid a few times (I know!). Something that is actually strange about Ryze is that more often than not, the Korean Ryze build starts the same with a Tear and Rod of Ages, but players then build Spirit Visage and a Hextech Revolver, into a WotA. It’s a bit strange when compared to the “standard” Ryze build with Frozen Heart and Banshee’s that we are used to in North America.

MonteCristo mentioned during the OGN that building a Spirit Visage in most cases actually makes you do more damage than building other items. Part of the reason is that Spirit Visage costs less gold and synergizes well with Ryze’s ultimate – “Desperate Power,” increaseing his spell vamp regeneration. Another thing to look at when Ryze build a Visage, they had multiple magic damage threats, the biggest ones being Elise jungle, Malzahar mid as it were in one series.

Honorable Mentions:

Kennen (83.3% win rate)

Lee Sin (70% win rate)

Nami (70% win rate)

I already spoke about all of these champions already, so I don’t want to bog down the post repeating information.

The Contested

Elise, Jayce and Twisted Fate

Picked or banned in 100% of all games

These three champions were either picked or banned in all games in the OGN so far. Jayce and Twisted Fate were the obvious ones, and I’ve already discussed them in their posts earlier but Elise sticks out. Elise is one of those champions that people know is good, but never seems to be the “we must ban Elise or we lose” type.

I do find it weird that the three highest contested champions are also the three highest banned champions in Korea. I know that sticks a foot into what I just said about must banning Elise or you lose, but if we look at their win rates as well, Jayce hasn’t won any game he played, and the other two have a 50% win rate, so none of them are particularly impressive. When we get finished with pool play, we will have a more accurate representation of these champions, but I will be keeping my eye on these three.

Kennen and Thresh

Picked or banned in 93.8% of all games

It looks like we are seeing a correlation with the other statistics and seeing similar champions in Korea. I want to point out that the only game that Kennen wasn’t picked or banned, he was actually passed over for Ezreal and Vladimir solos on one team, with Karthus and Zac solo on the other. Vladimir can fit in for Kennen because he can (and did) split push push just as well. He might not be as good of a dueler as Kennen, but he can push and cause pressure, then backing out with ghost and pool when someone comes to gank him.

With Thresh, the teams preferred Nami and Zyra. I understand a little why Thresh was substituted for Nami with her double bubbles, but Zyra shouldn’t have been picked over Thresh in my opinion. Also, the games were Kennen and Thresh weren’t picked or banned in was the same game, JAG Falcons vs Xenics Storm, with JAG Falcons winning the game.