The first part of OGN The Champions is over. Group stages were expanded to four groups of four, in hopes to get more up and coming teams to break into the scene and take on the Korean titans. 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. The world waits for the rest of the bracketed season to see how Koreans change or develop going into Worlds in the fall.

As always before my posts, let me dish out some information so you can check out these amazing games yourself! If you want to see the games in English live, you can go to OnGameNet’s Twitch channel. If you subscribe to the channel, you get access to the English VoDs and can catch up on all the games without waking up at 5 in the morning, depending on where you live.

You can also see the games for free by going to the LoLEventVods subreddit, although all the games will be in Korean. Catch up on all the stats for OGN and all the other scenes on the Leaguepedia page!

The Banned

Twisted Fate

Group A – 10 bans, 83.3% of the games

Group B – 11 bans, 84.6% of the games

Group C – 11 bans, 91.7% of the games

Group D – 8 bans, 66.7% of the games

This champion is the main reason why the red side in Korean pro games only have one ban. Similar to Lee Sin in the jungle, Twisted Fate is a must for mid laners in Korea or they won’t be a competitive player. His global pressure, along with the popularity of Shen, makes the potential double global split push far too high. He was recently nerfed, having his ultimate’s cooldown increased a bit. His global passive still makes him strong, simply because the extra gold gain can put a team that’s behind back into the lead by farming well.

Oddly enough, he only has a 50% win rate. Making things worse, the two games Twisted Fate lost were against an Ahri played by Xenics Storm against Blast, and Ezreal played by KT Rolster Bullets against MiG Blitz. Both teams who lost with Twisted Fate are out of the OGN season, so we will start seeing better play with him if, of course, he isn’t banned.

Jayce

Group A – 10 bans, 83.3% of the games

Group B – 8 bans, 61.5% of the games

Group C – 8 bans, 66.7% of the games

Group D – 7 bans, 58.3% of the games

Jayce, the other half of the “Red-Side-Must-Ban” pair. At the early stages of OGN, Koreans believed that if you didn’t ban Jayce, you were going to lose the game. Unfortunately, there aren’t any stats to actually back that up. With a combined ban rate of (insert ban # here), he has only won a single game in the entire group stages, and that was after his gate nerf and the Tear nerf.

The shocking thing about Jayce is that he was picked seven times, and has only won once. If Koreans see this stat, I honestly think Jayce’s ban rate will drop like a rock and you won’t see him again except if a team needs a poke champ and Nidalee won’t fit the comp.

I think that the Korean teams weren’t looking at the stats of Jayce throughout the season. It might have something to do with having the weaker team using Jayce causing his low win rate, but even then, CJ Frost lost to KT Rolster Bullets when they had Jayce. In my opinion, I don’t think Jayce will see much play in Korea anymore. Maybe some niche picks, but you won’t see him in every game anymore, if ever.

Honorable Mentions – Elise (25 bans, 52.1%), Lee Sin (22 bans, 45.8%), Ryze (16 bans, 33.3%), Kennen (15 bans, 31.3%)

I will mention these champions in another section, so I don’t want to beat a dead horse saying the same thing multiple times.

The Favored

Thresh

36 picks, 73.5% of the games

Mostly paired with Vayne in 11 (30.6%) of his games

Second highest pairing is with Twitch in 6 (16.7%) of his games

Thresh was always picked before his ADC except in one game, where Varus was picked first by Jin Air Greenwings Stealths against CJ Entus Blaze, and they lost.

Thresh is undoubtedly the god of supports right now. Thresh has the versatility to go with any and all ADCs and fits all team comps with no down side. Thresh can disengage with The Box, engage with his Death Sentence, reposition people who get caught with his lantern, and interrupt combos (see Xpecial play against SaintVicious’ Jarvan IV game) with Flay.

Take the above in conjunction with his passive that builds his armor up all game, and you start to see the reason why he is the most picked champion. Although it was recently changed to be more consistent, supports in Korea usually only get a Sightstone and Philosopher Stone so building up free armor all game is amazing for his effective health against enemy ADC. I already wrote up how effective health works in my last post, but if you want to go more in depth, see LoL Wiki’s page on effective health. In all, the take away from this, until Thresh gets nerfed, he has no downsides at all.

Nami

28 picks, 57.1% of the games

Mostly paired with Caitlyn in 10 (35.7%) of her games

Second highest pairing is with Vayne in 5 (17.9%) of her games

Nami was picked in the same exact draft as her ADC in 10 (35.7%) of her games

If Nami and Thresh were in the same game, Nami was only picked over Thresh once, in the Jin Air Greenwings Stealths vs CJ Entus Blaze game, where Blaze preferred Nami over Thresh, and won.

The two most picked champions in Korea are two supports? Koreans value their supports because they are well known for carrying their ADCs to the late game, where they steal all the glory. Nami, unlike Thresh, is more focused around disengaging rather than being an all-around, do-everything support. Unlike Thresh though, Nami does have a heal in the form of her W and a (now fixed) 1.5 second knock up from Aqua Prison and Tidal Wave.

Nami is picked over Zyra (who is the 20th most picked champion) as a disengage support due to her ultimate. Tidal Wave has a 2750 range which can, though not often, start fights, but more importantly serves as an amazing disruption tool. You can push it down the entire lane and catch entire teams in it, breaking apart secondary engages from your enemy. Since it starts from where Nami is positioned, which is usually near the carry who gets the first wave of engage, and gets pushed outwards, knocking up and slowing the follow up engage.

Ezreal

25 picks, 51% of the games

Mid – 12 picks, 48% of his picks

ADC – 13 picks, 52% of his picks

Playing as a Mid, his win rate is 41.7% while playing ADC, his win rate is 30.8% (avg. 36%)

Even though he has an extremely low win rate, Ezreal was picked a lot. I do see mid Ezreal getting phased out in the coming weeks since double AD comps with Nunu jungle haven’t been too successful. The strategy was based on Ezreal being able to push and clear lanes with his ultimate and having Nunu Blood Boil him or the other AD, pushing towers down faster. The problem with this is that with better teams, they would just run late game comps with high amounts of crowd control to destroy one of the ADCs, which is usually Ezreal since he is shorter range than the other AD that is typically ran in that comp, Caitlyn.

Ezreal is still great as a carry. Not as much late game power as someone like Caitlyn or Vayne, but he has a lot of great early game power with poke on his Q and a built in Flash with Arcane Shift. Just make sure you get damage somewhere else in your comp, which most Koreans do in the form of Ryze and, to a lesser extent, Kennen.

The Winners

Everyone in this category will have greater than three wins, just to make things clear. There are a lot of champions with one or two wins that have 100% win rate. This is to get a big picture view on who the stronger champions are in the long run.

Orianna

14 picks (28.6%), 11 wins (78.6% win rate)

Group C – 5 picks (41.7%), 4 wins (80% win rate)

Group D – 6 picks (50%), 6 wins (100% win rate)

When I saw Orianna’s stats, to be totally honest, I had to double check them. She was amazing in season 2, and I know she was picked a lot in OGN when Ahri was on the other team, but having the highest win rate of all champions in the group stages is amazing.

Orianna doesn’t have as much damage as other AP champions, but she does have a ton of utility and team fight presence. The biggest part of her kit is Command: Protect, which gives a shield and bonus Armor and Magic Resist and combos incredibly well with hard initiation champions with Zac and/or Elise. Put the ball on them, wait for them to get into the middle of the enemy team with their gap closer, and then use Command: Shockwave to disrupt the team fight, via the displacement from her ultimate.

The downside of Orianna is that she is a very “wombo combo” champion. The easiest way to deal with a wombo combo is by doing the other strategy that is incredibly popular in Korea–split push. By split pushing, someone has to go defend or they will lose all of their towers which will take away from the wombo combo. The people who typically defend a split push are either solo laners or the jungler, and those people are usually who are essential to the wombo combo.

Yorick

7 picks (14.3%), 5 wins (71.4% win rate)

This statistic scares me to be honest. I don’t want to see more Yorick in solo queue. Thankfully he’s not in every game in OGN. He was played in the jungle once and he lost that game, although he did well in the jungle.

Yorick is one of the most boring champions to talk about. There’s really nothing to him: spam in lane, bully people out, build tanky after Manamune. The biggest reason why Yorick was ever used in the first place was because of his ultimate, in effect, revived the person he casts it on when they die.

More so than just the revival part of the ultimate, the Koreans typically ran Yorick with hyper carries (specifically AD hyper carries) and put the Omen on them as they were doing Baron. Doing this causes a clone of that hyper carry, which can only auto attack, bringing Baron down quicker than the enemy teams can react to it.

Vayne

22 picks (44.9%), 15 wins (68.2%)

Vayne is the Queen of Carries in Korea. To start off, I don’t think any of the nerfs coming into Vayne will hurt her in Korea at all. She will still be one of the biggest carries in that region. It will hurt her in North America for sure. Koreans use Vayne as she is meant to be played: a carry. Her nerfs will destroy her split pushing and dueling power, something an AD carry shouldn’t have anyways.

With that being said, Vayne’s strength comes from her true damage from Silver Bolts, dealing 60 + 8% maximum health as true damage on the third stack. Teams work with Vayne because the enemy team, if they are smart, will always run a tank. The favorite tank in Korea right now is Zac, and he likes his health, which Vayne equally loves to whittle down.

The Contested

Elise

25 bans (51%), 24 picks (49%), 100% picked or banned

Elise was played by a top laner in 4 (16.7%) of her games

Elise was played by a jungler in 20 (83.3) of her games

Elise has her strength in unseen ganks with a quick projectile stun. She took a long time to catch on in North America, but not because of Elise’s lack of strength. It was more of a debate to play Elise or, at the time, the overpowered Jarvan IV, or overpowered Xin Zhao, or overpowered Volibear. Now that a lot of those junglers are out of the game, it’s Elise’s time to shine.

Elise’s strength comes from her Q in human form dealing percent current health damage and her Q in spider form dealing percent missing health damage. This allows for amazing executions on champions as well as an easier time securing objectives. Ganking with Elise’s Rappel allows you to jump to a minion and, when the enemy laner burns their Flash in response, change into human form and throw out Cocoon to insure the kill. Spiderlings can tank turrets and objectives so Elise doesn’t fall low and get killed in response as well.

Lee Sin

22 bans (44.9%), 23 picks (46.9%), 91.8% picked or banned

Lee Sin has yet to fall out of favor. The impact of junglers like inSec and Diamondprox have left their mark on the champion and Lee Sin is now considered a “must” for Korean junglers, similar to Twisted Fate for mid laners.

The combination of using his Q to a minion, using his W to hop to a ward, and finally using his ultimate to kick the enemy champion back into your own team is nicknamed the “inSec”, and Korean teams are coordinated enough to pull this maneuver off successfully and secure objectives afterwards.

Another reason why Lee Sin is picked so much in Korea is because of Sightstone. This is significant not only to pull off ward hops, but they also simply use it to heavily ward, something Korean teams love to do. Thankfully, this is something that is transferring over to the other servers, relieving some pressure the supports have with sinking all their money into wards.

Kennen, Shen, and Ryze

Kennen: 15 bans (30.6%), 10 picks (38.8%), 69.4% picked or banned

Shen: 12 bans (24.5%), 21 picks (42.9%), 67.3% picked or banned

Ryze: 16 bans (32.7%), 15 picks (30.6%), 63.3% picked or banned

I would love to give each of these champions their own section, but unfortunately they are all used for the same thing: split pushing and empty lane farming.

Kennen and Shen are used for similar reasons. They are picked to split push, duel, and cause pressure on other places of the map. Kennen is used for his “Sixth Man” push and superior dueling. He deals so much damage and has so much crowd control that it is tough to 1v1 him, which is where his strengths double. If they send two people to the Kennen lane, then the rest of the team can engage 4v3 and take objectives.

Shen is pretty straightforward: split push and when the team needs you, use your ultimate to put a shield on the initiator and join the fight from the other side of the map. Shen is one of, if not the last, true global ultimate champions in the game. If he were to split push bottom lane, he could then use his ultimate to get into a Baron fight while one person on the enemy team who went to defend against Shen is stuck watching his team 4v5.

The idea behind Ryze is just to give him the farm. Get Ryze big and fat and suddenly he has a fully stacked Tear, Rod of Ages and Spirit Visage and he’s destroying your whole team. Unfortunately, that takes forever, so when Koreans developed the “empty lane farm” strategy, Ryze was the prime candidate. He has a horrible early and mid game, but a fantastic late game so the idea is to just get him there.

Group Stage Fun Facts!

When looking at who took the first Dragon, the earliest Dragon ever taken was by Najin Black Sword against CTU, at 6:04. The latest first Dragon ever taken was by Xenics Storm against MVP Ozone, at 19:19.

When looking at who drew First Blood, the earliest blood was drawn by Najin White Shield against SK Telecom T1, at only 49 seconds into the game. The longest time it took to draw blood was by CJ Entus Frost against KT Rolster Bullets, at 14:14.

The earliest tower was destroyed by Xenics Storm against Xenics Blast, taken at 3:40. The latest it took for the first tower to go down was at 17:26, taken by KT Rolster Bullets against CJ Entus Frost.

Baron has three stats! The earliest Baron that was taken down was by Xenics Blast at 18:46 against MVP Ozone. The latest Baron was taken 36:02 by CTU against Jin Air Greenwings Stealths. There were seven games that ended without a single Baron being taken down.

Like Baron, first inhibitors have three stats as well. The quickest inhibitor was taken at 19:06 by MVP Ozone against Jin Air Greenwings Stealths. The latest the first inhibitor went down was at 42:38 by MVP Ozone against Xenics Blast. There were three games where no inhibitors were taken when the game ended, meaning those games were forfeited.

Want more stats? Leave comments and input below!

Previous Posts:

Stats Corner: OGN, The Most Competitive League in the World

Stats Corner: Pick/Ban Trends in the NA LCS

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