

While watching the 'Worlds Play-In Stage', I started asking myself a question: "Why are teams banning those champions?"



Arguably, the most "broken" item in the current Worlds patch is 'Ardent Censer', and the item procs off of heals and shields. So mainly, champions who have skills dedicated to healing and/or shieling utilizes the item. Of course, champions who don't, such as Alistar, Braum, and Thresh, tend to walk a different build path.



Naturally, due to the effectiveness of the Censer, you'd expect the supports who utilize the item to be more often than not, banned. However, it was quite the contrary in the play-in matches showcased so far.



■ Alistar - 14 bans, but a 27.3% winrate.



Alistar possesses strong CC and is a tank that does not depend on items to reach the desirable tankiness. Thresh, on the other hand, is a "hooking" champion that is great for countering 'Censer supports' and even grabbing the lead against 'tank supports' in the early game. So it's quite understandable for the two champions to be banned.



However, in the current ongoing tournament, Alistar's winrate was far from desirable; as his results so far are 3 wins to 8 losses. Same goes for Braum, as his results so far are also poor. And despite the high banrate of Thresh, he was rarely picked even when opened, leaving the question, "was it necessary for teams to ban him a total of 13 times?" open for debate.



Do the three mentioned champions deserve the ban that they received? We can argue that there isn't sufficient data to evaluate from, as we're still early in the tournament... but let's take a look at the next graph.



■ Janna - 5 bans, but an 85.7% winrate.



As a support champion, not only does Rakan carry strong forms of CC that can match the likes of Alistar and Thresh, but he can also utilize Ardent Censer - making him the "perfect" support in the current meta.



The champion that we need to look at, however, is Janna. At Worlds so far, Janna has had an 85.7% winrate; almost always leaving great results behind whenever she was picked up by a team. And although there is only so much data that we can gather from in the limited amount of games played so far at Worlds, the numbers Janna provided points fingers to 'overpowered'.



As of October 1st (KST) in Korea SoloQ, Janna has a pickrate of 15% and a winrate that nears 60%, and these numbers are the after results of her two nerfs in patch 7.19. It's almost too hard to imagine how strong she actually was in patch 7.18(Worlds Patch) and before.



Janna actually didn't see too much play in the regional leagues, and only started seeing frequent play during the Worlds Play-In Stages... and she's still receiving only a small number of bans. More often than not, a champion receives bans in the pro scene if he or she is considered overpowered, but the numbers that Janna provides hints her as the most powerful support aside from Rakan.



Currently, the seemingly easiest way for teams to secure a win is to either ban or take Janna for themselves. Of course, if a team is experienced at quickly snowballing, Alistar and Thresh may be the better choice, but even if so, Janna deserves way more attention than she's been getting. We could most likely expect her pick/ban rate to grow over time at Worlds.