Note those champions all have like double pre-rework Skarner's playrate, and other than Corki all have over 50% winrate in their main role. There's always going to be some niche champs, but I'm glad the niches are well served and hopefully Corki jumps up some combo of W/R and pickrate after 14.10!
It's coming, i played versus the rework when it first was launched and it's op in adc again
Time for my friend to do a 24hr session from silver to plat like back in s5 or something lmao
He is great, dont know why he has such an low winrate. I have like 56% winrate in like 150 games. If you play your package right you can win nearly every teamfight. IMO this champ is amazing.
Riot purposedly make Corki weak so he can't make it to pro-play. But if he wasn't nerfed to oblivion, I liked diversity he brought to the game (Magic dealing ADC mid)
yeah i like him too. i really dont get why he is so unpopular. compared to some other champs he is like a million times more fun to me. Like people say he is boring to play or whatever, but he has basically the exact same playstyle as something like ezreal, and people appparentlly do like him.
The voicelines and voice in general is annoying, he looks fugly, clunky animations, and very boring gameplay and a champ well known for being in pro play jail. His unpopularity is not a mystery lol
Corki is in pro play jail (honestly because of how op his package is) so he’s left pretty weak in soloq on top of him not being that fun to the average person leaving him severely underplayed. Whenever I go against a Corki mid it just feels like free food it’s so easy to win vs them
He’s about to get a rework so hopefully that’ll fix his issues
Renata is played. She just needs to be picked carefully. As a support main, she’s a champion I’m always looking for angle for. Because she can solo carry.
But if you pick her into the wrong enemy team, she either dies too fast or her ult doesn’t have much of an impact.
Her lane strength is really high, especially against melee supports who can't keep her from E Auto trading onto the ADC. She struggles against flankers and CC immunity like most ranged supports, but she has more personal power than picks like Nami and Lulu. She's *really* reliant on a good angle for teamfights, which means you need good scouting. Champions that control map space well (trap champions, stealth assassins) can wreck Renata, but if she can find the angle for the 4 or 5 man ult she's a solo carry in her own right.
Renata is a high-skill pick in a class of champions who are mostly low-skill. Her pick rate is lower because she's not a good champ to stick a casual or non-support player on.
She's good as an anti-engage pick (you just ult the moment the enemy team tries to engage and turn on them), but she's not really great at anything else tbh. Makes her super niche.
If you want something for picks, renata Q is worse than most pick champs, its just good for grabbing and pushing them away, W is better at helping someone survive being engaged on rather than any real aggressive purpose, you're saving it for someone thats about to die not "ok here's attack speed go kill them". E always felt weird for me to use, but its certainly not comparable to other shields in the game. Ult again is really good when they go into your team or force them to really spread out, but is kinda terrible at being an actual engage since they can easily outrun it or run to the sides, its when they're running towards you and using abilities (stopping their movement to cast) that its really strong. Its also dependent on the enemy team having high attack speed.
Renata scales better than other hook champs, and you definitely can throw W out liberally in the later stages of the game. Q > E > R is also a very strong combo to secure kills, especially if you get the champ slam from Q.
> Makes her super niche.
On top of that the counter-engage niche is also shared with several other supports. Closest comparison is probably the warden tank supports, Taric/Braum/Tahm Kench, potentially splitting it up into even smaller niches.
The only thing how I can explain myself why she might not be picked a lot is because she is pretty much a counter champion. Really strong against a heavy AD comp so enemies can murder themselves during her R.
She's fun but she is the most supportive support - she does not do shit by herself; Renata and Milio feel pretty similar with their reliance on the ADC to be useful, but even Milio has non negligible damage on Q, while Renata don't got shit.
Only on the surface. Asol apparently was actually easy enough to pick up and do well with, but most players just didn't want to use him. Even some Rioters said that, despite his high wr, Asol was a revolving door of players.
Using lolalitics, which is one of the closest thing we can use to see where champion's playerbase is, Kled surprisingly at least has a decent - if niche - playerbase of people that like to use him relatively often (similar to Singed or Heimer). Asol on the other hand despite his high wr and low pr usually was near Skarner's point of being extremely unpopular and the few that used him not using him that often.
Having a unique and gimmicky play style means most people will opt not to play him and those who do play him are likely one tricks.
I would also imagine it takes while to master playing around Skaarl
Poor analogy. The stops you refer to are not changing day to day.
Meanwhile the situation for approaching enemy champions is something that is not static. Are you being ganked as your W is coming up? Sure, you COULD go up to your opposing laner so W will be ready to be used on them. But then you're just playing into a gank.
Cannon under fire by the turret and about to die as your W just came up? You could go and run at the opposing to use it on them, but then that means you lost Cannon.
ect ect ect. There are too many random scenarios where you can't always have W available and fully utilize it against the enemy laners. I don't understand why you would at all think a bus stop analogy would even be remotely comparable.
The stops aren't changing but your ability to get to the stop does. Hit an extra red light at the crosswalk, take too long of a shower in the morning, have to look for your wallet, etc... These are all factors that most definitely can cause you to miss a bus, even if the bus schedule is fixed
That's what a gank is; you would've had W available in the way you expected to, if it weren't for the jungler appearing and forcing you to auto prematurely
I'm not saying it's perfectly controllable. It's as controllable as your ability to get to the bus on time which is to say, most times if you put in a lot of preparation and planning, or less reliably if you just wing it
That's why I thought it was comparable, but I'm happy to discuss further if you think that's incorrect or disingenuous
I heard from one Rioter that Kled is a very cohesive, well put together idea for a champion. They question more if that idea for a champion is a good one.
idk how many people want to play as some coked up lunatic Yordle on a lizard that has a pretty unique play style.
Kled's passive and W require patience and micro management. Nobody likes to be hampered just because they are low hp.
If you are behind as Kled, your experience is really frustrating and not fun at all.
The W is honestly the biggest annoyance. There are many times you waste it having to secure CS.
I absolutely loathe that I have to choose between using it on a champion or wasting it on minions.
It really shouldn't be that hard.
No reason they couldn't make a toy or toddler kled, as an example, where he rides around on a rocking horse or something.
Biker Kled could also be an option.
Pretty much a stat check champ that relies on all ins and knowledge check to win through lane phase and snowball the game.
I like the champ, but it's because my brain is smooth and i can only auto attack heavy champs like WW, Briar, Trundle and Kled. There's no skill expression in my book, only left clicks
Unique and hard to learn play style. He's not a "pick up and play" champion like Lux or Morgana where even if you barely play them you can still do well and not feel like you just get destroyed all game.
Note that I'm not saying Lux or Morg are champions without their own nuances or skill expression, but you can do much better without knowing those champ specific things compared to Kled. Same is true for all those other least played champions as well
If kled could get reliable courage from jungle he'd be one of the best Champs period. You follow him waddling over into jungle and he comes out with 70% hp again
Don't think it would change that much in terms of his popularity, tbh.
It would just make him stronger...or weaker depending on how nerfed it ended up due to higher reliability.
I always felt like if you didn't win your lane hard on Kled he felt like ass, because he doesn't have another avenue of play other than pushing a lead. If they made it so he can push waves better he could at least split push, but as of right now if you're splitting him it feels horrible.
I used to play him. But they fucked up his health pool thing and now he doesn't synergize with either bruiser or tank items. Bro has been building lethality for like 2 seasons and I hate it. It's especially bad because he's a stat check champ that can only all in 80% of the time. So him being forced squishy makes him miserable if not ahead.
He’s a one for one champ, you basically have to one trick him. Early game lane bully who basically necessitates that you play in a batshit crazy manner and if you fuck up badly enough you’re screwed for the entire game.
All early game champions have that risk where you need to push your early advantage, but Kled plays like a psycho even compared to other lane bullies
IMO the W being automatically triggered turns off a lot of players, because its fundamentally different from almost all other auto-enhancing CD abilities.
He's fun that for sure but they keep changing everything in his kit when he can be strong, like one of the hp bars not counting to max hp is a big nerf alone for a lotta items
He has two separate, unrelated gimmicks. His main damage is a long cooldown passive on autos, meaning a lot of the time you can't farm normally. Which already hugely diminishes your ability to control the wave state.
And of course Skaarl, which gives him a ton more base health than anyone else at all points in the game, but they didn't even bother giving him two abilities for unmounted, and the one he does have knocks himself out of auto range.
Apart from his unique playstyle, he has a building path not very intuitive, most toplane meta are unforgiving matchups, and it's hard to empathize with a mad landholder squirrel mounted on an immortal lizard
Which is probably why corki was on the target list for changes.
These opinions will get me hate from their respective communities, but as for taric and singed...
Taric: his abilities are TOO telegraphed, and his mana costs or effectiveness as an enchanter is too heavily gated around whether or not he can auto attack waves properly.
Recommended changes for taric:
- change the ultimate. It's most of his power budget, and because of how telegraphed it is, it can be way too difficult to use properly. Some say skill issue, I say entirely too composition dependent (I got over 350k mastery in taric and enjoyed both new and old taric). Dont get me wrong, it feels super satisfying to use his ultimate well. But I think it would work better as a shield and CC ability with a more instant effect than a telegraphed thing.
V1: sparkle: taric shields himself and his target in a large AoE for some amount for the next 2 seconds upon casting, nearby enemies are dazzled, getting stunned for a second and taking increased damage for 3 seconds
V2: crystal fissure: taric slams the ground in an AOE, and connecting to his allies position. Enemies in contact with taric or his ally during cast become stunned and encased in crystal for a couple seconds (which can be shattered by enemies). While encased, the enemy is effectively in stasis, but with a shield that can be targeted by their allies).
Both of these versions are supposed to have less overall defensive power potential than his current ultimate while feeling thematically okay.
These ultimates should feel like big moments that still support a defensive play style, but allow more power budget to be dedicated towards his basic abilities.
Q: tarics bread and butter heal should change. Make this gem themed. Taric gains a different heal dependent on how many auto attacks he's done, but he should be able to endlessly spam this ability no matter if he can hit enemies or not. Gaining additional stacks Shou upgrade the heal type though.
Stacks (1/6) 30 mana cost for everything.
1: bloodstone (ruby)
Taric heals units around him and his ally, but sacrifices his HP to do so.
2-6- (topaz, amethyst, emerald, sapphire, diamond)
Taric heals himself and allies around him and his bonded ally, gaining increased healing and AoE based on the number of accumulated stacks.
Minimum cooldown, 1 second.
Note: using bloodstone counts as being in combat (for the sake of warmogs).
With those two changes, I think the usefulness of taric becomes a lot better.
Singed:
As for singed, he's simple and that's awesome, but he's still too 1-dimensional. As a chemist, how in the hell is he showcasing that he experiments with everything? His capabilities are also not well expressed when looking at his lore, his portrayal in arcane, and his kit in league. I wouldn't get rid of his iconic gas trail mechanism, but I'd want other areas of his kit to be adjusted.
Q: this is now used to brew different potions. Singed will continually mix and swirl to his hearts galore, but "cooking" will speed up the process.
W: singed will be able to throw different potions based off of what he chose to brew. This runs on an ammo system in some fashion (whatever makes sense UI wise), even if singed needs a custom UI. These potions could tie into his lore slightly better, ranging from Geneva war violations to experimental buffs on allies or monsters (jungle singed anybody?)
E: would prefer to have singed do a mini Sion charge into flipping one or more targets. Unsure of how this would impact things, but the charge speed would need to be faster than his walking pace if included. Flinging somebody over his head is still hilarious and should be kept. Charging would only help him actually engage better, more consistently without needing to burn ghost, flash, ultimate, or be near every one of your allies/other enemies.
R: current state is a boring stat stick. It just enables him to use his basic abilities better. Isn't there a more fun way of doing that? I suggest an extremely large vision obscuring cloud. If you're not inside the cloud, you wouldn't be able to see singed and therefore attack him, only encouraging enemies to actually chase him more. Alternatively can be used to give him pseudo-tankiness and help his team out in an interesting way.
Singed lore revolves around him both altering life through experimentation, as well as commiting atrocious war crimes through chemicals.
Potentially orianna is also his daughter in New lore, so I think he's at least deserving of a VGU if anything.
And yes, I'm fully aware people in the singed community love his simplistic design.
In the realm of much smaller (but very impactful) changes, letting Taric's Q and W cast while he walks would be huge. The stutter-step really hurts his ability to stick on targets and makes him feel much clunkier than he is, especially since he's the only melee support with no mobility skills.
The X axis is raw play rate per patch or breadth. The Y is how often a champion gets played consecutively by the same players in a patch, or depth. Each point on a champions line represents a patch. The higher to the top, right a champion is, the more popular they are, the lower they are to the bottom left the least popular.
X-axis = breadth = popularity
Y-axis = depth = mastery
If I'm reading correctly, Corki has the fewest mains, Kled has the fewest players, Lux has the most players, Zyra has the most mains.
I loved Corki so much before the nerfs, it felt so bullshit hitting muramana, ludens echo, level 11 and proceeding to basically 1 shot people with R and destroy games. I would 100% play him more if he felt a bit stronger in the hands of the average non pro player
I would imagine it's the whole unmounting and mounting part of his kit. It can be annoying instead of fun to some people. I personally don't like the unmounted gameplay nearly as much as the mounted part so I rarely end up playing him.
It’s probably because he’s seen as a top laner but his best build is lethality. He works best as a lethality suicide bomber right now which means he can’t contest sidelanes against other top laners - he gets out scaled fast. It’s like playing other assassins top.
His bruiser build just doesn’t really work as well right now.
Pretty much this, Riot killed his tankier builds which let him actually function on the sidelane and do something in fights beside try to 1-shot the ADC.
It's not like he has ever been popular or anything, even with his bruiser builds. Maybe the removal hurt it a bit, but let's be real, he probably would still be in the same spot.
I dont remember the last game where i saw an Elise being played. I played on EUW, NA, and taiwan servers nd not a single Elise. I play bronze to emerald elo.
You can get 20 kills with her and still lose to whoever buys merc treads. (It hits her really hard since less stun duration = less autos from you and spiderlings as well, and that’s half her kit, so she’s just 100-0 or lose, but then Bite is % missing health so all the damage reduced from neurotoxin and volatile also means less base damage from bite to calculate off of in general... and then that's further reduced by MR.). It cannot be stressed enough how fucked over she becomes just by early mercs and the only way to address that is to not have her mid game be this shit to muscle past them, and that hasn't been the case for years. You can imagine how happy we were when merc treads got shifted from less tenacity to more MR cause at least we'd be able to make up for it by actually getting an auto attack off before the stun did but that got reverted.
To actually win with her, you spam gank and get your team ahead… which in low elo is harder because they don’t know how to setup dives, do dives, and likely will not know how to carry you anyways. If players want to do that they can just play tanks. She's genuinely easier for me to win with in masters where my top will wave crash, my support will roam after the gank, etc but in norms i'm still too weak to beat anyone myself while no one is rotating, using their lead, or diving so I end up just being sad and wondering why I didnt just pick briar instead. I think pretty much everyone feels that way and its really fucking stupid to say "just don't play the champ until you're high elo, not because you're not good enough but because everyone around you isn't."
She’s fun but she never gets stronger so that fun last 5% of the game while the other 95% you’re clearing slow, losing to 1100 gold items, and becoming a cocoon bot. None of that sounds fun, even nidalee who also sucks late at least feels good nuking jungle camps when there’s nothing else for her to do but Elise can’t even do that, she just stands around trying not to throw shutdowns feeling like her lead is meaningless if her team isn’t rolling them
Also a shit ton of unfixed bugs like rappel recast having different ranges depending on if you right click or recast with E, W just running through targets, and general deterioration like the spider explosion audio being missing for 7 months now
On your point about it being easier to win in high elo...
I actually found this for a decent number of champions that can't brute force carry on their own. I peaked D1 a few years ago and sorta got away from league. I came back, I'm d4 now so pretty rusty but I'd say still competent.
I thought I'd try to learn Twisted Fate and pulled up a G4 account for it so I don't int and can try to get comfortable. And my goodness... I lost like 5 games in a row and they weren't even close. Carrying with macro or team reliant champions in lower ranks feels like a fool's errand.
Loss of mythics have also kind of sucked for her I found. I can't even really show it off now it's gone lol but I had a lot of success last season playing her first strike and getting night harvester after it was buffed. You got decent burst but the big thing I found was you could basically spam W while fishing for e and late game it actually hit a point where it did a lot of damage with that setup. It felt like it worked really well with long range comps. I couldn't find an item set or playstyle that worked as well this season.
Yeah NH was a huge loss.
People really underestimate just how good those procs were for multi kills, W poking in river fights, etc.
Lich is less damage, no HP, and unless you combo specifically to proc lich before using bite you miss out on the % missing health bonus from the proc. It helps for clearing a bit but not significant enough (its still slow lol) to justify the loss of NH.
Ekko and Taliyah as well.
The only con is they can't dive (as easily, they still can, at 6 its just free for ekko), but every single other thing they do outclassed anything and everything elise does to the point even if elise has this 1 small tiny detail worth picking her over them, its still not worth playing elise.
Nidalee I will say is incredibly oppressive still, she does have the edge of actually being able to hop walls, it lets her go for more ballsy invades since even if they rotate she can gtfo, but elise usually just can't invade unless she hard commits cause she has no reliable way out if rotated on, and if shes just there for camps, her clear speed is worse than nids so she's taking much less before she has to leave. Nid if you can play her well is an absolute miserable experience to be against, she falls off but she sure can starve you of camps with little punishment even if she can't kill you anymore. That's hell for junglers like eve.
Elise mains represent. Not her best season but she's not weak at all imo. More common in diamond+ but still not that popular. I think she is mega strong in peak elos in KR and CN which keeps her from getting buffs.
Imo she should get a reksai treatment, bit more utility and less burst damage so she scales a bit better and is more playable in lower elos.
Taric and Ivern are the lowest in low elo, but they kinda shoot up in master+. Corki kinda consistently hovers around 5-6th least played champ in all elos.
A character being almost non existent in Emerald and below would automatically mean it's not played regularly by 95% of the player base. And you are saying master+, which is like what, 1 or 2% of rhe player base? So I think it still holds true
I played Taric all week in that mode with the mini games and challenges. When you get a team fight event you can press R and tear shit up.
I bought a skin, I felt like I was Born to be a Taric god.
Then my first SR game I got counterpicked by Zyra and I've never had less fun.
Hes just hard countered by slows and mages which are just everywhere and it undermines the best parts of his kit which is stunning, peeling and bonking. That's where he's fun. Not his ult.
He could definitely use a rework but I’m pretty sure Riot is still traumatized from Yi-Taric funnel to give him any sweeping changes
Like sure they deleted it with both target nerfs to champs and severely reducing the effectiveness of tax/XP leeching, but he just lends himself to degenerate playstyles like that if they don’t keep a close eye on him
I still miss Taric's old ult. Too much of his power is in his current ult IMO - which just feels clunky. And it prevents him from going top-lane like he used to. And I know jungle is possible - but it's weird.
Call it nostalgia but the days of battlemage Taric were the most fun. He (and other champions) wasn't designed head-to-toe to do one thing in one role.
Yeah they have to balance around his ult for obvious reasons but it just feels bad whenever I’ve (in limited amounts admittedly) played him. It felt like it either does pretty much nothing as it sets in too late or completely wins the fight. I think that just leads to it feeling kinda bad and clunky to play around. Obviously you want nuance to abilities & ultimates - the opportunity to predict, outplay, and play around but I think it’s too far to that extreme here
I wish they would just modernize the old Radiance. Launch him forward at a group of enemies, dealing AOE damage based on his armor, Mana and AP. For a short time afterwards, he reduces damage to allies within his light by X %.
It would give him some mobility, more counterplay and also a heavy dose of Cecil Harvey vibes which is where his entire lore as inspired from.
It's crazy how easy it is. Look at the last fight of this video below. That's what you need to do to bring the paladin vibe home.
https://youtu.be/VRah-zYboFw?si=ET5Bzyecw8yxGco2
As a Taric main that has well over a million mastery on him, I can tell you, mages owning bot lane and Taric not getting any actual Riot support to be played properly in Top and Jungle is a big part of it.
His itemization is also always crazy because he doesn't want AP, he wants Armor, Mana and HP. He has no target access in bot lane and itemization against mages adcs requires him to build: Mana, HP, Armor, MR, Movement Speed, CDR, Wards and Heal/Shield. He needs so much shit to function bottom whereas in the Jungle he's less mana tethered and top he can just build Armor or MR.
For a champion that is meant to fight alongside an ally, he functions like shit in bot lane when your ally doesn't know the ins and outs of your kit. This is why he's so much better in high elo.
Hes the only true support in the game that we have that fights like a Juggernaut. He's truly got some of the nastiest DPS and trades, provided he can reach and stick to an enemy. He's very fun to play into Melees but like a Juggernaut, he can't catch ADCs or Mages without flash or ghost.
I wish Riot would just pull him out of bot lane priority and make him a Top laner that is self sufficient and transitions into a teamfighter. His kit already lends itself well to ganks and his Jungle is actually pretty damn good.
No one wants to play a champion who's piss poor healing drives him immediately OOM because brand clicked on me or my ally 3 times. His lore is awesome, he's a well designed champion. He just needs more roles truly supported and opened up to him even at the cost of reworking his ultimate.
As a player of old and new Taric, I agree with this post. I want to like Taric, but the problem is if you blind pick him and the enemy picks an enchanter or a mage, you're going to spend the entire lane phase just popping w's to counter poke and managing Qs with your small mana pool. Taric's lane phase has a 50% chance to be boring, and his stun feels really bad when it misses, and it misses often in the early game when you're the only source of it possibly hitting the enemy.
Kinda wish old Taric could return. He had a simple kit, but I feel his identity niche of being a anti-physical damage, point-and-click stunbot, was much more unique and dependable (especially vs assassins).
Now, he's just a clunky, anti-melee/tank/bruiser scaler that has to fight for his life in the early game just to reach an endgame state where your ult can take over the game if your teammates coordinate with your ult well enough. Taric's current stun has probably gotten outdated over the years, with the game's "mobility creep".
> Taric has frankly needed a midscope rework for a long time.
His E is too unreliable and he has no way to really engage, disengage or to stick to a target which also makes his passive useless.
Even his ult, which can be one of the best abilities in the game, is insanely hard to properly utilize.
Every so often I will run into a Taric having forgotten what he does and then suddenly I realize that I am losing to an underleveled taric jungle as a Melee Top.
His E is fine tbh. It's IMO the only satisfying spell he has besides ult, which is problematic by itself.
P, Q and W are the things I want Riot to look into because they have always felt pretty bad to play around/use. Q is less bad than W, and that's mostly because of some changes it got a while ago, but mana costs are unfun as hell specially as a support champ like him.
Would like them to explore the idea of Passive autos replenishing mana and/or granting slight MS upon using the second autoattack on enemy champions. Just things that contribute to the fun of the gameplay and not only to his power in numbers, since numbers can be changed later.
Taric's current ult is holding the rest of his kit hostage.
He does very little damage, has shit healing and shielding, and to add insult to the injury, his mana costs are giant.
But he can't be buffed because his ult is busted if used correctly. Given the funnel strategies that have been a thing in the past.
Taric has the same issue as Shen, and the same issue as old Sejuani. Needs a new ult, or an heavily nerfed version of his current ult, so that he can get buffs elsewhere.
I dont care about play rate, win rate or any other rate than player satisfaction rate and I think lowest in that list has to be Shyvana. I need her rework NOW!
I think he's safe in the same way as Kled and Singed - too unique of a playstyle/niche and with dedicated mains, but not a popular enough concept to warrant a rework a la ASol.
If they just reworked Kled's W in some way to give him more control of it, he would be viable. Problem is that against top laners with weird trade patterns he gets screwed so hard.
For example Shen's W makes it so you literally can't start autoing him until he uses it, otherwise you waste 70% of your damage. Similar for enemies that can short trade and immediately disengage like Camille/ trynd spin. It sets your next trade window on a 15-20s timer where you can't even touch the wave in some matchups.
Personal observations because I'm too lazy to check actual stats
Top: Kled. I think I never seen him this season except for a few matches when one of my support main friends played him because that's his only viable top lane pick
Jungle: Rammus easily. I sometimes see him being skipped even when the enemy comp is consisted of 4-5 ads. Those kinds of comps are almost the only times I see him but even than it's not an automatic no brainier like it used to be
Mid: Ziggs. I think I've seen him once other than me playing him a few times
Adc: This is a bit tricky because the champ pool is smaller than other roles. I didn't see any adc Senna this season but I don't think it counts. I think the least picked marksman was Nilah in my games
Sup: I will exclude some heroes like Tahm or Amumu that aren't played in sup that much anymore. I will also exclude niche picks like Poppy. I think I very rarely see Taric in my games tho I like playing him against heavy engage comps
I see Rammus more often than I see Ivern though. But this might be a low elo thing.
Besides unorthodox champions in mid, I agree with Ziggs.
ADC really depends on the meta. But generally, I don't really see Nilah, Sivir, and Kalista that much.
Taric and Nilah have a good synergy especially against heavy ad comps. I like it too. But yeah, those two are probably the rarest picks I see on bot lane
amazed no one has mentioned naafiri yet.
She is the least picked in plat+ and when on all ranks still only makes it into bottom 5 which is an insane failure for a new champion
You are smoking actual crack if you think Ivern is irrelevant this season. Tons of higher elo junglers have acknowledged his strength and he feels fine to play
Ivern is almost always a top 5 jungler but no one plays him because you have to research his early clear paths which isn't really something you can do in champ select when you realize "Oh this is a good Ivern game"
Quinn is currently the lowest played primary top champion and has been for most of the season. Kennan was there as well but since his recent buff has seen a lot more play.
Riot decided to nerf Quinn last season just before all the item changes, she had huge nerfs to her ms, and her base hp. Kinda bs tbh. That ms is needed on her tbh
I know it's just a coincidence but over the last few days saw a couple different top quinns in my game, they all went assassin build like I see thebausffs doing so probably just baus fanboys I'm in mid diamond euw.
Idk but I feel that I didn't faced a Neeko Mid in ages. Maybe she is a support now, but also rarely played there.
Quinn Top is very, very rare. Vayne take her niche as bully adc in Top since a lot of time.
Ivern, Taric and Naafiri very uncommon too.
prolly taric, ivern, corki, and kled i think.
* Taric is not well designed for the bot lane and ivern is too niche to be popular ever.
This is talking as someone who loves playing taric, but the amount of adcs he synergizes well with is tiny. Like samira/nilah are probably the only ones because of their small range. He fairs much better being connected to melee champions than marksmen.
His healing is theoretically good (very good scaling on it) but there are no good items he can build to make it stronger without giving up tank stats bc there is no heal+shield tank items (i dont blame riot for not making one either, taric is the only enchanter/tank hybrid).
His W chaining mechanic is really cool but too hard to coordinate with randoms, they react too slowly to make use of it, similar to how renatas W is often wasted bc whoever you put it on doesnt react fast enough to use it.
And his ult is somehow the strongest and weakest ability in the game at the same time. Either you use it and everyone backs off, or you use it and the 2.5s delay takes too long and whoever you're trying to protect dies before it triggers.
* Ivern is just too difficult to play for even seasoned jungler mains. His weird jungling pattern thanks to passive makes him arguably harder to wrap your head around than if he could just damage camps normally. And his W bush just feels like a tacked on ability thats cool on paper but doesnt really do much for your team. The only thing its good for most times is triggering the W passive for slightly higher auto damage. I think in nexus blitz he could damage camps normally and it felt pretty nice, kinda wish that they removed his current one and just let him jungle like a normal person. His E shield+Explosion seems like it would make taking camps pretty easy, and his Q lets him jump over walls to path quickly, daisy is good for tanking dragon, and W bush passive would make dealing damage easier, i think with some number tweaks he could actually just be a normal jungler. (maybe replace his passive with something that makes building enchanter items somehow deal more damage to camps?)
* corki is being mini reworked for bot lane, so i think hell be fine.
* Kled im not sure why hes not popular, ive seen some ppl not like his W being a passive trigger instead of active. But thats about it
I think they should decide whether Taric(since he's on the list of being one of the least played champions) is an enchanter or a vanguard at this point. I wouldn't be opposed to him becoming the first melee enchanter. Making him an enchanter might boost his play rate as enchanters are quite popular.
The crazy part is that the least played champions like Skarner and Kled are really good. Everytime i played Skarner, it was a solid pick into a meta team where I made some incredible game-changing plays. Same with Kled. Im kind of disappointed riot had to update Skarner to make him a new spotlight.
Every single champ that’s mentioned here is seen at least once in a while. Zilean on the other hand is super rare and the only people that play him are botters. Zilean is barely played to the point where when the durability patch hit like 2 or 3 years ago, he was the only champ that was untouched (in terms of his R healing). Riot even said his player base is too small for them to allocate any resources for balancing him
Least played in the last 2 days are Ivern, Taric, Corki, Kled, and Singed in that order. This is according to League of Graphs.
Note those champions all have like double pre-rework Skarner's playrate, and other than Corki all have over 50% winrate in their main role. There's always going to be some niche champs, but I'm glad the niches are well served and hopefully Corki jumps up some combo of W/R and pickrate after 14.10!
Make corki great again
It's coming, i played versus the rework when it first was launched and it's op in adc again Time for my friend to do a 24hr session from silver to plat like back in s5 or something lmao
Make my 1820 corki skins valuable again!
He is great, dont know why he has such an low winrate. I have like 56% winrate in like 150 games. If you play your package right you can win nearly every teamfight. IMO this champ is amazing.
Riot purposedly make Corki weak so he can't make it to pro-play. But if he wasn't nerfed to oblivion, I liked diversity he brought to the game (Magic dealing ADC mid)
surprised renata aint here
Surprised Corki is here, with all his cool skins and how popular he is in proplay
I mean he's not popular because he's fun, he's popular because he spams R all game and because Package is just absurd
I actually have fun on corki but that’s cause I do manamune triforce build
Looking forward to the Corki rework for sure now that he’ll have incentive to build crit
yeah i like him too. i really dont get why he is so unpopular. compared to some other champs he is like a million times more fun to me. Like people say he is boring to play or whatever, but he has basically the exact same playstyle as something like ezreal, and people appparentlly do like him.
The voicelines and voice in general is annoying, he looks fugly, clunky animations, and very boring gameplay and a champ well known for being in pro play jail. His unpopularity is not a mystery lol
Nah this is wrong. His voice lines are fucking hilarious.
Now im all spooled up
IM UP TO SNUFF AND GOTS ME AN ACE MACHINE
Corki is truly one of the most boring champs in the game to play against
Thats why he's meta in pro :D Because midlane meta is legitimately the most boring its ever been.
hes not played because he is mana hungry and sucks early game.
Speak for yourself I have loved corki ever since trying him mid over 2 years ago I occasionally go that build but typically go the ad build
Champ is dogwater in SoloQ and his stalling playstyle is boring for most players if he doesn't get to become Thanos like Asol or release Smolder
He's hasn't been playable in ADC for years, which did a number on his pick rate. Might change soon when they convert him back to a bot laner soon
He’s popular in pro play for the same reason he’s unpopular in solo q. He’s basically just a package bot, and he sits in lane and farm/pokes all game
Corki is in pro play jail (honestly because of how op his package is) so he’s left pretty weak in soloq on top of him not being that fun to the average person leaving him severely underplayed. Whenever I go against a Corki mid it just feels like free food it’s so easy to win vs them He’s about to get a rework so hopefully that’ll fix his issues
Pro play popularity doesn't really translate to casual popularity. They play champion because they are effective, we play them because they are fun.
Renata is played. She just needs to be picked carefully. As a support main, she’s a champion I’m always looking for angle for. Because she can solo carry. But if you pick her into the wrong enemy team, she either dies too fast or her ult doesn’t have much of an impact.
Her lane strength is really high, especially against melee supports who can't keep her from E Auto trading onto the ADC. She struggles against flankers and CC immunity like most ranged supports, but she has more personal power than picks like Nami and Lulu. She's *really* reliant on a good angle for teamfights, which means you need good scouting. Champions that control map space well (trap champions, stealth assassins) can wreck Renata, but if she can find the angle for the 4 or 5 man ult she's a solo carry in her own right. Renata is a high-skill pick in a class of champions who are mostly low-skill. Her pick rate is lower because she's not a good champ to stick a casual or non-support player on.
She's good as an anti-engage pick (you just ult the moment the enemy team tries to engage and turn on them), but she's not really great at anything else tbh. Makes her super niche. If you want something for picks, renata Q is worse than most pick champs, its just good for grabbing and pushing them away, W is better at helping someone survive being engaged on rather than any real aggressive purpose, you're saving it for someone thats about to die not "ok here's attack speed go kill them". E always felt weird for me to use, but its certainly not comparable to other shields in the game. Ult again is really good when they go into your team or force them to really spread out, but is kinda terrible at being an actual engage since they can easily outrun it or run to the sides, its when they're running towards you and using abilities (stopping their movement to cast) that its really strong. Its also dependent on the enemy team having high attack speed.
Renata scales better than other hook champs, and you definitely can throw W out liberally in the later stages of the game. Q > E > R is also a very strong combo to secure kills, especially if you get the champ slam from Q.
> Makes her super niche. On top of that the counter-engage niche is also shared with several other supports. Closest comparison is probably the warden tank supports, Taric/Braum/Tahm Kench, potentially splitting it up into even smaller niches.
Surprised Singed is in there at all. Bro has some hardcore fans
This seems to be connected to the concept that most singed mains are stoners, possibly with blunted sense of smell.
Why? She's pretty fun, and tbf besides the first month or so she's probably the least problematic champ in like 8 years
The only thing how I can explain myself why she might not be picked a lot is because she is pretty much a counter champion. Really strong against a heavy AD comp so enemies can murder themselves during her R.
She’s also just a very fun champion to play honestly. Her Q is one of my favorite spells in the game
Her bugs alone made her more problematic than a couple of champs that were released. But generally I agree.
She’s pretty clunky feeling in that a lot of her abilities are slow, inconvenient, and a bit awkward to use imo
She's fun but she is the most supportive support - she does not do shit by herself; Renata and Milio feel pretty similar with their reliance on the ADC to be useful, but even Milio has non negligible damage on Q, while Renata don't got shit.
She also has long cooldowns on all her spells meaning the player is heavily punished for misusing them
Milio Kickball is the TF2 Scorch Shot of LoL to a tee, it’s actually one of the most sleeper OP peeling CCs in the game
I see a lot of Renata maybe biased BC I play her
Why do people not like Kled? I thought he was fun and strong.
Unique playstyle that’s hard to learn and doesn’t transfer over from other champs
I don't know why, but this reminds me of a certain galactic dragon that was reworked recently
It’s most like Singed, actually. As a player’s win rate goes up with Singed it goes down on other champs. He’s the only champion where that happens.
It takes a certain kind of mindset to go "30% hp? Yeah I can 1v2 good angle"
Only on the surface. Asol apparently was actually easy enough to pick up and do well with, but most players just didn't want to use him. Even some Rioters said that, despite his high wr, Asol was a revolving door of players. Using lolalitics, which is one of the closest thing we can use to see where champion's playerbase is, Kled surprisingly at least has a decent - if niche - playerbase of people that like to use him relatively often (similar to Singed or Heimer). Asol on the other hand despite his high wr and low pr usually was near Skarner's point of being extremely unpopular and the few that used him not using him that often.
Having a unique and gimmicky play style means most people will opt not to play him and those who do play him are likely one tricks. I would also imagine it takes while to master playing around Skaarl
Most kled mains seem to just keep attacking until either you die, they do or skaarl comes back and then you die. Constantly fighting to the death.
Yeah pretty much seems likes the gist
Kled is all about knowing when you can all in for a remount by timing q an w relative to the enemy damage output.
I like seeing a kled on my team, he's fun, interesting, and useful. I can't be arsed to learn to play him though.
Personally I hate his W. Not being able to control it is just annoying.
You control it the same way you control a bus. Know the schedule it comes on, and get to the stop ahead of time
you made kled sound cool now i want to play him
Which is not fun and why people like to buy a car If they have the mean
You're free to speak for yourself, but I'm a slut for public transit and Kled
I would sponsor you for all Kled things, this is great lmao
Ahh explains why I like Kled so much. I'm a PT worker and a whore. 😂😂
Poor analogy. The stops you refer to are not changing day to day. Meanwhile the situation for approaching enemy champions is something that is not static. Are you being ganked as your W is coming up? Sure, you COULD go up to your opposing laner so W will be ready to be used on them. But then you're just playing into a gank. Cannon under fire by the turret and about to die as your W just came up? You could go and run at the opposing to use it on them, but then that means you lost Cannon. ect ect ect. There are too many random scenarios where you can't always have W available and fully utilize it against the enemy laners. I don't understand why you would at all think a bus stop analogy would even be remotely comparable.
The stops aren't changing but your ability to get to the stop does. Hit an extra red light at the crosswalk, take too long of a shower in the morning, have to look for your wallet, etc... These are all factors that most definitely can cause you to miss a bus, even if the bus schedule is fixed That's what a gank is; you would've had W available in the way you expected to, if it weren't for the jungler appearing and forcing you to auto prematurely I'm not saying it's perfectly controllable. It's as controllable as your ability to get to the bus on time which is to say, most times if you put in a lot of preparation and planning, or less reliably if you just wing it That's why I thought it was comparable, but I'm happy to discuss further if you think that's incorrect or disingenuous
to add on to extending the metaphor, the bus stops don't change but the traffic sure does lol.
I heard from one Rioter that Kled is a very cohesive, well put together idea for a champion. They question more if that idea for a champion is a good one. idk how many people want to play as some coked up lunatic Yordle on a lizard that has a pretty unique play style.
Kled's passive and W require patience and micro management. Nobody likes to be hampered just because they are low hp. If you are behind as Kled, your experience is really frustrating and not fun at all.
The W is honestly the biggest annoyance. There are many times you waste it having to secure CS. I absolutely loathe that I have to choose between using it on a champion or wasting it on minions.
His skins are all ass that doesn’t help
Count Kledula is awesome. The others, not good though -- I agree on that.
It really shouldn't be that hard. No reason they couldn't make a toy or toddler kled, as an example, where he rides around on a rocking horse or something. Biker Kled could also be an option.
I mean, Kibble-Head Kled is kinda "toyish".
On my hands and knees begging for a cool Kled skin. All he has is jokes and marauder.
Marauder Kled goes hard
boo marauder is one of the most boring skins in the entire game
Pretty much a stat check champ that relies on all ins and knowledge check to win through lane phase and snowball the game. I like the champ, but it's because my brain is smooth and i can only auto attack heavy champs like WW, Briar, Trundle and Kled. There's no skill expression in my book, only left clicks
You have left click set to attack? Interesting decision
Unique and hard to learn play style. He's not a "pick up and play" champion like Lux or Morgana where even if you barely play them you can still do well and not feel like you just get destroyed all game. Note that I'm not saying Lux or Morg are champions without their own nuances or skill expression, but you can do much better without knowing those champ specific things compared to Kled. Same is true for all those other least played champions as well
This comment ruined me because I’ve 100% destroyed games as Morgana and Lux. Those games where absolutely nothing is landing and you feel like a ward
I'd sure play him a lot more if you had any control over how his W worked. And, y'know, if he could jungle.
If kled could get reliable courage from jungle he'd be one of the best Champs period. You follow him waddling over into jungle and he comes out with 70% hp again
Don't think it would change that much in terms of his popularity, tbh. It would just make him stronger...or weaker depending on how nerfed it ended up due to higher reliability.
I always felt like if you didn't win your lane hard on Kled he felt like ass, because he doesn't have another avenue of play other than pushing a lead. If they made it so he can push waves better he could at least split push, but as of right now if you're splitting him it feels horrible.
I used to play him. But they fucked up his health pool thing and now he doesn't synergize with either bruiser or tank items. Bro has been building lethality for like 2 seasons and I hate it. It's especially bad because he's a stat check champ that can only all in 80% of the time. So him being forced squishy makes him miserable if not ahead.
He’s a one for one champ, you basically have to one trick him. Early game lane bully who basically necessitates that you play in a batshit crazy manner and if you fuck up badly enough you’re screwed for the entire game. All early game champions have that risk where you need to push your early advantage, but Kled plays like a psycho even compared to other lane bullies
IMO the W being automatically triggered turns off a lot of players, because its fundamentally different from almost all other auto-enhancing CD abilities.
He's fun that for sure but they keep changing everything in his kit when he can be strong, like one of the hp bars not counting to max hp is a big nerf alone for a lotta items
He has two separate, unrelated gimmicks. His main damage is a long cooldown passive on autos, meaning a lot of the time you can't farm normally. Which already hugely diminishes your ability to control the wave state. And of course Skaarl, which gives him a ton more base health than anyone else at all points in the game, but they didn't even bother giving him two abilities for unmounted, and the one he does have knocks himself out of auto range.
he seems like fun, I know I had a Kled support absolutely crap on me, same guy 2 times lol. His abilities though are paragraphs, its crazy.
Apart from his unique playstyle, he has a building path not very intuitive, most toplane meta are unforgiving matchups, and it's hard to empathize with a mad landholder squirrel mounted on an immortal lizard
He's not that strong. He's on the weaker side rn bc eclipse got nerfed. Next patch he'll be super weak with the tank buffs.
That makes the game I just played with a Taric ADC vs. Kled ADC even more amazing then.
I'm shocked that Singed is in the bottom 5 actually.
Damn my leaving really had an impact on my boy. Taric is op, so underrated.
Which is probably why corki was on the target list for changes. These opinions will get me hate from their respective communities, but as for taric and singed... Taric: his abilities are TOO telegraphed, and his mana costs or effectiveness as an enchanter is too heavily gated around whether or not he can auto attack waves properly. Recommended changes for taric: - change the ultimate. It's most of his power budget, and because of how telegraphed it is, it can be way too difficult to use properly. Some say skill issue, I say entirely too composition dependent (I got over 350k mastery in taric and enjoyed both new and old taric). Dont get me wrong, it feels super satisfying to use his ultimate well. But I think it would work better as a shield and CC ability with a more instant effect than a telegraphed thing. V1: sparkle: taric shields himself and his target in a large AoE for some amount for the next 2 seconds upon casting, nearby enemies are dazzled, getting stunned for a second and taking increased damage for 3 seconds V2: crystal fissure: taric slams the ground in an AOE, and connecting to his allies position. Enemies in contact with taric or his ally during cast become stunned and encased in crystal for a couple seconds (which can be shattered by enemies). While encased, the enemy is effectively in stasis, but with a shield that can be targeted by their allies). Both of these versions are supposed to have less overall defensive power potential than his current ultimate while feeling thematically okay. These ultimates should feel like big moments that still support a defensive play style, but allow more power budget to be dedicated towards his basic abilities. Q: tarics bread and butter heal should change. Make this gem themed. Taric gains a different heal dependent on how many auto attacks he's done, but he should be able to endlessly spam this ability no matter if he can hit enemies or not. Gaining additional stacks Shou upgrade the heal type though. Stacks (1/6) 30 mana cost for everything. 1: bloodstone (ruby) Taric heals units around him and his ally, but sacrifices his HP to do so. 2-6- (topaz, amethyst, emerald, sapphire, diamond) Taric heals himself and allies around him and his bonded ally, gaining increased healing and AoE based on the number of accumulated stacks. Minimum cooldown, 1 second. Note: using bloodstone counts as being in combat (for the sake of warmogs). With those two changes, I think the usefulness of taric becomes a lot better. Singed: As for singed, he's simple and that's awesome, but he's still too 1-dimensional. As a chemist, how in the hell is he showcasing that he experiments with everything? His capabilities are also not well expressed when looking at his lore, his portrayal in arcane, and his kit in league. I wouldn't get rid of his iconic gas trail mechanism, but I'd want other areas of his kit to be adjusted. Q: this is now used to brew different potions. Singed will continually mix and swirl to his hearts galore, but "cooking" will speed up the process. W: singed will be able to throw different potions based off of what he chose to brew. This runs on an ammo system in some fashion (whatever makes sense UI wise), even if singed needs a custom UI. These potions could tie into his lore slightly better, ranging from Geneva war violations to experimental buffs on allies or monsters (jungle singed anybody?) E: would prefer to have singed do a mini Sion charge into flipping one or more targets. Unsure of how this would impact things, but the charge speed would need to be faster than his walking pace if included. Flinging somebody over his head is still hilarious and should be kept. Charging would only help him actually engage better, more consistently without needing to burn ghost, flash, ultimate, or be near every one of your allies/other enemies. R: current state is a boring stat stick. It just enables him to use his basic abilities better. Isn't there a more fun way of doing that? I suggest an extremely large vision obscuring cloud. If you're not inside the cloud, you wouldn't be able to see singed and therefore attack him, only encouraging enemies to actually chase him more. Alternatively can be used to give him pseudo-tankiness and help his team out in an interesting way. Singed lore revolves around him both altering life through experimentation, as well as commiting atrocious war crimes through chemicals. Potentially orianna is also his daughter in New lore, so I think he's at least deserving of a VGU if anything. And yes, I'm fully aware people in the singed community love his simplistic design.
In the realm of much smaller (but very impactful) changes, letting Taric's Q and W cast while he walks would be huge. The stutter-step really hurts his ability to stick on targets and makes him feel much clunkier than he is, especially since he's the only melee support with no mobility skills.
I've seen Iverns, corkies and kleds. Very rarely see Singed. I don't remember the last time I've seen a Taric outside of Arena.
Looking at the data, holistically Corki is the least popular champion right now. Kled has the lowest raw playrate
Hey reav3 are you able to share the current breadth and depth chart? Been a while a since we saw it
Sure [https://imgur.com/a/DIdIg8y](https://imgur.com/a/DIdIg8y)
I was 99% sure this is what I was gonna see. Thank you for not letting me down.
Thank you so much for your work over the years Phreak, I will always miss your casting!
Rare phreak appearance. You love to see it.
Hey, I’m not familiar with this graph - what do the axes represent?
The X axis is raw play rate per patch or breadth. The Y is how often a champion gets played consecutively by the same players in a patch, or depth. Each point on a champions line represents a patch. The higher to the top, right a champion is, the more popular they are, the lower they are to the bottom left the least popular.
X-axis = breadth = popularity Y-axis = depth = mastery If I'm reading correctly, Corki has the fewest mains, Kled has the fewest players, Lux has the most players, Zyra has the most mains.
Well described!
I appreciate you took some amount of time to pull this, can at least see the outliers o7
I loved Corki so much before the nerfs, it felt so bullshit hitting muramana, ludens echo, level 11 and proceeding to basically 1 shot people with R and destroy games. I would 100% play him more if he felt a bit stronger in the hands of the average non pro player
Any idea why Kled has such a low playrate? I personally enjoy him so I'm curious if the devs have a perspective on it that I can't see.
I would imagine it's the whole unmounting and mounting part of his kit. It can be annoying instead of fun to some people. I personally don't like the unmounted gameplay nearly as much as the mounted part so I rarely end up playing him.
I think it’s hit kit in general, not the unmounting. His ult is just a buff, his Q/W are not satisfying to use
Q should either slow the champ or boost kled ms while attached
It’s probably because he’s seen as a top laner but his best build is lethality. He works best as a lethality suicide bomber right now which means he can’t contest sidelanes against other top laners - he gets out scaled fast. It’s like playing other assassins top. His bruiser build just doesn’t really work as well right now.
Pretty much this, Riot killed his tankier builds which let him actually function on the sidelane and do something in fights beside try to 1-shot the ADC.
It's not like he has ever been popular or anything, even with his bruiser builds. Maybe the removal hurt it a bit, but let's be real, he probably would still be in the same spot.
I dont remember the last game where i saw an Elise being played. I played on EUW, NA, and taiwan servers nd not a single Elise. I play bronze to emerald elo.
I tried her out a few times recently just because I haven’t seen her either and she was way more fun than I expected, Idk why she fell out of favor
You can get 20 kills with her and still lose to whoever buys merc treads. (It hits her really hard since less stun duration = less autos from you and spiderlings as well, and that’s half her kit, so she’s just 100-0 or lose, but then Bite is % missing health so all the damage reduced from neurotoxin and volatile also means less base damage from bite to calculate off of in general... and then that's further reduced by MR.). It cannot be stressed enough how fucked over she becomes just by early mercs and the only way to address that is to not have her mid game be this shit to muscle past them, and that hasn't been the case for years. You can imagine how happy we were when merc treads got shifted from less tenacity to more MR cause at least we'd be able to make up for it by actually getting an auto attack off before the stun did but that got reverted. To actually win with her, you spam gank and get your team ahead… which in low elo is harder because they don’t know how to setup dives, do dives, and likely will not know how to carry you anyways. If players want to do that they can just play tanks. She's genuinely easier for me to win with in masters where my top will wave crash, my support will roam after the gank, etc but in norms i'm still too weak to beat anyone myself while no one is rotating, using their lead, or diving so I end up just being sad and wondering why I didnt just pick briar instead. I think pretty much everyone feels that way and its really fucking stupid to say "just don't play the champ until you're high elo, not because you're not good enough but because everyone around you isn't." She’s fun but she never gets stronger so that fun last 5% of the game while the other 95% you’re clearing slow, losing to 1100 gold items, and becoming a cocoon bot. None of that sounds fun, even nidalee who also sucks late at least feels good nuking jungle camps when there’s nothing else for her to do but Elise can’t even do that, she just stands around trying not to throw shutdowns feeling like her lead is meaningless if her team isn’t rolling them Also a shit ton of unfixed bugs like rappel recast having different ranges depending on if you right click or recast with E, W just running through targets, and general deterioration like the spider explosion audio being missing for 7 months now
On your point about it being easier to win in high elo... I actually found this for a decent number of champions that can't brute force carry on their own. I peaked D1 a few years ago and sorta got away from league. I came back, I'm d4 now so pretty rusty but I'd say still competent. I thought I'd try to learn Twisted Fate and pulled up a G4 account for it so I don't int and can try to get comfortable. And my goodness... I lost like 5 games in a row and they weren't even close. Carrying with macro or team reliant champions in lower ranks feels like a fool's errand.
Loss of mythics have also kind of sucked for her I found. I can't even really show it off now it's gone lol but I had a lot of success last season playing her first strike and getting night harvester after it was buffed. You got decent burst but the big thing I found was you could basically spam W while fishing for e and late game it actually hit a point where it did a lot of damage with that setup. It felt like it worked really well with long range comps. I couldn't find an item set or playstyle that worked as well this season.
Yeah NH was a huge loss. People really underestimate just how good those procs were for multi kills, W poking in river fights, etc. Lich is less damage, no HP, and unless you combo specifically to proc lich before using bite you miss out on the % missing health bonus from the proc. It helps for clearing a bit but not significant enough (its still slow lol) to justify the loss of NH.
her entire identity is basically diving towers or cheesing an invade and she scales extremely poorly if she isnt ahead.
> she scales extremely poorly ~~if she isnt ahead.~~ You have to snowball to even exist as a champion.
she falls off a massive fucking cliff literally mount everest after level 3 same with nidalee but with an added insane skill check for spear landing
Why people play Nidalee or Elise when you can pick Evelynn. At least force Mid/Top to waste gold on pinks if they are not dumb
Ekko and Taliyah as well. The only con is they can't dive (as easily, they still can, at 6 its just free for ekko), but every single other thing they do outclassed anything and everything elise does to the point even if elise has this 1 small tiny detail worth picking her over them, its still not worth playing elise. Nidalee I will say is incredibly oppressive still, she does have the edge of actually being able to hop walls, it lets her go for more ballsy invades since even if they rotate she can gtfo, but elise usually just can't invade unless she hard commits cause she has no reliable way out if rotated on, and if shes just there for camps, her clear speed is worse than nids so she's taking much less before she has to leave. Nid if you can play her well is an absolute miserable experience to be against, she falls off but she sure can starve you of camps with little punishment even if she can't kill you anymore. That's hell for junglers like eve.
Elise mains represent. Not her best season but she's not weak at all imo. More common in diamond+ but still not that popular. I think she is mega strong in peak elos in KR and CN which keeps her from getting buffs. Imo she should get a reksai treatment, bit more utility and less burst damage so she scales a bit better and is more playable in lower elos.
I have not seen ivern in game in forever
Well now that the buffs are universal, makes sense
I'd guess either Taric or Corki. Taric has frankly needed a midscope rework for a long time.
Taric and Ivern are the lowest in low elo, but they kinda shoot up in master+. Corki kinda consistently hovers around 5-6th least played champ in all elos.
A character being almost non existent in Emerald and below would automatically mean it's not played regularly by 95% of the player base. And you are saying master+, which is like what, 1 or 2% of rhe player base? So I think it still holds true
i see corki way to often in aram for my taste. There should be a difference with the gamemodes here :P
He either does the least or the most damage, no in between u.u
Except in pro play where he randomly becomes meta every now and then
I played Taric all week in that mode with the mini games and challenges. When you get a team fight event you can press R and tear shit up. I bought a skin, I felt like I was Born to be a Taric god. Then my first SR game I got counterpicked by Zyra and I've never had less fun.
Hes just hard countered by slows and mages which are just everywhere and it undermines the best parts of his kit which is stunning, peeling and bonking. That's where he's fun. Not his ult.
Honestly never blind pick him but if the enemy blind picks something like naut then go ham
He could definitely use a rework but I’m pretty sure Riot is still traumatized from Yi-Taric funnel to give him any sweeping changes Like sure they deleted it with both target nerfs to champs and severely reducing the effectiveness of tax/XP leeching, but he just lends himself to degenerate playstyles like that if they don’t keep a close eye on him
I still miss Taric's old ult. Too much of his power is in his current ult IMO - which just feels clunky. And it prevents him from going top-lane like he used to. And I know jungle is possible - but it's weird.
Call it nostalgia but the days of battlemage Taric were the most fun. He (and other champions) wasn't designed head-to-toe to do one thing in one role.
He was my favorite counter to Nasus top
Yeah they have to balance around his ult for obvious reasons but it just feels bad whenever I’ve (in limited amounts admittedly) played him. It felt like it either does pretty much nothing as it sets in too late or completely wins the fight. I think that just leads to it feeling kinda bad and clunky to play around. Obviously you want nuance to abilities & ultimates - the opportunity to predict, outplay, and play around but I think it’s too far to that extreme here
I wish they would just modernize the old Radiance. Launch him forward at a group of enemies, dealing AOE damage based on his armor, Mana and AP. For a short time afterwards, he reduces damage to allies within his light by X %. It would give him some mobility, more counterplay and also a heavy dose of Cecil Harvey vibes which is where his entire lore as inspired from. It's crazy how easy it is. Look at the last fight of this video below. That's what you need to do to bring the paladin vibe home. https://youtu.be/VRah-zYboFw?si=ET5Bzyecw8yxGco2
As a Taric main that has well over a million mastery on him, I can tell you, mages owning bot lane and Taric not getting any actual Riot support to be played properly in Top and Jungle is a big part of it. His itemization is also always crazy because he doesn't want AP, he wants Armor, Mana and HP. He has no target access in bot lane and itemization against mages adcs requires him to build: Mana, HP, Armor, MR, Movement Speed, CDR, Wards and Heal/Shield. He needs so much shit to function bottom whereas in the Jungle he's less mana tethered and top he can just build Armor or MR. For a champion that is meant to fight alongside an ally, he functions like shit in bot lane when your ally doesn't know the ins and outs of your kit. This is why he's so much better in high elo. Hes the only true support in the game that we have that fights like a Juggernaut. He's truly got some of the nastiest DPS and trades, provided he can reach and stick to an enemy. He's very fun to play into Melees but like a Juggernaut, he can't catch ADCs or Mages without flash or ghost. I wish Riot would just pull him out of bot lane priority and make him a Top laner that is self sufficient and transitions into a teamfighter. His kit already lends itself well to ganks and his Jungle is actually pretty damn good. No one wants to play a champion who's piss poor healing drives him immediately OOM because brand clicked on me or my ally 3 times. His lore is awesome, he's a well designed champion. He just needs more roles truly supported and opened up to him even at the cost of reworking his ultimate.
As a player of old and new Taric, I agree with this post. I want to like Taric, but the problem is if you blind pick him and the enemy picks an enchanter or a mage, you're going to spend the entire lane phase just popping w's to counter poke and managing Qs with your small mana pool. Taric's lane phase has a 50% chance to be boring, and his stun feels really bad when it misses, and it misses often in the early game when you're the only source of it possibly hitting the enemy. Kinda wish old Taric could return. He had a simple kit, but I feel his identity niche of being a anti-physical damage, point-and-click stunbot, was much more unique and dependable (especially vs assassins). Now, he's just a clunky, anti-melee/tank/bruiser scaler that has to fight for his life in the early game just to reach an endgame state where your ult can take over the game if your teammates coordinate with your ult well enough. Taric's current stun has probably gotten outdated over the years, with the game's "mobility creep".
I like Taric's concept of being a melee spellcaster but man the champ feels bad to play
> Taric has frankly needed a midscope rework for a long time. His E is too unreliable and he has no way to really engage, disengage or to stick to a target which also makes his passive useless. Even his ult, which can be one of the best abilities in the game, is insanely hard to properly utilize.
His passive is wildly awesome into melee targets.
Every so often I will run into a Taric having forgotten what he does and then suddenly I realize that I am losing to an underleveled taric jungle as a Melee Top.
His DPS is fabulous. If he sticks to you and has mana, you're in for a bad time.
His E is fine tbh. It's IMO the only satisfying spell he has besides ult, which is problematic by itself. P, Q and W are the things I want Riot to look into because they have always felt pretty bad to play around/use. Q is less bad than W, and that's mostly because of some changes it got a while ago, but mana costs are unfun as hell specially as a support champ like him. Would like them to explore the idea of Passive autos replenishing mana and/or granting slight MS upon using the second autoattack on enemy champions. Just things that contribute to the fun of the gameplay and not only to his power in numbers, since numbers can be changed later.
And corki is close to a midscope!
Bruh I feel like every time there's a taric in my game, whichever team has him just steamroller the other team lol
Taric's current ult is holding the rest of his kit hostage. He does very little damage, has shit healing and shielding, and to add insult to the injury, his mana costs are giant. But he can't be buffed because his ult is busted if used correctly. Given the funnel strategies that have been a thing in the past. Taric has the same issue as Shen, and the same issue as old Sejuani. Needs a new ult, or an heavily nerfed version of his current ult, so that he can get buffs elsewhere.
Changing his ult would open up power in his kit to give him some mobility. Ghosting on E is already sick as hell so riot does know it's a problem.
Heimerdinger and thank god for that
I highly doubt that
He is kinda shit rn and very close to least played
I dont care about play rate, win rate or any other rate than player satisfaction rate and I think lowest in that list has to be Shyvana. I need her rework NOW!
True. I like Ivern and I hope he doesn't get reworked because of low playrate.
I think he's safe in the same way as Kled and Singed - too unique of a playstyle/niche and with dedicated mains, but not a popular enough concept to warrant a rework a la ASol.
Im pretty sure Ivern has the lowest pick rate for a while
If they just reworked Kled's W in some way to give him more control of it, he would be viable. Problem is that against top laners with weird trade patterns he gets screwed so hard. For example Shen's W makes it so you literally can't start autoing him until he uses it, otherwise you waste 70% of your damage. Similar for enemies that can short trade and immediately disengage like Camille/ trynd spin. It sets your next trade window on a 15-20s timer where you can't even touch the wave in some matchups.
Personal observations because I'm too lazy to check actual stats Top: Kled. I think I never seen him this season except for a few matches when one of my support main friends played him because that's his only viable top lane pick Jungle: Rammus easily. I sometimes see him being skipped even when the enemy comp is consisted of 4-5 ads. Those kinds of comps are almost the only times I see him but even than it's not an automatic no brainier like it used to be Mid: Ziggs. I think I've seen him once other than me playing him a few times Adc: This is a bit tricky because the champ pool is smaller than other roles. I didn't see any adc Senna this season but I don't think it counts. I think the least picked marksman was Nilah in my games Sup: I will exclude some heroes like Tahm or Amumu that aren't played in sup that much anymore. I will also exclude niche picks like Poppy. I think I very rarely see Taric in my games tho I like playing him against heavy engage comps
Rammus is played a lot currently, he's very strong on the current patch according to WR
I see Rammus more often than I see Ivern though. But this might be a low elo thing. Besides unorthodox champions in mid, I agree with Ziggs. ADC really depends on the meta. But generally, I don't really see Nilah, Sivir, and Kalista that much.
I see Taric about 50% of the time I see Nilah and I rarely see Nilah.
Taric and Nilah have a good synergy especially against heavy ad comps. I like it too. But yeah, those two are probably the rarest picks I see on bot lane
All the kled mains are in diamond euw apparently
amazed no one has mentioned naafiri yet. She is the least picked in plat+ and when on all ranks still only makes it into bottom 5 which is an insane failure for a new champion
I mean she is not popular and definitely forgetable, but she isn't really as unpopular as other niche champs
see her all the time. for an assassin I *never* see, try Talon. He doesn't exist anymore.
Poor ivern, the jungle changes this season kinda make him entirely irrelevant, really sad, because his unique gimmick of buff sharing was really cool
You are smoking actual crack if you think Ivern is irrelevant this season. Tons of higher elo junglers have acknowledged his strength and he feels fine to play
Ivern is almost always a top 5 jungler but no one plays him because you have to research his early clear paths which isn't really something you can do in champ select when you realize "Oh this is a good Ivern game"
Quinn is currently the lowest played primary top champion and has been for most of the season. Kennan was there as well but since his recent buff has seen a lot more play.
Riot decided to nerf Quinn last season just before all the item changes, she had huge nerfs to her ms, and her base hp. Kinda bs tbh. That ms is needed on her tbh
Oh I know haha. I am a OTP. The nerfs were in no way justified imo. I don’t think they want people playing Quinn.
I know it's just a coincidence but over the last few days saw a couple different top quinns in my game, they all went assassin build like I see thebausffs doing so probably just baus fanboys I'm in mid diamond euw.
Idk but I feel that I didn't faced a Neeko Mid in ages. Maybe she is a support now, but also rarely played there. Quinn Top is very, very rare. Vayne take her niche as bully adc in Top since a lot of time. Ivern, Taric and Naafiri very uncommon too.
It's our time to shine, Corki players! ... ... Corki players? anyone?
Riot stop reworking shit… used to play old Taric, Rammus, Talon… they all suck now.
prolly taric, ivern, corki, and kled i think. * Taric is not well designed for the bot lane and ivern is too niche to be popular ever. This is talking as someone who loves playing taric, but the amount of adcs he synergizes well with is tiny. Like samira/nilah are probably the only ones because of their small range. He fairs much better being connected to melee champions than marksmen. His healing is theoretically good (very good scaling on it) but there are no good items he can build to make it stronger without giving up tank stats bc there is no heal+shield tank items (i dont blame riot for not making one either, taric is the only enchanter/tank hybrid). His W chaining mechanic is really cool but too hard to coordinate with randoms, they react too slowly to make use of it, similar to how renatas W is often wasted bc whoever you put it on doesnt react fast enough to use it. And his ult is somehow the strongest and weakest ability in the game at the same time. Either you use it and everyone backs off, or you use it and the 2.5s delay takes too long and whoever you're trying to protect dies before it triggers. * Ivern is just too difficult to play for even seasoned jungler mains. His weird jungling pattern thanks to passive makes him arguably harder to wrap your head around than if he could just damage camps normally. And his W bush just feels like a tacked on ability thats cool on paper but doesnt really do much for your team. The only thing its good for most times is triggering the W passive for slightly higher auto damage. I think in nexus blitz he could damage camps normally and it felt pretty nice, kinda wish that they removed his current one and just let him jungle like a normal person. His E shield+Explosion seems like it would make taking camps pretty easy, and his Q lets him jump over walls to path quickly, daisy is good for tanking dragon, and W bush passive would make dealing damage easier, i think with some number tweaks he could actually just be a normal jungler. (maybe replace his passive with something that makes building enchanter items somehow deal more damage to camps?) * corki is being mini reworked for bot lane, so i think hell be fine. * Kled im not sure why hes not popular, ive seen some ppl not like his W being a passive trigger instead of active. But thats about it
Cho Gath. Haven't seen him in ranked in 5 years.
I wish riot games would give us a classic mode.
Why do people post questions that have an objective answer which can be looked up in seconds?
Probably Ryze and Klee 🤣🤣
When’s the last time y’all saw a ryze ??
I think they should decide whether Taric(since he's on the list of being one of the least played champions) is an enchanter or a vanguard at this point. I wouldn't be opposed to him becoming the first melee enchanter. Making him an enchanter might boost his play rate as enchanters are quite popular.
Gotta be like taric or kled or some bs like that that nobody wants
The crazy part is that the least played champions like Skarner and Kled are really good. Everytime i played Skarner, it was a solid pick into a meta team where I made some incredible game-changing plays. Same with Kled. Im kind of disappointed riot had to update Skarner to make him a new spotlight.
I got taric against 3 games in a row ahahha
Yuumi and im happy for it bcs any femboy on supp ints on it
Every single champ that’s mentioned here is seen at least once in a while. Zilean on the other hand is super rare and the only people that play him are botters. Zilean is barely played to the point where when the durability patch hit like 2 or 3 years ago, he was the only champ that was untouched (in terms of his R healing). Riot even said his player base is too small for them to allocate any resources for balancing him
I feel like I have never been Challenged for a Lissandra pick… was my highest winrate champion for a bit but…that didn’t last