Knowing which lane a team prefers is a great way to anticipate its strategy and style of play. It is possible to extract certain information from the statistics of each team, or even define their style of play by combining them. This step is essential, because similar information can sometimes hide different strategies. For example an aggressive team may want to play around the top to take a Herald and snowball quickly, as well as a more passive team wishing to put their split pusher in good conditions. It is therefore necessary to combine the percentage of ganks carried out by the jungler on a lane, with the effective time that he spends there in order to be able to identify with precision the strategy of the teams.
Methodology
These statistics were published by KindredChokoBons on Reddit. They take into account the time that each jungler spends on the lanes, but also that spent by the two other positions that can easily roam: the support and the midlaner. The lanes were defined by the bushes at the entrance of the river for each of them, so as not to consider a jungler doing a scutt as being gank either. It should be noted that these stats relate only to the start of the game, so it is an average time covering the actions taken from the start of the game to the fourteenth minute. For greater statistical accuracy, actions carried out at level 1 (which often concern a specific strategy and/or situation) have not been counted.
On the other hand, all actions performed to help a laner have been taken into account, whether it is a gank, placing a ward or helping to push/defend a tower. For more readability, only the starting position of the lane is taken into account. For example, if after taking the T1 bot, the ADC/Support duo recovers the toplane, and the jungler comes the ganks to the top, the time is counted for the botlane, because ultimately it is indeed his duo that he helps and not his sololaner.
An emerging trend
Unsurprisingly, the favorite teams’ junglers spend the most time on the lanes. This is usually due to a better macro. The jungler often optimizes his route a little better and therefore gains additional seconds compared to his opponent. Even if it’s not very significant on a single rotation, over 14 minutes the 3/4 seconds gained on each clean end up weighing. In addition, the best teams optimize their ganks well, which are usually followed by a push and a grapple, extending the time spent on the lane. However even it is the expected formations that dominate, the gap between them is quite significant with 40 seconds difference between T1 (1st in the ranking) and G2 (3rd).
Unsurprisingly, midlanes are the most ganked lanes as a rule. This is explained by the presence of the support, which can easily come to help mid, whereas a toplane intervention requires a greater sacrifice. If you look at the stats of the junglers, most of them prefer to help the outer lanes (very slightly). Moreover, at RNG and G2, the midlane is the lane least visited by junglers. Even taking into account the fact that the supports go there less, the toplane remains the least helped lane in terms of effective time, except at RNG and G2. The Saigon Buffalo bring as usual a little exotic touch compared to the other regions, being the only team in the tournament to largely favor their botlane.
lfl-lol
Thunderbolt on the French League of Legends scene. The little prince of toplane, Adam, would pay the price for his bad Spring Split in the LEC. He would have been “punished” and sent back to LFL for the summer… It’s still hard to believe, but the information comes from Wooloo.