The competition is back in League of Legends. This return is a bit special for all major leagues, as Riot Games has introduced some big changes to items, tower damage, and champion resistance. The adjustments have led to a big change in strategy and the way of approaching the game, which now puts the work of the developers to the test. The pros are still adjusting, but after the first few days we can start drawing conclusions about which champions dominate, waiting for either a nerf or a buff from their competition.
Champions who dominate
In this article, we will focus on the best characters that appear in almost every professional match. There are other interesting data such as the increase in the average duration of matches in the four major leagues but there will always be time to dwell on it later. We will focus on the champions with more than 95% presence in the so-called major leagues. This score is the point from which Riot Games must obligatorily nerf the characters, according to the balancing rules shared by the studio.
wukong | 96.8% | 46 | 46 | 59% |
 Lucian | 95.8% | 18 | 73 | 47% |
 Gwen | 93.7% | 25 | 64 | 50% |
The truth is, looking at champions who meet these requirements, it’s easy to see that there aren’t any big changes from where they were before the big tweaks in Patch 12.10. Only Ahri has dropped a little in popularity, but remains present in 74% of the games. Wukong (96.8%) is the most contested champion in competition and also performs very well in soloQ. He received a power reduction very recently, but it was not enough at all. Based on his performance, it’s very likely that Riot Games will look for a new change to apply and this time tackle the current best champion in competition.
The second most present champion in competition is Lucian. This character is the most feared of professional players, with a total of 73 bans. Again, we are faced with a simple case for Riot Games. The sniper has a high win rate in the traditional ranked (51.75%), so the developers have the possibility to reduce its power and balance the situation between the different competitive modes. Even though his competitive win rate isn’t all that impressive, his ubiquity forces teams to strategize against him, or ban him. In a way, it prevents more diversity in picks, destroying many of its direct competitors.
One would have thought that Riot Games had settled the case of Gwen. However, this champion is in a very problematic situation. Present in 93.7% of official matches, it has only 46.2% win in games ranked platinum and above. This makes balancing her very difficult, as just nerfing her spell power would risk dropping her even lower than she already is in soloQ. The changes should therefore be more profound, and may lead to a modification of some of his spells. However, if Riot manages to figure out how to nerf what makes her extremely powerful in pros, then they can give her a boost on her other spells to increase her soloQ winrate.
The situation also shows that patch 12.10 ultimately didn’t redistribute the cards so much between League of Legends champions. The three characters that dominate the competition were already very present at MSI 2022. Although there have been some new features like the appearance of Kayle and Swain, as well as the return of some tanks, it’s not the big transformation that many players were expecting.
In 12 years of existence, League of Legends has experienced weak synergies. One of the most famous of these concerns AP Rengar. Throwback to one of the best or worst builds in the history of the game. It all depends on whether you were playing Rengar, or against him.