These days, any League of Legends player who wants to can view champion stats. Knowing a character’s win rate or popularity is not complicated at all. A transparency that helps us play correctly and allows us to draw many conclusions about the game, but which also played tricks on Riot Games. One of the most obvious has to do with character popularity and the usual complaints of seeing a champion selected in only 0.5% of games..
The least popular champion in League of Legends history
Currently, the least picked champions are Skarner (0.41%) and Aurelion Sol (0.49%). However, a League of Legends developer revealed that the situation was much worse a few years ago. The champions with the lowest popularity rating before they racked up so many stats had a much lower pick rate than the two characters mentioned so far. A situation that was particularly bad in the case of Urgot, who is the least loved character in history if we look at his version before the 2017 rework.
Riot August, who explained the situation in his personal stream, began by explaining that “old Urgot had a very strange set of skills that didn’t seem to be part of League of Legends.” According to him, the champion was “a mix between a sniper and an attrition mage” who most of the time “did not work”. This situation meant that the more fun elements of his spells, like the ultimate, “didn’t make much sense to him” and that he was still stuck in an in-between situation that didn’t allow him to fully perform no matter what position he was played in, unless heavily favored by the meta.
The biggest problem, however, is that he wasn’t a very fun character for most people. The champion was played competitively for a few periods and even topped SoloQ games with his win rate, but he failed to convince everyone. “If you see Jinx in an LCS game, you’re going to want to play Jinx (…) If Akali has a 52% win rate, you can bet everyone is going to jump on the bandwagon. There’s certain champions who, if they are good, will be played by everyone. Look at Kai’Sa. Everyone is looking for excuses to play her (…)”.
Continuing his explanation, August pointed out this difference and made the comparison with the Aurelion Sol case. Even when the dragon was all the rage in competitive play or had high win rates in SoloQ, no one wanted to pick it. A scenario which, although more exaggerated, is identical to the one that old Urgot encountered. He could literally win every game and no one would choose him because he doesn’t belong in League of Legends. His conflicting abilities and ill-defined role made players unattractive to him.
By the way, it should also be added that the design of the old Urgot will not be remembered as the most inspired design made by the artists of Riot Games. His rework is able to maintain the fantasy of being a mechanical monster with human features, but does it in a much more interesting way. It’s not for nothing, and while he’s currently far from the most picked character in the game, he is now selected in 2.8% of the games.
esport-lol
G2 Esports continues its clear round at League of Legends MSI and the team is 4-0 down in the Rumble Stage. After defeating T1 and RNG, the LEC champions confirmed their very good form. We had the opportunity to speak with Broken Blade, the quiet strength of the Samurai.