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League of Legends: reaction to LS’s top 20 players at the World Championship list

By Josh Tyler

GWANGJU, SOUTH KOREA - OCTOBER 27: Team G2 Esports of Europe plays against team Invictus Gaming of China during the semifinal match of 2018 The League of Legends World Championship at Gwangju Women? University Universiade Gymnasium on October 27, 2018 in Gwangju, South Korea. (Photo by Woohae Cho/Getty Images)
GWANGJU, SOUTH KOREA - OCTOBER 27: Team G2 Esports of Europe plays against team Invictus Gaming of China during the semifinal match of 2018 The League of Legends World Championship at Gwangju Women? University Universiade Gymnasium on October 27, 2018 in Gwangju, South Korea. (Photo by Woohae Cho/Getty Images) /
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Korean caster LS released his list of the top 20 players at the League of Legends World Championship and we have some thoughts.

LCK color caster Nicholas “LS” De Cesare is at it again. The former professional coach and current streamer known for his quick-thinking style of commentary and coaching, along with his tendency to stir the pot with controversial statements, has released a list of his top 20 players that will be competing at the League of Legends World Championship in October.

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Now, to be completely fair to LS, I concede that he knows far more about League of Legends in general, especially about the Korean league, than I do. I don’t think that giving a blow-by-blow breakdown of where I’d put each player is necessarily helpful, because people can disagree about how strong or skilled certain players are. In fact, I would say his top 10 would probably have the almost all of the exact same players that I would have on my list.

Instead, I’m going to focus more on the criteria LS gave in determining his rankings. LS listed six “metrics” that he used to evaluate each player (individual ability, mechanics, champion pool depth, game awareness, reliability, and adaptability). The problem is that just about all of these metrics are subjective observations, especially given the non-factors he gave.

For LS lists six “non-factors” that he explicitly says he won’t consider: insider knowledge, achievements, community perception, things we must speculate about, stats/awards, emotional biases. Now, I agree with just about all of these factors except for two (well technically three) – achievements, stats, and awards.

If you are looking to evaluate those six metrics in an unbiased manner, to me using stats, achievements, and awards is the best way to do it. Even if you think awards/achievements are swayed by emotions and biases, they tend to be given out by people with a high amount of game knowledge and are usually determined by a crowd judgment (I personally think community perception can be useful, if a lot of people believe something you have to at least consider why that is and disprove it).

And, admittedly, I am biased as a stats nerd for LS excluding stats as a criteria. However, I would contend that if you want to measure nebulous criteria like reliability or individual play, stats would be the perfect way to do it.

A player dies a lot? He’s not reliable. He’s constantly behind in gold or experience in lane? His individual play is lacking.

So, in that spirit, here are a few players my stats have shown that LS (in my opinion) has over or under-rated:

Overrated

  • Chovy
  • JackeyLove
  • TheShy
  • Perkz
  • Wunder
  • Effort
  • Jensen
  • Canyon

Underrated

  • Jankos
  • Lehends
  • Xerxe
  • Doublelift
  • Nisqy
  • Impact
  • Lwx
  • Tian
  • Clid

Next. Ranking all 24 teams at the World Championship. dark

Do you agree with LS’s list? Let us know who he missed in the comments!

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