League of Legends: the 10 best players you’ll see in the World Championship play-in stage

With the League of Legends World Championship play-in stage only a few weeks from kicking off, which players should you keep your eye on?

With less than two weeks until the League of Legends World Championship starts play, it’s time to start thinking about all the players we are excited to see once the action begins! Since the tournament will start with the play-in stage first, it seems only appropriate to take a look at those players who will be facing off in this first stage of the tournament.

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Now, of course, it’s hard to judge the players subjectively, so we’ve run statistical analysis of each player based off their domestic stats from the summer regular split in each of their various leagues. Because of varying qualities of competition we have elected to adjust the normalized scores of players up when they are in stronger leagues (the LCK, LPL, and LEC) or down for weaker leagues (the LLA, TCL, LJL, LST, CBLoL, LCL, and OPL). The “middle-of-the-road” regions (LCS, VCS, and LMS, we will not adjust.

For the play-ins, all seven of the weaker leagues will be sending one team, along with the second seed from the VCS, and the third seed from all the other regions except the LPL. So, who are the ten players that the statistics say are the best-performing players? And how many of them are not from DAMWON Gaming?

10. Mitchell “Destiny” Shaw (Support, MAMMOTH)

Kicking off the list is the best player on the worst team in the tournament. Destiny was utterly dominant in the OPL this season. He had a very solid 3.82 adjusted KDA during the OPL’s Split 2, with a 116.5% adjusted kill participation which is better than any other support at Worlds. Finally, his 12.5 assists per game were also the best among supports at the World championship as was his 81.5% kill participation.

9. Cho “BeryL” Geon-hee (Support, DAMWON Gaming)

The first Damwon player to appear in this list (though certainly not the last), BeryL is one of the more under-appreciated players in the LCK. While his KDA stats are not great (a 1.89 aKDA largely due to averaging over half a death more per game than most supports at Worlds), BeryL makes up for it with strong vision control (2.61 vision score per minute).

8. Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir (Jungle, Splyce)

Getting away from the support position, we move to the best player in the LEC to be represented in the group stages. While many will point to Kobbe as the driving force behind Splyce’s late-season push to the third-seed, Xerxe was one of the best junglers in the LEC.

Even though he plays a lot of aggressive champions like Elise, Qiyana, and Gragas, Xerxe is one of the best supportive junglers in the game. He excels at controlling vision (2.04 VSPM), snowballing his laners (68.5% kill participation but only a 14% kill share), and never dying needlessly (1.78 deaths per game, fewer than studs like Jankos and Karsa).

7. İrfan “Armut” Berk Tükek (Top, Royal Youth)

Royal Youth is one of the more top-heavy teams in the World Championship, with a couple of really strong players but not much else beyond that. One big area of strength is their top laner, Armut, who was an absolutely dominant laner. Yes, he was only facing TCL competition but, still, averaging advantages of 829 gold, 16 CS, and 351 experience at 15 minutes is just ridiculous.

6. Na “Pilot” Woo-hyung (ADC, Royal Youth)

Exiled from the LCK, Pilot has found his wings again as the second pillar of Royal Youth’s foundation. He put up a ridiculous 4.8 kills per game and a 5.55 aKDA. Combined with a 109.5% adjusted kill participation, Pilot is the second-best ADC in terms of kill efficiency (aKDA times aKP) to only Griffin‘s Viper.