Rating and ranking all 24 top laners at the League of Legends World Championship
By Josh Tyler
9. Kim “Khan” Dong-ha (SKT) – 79 OVR
Khan has taken a lot of criticism, some of it fair, but that overlooks some of his positives. For instance, Khan is probably the worst laning top in the major regions outside of Csacsi and his aKDA (2.23) is far below the average for his position. However, for all those failings, Khan does have fairly good kill participation (104.3% aKP) and is great at controlling vision (1.11 VSPM) which enables his team’s big carries like Faker and Teddy to pop off.
8. İrfan “Armut” Berk Tükek (Royal Youth) – 79 OVR
The best top laner out of the “emerging” regions, Armut absolutely dominated his competition in Turkey this year, not only winning lane (0.84 laning score) but also playing around his team (1.17 VSPM). Armut will finally be tested here at Worlds, but his performance in the TCL indicates that he can at least stand toe-to-toe with some of the best.
7. Choi “Sword” Sung-won (Griffin) – 81 OVR
Most would consider Sword to be the weak point of Griffin’s team, and in fact, the statistics bear that out. Yet he’s still one of the best top laners in the world. Sword doesn’t really stand out in any one area (other than vision, he averages 1.15 VSPM) and is quite exploitable in lane -0.18 laning score, but he stays solid enough to let the rest of the map carry him. Sword is the player that people think Impact is, and he’s faced much tougher competition.