Ranking all 24 mids at the League of Legends World Championship
By Josh Tyler
20. Édgar Ali “Seiya” Bracamontes Munguía (Isurus) – 67 OVR
Seiya is one of those players whose stats aren’t terrible. They’re just average to below average (although his laning and damage outputs are significantly lower than just below average). Unfortunately, putting up average stats in an emerging region against weaker competition doesn’t help you out too much.
19. Yu “cyeol” Chung-yeol (Royal Youth) – 68 OVR
One of the reasons I don’t have a ton of confidence in Royal Youth like others do is the weakness they have in their mid laner. Cyeol has the worst adjusted KP of any mid laner (88.8% aKP), largely due to his incredibly high death share (22.3% of his team’s deaths).
Surprisingly, he doesn’t die a lot more per game than the average mid laner at Worlds (2.1 vs. 2.09), which indicates that his high death shares aren’t due to him being a driving force of aggression on his team but instead likely getting caught mispositioning or not being in sync with his team. His below-average gold and damage numbers support this proposition.
18. Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen (Team Liquid) – 70 OVR
A lot of people are hyping up Jensen as being a clear best mid laner in North America, but the stats still tell the tale of a guy who had the label of “KDA player” put on him fairly. His aKDA of 3.91 is great, largely thanks to his 1.61 deaths per game. However, his raw kill participation (59.2%) and adjusted KP (98.5%) are both below average.
Jensen also does some of the lowest damage out of any mid laner in this tournament (436 aDPM) and doesn’t offset that lack of damage via vision (his 0.91 VSPM is second-worst among mids). Finally, Jensen hasn’t shown himself to be a particularly good laner, with a -0.33 Laning Score thanks to averaging only slight CS and XP advantages with a slight gold disadvantage at 15 minutes. If Liquid is going to lean on a carry at Worlds, I wouldn’t trust in Jensen.
17. Chen “M1ssion” Hsiao-Hsien (Hong Kong Attitude) – 71 OVR
On the other hand, we have the anti-Jensen as M1ssion has an abysmal aKDA (2.45, with 2.6 deaths per game), but he does it to the benefit of his team. His 110.6% adjusted kill participation (including 72.5% raw KP which is best in his position) and 568.4 aDPM are both among the best for his role. Although he is a strong team player, there is a risk that M1ssion can be taken advantage of given his weak laning (-0.92 Laning Score).
16. Nguyễn “Artifact” Văn Hậu (Lowkey) – 73 OVR
Artifact is another player with a terrible KDA, as he dies 2.7 times per game, with solid damage numbers (531.2 aDPM). His advantage over M1ssion comes in the fact that his laning is far better, with a 0.16 Laning Score thanks to a strong 297 gold advantage at 15 and 0.65 solo kills per game to M1ssion’s 0.38).