League of Legends LCS: Why NA mids just can’t measure up
By Josh Tyler
With the news that veterans Pobelter and Damonte will not have a spot in the LCS in 2020, we look at why North American League of Legends seems to struggle to produce mid laners.
A lot of noise has been made this offseason about the lack of international success for North American League of Legends. Criticism and barbs have been directed towards the NA server’s poor ping and shallow talent pool, the LCS for preferring imports to growing its own, native talent, and the lack of set infrastructure in NA to help expand the talent pool.
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These criticisms have now reached their apex with the news coming out yesterday that two of NA’s top mid lane talents, Eugene “Pobelter” Park and Tanner “Damonte” Damonte have been passed over for spots in the LCS and are now struggling to even find positions in Academy. With this news, the LCS seems likely to begin the 2020 season with only one North American-born mid laner on an LCS roster in Golden Guardians mid Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer. How did we reach this point and where do we go from here?
What happened?
One important question we must address in this growing trend away from NA mid laners is why is this trend seemingly localized to the mid lane? If we look at the split of NA/non-NA players by position (based on the player’s home country not residency), we see that other roles are far more NA-diverse than mid lane:
Role
Top
Jungle
Mid
ADC
Support
NA / Non-NA
3/6
5/4
1/6
5/4
5/4
One explanation for this diversity in other roles (and the lack thereof in mid lane) could be the relative native talent levels looking at roles. Perhaps NA just produces better junglers and ADCs than they do mid laners?
Well, if you look at how we graded LCS players last summer, we see a breakdown of how NA players fared in each role compared to non-NA players:
Role
Top
Jungle
Mid
ADC
Support
NA average rating
0.006
0.042
-0.224
0.109
0.042
Non-NA
0.261
0.099
0.421
0.046
0.155
So, the data definitely supports the presumption that, when it comes to the professional League of Legends talent from NA, they are most certainly weakest at the mid lane position. More concerning, however, is the fact that non-NA mid laners fare better than imports in any other role. Not only is mid lane the weakest lane in terms of producing NA talent, but you get the most value as an LCS team from importing a mid laner.
There’s certainly a “chicken-or-egg” causality argument to be made here, that is whether LCS teams are importing more mid laners because the native talent is so low, or if the native talent looks so much worse because teams keep raising the relative talent level in the mid lane via imports. To that end, let’s look to see how the lanes have broken down by import versus natives over the past three years, as well as how they stacked up to each other by KDA.
Note: NA players (avg NA KDA) / non-NA players (non-NA KDA)
Role
Top
Jungle
Mid
ADC
Support
Spring 2017
5 (3.44) / 6 (3.02)
7 (3.16) / 5 (2.84)
5 (2.18) / 8 (3.53)
8 (3.69) / 4 (3.65)
9 (3.46) / 1 (3.7)
Summer 2017
6 (2.36) / 6 (3.05)
8 (3.01) / 4 (3.13)
5 (3.42) / 8 (4.75)
9 (4.07) / 3 (3.73)
11 (3.4) / 2 (3.2)
Role
Top
Jungle
Mid
ADC
Support
Spring 2018
7 (2.63) / 4 (3.56)
7 (3.71) / 3 (3.3)
3 (2.73) / 8 (5.35)
8 (4.67) / 2 (6.15)
8 (3.3) / 2 (4)
Summer 2018
6 (2.82) / 4 (3.85)
8 (3.11) / 4 (3.03)
4 (3.33) / 7 (4.09)
8 (4.71) / 3 (4.57)
8 (3.12) / 3 (2.8)
Role
Top
Jungle
Mid
ADC
Support
Spring 2019
6 (2.82) / 4 (3.85)
7 (2.73) / 4 (3.45)
3 (3.13) / 8 (5.36)
6 (4.98) / 4 (4.38)
8 (2.94) / 2 (4.15)
Summer 2019
7 (2.61) / 4 (3.23)
7 (3.42) / 5 (3.24)
2 (3.15) / 8 (4.01)
7 (4.61) / 4 (4.05)
8 (3.41) / 4 (3.5)
As you can plainly see, there is a distinct trend that shows that the NA’s solo lanes are particularly weak compared to the non-native players, but North America’s talent tends to stack up fairly well in the bot lane and jungle. While both solo lanes are flagging, it’s quite clear that NA top laners are at least closer to their international competition than mid laners.
In fact, there was never a single split in the last three years where there were more native mids than non-natives or where the native mids averaged a higher KDA than the non-natives, something that has happened at least once in every other lane. In fact LCS teams have employed more NA players in the jungle, ADC, and support roles in every single split these last three years and the native NA players have almost always averaged higher KDAs than non-natives in these roles.
Another interesting trend has been that LCS teams have consistently begun to rely more heavily on non-natives to play mid lane, whereas in other roles the split has largely remained the same or even become more NA-reliant (like top lane). The implication, to me at least, seems to be that LCS teams are recognizing the lack of NA talent in the mid lane and thus making sure to use an import or non-native in the role. This isn’t a new occurence, or a collision of circumstance, but a definite trend as more imported players become residents, teams are increasingly looking to use their imports to improve those lanes where NA natives are weak.