Worlds 2020: Rating and Ranking the Best Support at Worlds
By Josh Tyler
We break down the best support players that you will see at Worlds 2020.
15. Zdravets “Hylissang” Iliev Galabov (Fnatic) – 79 OVR
Live by the Hyli, die by the Hyli has long been the saying for Fnatic this year. With an eclectic champion pool that includes his signature Pyke pick, Hyli plays roulette on the Rift a bit too often for my liking. He averaged over 4.5 deaths per game in the LEC regular season and playoffs, by far the most for any support in any region, and as a result he has the lowest adjusted KDA (1.03) of any support at Worlds 2020.
It’s not like that aggression really comes at a great benefit to his team, either, since he barely averages more kills than the average support and his gold per minute in largely in line with most other supports. While Hylissang can make high-impact plays, unfortunately in 2020 they were often for the benefit of the enemy team.
14. Kim “Life” Jeong-min (Gen.G eSports) – 79 OVR
Life honestly gets bailed out in these rankings due to the fact that he plays in the LCK. A support with his numbers in the LCS would be below Huhi in our support rankings, and he’d actually be barely above Ignar.
The biggest issues Life has are that he’s not particularly good at anything. His laning statistics are largely underwhelming, he controls vision at a slightly below-average rate, and he had a 2.2 aKDA throughout the LCK regular split. However, he did level up his play in all of these categories during Gen.G’s run during the playoffs, which helped elevate his rating.
There are two outstanding questions for Life going into Worlds 2020. First, how much of this surge was thanks to his laning partner Ruler going supernova hot in the playoffs? Second, can this bot lane keep that level of play going. I have no idea as to the answer of those questions, but if Gen.G starts to skid Life could get exposed quite quickly.
13. No “SnowFlower” Hoi-jong (Papara SuperMassive) – 80 OVR
The former KT Rolster and Jin Air support moved over to the TCL and has gotten a fair amount of success, becoming the best support in that region. He’s been a dominant laner in Turkey, posting an average gold advantage of over 500g at 15 minutes and an average XPD of + 385 during the regular season. This was all in spite of him being paired with one of the weaker ADCs at Worlds 2020, Zeitnot.
While he’s been exceptional in Turkey, we do have to acknowledge that we have seen Snowflower go up against LCK supports and the results were not pretty. Snowflower is going to have to prove doubters wrong and show that he has improved from the times where he was one of the worst supports in Korea.
12. Oskar “Vander” Bogdan (Rouge) – 80 OVR
Although Vander isn’t one of the most mechanically-gifted supports (he plays a whole lot of Braum and Tahm Kench), he is one of the best support players Europe had to offer this year. Vander averaged under 1 death per game during the regular season, which led him to have an aKDA of almost 5.00, one of the highest marks in the world.
However, those lack of mechanics do come to bite Vander and his lane partner, Hans sama, as they are often behind in lane in terms of gold and experience. Most concerningly, he is considered to be below-average at vision control, something most veteran supports tend to excel at. With his first trip to Worlds since 2016 with H2k, Vander will be trying to keep his bot lane afloat to allow his carries across the map to lead Rogue to victory.
11. Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in (Team Liquid) – 81 OVR
Many will be shocked to see LCS MVP CoreJJ sitting this low on our ranking of the best support players, but I continue to see massive holes in Core’s gameplay that just cannot be ignored. His assists per game are very low, his deaths per game during TL’s playoff run (3.2) spiked massively compared to his regular-season mark (1.3), and he has proven to be an average laner despite the fact that his partner Tactical is a lane monster.
One area where CoreJJ is elite – not good or great, but truly elite – is vision control. His average VSPM for the summer was 3.12, second highest of all supports at Worlds. CoreJJ the MVP likely has nothing to prove to fans at Worlds 2020, but in my opinion he’ll need to step his game up if TL wants to have a real shot at making a run.