Worlds 2020: Ranking and Rating the Best Top Laners at Worlds
By Josh Tyler
We break down the best top laners that you will see at Worlds 2020.
20. Emmanuel “Acce” Juárez (Rainbow7) – 69 OVR
Acce is actually fairly solid, statistically, ranking above average for top laners at Worlds 2020 in key categories like adjusted KDA (“aKDA”) and adjusted GPM (“aGPM”). The biggest problem lies in his damage output: namely that he doesn’t do any.
Part of that is due to the fact that two of his most-played champions – Ornn and Aatrox – are bottom-three for their position in DPM. However, with Camille (a top-three DPM top laner) as his third most-played champion you would expect to see his damage counts be a bit higher. His adjusted DPM (“aDPM”) of 344.1 is among the worst of top laners attending Worlds 2020.
19. Hsieh “PK” Yu-Ting (Machi Esports) – 71 OVR
Another top laner with a more tank-focused champion pool (he played Ornn and Renekton in 30 of the 77 games he played in 2020, with Aatrox, Sett, and Volibear rounding out his top five), PK has actually done a fairly good job at outputting damage on these picks. His 403.3 aDPM is below average for his role, but it makes sense given his champion pool.
PK is not a bad player at all, with aKDA and aGPMs that are around or slightly below average. The biggest problem that keeps him rated so low is that he is a poor laner (his gold/CS/XP differentials at 15 minutes in the regular season were -112/-4/+10). While the PCS is a better region than the wildcard, it’s still not encouraging that he’s basically losing lanes most of the time (while Ornn is a bad laner, Renekton is probably the best laner in top).
18. Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong (Team Liquid) – 71 OVR
I spent another year howling to the heavens that Impact is vastly overrated as a top laner, yet somehow he found his way to the top 10 for MVP voting. Just looking at Impact’s champion pool compared to top laners mentioned like PK, Acce, and Paz, and comparing their stat lines it’s just laughable. Impact is worse than the three aforementioned players by every key measurement, or at best equal.
Yes, I acknowledge that he is playing against harder competition in the LCS (ignore the LEC, LCK, and LPL fans snickering) and he also does not play any Renekton so he loses a bit of damage and gold for not having that pick. But the fact that he is getting out-performed by middling talent in minor regions should dispell this notion that he’s an elite “weak-side top laner.”
And, speaking of that Renekton pick, once teams figure out that he can basically only play four champions – Ornn, Mordekaiser, Sett, and Shen – it’s over for Team Liquid. Those four champions account for 73% of the games he played in 2020. Of the remaining six champions he played in the final 13 games, only one (Gangplank) has a KDA over 2.50.
17. İrfan “Armut” Berk Tükek (Papara Supermassive) – 71 OVR
Armut is a fascinating top laner to look at because he excels in some areas like KDA (he has a 3.27 aKDA, which is quite high for top laners) but is absolutely awful in the others that you would expect to accompany a solid KDA. For instance, aDPM is 345.4 which is second-worst of top laners at Worlds, almost 100 damage per minute less than the average for his role.
His two most-played champions may be Ornn and Aatrox, but his third most-picked champion is Jayce, who is the champion with the highest damage per minute of all top laners (with a significant amount of games played this year). Low damage plus low kill participation (his 58.7% is slightly below the average for the top lane) generally equals a KDA player, which is what I suspect Armut might be.
16. Vladislav “BOSS” Fomin (Unicorns of Love) – 72 OVR
BOSS, incredibly, had an even lower kill participation than Armut with a higher aKDA, giving him a claim to the biggest KDA player at Worlds 2020. With a solid 3.54 aKDA (second for all top laners attending Worlds), he came out with an abysmal 48.5% kill participation while playing big teamfighting champions like Renekton, Aatrox, and Ornn.
What saves BOSS, though, is that his damage numbers are a fair bit higher than Armut’s (357.8 aDPM) and his laning stats are above average (he averaged a gold differential at 15 of almost +800 despite averaging CS and XP differentials). That means that he is probably tending to play a bit more selfish as a splitpusher, but not avoiding fights to preserve his KDA.