LCS 2021: Evaluating the Champion Pool of LCS Players

Let’s take a deep dive into the champion pool of the LCS players entering the 2021 season.

Top Lane

Among top laners, we see the first pieces of evidence that a “bigger” champion pool is not always better. Among the top five top laners entering the 2021 LCS season, we do have two of the players with the longest pools – Licorice and Niles – from 2020, but we also have two of the smaller pools by length – Fudge and Impact. On the other hand, the player from 2020 with the longest champion pool, Broken Blade, would be in the bottom half of the LCS entering 2021 due to his lack of depth.

For clarity, this isn’t saying that Broken Blade would be considered a “bottom-tier” player entering this LCS season, because performance is so much more than just champion pool (heck, I think Ssumday is a top-two top laner and he’s bottom-half in champion pool size). All it means is that, for all of BB’s unique picks in 2020, he did not show a lot of width or depth in terms of champions that he could play reliably and at a high level.

The average length (or pure champion pool size) is 15 unique picks, and the average overall grade is about 85. It’s interesting to see players like Ssumday and Broken Blade be ranked so low for different reasons. Ssumday played very few unique champions (albeit in far fewer games) but had far more comfort champions that he could fall back on compared to Broken Blade.

Another interesting observation is the prevalence of Ornn in players’ core champion pools. Six of the thirteen players (and six of the ten 2021 LCS top laners) had Ornn in their core champion pool. After Ornn, Gangplank is the most common core champion in the role, so I would expect to see both champions continue to be prominent in 2021.

Jungle

What jumps out immediately from the jungle perspective is how highly all the unsigned junglers would be ranked in champion pool compared to the starters. In particular, seeing Akaadian and Contractz have such high champion pool grades compared to chosen starters like Svenskeren and Broxah.

Another interesting point is that the average champion pool size is slighly larger than the top lane (90 vs 85). This is in spite of the fact that the average champion pool length is smaller than top lane (14 vs 15). This makes sense, as there are a lot more “viable” top laners as opposed to junglers, but it also highlights how LCS junglers appear to be better about drilling down and finding their best champions.

In the jungle, we see Olaf is the most prominent “core” champion, but he only appears for three players – Blaber, Akaadian, and Contractz. In fact, five champions have multiple appearances in an LCS player’s core champion pool: Lee Sin (Blaber and Akaadian), Gragas (Blaber and Xerxe), Trundle (Iconic and Santorin), Rek’Sai (Akaadian and Xmithie), and Graves (Iconic and Contractz). This indicates that the jungle champion pools are fairly unique, but also have a lot of overlap.