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The craziest stats from the League of Legends Worlds 2018 group stage
With all the crazy upsets that happened during the Worlds 2018 group stage, these are the outlandish stats to go with them.
The League of Legends World Championship 2018 Group Stage is done and dusted and the final eight teams are locked in to the playoffs. A lot of the favourites are still in contention, but there also were a lot of surprise upsets, such as last year’s reigning champions, Gen.G, who were the first team to be eliminated.
Join us as we dive deep into the numbers from the epic group stage.
The most bloodthirsty players
Uzi’s gunning for the top spot
© Riot Games
Fnatic’s Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther led the pure kills leaderboard throughout the group stage. The mid laner grabbed a hefty 37 in total across his seven games. That’s a full three kills more than Cloud9’s Nicolai ‘Jensen’ Jensen got.
The famously aggressive Chinese AD carries were next on the list. Invictus Gaming’s Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wen-Bo and Royal Never Give Up’s star Jian ‘Uzi’ Zihao both got 33 kills in their seven games. Impressive numbers from an already wild Worlds showing.
If we look at the teams that only played the standard six games, it’s actually 100 Thieves’ Andy ‘AnDa’ Hoang who tops the list. He pulled together 29 kills during his time in the competition, even though they were eliminated.
The unkillable players
Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok might be nicknamed the ‘unkillable demon king,’ but he didn’t even make it to Worlds this year. Other players tried to step up and take his untouchable mantle and a few of them got pretty close.
As for the players who played all six games, three managed to only go down an impressive five times. One of them, Team Liquid’s Yiliang ‘DoubleLift’ Peng, didn’t make it out of groups. More on him later.
The other two were Afreeca Freecs’ Lee ‘Kuro’ Seo-haeng and KT Rolster’s Cho ‘Mata’ Se-hyeong. Next up, two players died just six times: Afreeca Freecs’ bot laner Ha ‘Kramer’ Jong-hun, and Fnatic’s Martin ‘Rekkles’ Larsson. Rekkles’ feat is actually more impressive because he played seven games in total and he also topped the KDA ratio list with an impressive 13.7.
The team players
iBoy has proven himself to be a true team player
© Riot Games
League of Legends is a team game, so it’s not always about individual skill. The kill participation stat shows off the players who were putting in the biggest shifts for their squads across the map and in team fights.
Hu ‘iBoy’ Xian-Zhao of Edward Gaming managed an incredible 82.6 percent kill participation during the group stage. Not only did he rack up 28 kills, he also got a huge amount of assists: 43 in total. AnDa clearly tried his best from the jungle position for 100T, trying to keep his team in with a shot with an 81.1 percent KP, but it wasn’t enough to keep NA’s second seed in contention.
Some love also has to go out to the supports. EDG’s Tian ‘Meiko’ Ye managed 80.2 percent KP, while Team Liquid’s Kim ‘Olleh’ Joo-sung wasn’t far behind with 78.4 percent.
Hsiao ‘Kongyue’ Jen-Tso attempted to put the much maligned MAD Team on his back with 86.4 percent KP across his four games, the highest percentage out of anyone at the tournament. He clearly was getting involved at every facet of competition.
The minion haters
It’s clear that Hjarnan hates minions
© Riot Games
You’d think the minions on the Summoners Rift would learn to stop carrying so much gold on them. Pro players are really good at CSing and these are the players who got the most to fatten up their wallets.
Heimerdinger master G2 Esports’ Petter ‘Hjarnan’ Freyschuss was on form during the group stage and slayed 2,750 minions during his 266 minutes on the Rift. But it’s likely if Uzi’s games had gone a bit longer, he would’ve overtaken him. The Chinese marksman got 2,740 in 253 minutes – clearly living up to his reputation.
Martin ‘Wunder’ Hansen of G2 also broke the 2,700 mark, but then after him there’s a hefty gap back down to his teammate, Luka ‘Perkz’ Perkovic, who chalked up 2,600 creeps, and Jensen on 2,547. But these poor creeps were easily decimated during the groups.
Champions by the numbers
The diverse Worlds 2018 meta
© Riot Games
If the numbers tell us anything, it’s clear that MAD Team should ban Kai’Sa. On their final day of the tournament, MAD lost three times. All three of those losses were against a Kai’Sa in the bottom lane, indicating that the Daughter of the Void was a stumbling block for them.
There’s an incredibly diverse meta at this year’s Worlds, with more champions turning out than ever before. Of course, there are more champions now than ever before, but the current meta is allowing for a lot of different options. Over 86 individual champions have been selected so far, more than the 82 across the entirety of Worlds 2017 – and there’s still plenty of competition left, and potentially more picks on the horizon.
A tale of teams
The match between Afreeca Freecs and G2 was a very close affair where the EU side eventually came out on top. Nothing shows it more than the ‘in-between’ gold stat. For 71.3 percent of the game, neither team owned more than 51.5 percent of the total gold. For a lot of the games, that stat was much, much lower, indicating that this game really went down to the wire.
On the other end of the spectrum we have an extremely lopsided game, with Invictus Gaming defeating 100 Thieves in just 20 minutes and 26 seconds, the fastest game at Worlds to date.
The solo stories
DoubleLift is nothing but determined. He played in the first World Championship and has been trying ever since then to make it on the international stage. He hasn’t made it to every Worlds and his team have crashed out in the Group Stage when they have made it. But admirably he’s still going to keep trying.
And finally, Hjarnan’s pocket pick Heimerdinger is more than just a novelty. This summer, G2 have gone 9-0 when he’s been on Heimerdinger and he’s got a stupidly high 20.8 KDA. So far, in the two games he’s used him at Worlds, he’s been two for two. Let’s see if his run continues.
