THE META REPORT NAME IS TOO LONG, TOO DAMN LONG (n°12)
Guardian of the Ancient - part 1
by Legna
2021/06/22
Data
With the “Open Rounds” of the Seasonal (Guardian of the Ancient, which started on 2021-06-19) having just finished this week I’ll focus on the tournament instead of the ladder. The number of games available is indeed smaller but the results are way more interesting than usual.
Still, before starting this report I need to forewarn that it’s pretty much impossible to determine the exact amount of games played during the “Open Rounds”. It’s possible to have an approximation not nothing more since we don’t know the precise amount of forfeits. What we can say for certain is the amount of the max number of games possible:
- Max number of games: 1024 players for each shard * 9 rounds * 3 games (Bo3) / 2 (as a match is already between two players) -> 13824 games at most.
Games recovered:
- EU Shard: 7484
- NA Shard: 7410
- Asia Shard: 1959
While the methodology to collect the data was always the same, there seems to be some kind of problems(?)/error(?) with the Asian Shards numbers. Sadly this was to be expected for the most part. To be eligible to participate one either had to win a slot through the LastChanceGauntlet or by being a top700 Master player but during the cut-off it turns out there were about ~465 Asian Master players. I don’t know if Diamond players completed the remaining spots but overall this is pretty much the best I can do for this Seasonal
Regarding the EU and NA Shards the coverage is no less than ~54%, ~54% respectively, but most likely higher. Such value can be inferred by looking at the results obtained for each player.
Because the coverage of the Asian Shard was way worse I dropped all their games and only focus on EU and NA
Sample population: Seasonal games / Patch 2.10 / Seasonal players
Number of games: 14894 [^1] (check the footnote for additional information)
Regions
Play Rate
Plot
Table
| Region | Play Rate | America | Europe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bilgewater | 3.56% | 4.1% | 3.1% |
| Demacia | 6.3% | 6.0% | 6.6% |
| Freljord | 11.53% | 11.8% | 11.3% |
| Ionia | 5.82% | 5.7% | 6.0% |
| MtTargon | 10.15% | 9.9% | 10.4% |
| Noxus | 13.55% | 13.7% | 13.4% |
| PnZ | 11.86% | 12.2% | 11.5% |
| ShadowIsles | 17.38% | 16.9% | 17.9% |
| Shurima | 19.84% | 19.7% | 20.0% |
Play Rate by number of Cards
Plot
Table
| Region | Play Rate | America | Europe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bilgewater | 3.75% | 4.42% | 3.08% |
| Demacia | 7.18% | 6.91% | 7.46% |
| Freljord | 12.2% | 12.39% | 12.02% |
| Ionia | 7.05% | 6.77% | 7.32% |
| MtTargon | 10.53% | 10.39% | 10.67% |
| Noxus | 12.44% | 12.37% | 12.50% |
| PnZ | 12.63% | 13.19% | 12.08% |
| ShadowIsles | 18.65% | 17.93% | 19.37% |
| Shurima | 15.57% | 15.63% | 15.50% |
Finally a good example of why I also measure a Region Playrate but number of cards too.
The easy take: Shadow Isles clearly too OP, pls Rito nerf now. Overall the result is because of the different playrates of top decks that reduce the overall presence of Shurima while the inclusion of Deep and Spider increase the presence of Shadow Isles. But to say if the region is really too strong it would be wiser to wait the next patch and see if it still remain at the top.
Champions Combinations
Play Rates
Plot
Table
The overall playrates remain similar to the ladder with the main difference being the ulterior increase of Draven Ezreal which remain a strong option in tournament settings.
Win Rates
Tie games are excluded
Win rates of the most played combination of champions, against all decks, this week. This time I left all cases with more than 100 games.
Draven Ezreal strength can be seen by looking at the win rates. One could say “but the WR is even top10 among the ones displayed”. It’s true, but that deck strength is about being a “Jack of all Trades, Master of None”, it’s never and hard counter but it’s also never being hard countered so its WR is quite stable and an optimal option for those who can play it well. This isn’t as true for the “unholy-triad” (Nasus/Thresh - Azir/Irelia - TLC) which all saw a decrease in WR in many cases big enough to be a result of the different meta and not just random chance.
Underdog(?) Win Rates
Top Win rates of the least played combination of champions. Min 30 games and playrate < 1%
This section is harder to comment as it’s very wild. The sample size is indeed small but in several cases it’s good enough to be decent to say the “direction” of the WR is correct.
Match Ups
Match-up Grid
The win rates on the grid are among the 10 most played champion combination. Match-ups with less than 300 games are not included
While this is one of the most interesting data for many the results are still heavily affected by the small sample size. They may be the 10 most played combination of champions but it’s still a 100 cell grid. Also, while my approximation for archetypes usually works, this weeks more than usual, two decks are not well reported: Dragons and Azir/Noxus. In these two cases the inclusion of J4 / Garen / Zoe and Draven / Darius create different values for in the end it’s the same deck with just a couple of different card. I already have an idea and part of the code how to solve this but will use it for next week. I could use Dr.LoR approach with bayesian statistics but I want to be consistent with my metholody in order to have a better comparison for my results. Of course I can still make changes in the future if the quality vastly improve with them.
Match-up Table
I updated the table in order to be easier to navigate, know it’s possible to select the specific combination of champions and filter the results by regions. (not done in the draft) Filtered cases with less than 5 games
Deck Structure of the week
Irelia / Miss Fortune
It was hard to choose a deck for this week report, than I saw the spoiler for Rise of the Underworld and saw Snapjaw Swarm, so, combined to one of the underdog deck… the choice was clear: let’s see the “base” of what could be one of the future meta decks: Irelia / Miss Fortune
How to read the table:
- Play rate: How often a card is included in this class of decks / the table is order by this column.
- 3/2/1 is the relative and absolute frequency of the number of copies in the decks that plays them
- Frequencies from 50% to 100% are colored from shades of green to white to identify more easily the highest values
LoR-Meta Index (LMI)
Remember it’s possible to zoom in the graph
The LMI 1 is an Index I developed to measure the performance of decks in the metagame. For those who are familiar with basic statistical concept I wrote a document to explain the theory behind it: , it’s very similar to vicioussyndicate (vS) Meta Score from their data reaper report. The score of each deck is not just their “strength”, it takes in consideration both play rates and win rates that’s why I prefer to say it measure the “performance”. The values range from 0 to 100 and the higher the value, the higher is the performance.
I decided to leave this section to give an example about how this graph could appear in a completely different context from the usual ladder data. Because of the very small amout of games but still the problem on high WR in cases of a small amout of games I opted to filter decks with less than 5 games. It’s harsh in tournament with 9 rounds, even more for cases with only one person who played it.
The interesting take is that Overwhelm was the dark horse of the Open Rounds being the best performing deck. But what’s almost even more interesting is that unconventional decks like Ez/Teemo, Diana/Zoe (MT/SI) were among the best options along side more stables but still “rarer” choices like Thrall and Discards. In a Bo3 format the meta is indeed way more interesting, that’s for sure.
Cards Presence
Play Rates
Top 3 Play Rates by Region
Legal bla bla
This Meta Report was created under Riot Games’ “Legal Jibber Jabber” policy using assets owned by Riot Games. Riot Games does not endorse or sponsor this project.