Hello and welcome to the inaugural Professional League of Legends Champion Selection Tier list. With January being the first full month with the Season 3 patch and with the League of Legends Championship Series right around the corner, there is no better time to begin this tier list.

Contrary to most tier lists, this list is completely objective and based on the past month’s professional level picks at premiere LAN events. This months stats come from the NA and EU LCS qualifiers, IEM Katowice, OGN The Champions, GPL, and StarsWar League.

One thing to note: please do not take this as an end all, be all for your solo queue adventures. This is merely a snapshot of what the professional players are using in professional team matches. All champions have their potential viability in solo queue (unless you play Karma…just kidding). Champions like Riven and Lux are great champions, but they haven’t seen much competitive play this past month – thus are rated very low in this list.

But without further ado, I introduce to you the ESFI Professional League of Legends Champions Selection Tier List.

The ESFI Professional League of Legends Champion Selection Tier List is a representation of the recent picking and banning trends of professional level teams. The list itself is completely mathematically based off the usage and effectiveness (wins and losses) of the champions by professionals and not the potential usage and subjective strength of said champions. Several high end tournaments and leagues throughout all regions of the League of Legends playing world were surveyed with relevant stats (painstakingly) gathered from each of them. From there, each champion’s stats are put into a formula that spits out a rating that accurately represents the usage and effectiveness of the champion as seen under each portrait which is used to split the champions into five main tiers.

God Tier – Picked or banned in most games

With the emergence of the Season 3 Black Cleaver, Kha’Zix has been a nightmare for enemy teams. With almost a 90% pick/ban rate and a 63% win rate, he was by far the most valuable pick or ban in January.

Olaf and Shen have taken advantage of the cost effective HP items in Season 3, becoming  a favorite for the top lane. Fun Fact: Koreans love Shen. Because of the blind pick rule for game 5 of best of 5′s, in 31 games at OGN The Champions, there have been 33 total Shen picks and bans.

Top Tier – Often picked, commonly banned

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elise was one of the surprises here. Despite being considered OP by some professional players as well as being an extremely consistent ban, she gathered a paltry 40% win rate, one of the lowest win rate of any champion with more than 30 picks or bans.

Mid Tier – Uncommonly banned, sometimes picked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jarvan IV is absolutely adored in Asia. Of the 60 total games in the GPL and StarsWar League, he’s been picked or banned 45 times. Conversely, he is an afterthought in Europe with a combined 2 picks at IEM Katowice and EU LCS qualifiers.

Amumu is one of the most popular picks in all regions, but he doesn’t seem to be helping the teams that pick him that much. Over the last month he was picked in just under half the games surveyed, but only had a 37% win rate.

Low Tier – Situationally banned, common specialty picks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you get down here, you see some weird stuff. Lulu was a fairly common pick for support with a 37% pick/ban rate, but was only able to score a 37% win rate. Opposing that you see Kog’Maw who had highest winrate with more than 10 games played at 70%, 7% more than Kha’Zix. And finally you have Malphite, who was banned 23 times, but only played 8 (and lost 6) times.

Lower Tier – Situational and specialty champs

 

 

 

 

 

Draven snuck in as the last spot almost completely due to Dragonborns HosaN at the EU LCS qualifiers. His Draven was so mighty, Against All Authority felt it deserved a ban in one game.

Irrelevant Tier

Everyone else. The next highest rated champion was Varus who was picked in 14 games but lost 9 of them.