The Best Laners of Worlds Group Stage

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

The importance of the early game has fluctuated throughout the year. Changes to early dragon rewards, tower durability, first blood rewards, champion picks, trinket timings, etc. have affected how teams strategize and perform during the first 10 minutes of games. One could even argue that the importance of the early game has somewhat diminished over time, given the prevalence of high-scaling Top and ADC champions who sacrifice early laning power for late-game strength. Two teams that are widely regarded as “late-game” teams - SSB and EDG - tend to fall behind early to elite competition yet have posted good results throughout the year and are perhaps two of the best teams in the tournament.

This article first shows which roles convert early leads into wins most often and then shows the statistics for each player’s average gold difference and xp difference at 10 minutes. The difference is relative to the enemy player in the same role. The goal of this article is to provide results that help better assess player performance during the laning phase. The results help support many common conceptions about many of the players, but there are some surprising results.

Note: Many factors affect the results, including lane setups, champion picks, team strategies, etc. Each player’s differences are calculated by comparing his Gold and XP amounts relative to the enemy player's amounts in same role.

Converting Early Gold and XP Leads into Wins

First lets look at if these leads have a significant impact on the game. We analyzed the win percentage of each role if they had a lead in Gold or XP.

Jungler has the highest win rate in both the Gold table and the XP table, meaning the most important member to have success early game is the Jungler not a carry such as Mid or ADC. This could be because the success of the Jungler early leads to the success of the carries through ganks, rather than Junglers getting Gold/XP lead through farming.

Role by Role Analysis

• SK fredy122 performed very well during the first 10 minutes of games. He averaged the 4th highest average gold difference and earned a gold lead in all six games. He averaged the second highest average XP difference and earned an XP lead in all but one game.

• ALL Wickd, for as much flak as he has been getting for some of his misplays, performed surprisingly well during the laning phase, earning Gold and XP leads in most of his games.

• The three Korean Top laners had strong results as expected, with SSB Acorn and NWS Save perhaps being slightly more consistent than SSW Looper.

• Two western Top laners who many consider to be strong laners, C9 Balls and FNC sOAZ, actually averaged Gold and XP deficits during the group stage. C9 Balls is the only Top laner who averaged a gold deficit yet still qualified for the quarterfinals.

• SSW Dandy is considered to be the best Jungler in the world. SSW Dandy posted staggeringly high Gold and XP leads throughout the group stages.

• In comparing C9 Meteos and ALL Shook, both Junglers performed well during the early game, with ALL Shook perhaps slightly outperforming.

• FNC Cyanide, who many consider to be a fairly weak early game Jungler, fell behind enemy Junglers on average.

• SSB Spirit is the only player throughout the group stage who earned a Gold and XP lead in every game he played. The Samsung organization undoubtedly has the two best early game (and probably overall) Junglers in the tournament.

• SK Jesiz is the only Mid laner who never had a gold lead over the enemy Mid laner.

• TSM Bjergsen showed that he is one of the best Mids in the early game, earning a large Gold and XP lead in most of his games.

• TPA Morning surprisingly was one of the best Mid laners in the laning phase.

• Given the pre-tournament hype and overall opinion of ALL Froggen, the results show that he slightly under-performed during the laning phase throughout the group stages.

• The results support the belief that C9 Hai is fairly weak or average during the laning phase, as he averaged Gold and XP deficits.

• SSW PawN and SSB Dade performed well as expected.

• NWS Ggoong somehow managed to get a gold lead in 100% of his games, but netted a negative XP difference at 10 minutes.

The XP differences for ADCs and Supports is highly dependent on lane setups. Many of the players who averaged xp leads benefited from solo farming lanes.

• To nobody’s surprise, SHR Uzi and SSW imp averaged the two highest Gold differences at 10 minutes. Many people consider SHR’s bot lane duo to be strong during the laning phase, and the results show that Uzi earned a substantial early lead over the enemy ADC in a majority of his games.

• OMG San is the only ADC who never had a Gold lead at 10 minutes over the enemy ADC. The results support the notion that OMG has a fairly weak bot lane duo during the laning phase.

• TSM WildTurtle was out-performed by the enemy ADCs during the laning phase in a majority of his games.

• LMQ Vasilii was one of the best early laners during the NA LCS summer split, and he continued to average large Gold and XP leads in the group stage games.

• Seeing SHR Zero and SSW Mata at the top of the list is not surprising given the standings for their ADCs and the general consensus that those two bot lane duos are the best in the tournament.

• DP Touch surprisingly averaged slight gold and xp leads during a majority of his games, despite DP HolyPhoenix averaging Gold and XP deficits. This could have been due to DP HolyPhoenix dying in lane which provided DP Touch with time in lane to farm and soak XP.

Thanks to Cuzimafish who helped us discover this data but big thanks to TinyShrimp who helped get and organize this data!