Will We See Another Teemo?
The First Worlds Patch Proves Successful - More Versatile Meta in Worlds 2022 than in the Summer Playoffs
The League of Legends Worlds championship has begun, and the play-in stage is already over. Besides knowing which teams will get a chance to compete in the Groups Stage, we also got a preview of the Worlds 2022 meta, and it looks like this year will be filled with even more champions than in the pre-worlds meta.
Knowing what to draft can often be the difference between a win and a loss, especially in the professional League of Legends scene. To give you an idea of how important it is, it isn't rare to hear players saying things like "the game was already lost in draft" and "draft diff".
For this year's League of Legends World Championship, Riot Games created the first Worlds Patch attempting to tune down overperforming picks like Kalista and Lulu. In contrast, other champions that hadn't gotten a lot of attention would get some small adjustments.
Improvement from Summer
After Play-Ins, we are starting to see the results of Riot's adjustments for Worlds 2022. We are seeing a bigger variation in champion select, and with already 89 unique champions either being picked or banned, we are seeing a more versatile meta than in Summer. If we compare this number to other Regions during their 2022 Summer Playoffs, we find the LPL with 71 unique champions and the LCK with 55.
As we can see, Worlds 2022 Play-Ins already had 18 more unique champions than the LPL did in the 2022 Summer Playoffs, despite LPL playoffs consisting of a bit more games than Play-Ins.
Teemo Picked in Worlds Play-Ins 2022
With a more versatile meta, we have still seen some out-of-the-ordinary picks that were not expected. One pick in particular that stood out is Teemo. Teemo was picked by Isurus against no other team than RNG. And as you can expect, the little devil was no success, as Isurus' top laner, ADD, finished the game 1/9/3. Besides Teemo, there were also some other unique picks that caught our attention, for example, Yone, Garen, Zac, Vayne and Tryndamere.
Aatrox with the Highest Presence
With Play-Ins over, we already have some stats that can help us predict which picks will be going into the Group Stage. According to gol.gg, we find Aatrox with the highest presence rate of 96% after Play-Ins.
Aatrox has been doing significantly well in Play-Ins and had a win rate of 71%, so no wonder players wanted to get their hands on this pick. Following Aatrox, we find Sylas with an 83% presence, closely followed by Kalista and Maokai.
Will We Have More Crazy Picks Going into Groups?
Even though we have seen a big variation of champions picked, we do expect it to slow down a bit for groups. However, some players can always surprise us. Maybe we will see Gen.G's Support Lehends pull out his signature Singed or teams like GAM Esports or G2 bringing some fresh ideas into the Rift.
Here are some of the picks we would love to see going into the 2022 Worlds Group Stage: