How NaJin Sword is the Best Worlds Team of All Time: League of Legends Statistical Rankings for all 4 World Championships

    Healthy debate has raged on about which team was the most dominant world champion, which teams have performed well on an international stage, and which teams seem to choke when they go to Worlds. In this article, I’ll use computer rankings to try to objectively see which teams have performed well and which have not, while taking into account strength of schedule. Of course, this isn’t going to be perfect (some teams only play 2-3 games at worlds, for some reason), but it is an attempt to bring analytics into what currently is a really subjective argument.

    (Skip the next three paragraphs if you just want to get to the rankings)

    I used a rating system that used to be in the BCS computer rankings. (For those of you who don’t know what that is, these rankings were used to decided who would play in the college football national championship.) The website is here[3] , the mathematics are explained here[4] , and it’s intuitively explained here[5] .

    The big advantages are that the system takes into account strength of schedule (for instance, NaJin’s 3-0 against OMG during Season 4 negatively affects C9’s and Alliance’s ratings), and that it doesn’t consider margin of victory.

    The coolest thing about this system is that you can check the probability for each team winning. If you want to see how often A would beat B, just use the formula 0.5+A-B. For instance, the system thinks that Fnatic would have a 59% chance of beating aAa in Season 1 if they played one game. If there’s more than 0.5 difference between two teams, just assume that the chances of the higher ranked team winning is very close to 100%. Without further ado, the rankings:

Season 1:

Logo	Team	Ranking	Record	Result
	Fnatic	.7460	8-3	Champs
	against All authority	.6561	7-5	Finals
	Team SoloMid	.5810	5-4	3rd
	Epik Gamer	.5383	3-4	4th
	Counter Logic Gaming	.5076	3-3	5th
	Xan	.3876	1-2	Group Stage
	Team GAMED.DE	.3786	1-4	6th
	Team Pacific	.3044	0-3	Group Stage

Team that did better than you thought: Xan (Who?????)

Team that did worse than you thought: No one

Observations: This is the tournament where the ratings are going to match the records most closely because there were only eight teams, so there aren’t a ton of surprises. Epik’s record is pretty misleading because they had to play in the hard group (aAa, Fnatic), where they somehow went 3-0, then play Fnatic and TSM in the playoffs.

    Also, if the format had been like Season 4, Fnatic wouldn’t have even made it out of group stages after going 1-2. However, they established themselves in the playoffs by going 7-1 against top-shelf competition. What if they had been allowed out of the group stages in Season 4? The world will never know.

    Finally, Group B of this tournament wins the award for “worst ever collection of teams at a worlds tournament”. TSM and CLG were decent enough, but Team GAMED.DE was just some random German team with a joystick as their logo, and I couldn’t find any information on whatever “Xan” was. Gamepedia has pages for Team Astral Poke and Square Duck, but they couldn’t find room for a team that won a game at worlds. Must have been a truly embarrassing performance.

Season 2:

Logo	Team	Rating	Record	Result
	Taipei Assassins	.8941	7-2	Champs
	Moscow 5	.7310	3-2	Semis
	Azubu Frost	.7176	8-4	Finals
	NaJin Sword	.6360	3-2	Quarters
	Counter Logic Gaming Europe	.5640	5-4	Semis
	invictus Gaming	.4675	2-3	Quarters
	Team WE	.4384	1-2	Quarters
	Saigon Jokers	.3833	1-2	3rd in Group
	Counter Logic Gaming Prime	.3795	1-2	3rd in Group
	Team SoloMid	.3588	0-2	Quarters
	Team Dignitas	.2167	0-3	4th in Group
	SK Gaming	.2129	0-3	4th in Group

Team that did better than you thought: Taipei Assassins

Team that did worse than you thought: Azubu Frost

Observations: Some people see TPA as sort of a “fluke” champ and would rather have seen an M5 vs. Azubu Frost final, but this system shows the Southeast Asian side as a truly dominant one. Remember, Season 1 Fnatic, a team that went 7-1 in the playoffs, had a 9% gap between them and second; TPA has almost twice that!

    This system saw the M5 vs. TPA semifinal as the two best teams in the tournament duking it out, while the Azubu Frost vs. CLG.EU semi looked to be a couple mediocre teams going at it. While these observations are counter to what most people think, they fortify Moscow 5’s rightful place in the annals of League of Legends lore.

    Unfortunately, this tournament’s format is terrible for rating the lower ranking teams, as many squads only played two or three games.

Season 3:

	Team	Rating	Record	Result
	NaJin Black Sword	.9396	3-3	Semis
	SK Telecom T1	.9372	15-3	Champs
	Royal Club	.7724	5-4	Finals
	OMG	.7294	7-3	Quarters
	Fnatic	.6816	10-5	Semis
	Gambit	.6106	7-5	Quarters
	Samsung Galaxy Ozone	.5695	5-4	3rd in Group
	Cloud 9	.5090	1-2	Quarters
	Lemondogs	.4722	3-5	3rd in Group
	Gamania Bears	.4686	0-2	Quarters
	Team Vulcun	.4028	3-5	4th in Group
	Team SoloMid	.3889	2-6	4th in Group
	GamingGear.eu	.3055	1-7	5th in Group
	Mineski	.1528	0-8	5th in Group

Team that did better than you thought: NaJin Black Sword

Team that did worse than you thought: Fnatic/Royal Club

Observations: I just ragged on public opinion in discussion the Season 2 results, but I’m going to have to eat my words. The almost-unanimous consensus is that the 5-gamer between NJBS and SKT was the “real final”, and the system backs this up. These teams dominated the competition, and it was truly a sign of Korean superiority.

    However, I know what you’re thinking: NaJin Black Sword over SKT Telecom? Didn’t SKT beat them??? Remember, though, that SKT lost to OMG. Also, their record was inflated by a pretty awful group (OMG, Lemondogs, Team SoloMid, Mineski) and a tepid first-round opponent. Meanwhile, NaJin’s only other result was a 2-1 against a solid Gambit team. Strength of schedule, folks!

    Also, this wasn’t exactly North America’s finest hour, with the region not placing any of its three teams in the top half, and TSM losing to GG.EU. Reverse karma would strike for Team SoloMid in the next worlds though.

Season 4:

	Team	Rating	Record	Result
	Samsung Galaxy White	.9285	15-2	Champs
	Star Horn Royal Club	.7073	12-8	Finals
	Samsung Galaxy Blue	.6657	8-5	Semis
	Team SoloMid	.6317	5-5	Quarters
	OMG	.6199	8-6	Semis
	Edward Gaming	.6065	6-6	Quarters
	ahq e-Sports Club	.5228	3-4	3rd in Group
	NaJin White Shield	.4454	5-5	Quarters
	Cloud 9	.4366	5-6	Quarters
	LMQ	.4285	2-4	Tied 3rd in Group
	Fnatic	.4285	2-4	Tied 3rd in Group
	SK Gaming	.4130	2-4	3rd in Group
	Alliance	.3940	3-3	3rd in Group
	Taipei Assassins	.3130	1-5	4th in Group
	Dark Passage	.2644	0-6	4th in Group
	KaBuM! e-Sports	.1940	1-5	4th in Group

Team that did better than you thought: Team SoloMid

Team that did worse than you thought: All of Group D (NJWS, Cloud 9, Alliance)

Observations: Stare in wonder at the gap between first and second; we could play 50 worlds tournaments and not see something like that again.

    The more interesting stuff is at the middle of the pack. That OMG 3-0 of NaJin had a ripple effect on Group D’s rep; Cloud 9 is stuck in the bottom half even though they took a game off of Samsung Blue, and NaJin somehow graded as a below-average team.

    Also, TSM should thank their lucky stars for that win against SSW, because it really buoyed them in these rankings.

    Observations of each individual worlds is interesting, but which franchise has sustained the most success across all 4 tournaments? My methodology is as follows:

    I assigned a 25th-percentile (so 6th in Season 1 and 12th in Season 4) performance as a rating of 0. This is because a team that finished in this position would be neutral; they could say they made it to worlds and didn’t embarrass themselves, but they really didn’t accomplish anything of note.

    The average 25-th percentile finish was .3868, and we’ll just add or subtract each teams ratings’ off of this number. The top 10 results:

	Team	Rating	Record	# Appearances
	NaJin (Black) Sword	.8020	6-5	2
	Samsung Galaxy Ozone / White	.7244	20-6	2
	(Star Horn) Royal Club	.7061	17-12	2
	Fnatic	.6957	20-12	3
	OMG	.5757	15-9	2
	Moscow 5 / Gambit	.568	10-7	2
	SKT Telecom T1	.5504	15-3	1
	Taipei Assassins	.4335	8-7	2
	Team SoloMid	.4132	12-17	4
	Samsung Galaxy Blue	.2789	8-5	1

Better than you thought: NaJin Sword

Worse than you thought: Team SoloMid

Observations: Yes, a team with a sterling 6-5 record is the greatest worlds team of all time. This is a really surprising result, but it makes sense in context:

The only franchises to be “contenders” at 2 World Championships: NaJin Sword, Royal Club, Fnatic, OMG, Moscow 5/Gambit?, TSM?

The only franchises to have ridiculous peak performances: NaJin Sword, Samsung White, SKT Telecom T1, TPA

The only team to be on both lists? That would be our friends NaJin Sword.

Also, congratulations to Team SoloMid for being on this list despite having a losing record. What other franchise could beat Samsung White and lose to Gaming Gear.EU?