With the full NA LCS 2015 Spring split wrapped up, post-mortem season is in full swing. One way to review player performances over the past few months is to compare statistics.
Today we’re reviewing the Top lane.
Check out the previous articles for AD Carries, Mid Laners, and Junglers, too!
I’ve chosen to highlight a few specific stats with charts, but there are many more statistics available in the complete table at the bottom of this article.
The statistics in this article are based on all NA LCS 2015 Spring split games, including the nine weeks of the regular season, tiebreaker games, and playoff games.
Note to Readers
Statistics are only one tool available for measuring player performance. This article is not meant to be a comprehensive player assessment to rank North American Top lane players. It may show us some interesting things, but the findings from these numbers should always be put in context with other factors such as individual and team play style, champions used, game lengths, and so on.
- The “Earned Gold Differential at 10 Minutes” statistic measures the Top laner’s and opposing Top laner’s earned gold at the 10-minute mark, takes the difference, and then averages that difference across all games played. These numbers are based on gold values rounded to the nearest hundred, which is the level of detail available in Riot’s match histories. Rounding errors may have some small influence on the values.
The best gold differentials at 10 minutes belonged to Rhux (in only two games played), Quas, Balls, and Zion Spartan.
Quas and Balls deserve special recognition for even having gold leads at 10 minutes even in losses (Quas with an average 143 gold lead in losses, Balls with 82). Zion Spartan, meanwhile, averaged a -111 gold deficit in losses, with a 273 gold lead in wins.
Food for Thought:
Early gold amounts come not only from farm, but also from kills/assists and early towers. High gold differential numbers could simply reflect a strong laning performance, but could also be due to kills in lane, favourable 2v1 lane swaps, or team turret kills elsewhere on the map.
Based on other stats available to us, we can get a decent idea of where a few players’ numbers come from:
Dyrus
The embattled TSM Top laner definitely didn’t earn his gold leads through First Bloods: he participated in four FB kills in 26 games, but gave up seven FB deaths! But TSM earned the first Tower kill in 78% of their regular season games and 75% of their playoff games. Assuming that some of those Tower kills came prior to 10 minutes, Dyrus would have benefited from the global gold, and that would have improved his gold differentials. This is not to say that Dyrus didn’t earn gold leads on his own through strong CSing, but Tower kills in other lanes will have helped his numbers overall.
Zion Spartan
Zion Spartan was in on nine First Blood kills in 20 games, a pretty impressive statistic, and this will have contributed to his early gold differentials. CLG also killed the first tower in 63% of their regular season games and 67% of their playoff games. That will have boosted Zion’s numbers here.
Quas
Team Liquid only killed the first tower in 26% of their regular season games (worst in the league) and 38% of their playoff games. Quas’ gold differentials definitely weren’t propped up by early Tower kills! Instead, Quas benefited from nine First Blood participations in 32 games.
Keep Digging: Curious about gold differentials @ 10 minutes in wins vs. losses? Check out this bonus chart.
- Damage to champions per minute is calculated separately for each game, then averaged across all games played. Bear in mind that this stat can be inflated by playing longer games or by playing high-poke champions.
Damage output is not the defining statistic for a Top laner, but it is certainly useful to highlight differences between players’ roles on their teams.
In Benny’s two games as a CLG sub, he did a ridiculous amount of damage, playing on two high-damage champions in Gnar and Rumble.
But among regular starters, the highest damage outputs came from Impact and Calitrlolz. Cali’s biggest damage games were on Vladimir, Gnar, Irelia, and Jax, but his Gragas and Maokai games produced lower damage numbers. Impact’s highest damage numbers came from his games on Rumble, Morgana, and Hecarim.
Avalon, Dyrus, and Balls did the least damage output. Avalon’s main champions were Gnar, Lulu, Maokai, and Sion. Balls played Maokai in 14 games, and Maokai’s damage output tends to be very low; his damage output was better in his few Rumble, Kennen, and Hecarim games. Dyrus played a lot of Maokai, Lulu, and Sion, but only did more than 375 damage per minute on Dr. Mundo (one game) and Lissandra (two games).
Effects of Champion Selection
Some champions do inherently more damage per minute than others, so it’s useful to compare different players’ performances on the same champion. Let’s look at Rumble, a champion who tended to produce a lot of damage through his big AoE. The table below only includes players who put in at least two games on the champion.
Note: Damage measured in thousands (.500 = 500).
There are other factors involved in these damage numbers, such as how often the teams engaged in fights, but putting those cautions aside, Impact rises head and shoulders above the pack, while Dyrus’s damage output is unimpressive.
- Damage share is the percentage of the team’s total damage to champions that was contributed by the player, calculated separately for each game and then averaged across all games played.
- Gold share is based on earned gold, which excludes each player’s 475 starting gold and the inherent gold gain of 1.9 per second that starts at 90 seconds.
As noted above, damage doesn’t really define a Top player the way it defines an ADC or Mid, but it does give an indication of each player’s priority in the team’s play style. Here are a couple of players who stand out to me from this chart:
Calitrlolz
The Team 8 Top had the highest damage share of any regular starter, and also took home a higher than average gold share. Cali was a key priority for the Team 8 strategy, and these numbers demonstrate that. Gamsu’s and Impact’s shares were similar, but Gamsu overall did a bit less damage share with a bit more gold share.
Dyrus
As discussed above, Dyrus didn’t output very much damage, due in part to his heavy usage of utility champions like Lulu and Maokai. His gold share was also among the lowest in the league, though, with only Avalon, Balls, and Zion Spartan receiving smaller gold shares.
Zion Spartan
CLG’s Top laner deserves credit for contributing close to the league average in damage share while making do with the league-lowest gold share.
- Wards placed per minute and wards cleared per minute are calculated separately for each game, then averaged across all games played. All ward types are included.
The biggest contributors to vision control were Zion Spartan and Calitrlolz, both of whom placed the most wards per minute while also clearing wards at or above the league average rate. Gamsu and Hauntzer were also strong players in the vision game.
Balls did relatively less for ward placements and clears, as did Impact and Avalon.
Full Stats Table
Click the image below for a giant table of Top lane statistics from the entire NA LCS 2015 Spring split. If you’re interested in sortable, scrollable tables, head to the Statistics section of Oracle’s Elixir and enter “Top” into the Search bar of the Player Statistics tables.
Click the image for a full-size, readable view.
A few other highlights from these statistics:
- Among regular starters, Quas took home the best KDA with a 4.0.
- Top laners in general had fairly low average kill participation, ranging among regular starters from 56% (Dyrus) to 69% (Quas, Balls, and Hauntzer).
- Among regular starters, Calitrlolz had the highest average earned gold per minute at 216.3, with Dyrus taking second at 212.5. Considering that Team 8 only killed 6.7 towers per game, while TSM led the league by far with 8.1 tower kills per game, Dyrus’s high gold per minute is unsurprisingly inflated. It’s more surprising that Dyrus isn’t at the top of the list! (For further comparison, CLG took 7.5 towers per game, C9 7.4, TiP 6.7, GV 6.5, TL 6.4, WFX 5.7, DIG 4.7, CST 3.8.)
If you found these stats interesting or useful, leave a comment and let me know! There’s plenty to discuss here, so go ahead and share your interpretations and explanations.
You can find more NA LCS statistics for both players and teams in the Statistics section of Oracle’s Elixir.
Statistics and Interpretation: Tim “Mag1c” Sevenhuysen
Graphics: “Daniel “Exorant” Hume“
