Analysis on the Top Bans for Each Group at Worlds

In this article I will be going over the top bans on red side, blue side, and combined bans for each group. The objective is to notice what each group is prioritizing along with the differences and similarities each group may have.

Group A

Red Side

The highest red side bans for group A consisted of Morde and Gangplank. These two are the most influential and powerful OP picks in the current Meta. The other three top red side bans were Elise, Lulu, and Rek’sai. Lulu still gets some bans because she is an OP pick, but she has more counter play compared to the other two so her ban rate isn’t as high. The other two bans were on junglers. Teams fight over jungle picks early on because there aren’t many choices and jungle picks don’t reveal that much. Ban a few of them and the selection is narrowed down even more. 

Blue Side

The top blue side bans are Kalista, Darius, Gangplank, and Malphite. Banning Gangplank on blue side typically means either you have no one who can play him which shouldn’t be the case or you are fishing for a certain pick. There is only one other group that has this many bans on Gangplank on blue side and that’s group D. The main difference here though is group D has Soaz who is very frightening on Gangplank which has caused some teams to ban him against OG. The Kalista ban is not too surprising looking at who is in this group. Doublelift, brTT, and Pray all look to Kalista if she is open. She is a potent pick and these teams don’t mind funneling more gold into their ADC’s. This is also the only group that has Kalista so heavily banned even though some of the ADC’s in group B and C wouldn’t shy away from her. I believe it is mainly due to the original statement where teams in group A are more dependent on their ADC’s. 

Overall Combined Bans

The Morde and Gangplank bans are expected to be 100% or close to 100%. Kalista is at 66.67% for reasoning I stated before. Elise is high up for being a high tier jungler, but what we don’t see is Lee Sin on this list. A good Lee Sin player can adversely affect the early game, but if we look at the junglers in this group not many of them play a good Lee Sin. Xmithie isn’t awful, but he doesn’t maximize Lee Sin’s potential to where he can beat out Elise. Finally, we see Lulu at 50% ban rate across all the games. Expect teams to hover around whether she is worth banning since there are ways to work around her as we saw Origen do. What we also notice is Veigar creeping into the ban list. Veigar is an interesting champion since he can be played passively, allow the enemy to even roam since he can always answer with his teleport, and he scales aggressively in the late game to where he can one shot enemies. 

I would expect to see more Lulu bans for group A’s super day. With more ADC centric teams she will become a higher priority for them and teams most likely took note on CLG’s performances with without her.

Group B

 Red Side

When it comes to red side bans group B follows suite with the 100% Morde ban while Gangplank and Lulu still get more attention on red side. It makes sense to see Gangplank ban priority on red to be higher if not always banned on red side. Finally, Azir appears as the 4th most banned champion on red. For one, Azir is a great control mage who the likes of Incarnati0n and Febiven will gladly take. The second reason is Azir is a very good blind pick on blue side. He doesn’t have that many horrible matchups and he scales well into the late game so he doesn’t require snowballing early on. The Lulu ban is also higher on red side because teams like FNC and C9 don’t mind getting a champion capable of buffing their ADC’s. 

Blue Side

Group B has more spread out bans on blue side. The only two that occur more than once are Elise and Lulu. Both champions can be let go to red, but some teams decided otherwise. The main thing to take away from this is group B teams prefer to target ban the enemy team and adapt towards the picks each team is using. For instance, after AHQ used Tahm Kench support the very next game Tahm Kench was banned. This will make the super day for group B very interesting. 

Overall Combined Bans

There isn’t much change when looking at the overall combined bans besides noticing two new bans, Veigar and Rek’sai. Incarnati0n received two Veigar bans after C9’s 1st game against AHQ. This champion works well with the way C9 plays since Veigar is a control mage who not only can take teleport to help with map play, but his big AOE stun allows for kiting. The Rek’sai bans are again just a secondary jungler teams have been targeting. Lee Sin was never banned by any of these teams while only being played twice. Elise is such a higher priority, but she can get abused by Lee as I mentioned previously. A player like Kakao could use an aggressive jungler to help his weaker side lanes. 

Group C

Red Side

The three main bans are the three main OP picks in the current Meta. What is peculiar about the Morde ban is it only sits at 50% on red side. This means Morde is getting banned on blue side. The first thought is these teams aren’t capable of playing Morde if they ban him on blue like a similar reason with Gangplank. However, that was proven wrong by H2K who banned him on blue side one game and then picked him on blue side the next. Some teams maybe having a particular plan that involves not using Morde and if they think the red side team isn’t going to ban Morde then the safest bet is to just ban Morde on blue. 

Blue Side

Group C has more frequent bans on blue side compared to group B. Elise is highest which is the first and only group to have a jungle champion this high. Elise will usually be first rotated by either team if given the chance except if the blue side team is fishing for an OP pick and doesn’t wish to give Elise over. When Elise is left open and an OP pick it can cause some tough decisions for a team and if they aren’t prepared correctly it can cause them to draft poorly. 

Overall Combined Bans

This group has the most champions banned out that hold at least a 33.33% ban rate. This is also the only group to have Darius banned so often. Darius has counters which can cause him to become useless. There actually aren’t many good reasons to ban Darius. The main reason I can think of is you have a top laner in mind for your composition that would get countered by Darius like Malphite. 

The second thing to notice are champions like Fiora, Lee Sin, Thresh, and Twisted Fate making the list for this group. They are mostly based on previous games during the week like Marin’s Fiora and Odoamne’s Fiora. The Thresh bans were used on Kasing. The one exception is the Twisted Fate bans since these were all banned against EDG. I think we will notice either more Twisted Fate bans or picks for group C’s super day. Twisted Fate with teleport can have massive impact on the map and I doubt teams will want to face an EDG team with more map pressure.

Group D

Red Side

This is the most interesting group when it comes to bans. First, notice how low the Morde and Lulu ban rates are on red side. The Lulu ban rate is similar to group A, but for different reasons. While group A is trying to grab Lulu it seems like in group D they are trying to counter the Lulu. OG beat LGD when they took Lulu and TSM beat LGD when they take Lulu. Both times teams weren’t afraid of letting her through to the other side. 

We also notice the Azir ban like in group B. Group D has Bjergsen who can carry TSM with Azir on his own and Nagne who is mainly known for his Azir.

The unique ban set to red side is Lee Sin. This is the first time Lee Sin is banned more than once on the same side. This is due to TBQ’s success on that champion. Interesting to note is how none of these bans on red side really seem to affect OG, but affect all the other teams in the pool.

Blue Side

Azir makes it on the list once again. The same reason holds as I mentioned for the red side bans. Gangplank is placed more importance in being rid of like in group A. However, it’s the same team that banned Gangplank on blue side, LGD. The Twisted Fate bans were solely focused on Bjergsen. A trend is starting to formulate from these bans if you notice. Group D bans are focusing more on specific players and incorporating specific strategies versus a few pocket picks and current strong Meta champions.  

Overall Combined Bans

Finally, the overall combined bans show Kalista and Rek’sai as two bans. Kalista was banned more towards Niels while Rek’sai was on TBQ to further decrease his champion pool. What I find intriguing is how Lulu stays at 33.33% ban rate for combined bans. Teams aren’t afraid to let her go in this group and some teams play the opponent by forcing to make a decision on whether they want Lulu or some S-tier pick like Morde. An example of this would be TSM vs LGD. 

Azir’s total ban rate increased a bit to 66.67%. Azir will continue to be banned against TSM and KT not just because of Bjergsen and Nagne, but because GODV and xPeke have not shown the capability to play Azir at a world’s level. Like with group C Twisted Fate is going to get more attention in group D. Both xPeke and Bjergsen showed what they can do with this champion and Nagne was one of the first people to take homeguards on Twisted Fate. This leaves a question mark on whether GODV will pick him up for their super day.

Conclusion

Looking at the bans from each group we can see group A focus is around the OP picks, Elise, and Kalista. Group B’s focus is the OP picks and Azir. Group C’s focus is the OP picks, Darius, and Elise. Finally, group D’s focus is 2 of the OP picks, Azir, and 2 junglers. The main question to ask is how are these types of bans by each group going to affect the others. Group D clearly doesn’t focus Lulu as much while group B and C put much more emphasis on banning her out. Group C is already decided, but group B teams may learn a thing or two looking at the group D games. This will cause Lulu to be banned less and some other champion to replace these bans.

Another clear thing to note is the increase in teleport mid laners. We may see teams bringing out Lissandra, more Twisted Fate, and maybe even some additional teams taking Veigar. This will cause the bans in all groups to change throughout their super day.

The only thing I know that will hold still for every single group is Gangplank will remain banned. Target bans will be enacted, but the power of Gangplank is too much for any team to really try countering.

Credits to the images taken from http://esports.inquirer.net/