Flex picks are a critical part of victory in Fantasy League Of Legends and this is often where weeks are won or lost. The aim of this quick article is to give some tips that will put you in the best position to beat your friends and give you some much deserved bragging rights. I will quickly detail which roles you should use and which players might surprisingly rack you up a ton of fantasy points.
Which role is best for my Flex pick?
It is no secret that the highest scoring players in most games are the ADC and Mid laners of the winning team. However what might surprise you is the average points per game score of each role. In the Top 20 players of this split as determined by average points per game, this is how the roles are divided:
Top Lane – 3 Players
Jungle – 5 Players
Mid Lane – 7 Players
AD Carry – 4 Players
Support – 1 Player
While 35% of the top 20 players are indeed mid laners, AD Carries are beaten by junglers, something important to consider when picking your flex. Top laners on average tend to die more than any other role, often for the benefit of their own team. These players are the focus of a lot of early ganks and can often be put behind by having to teleport elsewhere to assist a struggling lane, which not only puts them behind in lane but can sometimes lead to their death. Like supports they often play champions who have strong engage pressure, like Malphite or Poppy for instance. While they provide a great teamfight advantage, throwing themselves into the enemy team can lead to them being the first to fall even if their team wins the fight, missing out on potential kills and assists if the fight drags on. If you are considering using a top laner and the ‘popular’ top laners such as Huni and sOAZ are taken you should consider Odoamne, Vizicsacsi or Cabochard, who belong to teams who win a good percentage of their games and perform well consistently.
Support players only fill 5% of the top 20 in this case. While they provide a critical role in the team in not only getting their AD Carry ahead, protecting them and in many cases, acting as a CC fuelled source of engage in fights, they are not a source of high fantasy point scoring. As a rule, the role typically gives away kills wherever possible and will willingly die for the team sof high damage dealers can survive. I would strongly advise you do not use a support as a flex pick as, while it can work, they can often have poor fantasy points despite being on the winning team. It is worth pointing out that the only player in the top 20 is Adrian who is the support of Immortals, the only team in western League of Legends to still have not lost a game.
Which players are best for the role?
Jungle
Not including the players who have performed well but have only played one game (Procxin, Grigne, Shrimp) These are the best 3 players in the role of Jungler in terms of average points per game
Reignover – 18.96 points per game
Unsurprisingly, the best jungler in the west right now is Immortals’ Reignover. A direct import from European Kings Fnatic alongside top laner Huni, who has gone from strength to strength this season and despite the views of many has been a standout performer for the North American side. Yet to drop a game, Immortals have been nothing short of excellent so far, and the ‘first blood brothers’ are playing as good as ever. Reignover has an overall score of 12/2/31 and I can see him easily being the highest scoring jungler at the end of this season too.
Rush – 12.87 points per game
Last season Rush was by far the best player in America, picking up the summer split MVP award. While this season Rush has not been as incredible as he was last year he has still had some good performances, something I expect to continue to improve as he gains confidence on his new team. He has had some big boots to fill, taking over from Meteos and Mr C9 himself (Hai). As Hai has remained on the team as a rotating support, he can offer constant suport which Rush will benefit from.
Spirit – 12.01 points per game
Undoubtedly Spirit is one of the greatest junglers in League of Legends history but his performances on Fnatic have been far from convincing thus far. We’ve seen sparks of greatness as well as a horrendous week 3 which made me thank my lucky stars I ditched him for Jankos this week. This is in no small part, thanks to Fnatic’s new roster, held together by Febiven and Rekkles. I have no doubt that Fnatic will continue to improve this season, i do not think they will hit their peak until the summer season starts up. Spirit is still a decent choice and will do you well but may continue to be inconsistent, at least for the next couple of weeks while Fnatic find themselves.
Mid Lane
Pobelter – 22.97 points per game
Pobelter was good if not great last year on CLG, which is why players and fans alike were baffled when he was suddenly kicked/dropped from the team. Pobelter has had the last laugh though as Immortals have been dominant and Pobelter has been the best mid laner in the west with an overall score of 19/7/28. he can be a little reckless but he’s on the right team to be reckless. He will only get better.
Perkz – 19.99 points per game
33/11/28. That is how many kills, deaths and assists Perkz has right now. He has been nothing short of incredible, if you can get him, do it. He’s been playing so much better than anyone could have predicted and leads the board in kills in both Europe and North America.
Bjergsen – 19.12 points per game
There really isn’y much to say bout Bjergsen really, Team Solo Mid have been far from where we expect them to be but Bjergsen will always do well regardless of his teamates. He knows better than anyone how to get kills and not die, if he can get a 1v1 kill in lane he will do it, something he showed at worlds despite being on a worse than poor TSM team, picking up leads that his team could not translate into wins.
AD Carry
Zven – 18.38 points per game
Zven was the player I expected to be the highest points scorer overall this season and currently he is (NA still to play). Despite Origen’s shaky start it is good to know that Zven has continued to do well, outscoring players on teams with more wins than Origen, there is no doubt he is a great player and will be a definite contender for team of the season.
FORG1VENGRE – 17.91 points per game
Despite being on the best team in Europe right now, Forgiven’s average points total is lower than I expected. That is a testiment to H2K though as many people thought the ecqusition of this AD carry would turn H2K into ‘The Forgiven Show’ reminiscent of SK Gaming a year ago. Forgiven is no longer his teams solo carry and has learned to share resources, he is an excellent player and there is no excuse for not having him in your team if you can.
Doublelift – 15.81 points per game
Doublelift on TSM is still a strange thing to consider for me but there is no doubting that TSM snapping him up the second they could was a good bit of business on Regi’s part. Doublelift is a truly special AD Carry and TSM should keep getting better and better, especially with the acquisition of the best AD carry America has ever seen, the best Mid laner America has ever seen and the best support that western league of legends has ever seen. Doublelift has all the tools he needs to achieve greatness.
Secret Great Performers
Jungle
Trick – 18.78 points per game
Trick has been amazing so far this season. G2 have come straight out of the challenger series flying and are currently joint first at the top of the EU LCS table. Trick has definitely been the best player alongside Perkz on G2 Esports and by far the best Jungler in Europe so far. His overall score is 13/10/52, meaning he has the most assists of any jungler and the 3rd highest assists of any player in the West. Amazingly he’s only owned by 37.7% of players right now and out of all the players in this articles this is the player that you simply MUST get your hands on, even if you just want to have him on the bench to stop others abusing this incredible player.
Dardoch – 17.08 points per game
Dardoch has been inconsistent thus far with flashes of brilliance. Alongside Piglet he has been a standout performer on Team Liquid and one of the few players to be performing well in games that Liquid are losing. They were very unfortunate to lose to TSM as they were dominating from the start and a lot of that blame has fallen upon the shoulders of Dardoch. Dardoch played amazingly to put TSM down early but along with Fenix, threw the game after getting over eager on Elise, chasing ahead of his team to pursue the fleeing TSM. Once they noticed how far ahead Dardoch was of the rest of his team they turned on him quickly, obliterating him before his team could catch up. Dardoch should have learned from this and is a good pick for your team.
Amazing – 14.23 points per game
Lets face it, Origen did not have the start to the season we all expected. Amazing himself was hardly coloured in glory when he fell to a 1v2 against Gamsu on day one, missing all of his Lee Sin Q’s in the fight. A lot of people started dropping Origen players while I moved Zven and Mithy onto my bench for a week and put them back in when things were on the up. Amazing is, well, an amazing player and things seem to be on the up for Origen now that they have found their style.
Mid Lane
Shiphtur – 21.01 points per game
Dignitas have been surprisingly good this season, this may not last but Shiphtur and Apollo have managed to be consistently strong throughout, even in losing games. Shiphtur is definitely a safe pick, he’s not one of those players who will have a bad game and get you four points for a loss but on the other hand he’s not as likely to get you an outstanding amount in one go.
Fenix – 18.90 points per game
Fenix has not played as well as he could do this season (Orianna flash ultimate against TSM comes to mind) but he has been far from terrible. Team Liquid are starting to pick up the pieces with their somewhat refreshed roster and they are getting better. Fenix is definitely a player to consider and using him as my alternate in one of my leagues, single handedly winning me week 2. Definitely a player to consider.
HuHi – 17.81 points per game
HuHi has been somewhat of a surprise this season, he’s seemed unconfident at times but has seemlessly slipped into the boots of Pobelter and will hopefully only get better, I can see him having a big future as long as he can keep a cool head.
AD Carries
One of the main reasons I love this season is the incredible amount of high level AD carries we are seeing, some we didn’t expect to do as well like Keith. I’ll make this short as all of these are brilliant to have and if you can get yourself even one of these you are doing well. I recommend Wildturtle (23.07 points per game), Keith (20.07 points per game) and Freeze (24.16 points per game). However, the thing to remember is that Keith has had Visa issues and did not play last week and will not be paying this week. The benefit of this is that a lot of players are dropping him, hopefully it will be worth it to pick him up and bench him until he’s back in America. He is, after all, the best AD Carry on average that we have seen this season. I would like to talk about the following player who has managed to steal back his place in my heart as one of my favourite AD carries I’ve ever seen.
Steelback – 17.95 points per game
Steelback had his skeptics this for this season and ou can see why. He started 2015 with a bang as he, along with the rest of the fresh Fnatic roster, defied expectations to take the 2015 spring split crown as a team of rookies. They performed well at msi, beating TSM in group stages and almost beating eventual world champions SKT in the semi-final. Steelback was uncerimoniously dropped from Fnatic in favour of old hero Rekkles who returned after a lacklustre season at Elements. Steelback found mixed success bouncing around in the challenger series in AMerica and Europe before Unicorns Of Love smartly picked him up for this season. They have been great so far and you can see Steelback getting better and better as he grows in confidence, even outclassing the man who replaced him on Fnatic (admittedly Rekkles has performed decently under the circumstances).
Well there you have it, with these picks you will do excellently and you should be better informed as to who you should pick as your flex player as well as starting players.
For any questions, and to keep up with my future articles you can find me on twitter at www.twitter.com/OlieAdams
Have a great day guys 🙂
