Stats corner: What changed with Elise patch?

Count von Count, official "Stats Corner" supervisor



Sometimes, getting a new champion isn't even the third most impactful thing in a patch and such was the case with 1.0.0.150, more commonly known as "Elise patch". What it essentially did was park a huge lorry in the vivid garden known as "champion pool" and unload a big pile of nerfs onto many of them in hopes that it can balance out the tournament meta at least to a minor extent. As we'll see below, some champions suffered while other gave not one ***k and happily carried on to be on the very top of the "most contested" ladder.

All in due time, let's first go through the major changes:

BLITZCRANK suffered in terms of endurance, having his starting health and health per level reduced. The nerf came to mend the problem of having a support who's exceptional at zoning out and disrupting and at the same time very hard to kill through all this health and mana barrier.

SONA ate an equally unpleasant punch in the face and saw her base health and base armor lowered. The overwhelming utility of the champion combined with more than enough health to survive early game duels kept Sona not only on top of the "best support" ranking but on top of the "best champion" one as well. During past premier tournaments, we've seen other supports trying to crawl closer to Sona in terms of popularity but neither Nunu, nor Lulu, nor Leona could surpass her. At MLG Dallas, for example, the difference between the Sona and the second most picked support (Lulu) was 23 to 9. Not the most appetizing of ratios.

EZREAL endured just one nerf to the Essence Flux skill (no longer reducing enemies' attack speed), allowing for more fair duels on bot lane. With Ezreal's early game suffering a blow, it got people hoping that the AD champion pool at premier tournament would enjoy some diversity.

JAYCE's nerf to Thundering Blow (no longer having any flat base damage) was designed to fix champion's utter hegemony on top lane as well as balance out the power of poke team comps.

RENGAR saw his second consecutive nerf after it was released. Very understandable once you follow Rengar's popularity through history:
1) Rengar is released and is kind of meh
2) Rengar is buffed to high heavens but gets globally banned before S2WC. Meanwhile, solo queue players suffer in silence
3) Rengar is nerfed, still is top four most contested at MLG Dallas

EVELYNN got hit even harder than Rengar. Not only did her Agony's Embrace got its AP ratio cut in half but also Deathfire Grasp was no longer the strong combo opener that it was before. The most banned AP champion of MLG and S2WC was very likely to disappear off the charts.


First and foremost, say hello to Ezreal and Corki, two champions whose rivalry on bot lane is, apparently, going nowhere even despite the former being affected by the latest patch. Ezreal defends his #1 position from S2WC and MLG, while Corki returns to #2 after people got tired of experimenting with other ADs like Vayne, Kog'Maw and Graves and went back to their old moustached friend.

On the other hand, Sona was not as lucky as Ezreal and post-Elise patch she is nowhere to be seen. Her place is decisively taken by Lulu and Zyra, the latter of which would end up the most first-picked champion in DHW and IEM Singapore combined but while this was very much expected for Lulu, Zyra's abrupt rise to fame is somewhat staggering, though not unexplainable. The combination of strong AoE ultimate, free brush warding, CC from range and high damage is basically an upgrade on Leona (once the original support runner-up) so no wonder we see her so high in the charts.

In mid, there’s even clearer diversification of what’s hot and what’s not. Orianna is not only the fourth most picked champion but is also the only dedicated AP carry that found its way into the top fifteen. Evelynn, as we suggested, plummeted from hero to zero and has been picked just once in all 39 games. Other popular APCs such as Twisted Fate, Katarina and Karthus hover around the 7-9 range, meaning that for most games there was a very clean spit: there's Orianna, and there're leftovers.

Lastly, the Jax/Jayce/Malphite top lane trio is gone, enter Irelia and all the versatile bruisers. Ambiguous picks have always been a trend throughout premier tournaments but even more so at DHW and IEM Singapore. Maokai and Skarner represent the dedicated junglers as they always have but the rest of the chart is full of champions versed in both top and jungle: Xin Zhao, Lee Sin, Cho’Gath, Olaf.


Once again, the left graph almost directly translates to the right. Nobody wanted to play against Lee Sin and Diana for whatever reason but what's even more curious is how Blitzcrank and Rengar have found their way to the top 5 most banned even despite the nerfs. I guess you just can't hamper a great jungle/lane presence that easily.

Next on the line are ban pool old-timers like Shen and Jax, accompanied by Irelia and Anivia which will always appear in that chart whenever CLG.eu are attending. Thus, the most contested graph - with the few exceptions of Zyra, Lee Sin and Katarina where Sona, Jayce and Karthus used to be - is one very similar to past tournaments.

The metagame is undergoing its last small steps of alteration before Season 3 sends it all to hell.




NOTE: The win rates stats are here only by popular demand. They do not necessarily represent the power of one champion and, thus, no conclusions should be made on their basis. Consider them a part of the fun facts department.

Considering the note above, there is no need to go on and on about the numbers presented here and attention should rather be paid to the following highlights:

The top four champions by win rate are all in the 5-10 "time picked" radius
Ezreal and Cho'Gath are the only champions picked more than 15 times and still have a 60%+ win rate
Jayce, Shen and Rengar - previously some of the most popular champions in the game - share both a low pick rate (5-7) and low win rate (sub 35%)
Corki, Orianna and Lulu are champions that enjoy bot a high pick rate (15+) and low win rate (sub 40%)
The only champions with 100% win rate are Nocturne (picked thrice), Vladimir (picked twice) and Yorick (picked twice)

The results of Elise patch: A TL;DR version

Before we wrap this up, let's crunch all the numbers and examine the aftermath of 1.0.0.150

Change: Blitzcrank is nerfed (lowered base HP and HP/level)
Result: Blitzcrank is the most banned support and third most banned champion

Change: Sona is nerfed (lowered base HP and base armor)
Result: Sona disappears from the chart after being #1 support for ages. Lulu and Zyra take her place

Change: Ezreal is nerfed (attack speed debuff on Essence Flux removed)
Result: Ezreal continues to be the most picked champion in tournaments

Change: Jayce is nerfed (Thundering Blow has now flat damage)
Result: Jayce disappears from the charts after being #1 top laner since S2WC. Irelia takes his place (kind of)

Change: Rengar is nerfed (base HP, HP regen, overall DPS and ultimate's duration and cooldown lowered)
Result: Rengar's stats for times banned and times contested drop slightly

Change: Evelynn and DFG nerfed
Result: Evelynn goes from hero to zero. Orianna enjoys total hegemony in mid lane

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The data is collected from a total of 39 games from both DreamHack Winter 2012 and IEM Singapore.
Source: Play.GosuGamers.net (links to tournaments below).