This article is part of our Game Side series.
With just four teams remaining in the 2016 LoL World Championship, I thought it might be a fun exercise to break down how each respective position, based on the players remaining in the tournament. Here's my rankings for the top lane and jungler roles, descending from worst to best.
Top Lane
4. Lee "Duke" Ho-Seong - SKT T1: This may come as a surprise to many, as Duke was amongst the most hyped acquisitions in Korea coming into this split. His reputation for finding advantages in lane was nearly mythical in Korea, and it was presumed that he would be a worthy replacement for Jang "Marin" Gyeong-Hwan. The numbers in this tournament, however, tell a different story. While he, on average, maintains a gold lead over his opponents moving into the mid game, it's a mere 48 gold -- not even enough for a health potion. He also trails all of his opponents in both KDA and kill participation, a symptom of his focus on split-pushing in a World's semifinals that features some of the premier teamfighting top laners in the world.
While Duke is far from objectively bad -- he's in the semifinals of the biggest tournament of the year for a reason -- the fact that he ranks at the bottom of the barrel demonstrates just how amazing this year's pool of players in the top lane is. Furthermore, it's impossible to ignore that unlike the other players he'll be facing, Duke had some very memorable failures during his quarterfinals, as Jang "Looper" Hyeong-seok completely outstripped him in every game but the third -- even landing an early game solo kill to start off the series. For that reason and his statistical weakness compared to the other candidates, Duke ranks at the bottom of the bunch -- though his reputation for explosiveness means that he's certainly not a player who can be safely ignored.
3. Lee "CuVee" Seong-jin - Samsung: Based on the results of the regular season, having CuVee above Duke would almost seem like sacrilege, but there's no arguing that the Samsung top laner has stepped up his performance during Worlds, much like the rest of his team. His KDA, damage, and kill participation are all competitive with his opponents, but he gets those numbers with a notably lower gold share than any of his competitors. Even more impressively, CuVee boasts the highest First Blood percentage (33 percent) of any of his competitors, a number that's surprisingly competitive with all non-junglers -- a rarity amongst top laners.
For his remarkable ability to impact the game without requiring a large share of his team resources, CuVee makes it to third in my rankings. While he is a smidge beneath some of his opponents -- most notably Andrei "Odoamne" Pascu -- in the damage-dealing statistics, that's also a function of his role on the team. CuVee is the sole true role playing top laner left in Worlds, and his numbers are quite impressive for a player that's more than happy to take a back seat to his carries in terms of resource allocation. Still, CuVee has surprised analysts innumerable times with his ability to step up and carry games -- often via unexpected solo kills -- which sets him apart from other role players such as Darshan "Darshan" Upadhyaha or Looper.
2. Odoamne - H2K: Saying that Worlds 2016 is the tournament of Odoamne's life would be an understatement. His appearance last year was tepid at best, leaving plenty of doubt about the international viability of Europe's strongest domestic top laner. Those doubts have been, if not abolished, at least somewhat defrayed for the time being. It must be noted, however, that H2K had quite possibly the easiest path to this point, with a group full of inconsistent teams -- including the anemic early showings from the ROX Tigers -- their only competition, which somewhat detracts from the sky-high statistics that Odoamne boasts.
By sheer KDA, Odoamne only loses to Song "Smeb" Kyung-ho, but sheer KDA doesn't tell the whole story in this case. Where Odoamne has truly shone is in his laning statistics: he boasts an absolutely absurd 15 CS differential at 10 minutes, as well as an average gold lead of 537. In both statistics he is close to leading the entire assembled pool of remaining players, which speaks to how hard he punishes his opponents mistakes. However, it must be noted that he hasn't fared nearly as well against top talent as he has against weaker player, and the stats are tilted by the obvious outlier which was his series against ANX, where he earned the highest gold differential of Worlds when he thrashed Smurf. That aside, Odoamne is still a top threat, and we've already seen time and again that any mistakes his opponents make will be punished severely -- to disastrous results for the opposing team.
1. Smeb - ROX Tigers: This ranking comes to the surprise of no one. There's a reason that Smeb is widely acknowledged as the best player in the game: even when his team fails he manages to succeed, and he's brought his team back from the brink innumerable times. He's already had perhaps the greatest highlight of Worlds, when his four-man Slicing Maelstrom onto all of G2 turned the game on it's head, almost single-handedly ensuring that ROX would stay alive in the group stage. He is uncontested on top of the KDA charts among all top laners, and he is either the best or near the best in every other relevant statistic. While he often takes a fraction of his teams gold that is disproportionate to his damage output -- he takes 22.1 percent of his teams gold, while only outputting 21.6 percent of their damage -- that damage often comes when the Tigers need it most. For his ability to break games open not only in the lane phase, but at any stage of the game, Semb earns the top pick.
Jungle
3. Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong - Samsung, Marcin "Jankos" Jankowski - H2k: This may seem like a hedge, but the strengths of both these junglers are so disparate that they are difficult to compare. While Jankos has lived up to his moniker of First Blood King by earning the first kill for his team 65.5 percent of the time, that number -- while impressive -- is actually lower than both Yoon "Peanut" Wang-ho and Kang "Blank" Sun-gu, though H2k successfully converts those first bloods into wins much more commonly than either. After the first ten minutes, Jankos seems to fall off quite a bit, with mediocre damage share, damage per minute, CS, and KDA all haunting him. Even more damning, he dies more often than any other jungle remaining in the pool, and has 22 percent of all of his team's deaths. By comparison, Peanut has a mere 15 percent of his team's death, a difference that seems nitpicky but can have a major impact in a jungle pool as momentum-focused as the four we have remaining.
Ambition is on nearly the opposite end of the scale. He scores first blood for his team less often than any jungler left in the pool, but much of that may also be due to the insane first blood numbers his solo laners have -- CuVee has taken First Blood a few times already without any help required whatsoever. In comparison to Jankos, however, he has above average stats across the board after the early stages of the game, with his KDA being the only noticeably low stat. KDA is a difficult stat to use to judge Samsung players, however, as of all the teams remaining their performances have largely been dominant, and their clean ending of games once they obtain a decisive advantage has led to relatively depressed KDAs for all of them. While Ambition deals the most damage over the course of a game than any of his competitors, it's safe to say that his low KDA isn't indicative of his impact in-game, as his 325 damage per minute outstrips both Blank and Jankos by an impressive 15 percent.
2. Blank - SKT T1: In a tournament positively stacked with overperforming players, Blank may very well be the biggest over-performer of all. After a Summer Split that saw him often confused and without direction, he's come into Worlds with a level of dominance that has never been seen from the rookie previously. While most of his success has been on the same champion -- his Olaf is without question the best we've seen on stage thus far -- and his group was clearly the weakest overall, his numbers are still impressive with all of that taken into account. His newfound synergy with his side lanes has allowed him to finally pressure the map in a way that SKT T1 has lacked prior to Worlds, and he's been a huge part of their success.
Where Blank tends to stand out is in his farming stats: despite having the second highest KDA amongst all junglers and a 70 percent First Blood rate, he also averaged a six CS differential at the ten minute mark, a number only matched by CLG's Jake "Xmithie" Puchero. That demonstrates an action economy that few of his competitors can claim, as not only is Blank rarely idle, he is excellent at succeeding in whatever line of play he chooses to pursue, whether it be a gank, counter-jungling, or mere farming. Combined with his visually impressive performance in game -- he seems to be on a permanent killing spree during every game he's in -- his stats are more than enough to give him the second berth in our rankings.
1. Peanut - ROX Tigers: This is the least competitive slot on my entire power rankings. Peanut is tearing this tournament apart, and is seemingly pulling his team back from their appalling week one performance single-handedly. His KDA is comparable with most carry positions, his ganks work often enough that enemy junglers must suspect him of being clairvoyant, and he teamfights on Elise as if she was made for it while most of his opponents do little more than flail around on her once it comes to the late stages of the game.
To describe how numerically superior Peanut has been, only four numbers are required. Over the course of the entire tournaments, Jankos has earned 26 kills, Blank 21, and Ambition 19. Peanut has earned 57. If you aggregate all of the kills earned by every remaining jungler, 45 percent of those will be Peanut's, and he's not sacrificing assists in order to earn those -- in fact, he also leads in that statistic as well. Peanut is a wrecking ball tearing its way through the World's metagame, and the first thing that any team facing the Tigers must consider is how they will answer him, for if any team fails to keep this monster down, their defeat is all but sealed.
