All posts by Tim Sevenhuysen

Tim Sevenhuysen is the founder and sole developer of Oracle's Elixir and provides a variety of consulting and contracting services throughout the esports industry. He is the former Director of Esports Analytics for 100 Thieves, served as Head of Data Science for Esports One, led Shadow.gg from 2017 to 2019, and was Statistical Consultant for Fnatic in 2015. Follow Tim on Twitter at @TimSevenhuysen.
Check the Data

LCS Early-Game Team Stats

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Team Liquid have the best early game in North America, hands down.

Their early-game rating (EGR) of 70.7 means that they hit the 15:00 mark their games with an average win probability of 70.7%, the highest EGR among the major regions. That’s a clear improvement over Liquid’s spring regular season mark of 56.3, though with a smaller sample size, of course.

Liquid aren’t earning these leads by farming: their early lane and jungle control has actually been decidedly average. But Liquid are executing as a team and making intentional plays, which is far more valuable than mechanical laning advantages. When you take Liquid’s ~50% control of the early minions and monsters and then add an average of +1.4 kills, +0.3 towers, and +0.7 dragons, you get a team that is firmly in control as it enters the mid game.

Xmithie’s 63% First Blood rate (FB in 5 of 8 games) is definitely worth pointing out here.

Golden Guardians represent an interesting comparison point, since they have some of the highest early lane and jungle control in the league (51.7% for both) but just 54.0 EGR and +360 GD15. They’re giving up early kill deficits and going even on dragons, despite doing well in the lanes and knocking down some early towers. GGS are grabbing dragons later; in fact, they’re tied with Liquid to lead the LCS in overall drake control at 66%. Some extra priority on getting those drakes earlier in the game might be beneficial, though.

Analysis and Opinion

Harnessing Shelly: Rift Herald Usage and Timings in LCS, LEC, and LCK

I wrote previously about the effects of turret plating on the professional metagame in League of Legends. It’s been obvious that turret plates have shaped the priorities of pro teams as they try to get their hands on as much of that gold as possible before the plates disappear at 14:00. One of the key ways to pick up that gold is to take the Rift Herald and use it before the 14:00 mark. This has led to increased focus on killing Rift Herald, and especially killing it early.

In 2018 across LCS, LEC, and LCK, Rift Herald was killed in 89% of games. In 2019 to date, Rift Herald is being killed in 98% of games in those leagues, a dramatic increase.

The perceived value of Rift Herald has increased, but exactly how valuable has the early Herald kill become, and how is that playing out in leagues’ and teams’ priority levels?

How valuable is Rift Herald?

A Herald charge onto an outer tower is guaranteed to break two turret plates (worth 160 gold each), and it can lead to even more plates if the accompanying push isn’t well defended by the opposing team. Factor in the time the team gains in taking down the rest of the tower’s health in later pushes, and the Rift Herald’s value seems pretty high.

But you rarely get something for nothing. Objectives are frequently traded for something else cross-map. Anecdotally, the most common trade for Herald is a dragon.

According to the latest early-game rating (EGR) model, 320 gold at 15:00 is worth ~4.0 percentage points of win probability. Comparatively, holding one more dragon at 15:00 is worth ~7.5 points of win% — almost double!

If a team is looking to take the Herald pre-14:00 in trade for a dragon, they need to strongly believe either that a) the Herald is going to generate much more than two plates’ worth of value, or b) the dragon is less valuable than average due to its type and/or the two teams’ compositions and win conditions. Continue reading Harnessing Shelly: Rift Herald Usage and Timings in LCS, LEC, and LCK →

Analysis and Opinion

Turret Plating and Early-Game Variance: How well did Riot manage the metagame for the 2019 spring split?

Turret plating was introduced to League of Legends for the 2019 season as a way to improve and extend laning phase. That change, along with some other factors, had the potential for huge impact on the pace and metagame of pro LoL. After a full split of domestic and international play, it’s time to evaluate the results to see whether Riot’s changes produced the intended effects, and just as importantly, whether or not they created any collateral damage to the game’s balance.

Spoiler: things worked out pretty well!

Where did the shift come from?

In a development update going into the preseason, Riot stated:

“[Turret plating provides] a more protected and slightly longer laning phase, but still rewards those early push or strong lanes types with the opportunity to destroy a lot of barricade segments and reap the gold rewards.”

Essentially, the goal was to make the first 15 minutes of the game less volatile, but still give it a high influence over the outcome of the game. There was also a sub-goal of bringing down game lengths, partly seen in Riot saying that they wanted to see “decided games resolve faster.”

The goal was not to make the laning phase or early game a more influential part of the overall game flow, and that is the most important aspect of what we’ll evaluate below. Continue reading Turret Plating and Early-Game Variance: How well did Riot manage the metagame for the 2019 spring split? →