If you pay close attention to the recent adjustments from Riot Games, you can see that patch 12.10 is a crucial update that significantly changes the gameplay of League of Legends. This also affects the trend of champion selection and team compositions of professional teams as many champions that were strong in spring have now disappeared or are no longer prioritized.
Recently, in an interview after DK’s victory over KDF at LCK Summer 2022, player Nuguri elaborated on the aforementioned champion selection trend. According to Nuguri, to be picked in the Top Lane, a champion must have the ability to support teammates in some way, not just contribute damage anymore. Therefore, pure damage fighters are considered “out of date” by Nuguri at this time.
Question: You used Gangplank and Gnar in today’s match, what do you think about these champions?
DK Nuguri: They are both good choices and can support teammates very well. Gangplank has the ultimate to slow enemies from afar, while Gnar has a lot of crowd control and is strong in team fights. I think to be selected currently, a Top Lane champion needs to possess the ability to support teammates. Pure damage fighters are out of date and no longer used.
In the LCK region, the laning phase is always highly emphasized by teams, and they often tend to select strong champions at this time. However, when patch 12.10 was released, everything changed completely as a series of tanky, versatile champions returned to the Top Lane like Ornn and Sejuani. Even for damage champions, they must also provide a certain level of versatility such as Gangplank and Kayle (who can support teammates with her ultimate).
The most obvious consequence of this gameplay is that a series of damage fighters have seen a decline in their ban rates as they do not meet the aforementioned requirements. Jayce is a prime example of this as in LCK Summer 2022, The Protector of Tomorrow had only a 2% ban rate, with being banned once and picked once. In contrast, in LCK Spring 2022, Jayce had a 57% ban rate, the second highest in the Top Lane position.
Based on Riot’s recent moves, it is clear that they have no intention of buffing fighter champions. Instead, jungle champions with power scaling like Master Yi are the focus of adjustments. Perhaps we will have to wait until after the 2022 World Championship for the damage fighter class to have a chance to return.