Salutations.
According to Lolalytics, Singed's pick rate for Imperial Mandate has been traditionally very low. However, there has been sudden spike in pick rate. I wonder what's causing all this fuss?
Here is the recent patch history for Imperial Mandate's pick rate:

• Patch v13.1 = 0.07%
• Patch v13.3 = 0.08%
• Patch v13.4 = 0.06%
• Patch v13.5 = 0.06%
• Patch v13.6 = 0.06%
• Patch v13.7 = 0.07%
• Patch v13.8 = 0.08%
• Patch v13.9 = 0.06%
• Patch v13.10 = 1.41%
• Patch v13.11 = 2.05%

It seems like between the path v13.19 and patch v13.10 the item's pick rate has trevigintupled. You heard me right, trevigintupled. Not doubled, not tripled, not quadrupled, but trevigintupled.
There also seems to be decent increase from patch v13.10 to the current patch v13.11.
Additionally, this item has INSANELY high win rate. If you don't count Mejai's Soulstealer, this item has the 2nd highest win rate ouf of all the items built for Singed. 2nd highest for freaking sake! There are currently 104 "complete items" in the game, so being the 2nd highest is pretty impressive. ^\Complete equals to anything that is either mythic item or legendary item.])
As of patch v13.11, the win rate is 61.0%, which is abnormally high. The sample size is quite decent, hovering just around 2K.
So what's going on here? Why did this item suddenly became so popular? Any clues or speculations?
I would gladly like to hear.

I was watching some Riven stats online and from u.gg to lolalytics most sites say that the most played build is and hydra rush into black cleaver and death dance. Did eclipse just disappear or are websites bugged? Wasn't eclipse second considered to be the best?

WARNING: Long, detailed post.
Heyall,
Instead of making a video on the topic, I thought I would concise what I think about the the ongoing debate on whether it's best to go Guinsoo's or Riftmaker on Kayle. There's been a ton of debate on the subreddit and the subreddit's discord server as to what Mythic item is better, and I've also seen a ton of testing from the community which makes me very happy to see. That being said, I did state numerous times in my last video that it's entirely possible that we continue just building the traditional AP build on Kayle (nash-rift-deathcap) and that video was released before the Guinsoo's patch. The reason why I stated that is that even though Kayle didn't have a "perfect" Mythic item for her playstyle (on-hit hybrid damage), Riftmaker still filled that void pretty well and stacking AP on Kayle is really - really - strong. Guinsoo's does fit that "perfect" mythic item for Kayle, but I was worried before it was released as the item's strength is *heavily* stacked into it's mythic passive; compared to the Old Guinsoo's (the one that this rework was based on), it's a worse item IMO.
Also, it's important for us as a community learn from this example that DPS isn't everything. Guinsoo's DPS is amazing but here we are 4 weeks after it's release debating if it's a better mythic item than Riftmaker; that's the whole reason why "best DPS" or "mathematically correct" builds are pretty much always troll.
I’m going to be pointing out a few arguments that defend Guinsoo’s Rageblade and other items as currently they’re being shut down by people stating that Riftmaker is better. By doing this, I’m in no way concluding that Guinsoo’s is a better item. As you’ll understand from reading the post, it’s pretty much impossible to know what the best items for Kayle are at the very moment of writing this.

People are building Guinsoo's incorrectly

- People are still building Guinsoo's rageblade as a first item when most of the item's value is tied to its mythic passive. Also, the item works terribly in a vacuum without the aid of other on-hit items. This means that Guinsoo's is NOT good first buy having a 4-5% winrate difference if bought first or second for platinum+ but you can see the same trend in other elos. The item is terrible as a first item and gets a lot better the later you are into the game because of the broken mythic passive. Take the 4-5% winrate diff with a grain of salt as Kayle will naturally get higher winrates the longer the game goes on, meaning that she's going to have higher winrates for the second item compared to the first. That being said, all the other on-hit items including Nashor's (traditionally the worst in terms of raw earlygame) have a higher first item purchase winrate over Guinsoo's.
- People are building Guinsoos without sustain. Players are quick to conclude that Riftmaker having sustain is super important but then fail to add sustain to their builds when building Guinsoo's. Of course the item is going to feel bad when you get poked down and are forced to back because you have no way to sustain yourself. I've found that - since you don't need more DPS because of Guinsoos’s - trading Legend: Alacrity for Legend: Bloodline works amazing and works even better when you can greed for a Doran's Blade start. Trading LT for Fleet into some matchups also works really well to keep you healthy lategame and works even better when going Guinsoo's into AP since your W is actually providing a lot of sustain too. If you have Fleet, you obviously still run Legend: Alacrity by the way. Also, you can rush Blade of the Ruined King into Guinsoos and then you won't need any other sustain rune. I'm not saying BotRK into Guinsoos is meta, it's just an option; more on builds later on the post.
- People are building guinsoos when they're not supposed to. Riftmaker has had years to become optimized for Kayle and we know when to build it and how to build it. People still don't know when to build Guinsoo's or coupled with what items we should build them, driving the winrate of the item down. There's people building Guinsoo's into a full Assassin team and then wondering why they're performing poorly. Guinsoo's works well into long, drawn out fights so building it into 3 assassins is asking to get pummeled. Into assasins, Riftmaker is going to be the better option with the extra tankyness and burst (better against assasins) it provides. This coupled with people genuinely still not know what items are best for Guinsoo's are driving the potential winrate of the item down - more on this later in the post.

The data is unclear - people are misconcluding winrates

- The consensus right now is that Riftmaker is better than Guinsoo's because it has... better winrates? For platinum+ they have a 2% winrate difference when guinsoo's is build as a second item, the higher elo you go, the closer the gap gets between the two items them having no difference winrate wise in master's+. There's that low of a winrate diference all while pointing out all the issues with people building Guinsoo's above; if people optimized builds when building Guinsoo's and the item had a longer lifespan for people to know what's best for it, I'm pretty sure Guinsoo's winrate as a second item would surpass Riftmaker.
- Players are getting used to the new play patterns that Guinsoo's demands for. The increased attack speed means players will need increased micro skill for kiting, orbwalking and positioning (because you're squishier). This is something higher elo players grasp more but still, the play pattern is different. This is generally why high Attack Speed items like Guinsoo's and Kraken Slayer have higher winrates the higher elo you go.
- Guinsoo's is an item that a lot of new Kayle players are using, driving the winrate of the item down. Look at the difference between Guinsoo's on Kayle last patch and compare it to this patch. Winrates have all gone up while newer people are learning Kayle. Winrates are also going up with the item while people understand what to build with Guinsoo's and when to build it. Kayle Mains or One trick ponies actually have a HIGHER winrate (albeit not by much) with Guinsoo's over Riftmaker when Guinsoo's is built as a second item. Again, the stats for OTPs show that Riftmaker on average a 3% higher winrate than Guinsoo's but that's because people are building Guinsoo's as a first item; the stats show a higher winrate for Guinsoo's when built second. Also bear in mind that those are the stats for OTPs in ALL ranks; High Elo OTPs should have a higher Guinsoo's Winrate over Riftmaker by a good margin.

People haven't had enough time to test and discover builds

Two or even four weeks isn't enough time to understand what's the best items for a champion, it's certainly not enough time to test every single build either. Some other champion OTPS have gotten lucky and discovered it pretty quickly these patches; I'm looking at you Redemption Urgot, Evenshroud Aatrox and Toplane Rek'sai. For Kayle's case, it's very hard given how versatile the champion is. Although, again, it's possible for Nashor's - Rift - Deathcap to be the meta build, it's very close-minded to think after a couple of weeks that there's no other build that can compete with it. I'm pretty sure we haven't cracked Guinsoos or even Kraken yet and that's why I'm actively experimenting exhaustively with the item in numerous accounts. Maybe there's a hidden build we haven't tested. I'm currently testing:

1. Nash>Guinsoos>Deathcap/Rylais.
2. BotRK>Guinsoos>full tank.
3. Kraken>Nash>Riftmaker>Deathcap.
4. Xiao Chao Meng build tank build.
5. Kraken>Guinsoos>Nash>full AP.

And have tested many other builds. I still think we have a lot to learn about the new items and it’s very possible there’s a build hiding out there that we haven’t discovered given all the changes. We haven’t really tested the new Bloodthirster, Galeforce, Statikk, Stormrazor, options with Phantom Dancer-Guinsoos, etc. in detail. Actually, we haven’t even tested the new support items on Kayle. What if Kayle’s best build is a hidden gem like Nash>Helia>Mandate with Lucidity boots?

Final Thoughts

All the being said, it's pretty much impossible to conclude what the best mythic item is at the very moment. Both mythic items are great for Kayle and anyone saying "Riftmaker is better" or "Guinsoos is better" is severely rushing a conclusion as to which we don't have enough data from enough patches to know for certain; this includes Phreak that concluded Riftmaker was a better item than Guinsoo's on Kayle after a couple of weeks into Guinsoo's rework. Admittedly, he has better resources as a rioter to look at data than what we have but he gave no argument other than "Riftmaker is better than Guinsoo's on Kayle" without any further explanation nor enough data from a prolonged time period; so I would take what he says with a grain of salt. We also haven't limit tested or tried enough builds to know for certain what the best current build is.
Just play what you want, both items are great for Kayle. Maybe we end up concluding in a few months one is better than the other but imho, no one knows for certain at the moment and it's our job as a community to find out what the best one is - or at least the best one for your playstyle. As for my spreadsheet, it would be both irresponsible and impossible for me to update it with the current data and low testing time. I have also been flying a lot into various business trips which makes my time limited to test builds and runes. Bear in mind that although I haven't updated it, it still shows the traditional AP build as being meta so it's 100% still usable. I will update it when I feel the time is right.
Let me know if I missed anything on the post. I'm not perfect and might have forgotten to add some information. Let me know if you agree/ disagree. Also, note that the data used for winrates might change for when you read this post while the games rack up this patch, so bear that in mind.

Her winrate shot up a lot in high elo and in low elo and it worried me that they would nerf her. On top of this they would also nerf lethality items which is a double nerf for MF and make her much worse overall… I think shes fine as the main meta revolves around Zeri, Lucian and Jinx but hey its just a guess
here is the link to lolalytics

Hello summoners!
In order to create better discussion in the subreddit, we will be redirecting all simple or championpool/role questions to this thread. Check out the most recent patch notes on the sidebar!
What is a simple question? Typically, we define a simple question as something that can be answered fully within a single, or maybe two at most, comments. In this thread, you can ask any question you need answered about League of Legends, even if it isn't necessarily about learning the game itself.
Questions about what champ to add to your pool or general tip about roleswapping can also be asked in this thread.
Keep in mind we will still continue to remove golden rule violations, rants, memes, topics against Riot's ToS, and paid services - but the other rules are generally more lax here.
What you can do to help!
For now, this is a patch-based thread, meaning it will be posted once every two weeks. Checking back on this thread later in the patch and answering any questions that have been posted would be a huge help!
If you're trying to ask a question, the more specific you are, the better it is for all of us! We can't give you any help if we don't get much to work with in the first place.
Resources

• Our 101 page, with a ton of free content!
• Our weekly mentoring thread: We have many users willing to provide free mentoring services!
• Champion discussions: Check out our previous discussions on champions!
• Summoner School Discord: A voice and text chat platform for teaching and learning. We also have a mentors who are available for personal coaching.
• Leagueofgraphs: Stats site - winrates, pickrates and more.
• Lolalytics: Stats site - winrates, pickrates and more.
• OP.GG: Stats site - winrates, pickrates and more. Note: stats are for Korea plat+ only, so sample sizes tend to be low.
• Patch notes

Which do you use? Deviations in stats are typically minor, so whichever one you prefer.

I stepped away from the game for a few weeks to come back to kindred as the best jungler on lolalytics.. what happened?? Is this mostly from nerfs to ghostblade and assassins? New triforce build discovery?

I’ve seen a lot of speculation recently about people saying that the Kalista buffs were ‘worthless’ and that ‘she is still the worst ADC on the roster’.
To be extremely clear, the buffs were a complete success for what they were trying to achieve.
Riot were very clear that the buffs were aimed with these goals in mind:

1. Pro play/High elo focused buffs
2. QoL changes to make Kalista feel better in general
3. Breakeven with approximately her winrate from pre-patch 13.10 (~47% winrate)
4. Be a net positive ~2% increase in winrate

At no point was the goal to make Kalista the premier ADC of the patch and to dominate pro play.
After almost a week of patch 13.11 being released, according to stat websites such as Lolalytics and U.gg, Riot successfully accomplished ALL of their goals for the patch.
Yes, she still sucks for below Plat+ with an abysmal 46.2% winrate but in general across all ranks, her QoL has never felt better.

E max first 100% of the time. The MS is too valuable and its current state is basically what we got from W before anyways. You don't really gain much from leveling Q or W. I'd argue that even vs poke, E max is still better because you can at least roam better rather than stay in lane and get poked out.
Lv1 start Q vs melee (could be some exceptions like pyke) and W vs ranged. Q because it'll be more effective in a 1v1 or poke fest if it does happen, and W because you can dismount to normal -> remount -> normal to kill any ward placed in bush. You're never going to land Q on a ranged champ in lane unless they're being overly aggressive and stupid with positioning.
For items, as support... RUSH VOW. It gives literally every stat Rell needs sans-MR. The only exception for this is if the enemy team is like 80% magic dmg (ap jungler, ezreal/zeri + millio or smth bot) whereas you'd rush abyssal mask. Vow gives a ton of combat power, gives you a bit of the healing you lost on your Q and lets your adc take some more hits. This is especially good if your ADC is very aggressive and also doesn't take free poke.
Second item... IS NOT THORNMAIL. You DO NOT need to buy a mythic second. Tank mythics mostly suck for Rell. Objectively you get more value from most legendary tank items than you do mythics, and buying mythics later on give you more value anyways since mythic boost does that by design. It's not like you're going to get much more than 300 dmg out of that evenshroud before your next buy anyways.
Your actual second item is either Abyssal Mask if you have a strong mage on your team vs at least 2 magic dmg sources (you're not going to be fighting the enemy bot lane much at this point if you roam properly anyways), deadmans plate (if they are more AD oriented ofc), or mythic as a last option.
For your mythics... Jak sho is BAD. It gives resistances that stack up over time. Unless you are always playing as a warden before engaging to get its passive up, as well as aftershock, you don't gain value from this. As most instances you will be engaging upfront and the enemies will be dead long before you get the boosts (ideally). Evenshroud is ~fine~. Locket isn't as good as it was before, and even then it was questionable, especially since it's assassin and general lethality meta atm and serpents is a thing that exists. Radiant Virtue is an overall better option than Locket if you need to provide that supportive ability.
Shurelya's is also not actually terrible on Rell. The MS coupled with E make it for an insanely strong tool especially in low elo, where people take 3 seconds to start running because they don't often choose to fight when things move fast towards them. Everfrost is also not entirely a meme atm because you can use it in tandem with Q to guarantee a W even if the enemy has tenacity (as you can cast it mid crash down and get similar effects to what attract repel provided, RIP).
For other general items. Sitting on Tear is FINE. Completing Fimbulwinter is also FINE. Seraphs could even be a possible option if you're insistent on abusing the AP ratios riot added on for some reason.
Force of Nature is probably your second best MR option (unless you have like nilah or sam or smth that can amp your vow healing with visage). Chemtank sucks but if the enemy is very stacked on magic damage and have lots of mobility, why the f* not?
For armor options... Don't buy Zekes, it's trash. Imperial Mandate is a legendary now. If you want more bursty dmg, get that instead. Doesn't give armor, but Zekes is 2000 gold too expensive for what it gives. Thornmail sucks unless you have enemies you can force to hit you, like a Nilah or Draven. Do not get this vs stuff like kayn or divine sunderer users. You won't stop their healing effectively. Get oblivion orb for them. You'll reduce like 400x more healing this way, even w/o the magic dmg we lost from passive (RIP).
Frozen Heart gives no hp, you should almost never buy this. The only time you should is if the totally balanced CertainlyT bros and bel'veth are on the enemy side. You need at least two targets that you can get a TON of value from its use in order to make it worth losing out on an HP-providing item.
If you have any further questions, ask me. It's just silly that Rell's winrate hasn't moved despite the buffs given to her. That mostly tells me that many of you aren't roaming, and lolalytics tells me you're building crap. Stop that and give riot good data so we can finally revert this and have riot work on a better E.

hey pals. I'm perusing lolalytics for the first time and though it isn't a popular first item pick (which skews whether it is ACTUALLY good or not) i'm seeing a high win rate with Eclipse first item for Trist mid. Obviously I think this would be situational with who you are up against, better towards tanks, but i''m curious if anyone has thoughts on this. I'm eyeing that move speed. I would imagine eclipse into boots into kraken or collector could be good but i'm also a big n00b in general so I have no concept of whether this is a shitty idea. Any thoughts?
​
Also curious about rune picks. On lolalytics if you pick trist mid it looks like the highest win rate secondary is resolve with conditioning and overgrowth. I can see why you'd want more health but I would have expected something that might help you get that lvl 2 kill. They pair this with precision as first pick when i normally go HOB. I don't see many (any) people in this sub talking about going resolve as secondary so looking for thoughts on this as well if possible! thanks everyone :)

Was super excited to try out the New-Rell, but after 6 games of absolute pain i got curious and gave a check to her Lolalytics page
And well, currently she sits at 40.4% WR, down from 52.40% WR.
(also 32% WR in jungle, but that's not her main intended role, even after she got some Jungle directed buffs during the Midscope, so ok fair)
I get the "lotta new players trying her out" but there's no way a 12% WR is justified JUST by that.
I'm honestly surprised they didn't just Hitfix her during Patch day, like they did with Yas/Yone/Kindred, whom also dropped just 5% WR, and not 12%
Hopefully they're just taking their time to come up with something good, and we won't have a legit trollpick for the next 2 weeks.
I've honestly got her banned more often by my Own teammates, after i hovering her, due to them not wanting me to "troll" the game, than by enemies legit banning her, lol .

Introduction.

I've been grinding games in this new mid-season patch and I've tested out many builds with both Guinsoos and Riftmaker and I've had a lot of fun testing out all the new combinations of items that I could think of.
However I'm here to statistically show you that you're losing more games than you're winning if your main mythic is Rageblade and explain why this is the case.
I'll be using Lolalytics and using the default filters, having it show the last 14 days instead of current patch so we can have winrates that spans cross-13.10 and 13.11. (link)

The winrates

Here's the winrates, amount of games played, and what minute the item is usually completed.
We see that Kayle plays way more with Guinsoos as of right now and Kayle gets it faster than Riftmaker as of now, but with less success than Riftmaker, even if you take into consideration that there's more games played, this is still lower than pre-midseason patch (link) winrate with Riftmaker, where having Guinsoos actually had a higher winrate with a significantly lower play-rate due to the bait-stigma the item had, eventhough you could build it with Riftmaker.

The Guinsoos changes.

So what's the changes that made Guinsoos stick out in the mid-season patch?
Here's the old Rageblade's details, compared to the new Rageblade's details.
The new Rageblade has A LOT more words in it, but I'll simplify it: The change brought:

1. 20% Armor and Magic Pen from Mythic Passive (25% if you sold boots for another Legendary)
2. +7% Attack Speed (17% if Ornn upgrades)
3. 30 AD and 30 AP (40 AD and 50 AP if Ornn upgrades)
4. A loss of damage in the crit-to-onhit conversion.

How big is the loss? 20 damage per AA, which gets offset by the AD by itself but only if you sell boots. If you dont sell boots, you're losing 50 damage per AA on crit-conversion alone presuming you're building crit chance on every slot avaliable.

So why is Riftmaker outperforming.

Two reasons:

1. There's more burst damage now, as Lethality champions have gotten a field-day with the new items, being able to burst down most targets in the game, so the added survivability, AP, and CDR from Riftmaker helps you survive with more healing on W, not having to build dedicated tank items to survive so you can focus on damage items, and a lower CD on ult.
2. MR items have been nerfed across the board, with the biggest one being Force of Nature not blocking %damage anymore which allows AP based Kayle to shine.

But Guinsoos winrate is only so low because of non-OTP's picking her up for the first time!

And to that, I say: Click this and this (link for you who want the page)

TL;DR:

Guinsoos is INCREDIBLY situational, while Riftmaker is still as stable as it has ever been.

"Malph has an X winrate going AP but a Y winrate going tank. Therefore, tank is better." Is tank Malph better on average? Yes, but this is a case of using the wrong formula to get to the right answer. There's a lot more nuance to these stats. The apparent one is that AP items and tank items wildly differ in pick rates. In Plat+, the 2 most picked AP items (NH and Luden's) have a combined pickrate of ~70%, which is about 3x that of the 2 most picked tank items (Jak'sho and Heartsteel). Niche, non-troll builds will often have a higher winrate than more common, traditional builds by their very nature. Does Malph having a much higher winrate on Tabis vs any other boot mean Tabis are OP? Or does it mean that Malph is more favored in games where he can build Tabis?
Less common builds tend to be picked when they can perform well in niche scenarios. Related to this is how snowbally the game is. Looking at 13.10 when Belveth was the lowest winrate champ in Plat+, her winrate skyrocketed from 44.70% on average to 55.24% when she built a Death's Dance in the first 10 minutes. But for her to have had a DD in 10 minutes, the game would already had been extremely favorable for her. And if we look at just the first item built, she had a whopping 61% winrate when building TBC first item. What gives? TBC, again, is niche. And paired with this is that these builds have a very low pickrate.
On a related note, there are some very high winrate champs with low pickrates. This is most noticeable with enchanter supports. Are enchanters strong? Definitely yes, but they also tend to be picked more when you have an ADC to support and your team comp can slot in an enchanter, which can lead to artificially boosted winrates. (But also, their winrates are dragged down by some people going AP, but that's a different story and my point is that statistics are complex and have context)
Filters like Plat+, which I'm personally fond of, also affect stats. Plat+ artificially inflates winrates in general because this filter does not exclude games where say, a plat team plays vs a gold team. ARAM skill does seem to correlate with rank, and it should be expected for the plat team to win more often, even if it amounts to 1% difference. For example, using Lolalytics' 13.10 data, Plat+ has champ winrates ranging from 44.70-60.28% with the median winrate being about 51.4%. With all ranks, this changes to 44.29%-55.29% with the median winrate being about 50.2%. (I defined the median winrate as being the winrate of the 81st-83rd highest winrate champs of the current 163 champs for simplicity. It's a limited definition but it's a quick calculation and highlights my point well.)
TL;DR: Selection bias and taking statistics out of context can obfuscate how strong a champ actually is. Does this mean tank Malph isn't good? No, but it also doesn't mean that AP is always wrong.

Hey guys I wasn‘t into league for quite some time and I just came back after 13.10 and was kinda overwhelmed by all the item changes. After some games I felt like I couldn‘t really decide on what items to buy in a rational order to be as effective as possible in every stage of the game.
To specify my struggle here are some questions that come to my mind regarding the new items:

• when do I buy Kraken Slayer now? Is it still considered a tank-shredding item or can I buy it against squishier comps as well to amplify my damage (if I play an adc who loves to buy a lot of attack speed —> Kog, Vayne, Cait, Jinx etc.)?
  
• Is Botrk a viable item to buy even on non on-hit champs just for the sake of better kiteability and/or to melt hp stackers on crit champs like cait for example?
  
• I see a lot of people buy BT as second or third item now. Is the additional AD so impactful that it‘s kinda essential?
  
• what are the optimal tank-shredding items? Does LDR alone still seal the deal or do you rather buy LDR + Kraken + Botrk? If yes, in which order?
  
• When do you want to get Statikk‘s Shiv? I really liked the item back then and I‘d love to buy it early on but on 3rd party sites like lolalytics, u.gg, metarsc etc. you don‘t really see people buying it except on some funky veigar builds.
  
• is it just me or does it feel hella awkward to play AS-depending Champions early game because all the items lost their AS and swapped it for AD now?
  
• How about Black Cleaver as a tank-shredding tool on adc?
  

Thoughts? I havent played yet the new patch

This is something I've noticed playing ARAM lately (at around what was used to be considered a high MMR where dia+/masters players are common)

1. The overwhelming majority of people do not want to play tank. This is simply a fact of it.
   
2. If one team has a tank and the other doesn't, the team without a tank is extremely likely going to get stomped.
   

Now personally I think tanks in general are overly strong in ARAM, especially for their skill requirement. Checking some stats:

• Maokai is sitting at around 54%+ wr when he doesn't troll going Liandry (which is still his most common item). Link
  
• Sion's winrate actually rivals the much hated Aurelion Sol (again, when he doesn't troll going arpen items, which have significant build % on him). Yet most people barely consider him an issue. Link.
  
• Sej sits at around 52-53%.
  
• TK sits at around 53%+.
  
• Cho sits at around 53-54%.
  
• Malphite would also be up there with Aurelion Sol if people didn't build AP 60% of the time (55 to 59% wr building a tank item first). Link.
  

The list goes on and on. Basically heartsteel users (barring Sett who has some of the harshest nerfs in the mode) and tanks make up the lion's share of high winrates.
I noticed this is really what makes ARAM feel "bad" this season, draft diffs are so noticeable because at the end of the day it comes down to: did you get the tank player? Or did you get the 4 assassin/adc/enchanter players? And I want to point out, people are in their absolute right to play whatever they want and in fact should do so, this is not what this point is about. This is not "wahhh people don't want to play tank for me", this is "tanks are way too deciding in whether a team wins or loses in ARAM".
Now this creates a pretty irritating mechanic where if you aren't a tank player (and most people are not, or at least do not want to play ARAM to be a tank) you're often at the mercy of whether you have a tank player on your team, or banging your head against a Sion with 5k HP 7 minutes in.
Honestly I think another Heartsteel nerf wouldn't be out of the question, or more targeted nerfs on tanks. They're supposed to be good in teamfights, yes. So is Seraphine for example, and she's nerfed to a more reasonable 52%ish winrate.
And to anyone who says they need it to be fun, it clearly doesn't work, since most people still won't play them despite how strong they are. I think keeping a role at such a high power level while also being a role that isn't very widely enjoyed just creates a ton of frustation for everyone.
Thoughts?

I know it's been going on for a while now, since maybe season 7 or 8, but this season it's feeling worse than ever trying to play something like Vel'koz in the mid lane.
His pickrate has dropped by almost half in the past 6 months, from 1.25% at the start of the season to just 0.75% this patch (source: lolalytics.com, Plat+). His mid winrate is also below average. Lolalytics ranks him as a C- tier pick, below Teemo mid. Meanwhile other champions like Brand or Zyra have been dead as mid picks for ages now.
I know Riot wants to get AP mages out of the Support role, but the adjustments they've tried thus far (itemization adjustments, reducing roam effectiveness) has led to no improvement in the mid lane performance of these champions. They can get by as Supports, but they utterly lack the self-sufficiency required of meta mid-lane picks nowadays.
EDIT: Oof, looks like Azzapp (likely the best Vel'koz player) just gave up on one-tricking Vel'koz for both mid and support