2019 has been a year that’s been full of ups and downs. In the world of competitive League of Legends, when there was laughter being shared, there were also tears shed on the other end of the spectrum. With 2020 just around the corner, everyone’s setting up their resolutions for the new year, and for fans, teams and insiders alike, they’re all looking forward to another great year of League of Legends.
To bid adieu to 2019, here’s a look at another great year of League of Legends, explained through numbers. Please keep in mind that the data found in this article is based on the 4 major regions of competitive League of Legends, and some of the data in this article are just our fun estimates.
In 2019, 5 champions were released in Season 9. The lineup consists of Sylas, Yuumi, Qiyana, Senna, and Aphelios. All of the champions (excluding Aphelios, as it’s a champion that is still globally banned in competitive play), all the champions have been heavily picked in the four major regional leagues. Sylas and Qiyana were picked in top, mid and jungle, Yuumi was most notably picked with her favorite bot lane partner, Garen, and Senna was picked as a bot laner or support.
Compared to 2018, where only 3 champions (Kai’sa, Pyke, and Neeko) were released, the Champion Development Team at Riot Games gifted players with many more champions that casual and professional players were able to play in their games.
To celebrate League of Legends’ 10 year anniversary, Riot Games hosted an anniversary event, which not only awarded players with rewards via missions, they also unveiled many new titles that are in development. From Legends of Runeterra, LoL Esports Manager, Wild Rift, and many more projects to come, they made sure that League of Legends can be enjoyed in many different ways. However, the best part is that they implemented fan splash art of the original 40 champions in the loading screen of your League games.
For Griffin, 2019 has definitely been a roller coaster of a year. They were consistently at the top of the LCK standings during the regular season, and they were once on a 15 match win streak during the regular season. At the time, they seemed indestructible and monumental, and was considered the best team in the world by many experts of the scene.
However, they fell short to SK Telecom T1 at both the Spring and Summer finals, and when cvMax, the former head coach for Griffin, suddenly announced his departure from the team right before Worlds, many controversies surrounding Griffin's management came to light, which included mistreatment of staff, blackmailing and coercion of a minor, and unfair ‘slave’ player contracts. Because of such, not only did Riot Games ordered Still8 (the parent company of Griffin) to replace Griffin's management by Spring 2020, all the players on the team were granted FA status. With some former players leaving and new players added to their roster, they look to put the negatives of 2019 behind them and prepare for 2020.
Jin Air Green Wings was almost always at the bottom of the LCK standings. However, in the Summer split, they failed to grab a single match victory in the LCK, and with a 0-18 record in the LCK standtings, they've set a record for the longest loss streak by a single team in the LCK.
They’ve always somehow managed to survive the LCK relegation tournaments. They were even called the ‘Griffin of Relegations’, just because they performed well in relegation tournaments. However, their luck ran out when they were finally relegated into Challengers Korea, and the gladplane.jpg never took flight. 2020 will be a year of redemption for Jin Air, as the once-staple team of the LCK looks to prove themselves in CK and fly their way back into the LCK.
Traditionally speaking, bot lane always consisted of a marksman champion, with a support champion nurturing the marksman to successfully carry in the mid to late game. However, this year, there were 25 unique champions that have been picked in replacement of the marksman champion. While champions such as Cassiopeia, Irelia, and Yasuo were able to replace the marksman champion by themselves, some champions, such as Sona, Taliyah, and Garen were all specifically partnered with Taric, Pantheon, and Yuumi respectively.
On Aug. 16th, 2019, Pantheon received a visual and gameplay update. The initial reactions to the champions were that although his kit looks interesting, the raw stats of the champion were far too lacking to be viable in competitive play. However, Riot Games gave him a buff in patch 9.17, where his Q, Comet Spear, critically striked for 155 / 240 / 325 / 410 / 495 (+ 200% bonus AD) physical damage against targets below 25% of their maximum health. This buff made him incredibly strong in all stages of the game, and because of it, he was picked once at Worlds, and was permanently banned in every other match.
On January 2019, after a 2-0 victory against SKT in LCK Spring, Chovy became the first professional League of Legends to achieve a 115 KDA in a pro league. With a KDA record of 44/1/60, he was awarded the regular season MVP of LCK 2019 Spring split, with 1300 MVP points. However, as aforementioned above, he and the rest of the Griffin squad failed to take the throne in the LCK, as they fell to SKT in the LCK Spring finals. As the newest starting mid laner for DragonX, Chovy continues to be a force to be reckoned with in the LCK.
G2 Esports is a team that were not only dominant in the LEC, they also liked to have fun while doing it. One of the ways they like to have fun is to trash talk here and there on Twitter (all in the spirit of fun, of course). In fact, they were even nicknamed ‘The Villain’, as there were many people that didn’t find them to their tastes.
According to the Inven Global Data Lab, G2 Esports tweeted 2,150 posts in September, and 2,448 posts in October. With 4,598 posts tweeted by G2 Esports during Worlds alone, Inven Global estimates that roughly 1,977 of those were tweets that were fun little jabs at the opposition. Again, please keep in mind that this is only an estimate made by us, and is not meant to be accurately represented.
Worlds is an event that every League of Legends fans gather together, whether it’s online and offline, and watch the best of the best from all around the world compete against one another for the Summoner’s Cup.
Riot Games announced that this year’s Worlds had 44 million peak concurrent viewers, with 21.8 million average minute audience. According to the Inven Global Data Lab, the viewership peaked at 1.5 million viewers on Twitch.tv alone. There’s roughly 51 million people in Korea, so about 86% of Korea’s population tuned in to watch this year’s Worlds.
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