First Objectives vs. Win Rate (League of Legends)
Overview
The goal of League of Legends is to defeat the enemy to win the game. However, which objective is the most important to secure first? For example, let's take Dragon vs. Towers or Baron vs. Inhibitor. Should we focus on slaying the neutral rift monsters, or make an effort to take down enemy structures instead? General answers float about depending on what tier you are are in such as Bronze, Silver, Challenger, or even Unranked. In this insight blog post, we take a deep dive into which first objectives or combination of objectives will impact your chances of winning the most with the consideration of different tiers and regions.
Methodology
Obviously, first objectives depend on a variety of factors such as team composition like split-pushers, full-tanks, or damage-orientated builds. To combat the variances of meta and off-metas team compositions, we take a randomized recent-average of 2,500 games from Unranked to Challenger (8 tiers) for a grand total of just over 20,000 games to base our study off of. The unranked games (~2,500) are from normal summoner rift games. The ranked games from Bronze to Challenger (~17,500) are from solo-queue ranked games.
Optional Refresher: All About Objectives
Here we give a brief desciption of each objective in how it could potentially push your favor of winning more games. Feel free to skip this section if you are already know this stuff.
First Blood
As sick as this sounds, it gives a sick bonus as well. Not just 400 gold, but also an opportunity to recall, buy an item, and use it to your advantage to bully your lane opponent even more. If anything, this is the most selfish thing to secure or kill secure (we are looking at you, assassin mains!).
First Dragon
Without going into too much detail on what each specific dragon buff is capable of (we'll save that for another post), let's just say that slaying the first dragon will help your team globally by giving them combat buffs to help them win the game depending on how they make use of it.
First Tower
This enemy structure will give several advantages when taken down first. 300 gold for the summoner(s) responsible for the takedown, map pressure, and other opportunities that arise. This first objective is more helpful for the laners involved but also helps other teammates in the sense that the team has more map control.
First Rift Herald
Although this neutral monster doesn't give global buffs like its counterparts, Baron and Dragon, it does give something truly unique: immense split-push power for the summoner that picks up its eye. Depending on where the enemy laners are positioned during the Rift Herald capture, it can truly change the game outcome.
First Baron
Largly disputed as the most effective buff that can determine a team lead by an instant, it gives minion buffs, combat stat buffs, and an empowered recall.
First Inhibitor
Although summoners won't get a bonus from destroying this first, it does introduce some new members to the map: Super minions. Super minions are much stronger and durable than regular minions. In some cases, they can even defeat several champions in combat. This gives the team immense map pressure during any phase of the game and is considered one of the more important objectives.
First Objectives vs. Win Rate Tutorial
Our goal is to present users data and give them the tools necessary so that they can make an impactful decision on how they can improve their gameplay. We know and embrace different decision making, playstyles, and skill-levels of our players. That's why we chose Tableau as our method of delivering insights. It is simple to filter by tier, objectives, and do comparisons interactively rather than looking at a static infographic.
What is This Infographic and How Can I Use It?
This infographic is an interactive visualization that allows you to custom tailor a scenario that would be relevant to you and compare it to other Tiers to see how different first objectives stack up to affect win rate.
More Information About the Sample Size
Usually, each tier in League of Legends has about a 50% win rate with a small fluctuation of maybe 1 or 2 percent. To normalize the data to make the comparisons between tiers fairer, I took each game and recorded the winning and losing side to have a perfect win/loss ratio no matter my sample size. Thus, giving each tier an exact 50% win rate when all of the conditions are set to "all".
Playing Around with the Visualization
Suppose that I'm in gold tier and I'm wondering how the progression of first objectives impacts the win rate for games in my tier level. My questions are as follows.
What are the differences between securing first dragon over first tower, first tower over first dragon, securing both, and securing none? How will this influence win rate?
First Dragon over First Tower
Go to the drop-down filters to the right of the visualizations and select "1" for "First Dragon" and "0" for "First Tower".
If you did this correctly, you should see that that the win rate is 47%. It's 3% lower than the total averages so it impacts the win rate adversely in this tier.
First Tower over First Dragon
In gold tier, getting first tower over first dragon leads game to a 54% win rate.
Securing Both Objectives
In gold tier, getting first tower and first dragon leads game to a 80% win rate.
Securing Neither Objective
In gold tier, not getting first tower and first dragon leads game to a 21% win rate.
All right, I secured both objectives since it yields that sweet 80% win rate. What if I add either first Baron or first Inhibitior on top of that?
First Dragon, First Tower, and First Baron
Getting these 3 first objectives lead to a 87% winrate. An additional 7% just for adding a first Baron to the first two objectives.
First Dragon, First Tower, and First Inhibitor
Getting these 3 first objectives lead to a 95% winrate. An additional 15% just for adding a first Inhibitor to the first two objectives.
Favorite Insight
In my opinion, nothing beats the satisfaction of winning a game that is extremelly hard to win. What do I mean by that? How about losing every single first objective. How many games have succeeded despite all odds being against them? Which tier is most likely to pull through in this type of situation? Let's find out.
No First Objective vs Win Rate
Set all of the drop-down filters to "0", click on left-axis "Average Win Rate", and sort by highest to lowest.
For the 381 games in Platinum tier that got caught in this situation, 7% of the games prevailed to win their game.
Average First Objectives for Winning Games
Here, we take a look at the average first objective secured for only winning games.
Favorite Insight
If you deselect the "(All)" filter under "Measure Names" on the right of the visualization and select "First Baron", you could see effects of first Baron on each tier to winning their games. What is most interesting to me is how from Silver to Master tier, all of the percents are above 50%. This implies that securing first Baron is more helpful than not. However, for only Bronze and Challenger tier, it doesn't seem to be the case. Both percent win rates for getting first Baron is either 50% or under.
Conclusion
These two visualizations should give you a pretty good grasp on how first objectives lead to winning more games. Do you have a favorite insight? Let us know in the comments!
