League of Legends: Metagame Shifts?

The IEM Facebook page posted a link to an interesting article which looked a little bit about what happened to the League of Legends metagame during the most recent IEM tournament in Hanover. The sample size is pretty small (only 44 games played total) and the events were certainly not independent. (Moscow 5 didn't lose a game all event so the champions they may favour would have inflated win stats. Is that because the champions are really good or because the people playing them were really good?)

It's an interesting read at any rate, and there were a couple of particularly interesting factoids. Shen was picked or banned in 43 of the 44 games, for example. He was only 5-7 in games where he got to play (he was banned 31 times!) but the article theorizes that people may not have put in enough practice with him since his recent massive buff to really master him. Shen was one of my favourite champions back before he got buffed but never got to play him because just picking him would launch vitriolic attacks from teammates. So I'm happy he's now considered good enough to be frequently banned. (Though it now means I rarely get to play him because he's always banned!)

Sona went 0-9 and Soraka went 1-3. These numbers are really surprising! At the previous IEM in Kiev teams were often banning one of them and first picking the other one because everyone thought they were overpowered. I remember listening to interviews where people were saying Sona was unequivocally the best support and people were trashing Janna as being worthless. Janna went 26-10 this time! She was played 36 times compared to a combined 13 times for Sona and Soraka. Not only was Janna picked way more frequently than the 'best' supports her win rate was substantially higher!

The article doesn't give all the raw data so I'm not sure what people were picking as supports... With 44 games and each time likely having a support each time there should be 88 support choices. We only have 49 between the 'big 3' so what was left? I decided to manually sift through the games and see if I could put together who else was being used...

Janna - 37
Alistar - 14
Sona - 9
Nunu - 8
Taric - 5
Leona - 5
Soraka - 4
Blitzcrank - 3
Fiddlesticks - 1
Galio - 1
Yorick - 1

One game had a bottom lane of Alistar and Blitzcrank! I assigned the 'support' role of that duo to Alistar but I don't really know what the plan was. Those two together certainly have a lot of crowd control and could really lock in a kill when the jungler shows up but I can't really see either one making good use of the farm from the bottom lane creeps. That team ended up losing the game, but there is a replay for it which I'll probably check out tonight while I eat to see what went on.

The last point the article touched on that I found interesting was the advantage that can be gained by picking an 'ambiguous' champion. Support Galio, for instance. The team that picked him apparently won the game pretty much solely on the back of the fact the enemy team 'counter picked' the obviously mid Galio with a Talon. They then took another mid champion (Ahri) to slaughter Talon while they sent Galio down to be support. Having one champion that can be strong in multiple roles (typically jungle and top) and then switching where they go depending on opposing team comp seems really strong. In a format where your whole team has every champion and can trade appropriately at least... When you're like me and don't share champions with anyone else it's not nearly as strong.