Riot dev dives deep into League of Legends' mythic choice trends in season 11

Mark “Scruffy” Yetter, League of Legends' lead gameplay designer, detailed the most popular Mythic items for every single champion on the game’s roster in the newest dev blog.

Riot devs' primary intention for the massive preseason item changes was to broaden players' strategic choices. Scruffy tried to shed light on the current scenario of item pick-rate and preferences.

This will allow the developers to get a clear idea of the League of Legends community's state of mind and provide them with a clear insight into further areas of improvement.

Riot's goal for mythic-pick was:

“No champion chooses the same mythic in 75%+ of games.”

Though the number might have seemed flexible, Riot said that the percentage figure was a bit arbitrary. It did not expect to see 100% of the champions meet this goal. It will keep trying to close the gap as often as possible.

As per Yetter's analysis, around 135 of the 154 League of Legends champions hit Riot's flexibility goals. This was a dramatic improvement when compared to previous records.

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Role wise mythic pick analysis by Riot, two months after the massive item overhaul in League of Legends season 11

#1 - Marksmen

Marksmen - 1 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Marksmen - 2 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Marksmen are one of the classes with the richest item options. Expectedly, most of the champions saw a significant pick rate on three or more mythics.

The result was positive as 21 out of the 24 in-game marksmen lived up to Riot's mythic flexibility goal. Kracken Slayer was undoubtedly the most popular pick.

#2 - AD Assassins

AD Assassins (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

According to the recorded graph, Duskblade was clearly the most appealing choice for AD Assassins even when the item had limited implications.

Kha'Zix is the only champion who had picked Duskblade over 75% of the time. The pick-trend was perfect for the other nine.

#3 - AP Assassins

AP Assassins (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

As inferred from the graph, there was a pretty good balance between Rocketbelt and Night Harvester for most AP Assassins. Riftmaker filled a pretty strong niche for fighters and sustained damage dealers but could potentially widen to provide an off-build for more champions.

14 out of the 18 in-game AP Assassins lived up to Riot's mythic flexibility goal.

#4 - Mages

Mages - 1 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Mages - 2 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Mage is one of the classes that will be needing Riot's attention. Even though only six out of 33 mage champions crossed the 75% flexibility mark, there were many quite close to it.

Everfrost was underdelivering on appeal as it remained unused most of the time. The 11.4 buffs might improve the pick-rate of the item.

#5 - Fighters

Fighters - 1 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Fighters - 2 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Devs were satisfied with how the fighter mythic tweaks turned out to be "all positives" for the champions. Multiple items with clear reasons and situations to pick had the “right choice in the right game” dynamic that Riot wanted.

Even though a few champions like Garen and Darius were confined to Stridebreaker, 31 out of 36 fighters lived up to the devs' expectations.

#6 - Tanks

Tanks - 1 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Tanks - 2 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

The most flexible role in the last League of Legends patch was the role of Tanks. Results were phenomenal as not a single tank champion was forced into an item selection more than 75% of the time.

At the start of preseason, farming and support Tanks were in the worst spots in terms of item flexibility. Sunfire, in particular, was the “generic damage” option while also having the most generically usable mythic passive (Ability Haste).

This made it a dominant choice that worked in every situation, but now the situation has overturned quite drastically.

Scruffy had this to say on the matter:

"Now, Tanks are the only class with no hardbinding. We were able to move from only 50% to 100% of our goal with both balance changes and some light reworks of the tank mythics to give them more clear and viable niches."

#7 - Enchanters

Enchanters (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Enchanters showed a strange trend that surprised the Riot developers. Moonstone Renewer, Imperial Mandate, Shurelya’s Battlesong, and Locket of the Iron Solari are all broadly viable in terms of power.

Still, players only gravitate towards Moonstone and Mandate even when items like Locket and Battlesong are just as powerful as the former.

The result was positive as 10 out of the 11 in-game enchanters lived up to Riot's mythic flexibility expectation.

#8 - Legendary Items

Legendaries - 1 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Legendaries - 2 (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

Legendary items required a different approach for evaluation. Riot looked at factors like pick rate, win rate, pick order, and others to determine which Legendaries were over and underperforming.

One particularly useful method was by observing which items dominate the second item slot.

The analysis found that Zhonya's hourglass was the most popular legendary item pick, whereas items like Silvermere, Cosmic Drive, Serpent’s Fang were highly underused.

A few other key observations from the analysis

Even though the tanks and enchanters were two of the most flexible roles in patch 11.3, the most balanced champion in League of Legends in terms of mythic item selections was Draven, the AD Carry. The Glorious Executioner had an equally balanced pick-rate of four items: Kraken, Galeforce, Shieldbow, and Duskblade.

Draven is the most balanced champion in League of Legends in terms of mythic item selections (Image via Riot Games - League of Legends)

When it came to Mythic item selections in the last patch, the two least flexible champions were Samira and Olaf. Samira built Immortal Shieldbow 92.5% of the time, while Olaf built Goredrinker in 88.2% of his games.