The new champion Aphelios, who was released in League of Legends in December, is the most banned champion in history. However, a major nerf is still yet to come.
What record did Aphelios set? In the Challenger League in Korea, the champion Aphelios set a unique record. He achieved a ban rate of an incredible 223.47%.
This number arises because both teams can ban the same champion, achieving a 200% ban rate. If a match is not completed correctly and is restarted, the champion is banned again. However, a new game is not created. This allowed Aphelios to exceed the 200% mark.
- In comparison, the champion Akali has a ban rate of 174.37%
- In 3rd place is Qiyana with a rate of 138.37%.
- After that, it gets into double digits.
In addition to the ban rate, Aphelios managed to be played in 15.1% of the games. It can thus be assumed that in almost all games of the Korean Challenger, either Aphelios was banned or played.
Similar numbers to Aphelios were only achieved by the champion Kassadin in Season 4. There he achieved a 95% ban rate and almost a 5% pick rate. At that time, teams could not ban the same champion.
What is the problem with Aphelios? The new champion has 5 different weapon sets and correspondingly many abilities. This makes it difficult for opponents to gauge his attacks.
Many players also criticize the fact that as a player of Aphelios, you can hardly make decisions regarding weapon switching. This makes him far less complex than expected.
Weapon sets make predictions impossible
That’s why the weapons are a problem: In the reddit thread about the ban rate of Aphelios, the user Kipsteria summarizes the problems with the champion well:
- A core competence in LoL is knowing where the champions have their strengths and weaknesses and when to win a duel or better retreat. The level of the champions and the items also play an important role.
- With Aphelios, this is difficult because he has 22 different abilities, and only the player himself can see which weapon will be selected next. Items also have various interactions with his abilities. Thus, knowledge of the duels is lost.
- Additionally, there are weapon combinations that deal damage, while others heal significantly. If one is not aware of the latter and is unlucky, one can quickly die during a tower dive, for example.
- Complicating matters further, Aphelios is banned so often that many players do not even know him and learn to counter him.
Why is nothing being changed about Aphelios? Many players on reddit are wondering why Riot Games is not making any major adjustments to the champion. The user IWillNameMyChildZoe goes even further:
This champion should not have even left the drawing board with this concept, let alone reach the live servers.
He is not alone in this opinion. Even at the time of release, Aphelios was heavily criticized. The reddit thread “Aphelios isn’t hard to play, it’s just hard to play against him” remained in the top 3 for several days.
Patch 10.1 changed little: The new patch 10.1, which brought the latest changes before the start of the new Season 10, contained a minor nerf. One ability was slightly weakened, and his movement speed and health points were reduced.
However, the fundamental issues in the form of too many abilities continue to exist. It is still unknown when and what Riot will do to make Aphelios more playable.
As of yesterday, Aphelios is no longer the newest champion. Patch 10.1 introduced Sett, a new top laner:
