In League of Legends, the blind monk, Lee Sin, has a terrible win rate that keeps falling: He loses more games than any other champ in LoL. Nevertheless, the champion is popular and continues to be played.
How bad is Lee Sin doing? Quite bad:
- In the Platinum rank and above, his win rate was last at 45.53% – this was at one point the worst win rate in LoL overall. Thus, his already weak win rate has further declined, as the site Dotesports reports.
- Similarly poor during that time were Pantheon (45.57%), Ryze (45.75%), and Miss Fortune (46.1%).
- In the jungle position, Lee Sin is by far the weakest champion: his win rate is more than 2% lower than the “next-worst champion,” Viego.
LoL keeps introducing new champions. Riot Games has to strive to discover new game concepts:
Lee Sin: Popularity Top – Performance Flop
What is remarkable about Lee Sin? All other heroes with a win rate below 47% are played relatively rarely:
- Only about 20,000 matches of Ryze or Pantheon are documented on the stats site u.gg in the Platinum range or above.
- For Miss Fortune, there are even only about 12,000 matches.
- However, Lee Sin has been played in 165,319 matches at the Platinum level or above, making him one of the 11 most popular champions in the game. In the jungle, he is the third most popular champion, with only Kayn and Diana being picked more frequently.
We have the phenomenon of many people playing a champion with whom they lose.
Lee Sin has already won world championships, but that was 3 years ago
What is the reason for this? Lee Sin is one of the most recognized jungle champions in LoL in recent years: Korean pro junglers like Tian achieved great success with Lee Sin in 2019 and made him an iconic champion. They demonstrated how excellent Lee Sin can function in the jungle – when real masters play him in a harmonious top team.
He is considered a strong “support jungler” who can initiate and decide teamfights. However, he depends on strong teamwork.
However, Lee Sin has fallen out of favor now, after many changes in the meta due to patches:
- In recent professional tournaments, the trend has leaned more towards “carry champions” like Graves, who level up and become unstoppable in the endgame.
- The most successful junglers in the current meta in Platinum or higher are heroes like Fiddlesticks, Rek’Sai, Trundle, Wukong, or Zac.
Lee Sin is considered a champion for absolute masters
How is Lee Sin discussed? On reddit, Lee Sin is regarded as one of the “most difficult champions to master in League of Legends”: it is said to be mechanically challenging to hit his skill shots, according to a discussion.
Moreover, he is simply not a carry champion: even if one plays outstandingly, one cannot decide a match alone if their ADC fails.
Lee Sin has an extremely high “skill ceiling”: exceptionally strong players can do a lot with him – but consistently achieving good performances with Lee Sin is difficult.
So it appears that Lee Sin is the case of a champion:
- whom people love to watch professionals dominate with
- whom they themselves enjoy playing because he embodies a clear “power fantasy” and feels “right”
- but on average loses more than any other champion in LoL because it is quite tricky to fully master him
Similarly bad as Lee Sin is the poor Ryze in League of Legends:
A mage is currently the absolute worst champion in LoL – why is Ryze so bad?
