Should You Main Aatrox? Tier D
Aatrox is tier D for maining. Only 16 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 622,754 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Aatrox scores 2.40 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 2.40 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 6 Challenger · 10 Grandmaster · 131 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 622,754 games played worldwide · 6.76% pick rate · 6.50% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
Let's see, it's going to be Aatrox. So, Aatrox we're going to actually put into Bad Main. So, the reasoning for this is just because Aatrox is somewhat mechanically challenging.
And he is somewhat of a popular champion by pick rate. Though of all those players right now. I think right now Nail on EU West is one of the higher Aatrox mains, but even he is now I guess mainly playing jungle.
It's going to be a very difficult champion to reach higher elo with just because there's so many players playing it. But there are only six challenger Aatroxes of this patch. So, and then there are only 10 across all three major regions, even though it is a very popular champion.
I'm assuming this is because there's a lot of contention with this champion. So, going to place it in D tier.
How this was measured
Two numbers, one division. First, how many players are currently in Challenger or Grandmaster maining this champion in Korea, Europe West and North America, from onetricks.gg. Second, how many ranked games the entire playerbase plays of this champion worldwide across every rank, from op.gg. The result is high elo mains per 100,000 games played, then reduced by the champion's ban rate, because a champion you cannot pick is a champion you cannot main.
This is not a win rate list and it is not a patch strength list. It measures availability-adjusted high-elo main density: how much Challenger and Grandmaster main representation a champion has relative to how often it is played. It is not the probability that maining this champion will get you to high elo. The score counts Challenger and Grandmaster mains only, drawn from a tracked pool that starts at Master; it does not include the Chinese server, and it counts accounts rather than people, so one dedicated player with several high elo accounts shows up more than once. Patch 16.15. The full plain English explanation, including everything this list cannot tell you, is on the main list page.
Popularity is not the signal. What matters here is how densely high elo mains appear relative to how often the champion is played.