Should You Main Akali? Tier D
Akali is tier D for maining. Only 22 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 896,880 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Akali scores 2.09 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 2.09 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 6 Challenger · 16 Grandmaster · 143 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 896,880 games played worldwide · 9.73% pick rate · 14.88% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
So it is okay to main. I would say Akali is going to be, D tier as well. So, this champion is very popular, but the ban rate is also very high 15% and we're seeing only six challengers and 16 GMs.
So, a little bit more in terms of grandmaster representation, but again like the pick rate is around 10%. So, very popular champion. But even so we're not seeing too much challenger and GM representation.
So this is going to be about one tricks like one trick data. So if you are a main of the champion with a lot of mastery, how far can you really get and how far are you going to expect to get?
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.