Should You Main Aphelios? Tier C
Aphelios is tier C for maining, around the middle of the game. 1 Challenger and 9 Grandmaster mains across the three major regions, on 329,673 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Aphelios scores 3.00 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 3.00 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 1 Challenger · 9 Grandmaster · 99 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 329,673 games played worldwide · 3.58% pick rate · 1.15% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
So there's that. Aphelios, right? Moving on.
This is going to be in C tier as well. So, there's very little Aphelios representation in the highest MMRs. I have a little bit of a theory for Aphelios.
I think he's actually pretty decent champion. However, it's very difficult to say exactly where he should be. So I do think this is going to be skewed more towards higher MMRs.
So, he is picked about, you know, a little bit like 3.5% of the time. And he is having only he only has one challenger and nine grandmaster players. So I think for Aphelios his for Aphelios specifically for really high mechanical champions you can make the argument that it's actually very difficult to reach challenger because you have to play a lot of games.
So you have to actually play a lot. Now these days with how the LP cut off is in order to you have to win consistently over the long period like long term. So you need more LP league points than ever to reach these higher MMR thresholds because Grandmaster right now at least is 1,000 LP and challenger is 1,600 LP or I guess like 1500 LP 1550.
So, in order to even reach these in NA at least and in the US it's even higher. So, in order to even reach these LP thresholds, you have to play a lot of games since you can only at most gain around 30 league points per win and you lose around 30 per loss. So, you can do the math, but it's a lot of games that you have to play at your best in order to win majority of them.
Or I guess over 50%. And essentially climb. So, Aphelios' being one of the more mechanically demanding champions by a lot.
Since ADCs are very mechanically demanding as a class, you have to be extremely mechanically good on Aphelios for the long term. It's actually quite tiring. So, I think that's probably why Aphelios is doesn't see more representation in higher MMRs.
But I do think he if he another option is another reason for this is that mages bought are fairly strong, but I actually don't think that's the entire reason because yeah, I mean I think if a champion is strong then you can still play it. But yeah I think yeah kind of patch dependent but Aphelios is one of those high skill champions. But yeah he belongs in the CT right now.
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.