Should You Main Caitlyn? Tier F
Caitlyn is tier F for maining. Only 14 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 1,721,682 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Caitlyn scores 0.63 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 0.63 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 3 Challenger · 11 Grandmaster · 81 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 1,721,682 games played worldwide · 18.69% pick rate · 22.17% ban rate
Ban rate warning. Caitlyn is banned in 22.17% of games. Even where the density number is strong, you will not get to play it in roughly one game in 5.
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
So Caitlyn, another champion which is very difficult to main. This champion is very popular. There are three so there's very high ban rate for Caitlyn.
There's very high pick rate. So, it's going to it's basically going to get contested like 40% of the time. I guess like 30% of the time.
And then there's only three challengers in Caitlyn, all three major regions and 11 grand masters. So, very popular champion. I would say not a good main choice just because it is highly contested and everybody already knows how to play against you.
So, just keep that in mind.
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.