Should You Main Hwei? Tier C
Hwei is tier C for maining, around the middle of the game. 5 Challenger and 12 Grandmaster mains across the three major regions, on 498,076 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Hwei scores 3.34 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 3.34 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 5 Challenger · 12 Grandmaster · 95 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 498,076 games played worldwide · 5.41% pick rate · 2.09% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
I would have to play Hwei as C tier. I think he's okay to main. He is picked a decent amount ever since the Hoay buffs, but even so, that hasn't really helped too much.
I mean, he does have five challengers. So, I can see that one one of the challenger Quays on our server at least, Evan the Bank, also creates videos. He shows off that he's the rank one way.
And essentially low ban rate champion decently high pick rate. So you know more so than the other champions above there. Almost double of Hecarim's pick rate if that helps illustrate how often he's picked.
And 12 grand masters on him. So I would say Hwei is pretty mechanically demanding. You have to know all the different spell combinations and space very well.
He's a kind of honest champion as well. So similar to Anivia, if you get caught out, you're dead. You don't have escapes.
You can't really run or dash or I guess you can run slightly faster, but you have to burn an ability to do so and cast an animation. So yeah, you can run slightly faster and get away that way, but that's not too impressive. So very mechanically hard.
Definitely takes a lot of practice to play him. So I'd say not a very good champion to main when first starting out. This isn't really going to be about mechanically difficult, but essentially if you're spamming mechanically difficult champions, then just know that you're going to be able to grind peak peak performance less.
So when you're at the peak of your game, you're going to be able to play mechanically depending champions I guess less of the time essentially. So, like if you're playing something like let's say Cassiopeia or Bard or Hecarim, like not very mechanically defended champions. I mean, it's arguable.
But I would say you can basically spam out more games and essentially reach higher rank easier because you're able to play more when you're at peak condition. Whereas, if you're playing stuff like Azir, Jen Plank, these are very difficult champions to play and require more skill to execute. So, you're going to be able to play at this skill level a little bit less of the time.
So, you're going to need more like breaks and stuff when clicking a lot more just for your hands.
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.