Should You Main Kalista? Tier B
Kalista is tier B for maining, around the middle of the game. 2 Challenger and 8 Grandmaster mains across the three major regions, on 155,323 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Kalista scores 6.42 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 6.42 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 2 Challenger · 8 Grandmaster · 47 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 155,323 games played worldwide · 1.69% pick rate · 0.33% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
Kalista is going to be actually in the B tier. So, Kalista is decent to main right now. Very low pick rates, very low ban rates, two challengers, and eight grandmaster tier players with Kalista right now.
This is one of the champions that very, very low games overall played. But, of those low games, you're going to see a lot of people in the higher MMRs with her. This can skew because she is picked a lot in pro.
So, typically professionals are picking her up and playing them at the highest levels of play possible. So, you're going to see her in worlds, you're going to see her in professional play. This isn't necessarily indicative that a champion is strong, but it is something to consider when you're grinding from iron to challenger.
So, you can consider learning Kalista and picking her up. I think she's always been around. I think she's always been solid through the patches.
So pretty okay to kind of consider.
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.