Should You Main Locke? Tier F
Locke is tier F for maining. Only 5 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 756,150 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Locke scores 0.36 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 0.36 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 3 Challenger · 2 Grandmaster · 43 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 756,150 games played worldwide · 8.21% pick rate · 44.87% ban rate
Ban rate warning. Locke is banned in 44.87% of games. Even where the density number is strong, you will not get to play it in roughly one game in 2.
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
Locke even though the champion is fairly strong and has some representation it is perma banned so we cannot play it. 45% ban rate is actually the most I've ever seen. I think almost ever.
I guess maybe like pre pre-rework cassadin was higher, but yeah, it's very impressive that the champion has 45% b rate. Nobody likes playing against it. So or with or against it.
8% pick rate. Three challengers, two three challengers, two GMs. You can't play the champion.
So, I would not recommend playing as a main. You can play as a secondary maybe, but not as a main.
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.