Should You Main Vel'Koz? Tier C
Vel'Koz is tier C for maining, around the middle of the game. 1 Challenger and 17 Grandmaster mains across the three major regions, on 451,647 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Vel'Koz scores 3.90 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 3.90 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 1 Challenger · 17 Grandmaster · 157 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 451,647 games played worldwide · 4.90% pick rate · 2.19% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
Vel'Koz we all know Azap very good content creator on, you know, kind of founder of that never FF mentality. One challenger cause main I think that might be him actually. And then 17 grandmaster ones.
But yes, 5% pick rate, 2% ban rate. This is a solid champion, but he does have his main account and some alternate accounts. So I don't know how much of this is actually just one player.
So keep that in mind. It might just be one player.
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.