How Pick My Champ works

What the recommender takes into account, where the data comes from, and how to read the fit and reliability of each pick.

What it is

Pick My Champ is a free tool for the League of Legends champ select. You enter your role, the champions both teams have already picked and the bans, and it suggests the picks that fit that specific game best, with the reason for each one. It does not replace knowing your champions: it helps you decide fast with information there is no time to look up during champ select.

What it takes into account

Every champion in your role gets a score made of several parts. You can see the breakdown of any recommendation with “See analysis”.

Lane matchup. Whether the champion wins or loses against your direct opponent, based on ranked games from the current patch. This weighs the most: a clear lane counter is worth as much as several small advantages combined. Opponents in other lanes also count, but far less, since you will barely meet them during the laning phase.
Enemy team threats. The tool detects what the enemy team relies on: crowd control, burst damage, poke, mobility, tanks or engage. Champions that handle those threats well gain points and those that suffer them lose points. If an ally already covers a threat it weighs less; if an ally is especially vulnerable to it, it weighs more.
Synergy with your allies. Champion pairs that win more together than apart, based on duo data.
Strength in the patch and in your rank. The champion’s win rate, tier and ban rate in that role and in the rank you choose, from Iron to Challenger. A champion can be great in Mid and weak in Top: the data for the role you are going to play is always used.
Your pool (optional). If you mark your champions as “main”, “I play it” or “learning”, the score is adjusted slightly. The adjustment is deliberately moderate: your main does not hide a clear counter from your lane opponent.

Profiles

The profile changes the order, not the data. Casual favours champions that are strong overall and penalises hard-to-play ones; Standard balances everything; Advanced gives more weight to matchups and the specific threats of the game, for players with a wide champion pool.

Fit and reliability

Each recommendation shows two separate indicators:

Fit (excellent, very good, good, neutral, unfavourable): how much the game works for or against the pick, compared with a neutral champion. It is an absolute scale: if no champion fits well against that team, none will show as “excellent”. It is not a win probability.
Reliability (high, medium, low): how solid the data behind it is. It drops when the sample is small (Grandmaster and Challenger), when there are no stats for that role and another role’s are used, or when a value was borrowed from the neighbouring rank. The card always says why.

Where the data comes from

Win rate, tier, ban rate and pick rate by role and rank: op.gg, Ranked Solo/Duo games.
Matchups (who each champion beats and loses to in their lane): u.gg, with lolalytics as a fallback. A matchup is only flagged when there are enough games and a clear win-rate difference; otherwise it is treated as even.
Synergies: duo data from blitz.gg.
Threats: our own model that classifies each champion by their kit (crowd control, burst, poke, mobility, durability, engage).
Images and champion list: Data Dragon, Riot Games’ public service.

The data is refreshed every patch and downloaded again during the patch as more games are played. Each update is validated automatically before it is published: if a new value is implausible (for example, a huge win-rate jump on a small sample), the previous one is kept.

Limitations

Early in a patch there are fewer games: some matchups and synergies do not have enough sample yet, so the previous patch’s are kept.
Few people play in Grandmaster and Challenger, and percentages swing a lot from one day to the next.
Statistics describe how a champion does on average, not how you do. A champion you have mastered usually performs better than a counter you have never played.

About the project

Pick My Champ is an independent project, free and with no sign-up. It is funded by advertising. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Riot Games; League of Legends is a trademark of Riot Games, Inc.