Imperor or Impostor?

by | December 9th, 2015

Across the competitive League of Legends community it has been said that Imp is arguably the best ADC (Attack Damage Carry) and that he challenges Faker for the title of best player in the game. When I heard these statements, I was very interested to see the data that Imp would produce, especially after we had completed the data collection and analysis on Faker.

The Chinese region leading up to the World Championship was regarded as the region with the highest level of competition between teams. It was argued by many that are close to the competitive scene that the 2nd and 3rd best teams in the world were coming from the Chinese League (LPL).

The World Championship has long passed and both LGD and Invictus Gaming struggled to compete. We have heard casters make statements that players, such as Imp, seem out of sorts and not in sync with his team. The data tells a very different story that may shock those who are unaware.

imp blue2 imp red2

Looking closely at the data mappings above, it is obvious that Imp is a force to be reckoned with. But, his style of play comes at a very high cost. His laning phase is average. LGD requires their jungler, and sometimes their top laner, to gank bottom so as to create a substantial lead. The data shows that it is uncommon for him to achieves a 2v2 or 1v1 outplay, but it is more unlikely for other bot lane duos to outplay him during the laning phase. But, Imp is susceptible to ganks. You can expect TBQ to be ganking for either GODV or Imp, since these are the two carries for the team. Imp is known for being inconsistent, but on top of that during the entirety of the summer season he has been plagued with poor decision making and positioning. There are several reasons as to why Imp has been able to pad his stats over the course of the summer split. The biggest of these are that we see a common trend between ADC’s in the Chinese region, they suffer from poor decision making, and positioning.

Imp’s volatility plays a major role in every game. Mechanically, Imp quite possibly could be one of, if not, the greatest players in League of Legends. If Imp shows up and makes the right decisions, has good positioning, and when his superior mechanics are also included in the equation, then he can handily win team fights and the game. Imp this last season is comparatively the equivalent to Rajon Rondo during his time with the Boston Celtics. You never know which version of the player will come to play. If it’s the godlike, play-making wonder or the pessimistic, out-of-sorts diva.

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