Why Is Corki So Bad?
In League of Legends, Corki saw a significant amount of play as a bottom lane attack damage carry when Trinity Force was a meta item. But I’m not sure he was every considered a required ban at that time.
On November 11, 2015, patch 5.22 brought several key updates to Corki. His auto attacks now dealt partial magic damage, and he periodically gained a “Special Package” which empowered his W by granting it increased range, damage, and a knockback effect.
In June 2017, patch 7.12 further fine-tuned Corki by shifting his auto attack damage from a 50/50 split between physical and magic damage to a 20/80 physical/magical split.
Since then, most of Corki’s performance has been below the 50% win rate line in ranked, and his popularity has steadily decreased.
Does Popularity Contribute To Nerfs?
Considering Corki had a stable win rate above 50% from 2021 to 2022, what happened? At some point in 2021, his play rate dramatically increased and his win rate largely held. With the start of 2022, his performance worsened with only a brief return to the 50% line.
There are obviously going to be other variables which impact this — were mythic items a buff or a nerf to Corki? Were they a significant buff to his competition or counters? Have all the “good” players dropped Corki for better performing champions?
In this case, Azir and Corki have similar performance although the former boasts double the play rate.
So the question is: does popularity make a champion bad or good? For instance, both Yasuo and Yone are popular champions that boast sub-50% win rates — but they’re still within 1% of 50 — we can live with that kind of variation. Common sense would suggest that Yone and Yasuo are fun and cool champions — most importantly good — that’s why they attract a large player base. That also means “bad” players are playing those champions — even in platinum+.
But Corki and Azir are 3% below the mark. Fewer people are playing them. So the question here is: are these champions bad and undertuned? Then the very best players would avoid them since better, more performant champions exist. By extension, does that mean only bad players continue to play these champions despite their poor performance?
In that case, we have less than ideal players playing mediocre champions. (me)
Bad Players Making Champions Look Bad
Alternatively, maybe the champions are undertuned but still fine. However, since a majority of less than ideal players continue to play these champions in less than ideal conditions, their performance is bad — and makes the champions look bad!
Can Attention Make A Champion Better?
As a random aside and example, I think Lissandra was relegated to the top lane many years ago, but her time in high level and pro play brought her back as a flex pick for both top and mid lanes.
Since that time, she is pretty much only seen in the mid and is a decent to mediocre champion.
Contradictions
On the other hand, Lissandra’s performance isn’t consistent. She has a win rate slightly higher than 50% in North America and Korea, but below 50% in Europe West and Japan. At levels of play above Diamond, her win rate sinks below 50% and her na.op.gg tier ranking also drops. Similarly — the closer you get to Iron — her tier ranking and win rate performance drops.
Although it may mean that Lissandra just isn’t the best champion, we could also say most of this is player skill. So let’s compare some things.
The graphic above illustrates similarities and differences between the lowest level of play and the highest solo queue has to offer.
Notably, Yasuo has an enormous play rate and ban rate (14.51% and 16.84% respectively), but a subpar win rate in Iron. Meanwhile, he has a third of the play rate and ban rate among a much smaller set of high skill players and a positive win rate.
Sylas sees similar levels of play and bans in both brackets, but better performance among high level players — go figure.
So what about Corki?
What About Him
Not much, frankly. Although his win rate improves, he is still largely a low play rate, low tier champion.
Although his performance in higher tiers might be seen as a justification to use him — this is 0.5% of players. The overwhelming majority of players do not do well with Corki.
That being said — I should probably throw him in the dustbin since I won’t be Master+ any time soon!
But It’s Just Average Data After All
But this data is just that — data. It’s not a guarantee you will win or lose on a champion. You could always pick the highest win rate champion and lose all your games.
With that in mind, you really can play whatever you like! And if you use very high level play as a guide… be wary! Since it’s from an extremely small subset of the entire player base and a stark reminder that 90% of players are Gold and below.
Further Thinking
I am interested to see how popularity tracks with win rate though. If we had more fine grained patch and play rate analysis, we could monitor how sensitive play rate / win rate are and whether they are strongly related. We could also monitor win rate broken out by rank to make estimates on how many “good players” are no longer playing that champion.
At the end of the day — most of us will be Gold and below. So maybe it doesn’t make sense to highly weigh the performance of the best players. I, on the other hand, am determined to keep playing Corki.
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