The League of Legends pro league seasons are finally here. With the LPL starting over the week, the LCK and LCS starting this week and the LEC starting a week later, League of Legends is finally back. With that comes Fantasy League of Legends, which is basically fantasy football but for League of Legends. Draftbuff is one of the more popular platforms to use right now. New and even some veteran players may be looking for a leg up in their draft. To help players out, here are five tips that will make sure players win their draft in Draftbuff for Fantasy League of Legends.
[Related: TGH LCS and LEC Fantasy Rankings]
1. Draft Carries Immediately
While this may seem obvious, some people may see that some supports are ranked pretty highly or think that getting a team means more than it does. It does not and tip three will discuss why that is. In order to win, players have to draft carries and while this generally means ADC and Mid, it can mean the other positions as well depending on the player. For example, if a team plays through their jungler or their jungler gets a lot of kills, such as Blaber or Jankos, then they are worth looking at in the earlier rounds.
Overall ADCs and Mid Laners are the best to pick first and second as not only do they get a lot of the kills but they also get plenty of CS and assists while they tend to die less often. Looking for players like Caps, Perkz, Tactical and Rekkles will be crucial to having a good draft. But when those players are gone, looking to the next carries will be important no matter what position they play.
2. Get an ADC or Mid for the Utility Spot
Not every league plays with a utility spot, although they should, but if drafters are playing in one that does they may not understand how important it is. For those who play fantasy football, the utility slot is essentially the flex spot. Drafters can put any player in that position. This means that if someone is following tip number one, then they should be drafting with this in mind.
If drafters have picks that go something like two adc and a mid or two mids and an adc, in any order, to start their draft then they are probably going to have a good fantasy season. Having an ADC or Mid in the utility slot is crucial as they almost always get the most points. At a minimum drafters will want to have a carry player to fill their utility spot or else they will probably struggle.
3. Draft Teams Late but Not Too Late
While teams may be tempting to take early, drafters should avoid doing so unless there is a run on the good ones. The reason being that point-wise, teams are not going to add much in standard scoring. Now obviously the League owner can change the scoring but overall unless the team is getting every turret, dragon, Baron and winning in under 30 minutes, they won’t outscore most players. So drafting them sometime late is completely fine.
That said, if the drafter is in a deeper league with nine or more picks and eight or more drafters then they will want to draft teams a bit earlier. This is because there are players who will score less than the top teams like G2, C9, TL and others. With more picks and more drafters in the league then the best players will be gone fairly quickly and drafters will need to decide if a mid or lower tier top laner or support is worth more than a top tier team. In most cases, they are not. Thus, picking a team sometime between rounds five and seven in a deeper draft is not a bad idea.
4. Kill Participation is More Important that CS’ing
For those who don’t use it, Oracle’s Elixir is an incredible site for player statistics. Using a site like this can help drafters see past performances and help them make their decision on who to draft. One of the most important statistics for fantasy League of Legends is Kill Participation. This is a statistic for when a player either gets a kill or assist and what percentage that is of overall kills for the team.
Now the reason this is so important is that kills and assists are worth three and two points respectively in standard scoring. The issue for drafters is when they see that someone is getting high cs numbers and they may factor that quite a bit into their decision. In most games, even the best carries are only averaging maybe six points in CS per game (300 cs). That is also equal to three assists which they can get in one teamfight.
For this reason, drafters should be looking for high kill participation players who played more than a few games. An example of this is Santorin who had an 80% kill participation for his team which was the highest in the LCS for the Summer Split. When looking at his kills and assists, this showed that he was getting plenty of points as well which would have made him a great pick for the 2020 season.
5. Plan to Actually use Bench Spots
A lot of people in most fantasy sports and esports do not understand the value of bench spots. They will often quit the draft once they reach this point. The problem is that their bench spots can be extremely valuable. For starters, it can be another place to keep carries. These players are the name of the game and even if a player has filled their main starting spots, drafting a middle-tier ADC or Mid sometime in the middle rounds to stash on their bench can add a ton of value.
The first reason this adds value is that it can give drafters some flexibility with their players. Say one of their carries just is not performing or maybe they couldn’t choose between two players and decided to take both, now they can sub in their bench player in based on that week’s situation. If a team the bench player is playing that week has just been awful starting them over a star player who is playing a tough team, might be the way to go.
Another reason to actually care about bench spots is that they have trade value. Say the drafter has three ADCs but really only needs the two but their jungler is struggling. If someone in their league has an extra jungler or is desperate enough to trade their starter because they need a carry that badly, then players with a deep bench will be able to shore up their teams during the middle of the season. Overall having a plan for the bench and actually using it effectively can really make or break a season.
Bonus Tip: Remember that the LCS is Playing 3 Games a Week Now
This is not as much of a tip as it is a reminder, the LCS will be playing three games a week now instead of two. For those who are doing an LCS and LEC league, this will be important to note. While the scoring is the average of all the games from the weekend, the extra game can be extremely helpful, or detrimental depending on how one looks at it. So make sure to keep this in mind while drafting this for the Spring season.
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