Dissecting why Ivern has the highest win rate in the OPL

At the time of writing, out of all the regions of play in the world, the OPL boasts the highest win rate of Ivern at 81.8 per cent.

That’s nine games won out of 11. The obvious question after seeing this statistic is a fairly innocent one.

“Why?”

In order to understand this number, you need to understand three larger macro concepts concerning Ivern’s general role as a champion, how this role works within the framework of the OPL, and how it works in international realms of play.

Ivern’s strengths as a champion are both wide and deep. His kit is full of a wide range of hard crowd control (CC), peeling tools, and utility that automatically makes him fit in any comp in the current meta.

Unlike other tanks throughout the first half of the OPL, Ivern has a very fast clear speed, combined with a cheap itemisation path that allows him to gank quickly and continually hit itemised power spikes throughout the early game.

The only way to directly counter this early pressure that Ivern puts around the map – especially on the enemies jungle – is by abusing his poor 2v2 in solo lanes, or orchestrating invades onto his jungle.

This is where the framework of the OPL plays a key part. The OPL can not boast the same level of team coordination and  cohesion as the other main regions of play, most notably the EULCS, can.

As such, attempts to invade Ivern early in the game will often lead to a collapse by the laners – essentially removing one of Ivern’s bigger weaknesses. What’s more, the teams that do play Ivern – most notably Legacy, Chiefs, and Avant Garde – have some of the stronger solo lanes in the region.

This allows for Ivern to walk into 2v2s with an advantage of some sort already gained – helping to mitigate his weakness against say, a Kha’Zix or Elise in a straight up fight.

When these strengths and reduction of weaknesses are combined with the aggressive jungle pathing that the first few weeks of play bought, we often saw multiple ganks all across the map before the five minute mark. While these ganks don’t always work out, due to how well Ivern scales into the late game, initial mistakes with over-aggression can be ignored.

The power of Ivern in the later stages of the game largely centre around his objective control and power in sieges. Ivern’s w – Brushmaker – allows him to place a brush that conceals his teammates and neutral objectives. This is key, especially in the current ADC/Mid meta, as it allows for champs like Varus, Jhin, Ez, Jayce, and Corki to punish enemy sides with heavy poke from behind Ivern’s brushes in sieges. The brushes also make taking Baron/Dragon safer as it conceals them from potential steals over the wall.

Both of these are especially important in the OPL where sloppy mistakes by enemies being sieged or in rotations to objectives are more common. This allows Ivern to punish mistakes with ease, and then in the event of his team making mistake, has a plethora of peel to safe immobile carries.  This doesn’t even mention the importance of Ivern’s ult – Daisy, which also gives him a solid presence in teamfights. Interestingly Daisy plays an important part in combating Jhin’s ultimate and body blocking poke in general.

Aside from directly changing Ivern’s actual numbers, the easiest way to make him more balanced in the current OPL meta would be by buffing other tanks junglers to increase their early clear speed and survivability. Potential buffing champions like Zac and Sejuani would be able to provide a larger presence in team fights – an important aspect in the team fight heavy meta of the OPL – and would potentially make them have precedence over Ivern’s utility.

When all of these factors are combined together, we see just how powerful Ivern can be in a coordinated environment and especially one where small mistakes are frequent.

Special thanks to junglers Chelby from Avant Garde and Spookz from the Chiefs for helping me learn more about Ivern in the OPL!