IQs of the best LoL pros by region and role
You can’t compare LoL players of different roles - simply because a lot of skills you see are role-specific (e.g. kiting as an ADC, spell usage as a mid, pathing as a jungler). Region comparisons are also difficult, as pro LoL is artificially region locked so the best players rarely play each other (except at worlds and msi). There are a few exceptions to this - I assume few would question that the best native NA player is Doublelift, and that the best native EU player is Caps. On the other hand, I think it’s an open question as to whether Faker is actually better than Rookie, as the two have hardly ever played against each other. For the purposes of consistency, unfortunately I am ranking only natives - so Bjergsen would not count as an NA player, for instance.
Because of this, I will be estimating the IQs of all of the best LoL pros based on their dominance within their own role and region. It is important to get a judgement of what the best players are - I will be doing this based on a composite of my own judgement and those of experts.
Here is my list of the best players by role and region:
Korea:
Top: TheShy
Jungle: Score
Mid: Faker
ADC: Ruler
Support: Mata
China:
Top: 369
Jungle: Clearlove
Mid: xiaohu
ADC: Uzi
Support: Meiko
Europe:
Top: SoaZ
Jungle: Jankos
Mid: Caps
ADC: Upset
Support: Mikyx
North America:
Top: Hauntzer
Jungle: Blaber
Mid: Hai
ADC: Doublelift
Support: Aphromoo
International (difficult to judge):
Top: TheShy
Jungle: Score
Mid: Faker
ADC: Uzi
Support: Meiko
Regional (difficult to judge):
Korea: Faker
China: Uzi
Europe: Caps
North America: Doublelift
Overall best: Faker
The only big hot take here is that I think Upset is the best EU ADC ever, despite the fact he has never won a single title and has only been to Worlds once. The alternative that most people would cite is Rekkles, who is one of the most successful European players ever in terms of international placements and titles. However, I think his strong fanbase and luck with good teammates has led to him becoming overrated by the community. Otherwise, my rankings are very consistent with pro voting and community voting. Because of this, I don’t think it’s necessary to combine my rankings with those of the community or professional players to generate more accurate predictions.
Specific ratings
I have additional information about Doublelift and Faker that may aid in their estimations of their IQs.
Doublelift
I have a hot take: I think Doublelift is highly intelligent. There is a meme in the community that he's dumb and gets by purely on talent, but I think that perception is mostly a product of the fact that he's less intelligent than most pros and that he’s low in openness.
According to an old AMA he used to attend UC Irvine, which has an average SAT score of 1310. He's Asian, so I doubt he got by on affirmative action, and he is kind of lazy, so I don't think he worked his way up there either. Of course he was admitted about 11 years ago, but given that the selectivity of colleges relative to others is pretty stable, it wont change the estimate very much.
The z-scores are:
LoL - 4.45 based on region/role
SAT - difficult to tell, invoked rule 8 and regressed him to 0.5
I’ve decided to regress him to the mean of 0.5, which is essentially an invocation of rule 8.
Invoking rules 1, 4, 5,and 10 yields an estimate of 134.
Faker
Unbeknownst to me, Faker was GM in Starcraft 2, which corresponds to the top 200 players in his region. I’m not entirely sure that’s him, but there are very few people who can achieve that ranking at all, and given that that account has that name and is a member of the SKT clan, that makes me think it’s the real deal.
I watched him play Brood War (previous version of Sc2), and he looks decent, I would have guessed he’s diamond or masters just based on his POV. In a clip of him playing Sc2 he has the micro I would expect from a diamond-GM player. All in all, I think it’s safe to say Faker is probably good at Starcraft 2.
Sc2 has sold 6 million copies - convert that to players and maybe there’s 600000. It’s difficult to do an SK specific estimate as many people play games in PC bangs instead of at home, so I’ll invoke rule 8 and stick with 600000. This returns a z-score of 3.4.
His LoL z-score within his region and role is 4.66.
Given faker is east asian, I’ll also regress him to his racial mean of 105.
Invoking rules 1, 4, 5,and 10 yields an estimate of 146.
Player count
op.gg returns these numbers for total players playing ranked:
This is a more fair estimate of the number of players to compare pros to, as a lot of created accounts are inactive or smurfs. For China, the best region-representative comparison is one done by this guy:
If we assume that the relative number of smurfs/inactives is roughly consistent across regions, China should have about 16.6 million active ranked players.
Regressing all players to their racial, regional, and role means returns these results:
Korea:
Top: TheShy - 131
Jungle: Score - 131
Mid: Faker - 131
ADC: Ruler - 131
Support: Mata - 131
China:
Top: 369 - 136
Jungle: Clearlove - 136
Mid: xiaohu - 136
ADC: Uzi - 136
Support: Meiko - 136
Europe:
Top: SoaZ - 131
Jungle: Jankos - 131
Mid: Caps - 131
ADC: Upset - 131
Support: Mikyx - 131
North America:
Top: Hauntzer - 133
Jungle: Blaber - 133
Mid: Hai - 133
ADC: Doublelift - 133
Support: Aphromoo - 122 (sorry aphro. you’re definitely a smarter player than Doublelift lol)
Arbitrary assessments
Korea:
Top: TheShy - 133
Jungle: Score - 140
Mid: Faker - 150
ADC: Ruler - 130
Support: Mata - 140
China:
Top: 369 - 136
Jungle: Clearlove - 145
Mid: xiaohu - 140
ADC: Uzi - 129
Support: Meiko - 140
Europe:
Top: SoaZ - 139
Jungle: Jankos - 145
Mid: Caps - 140
ADC: Upset - 135
Support: Mikyx - 140
North America:
Top: Hauntzer - 130
Jungle: Blaber - 130
Mid: Hai - 143
ADC: Doublelift - 125
Support: Aphromoo - 133
Because the estimates for the individual players are too volatile, I’ve decided to only include the ones that use additional indicators in DIE.