One Trick or Flex Pick?

"Can you play anything else?" [1]—a classic starter to the discussion about who gets to play which role in League of Legends. Specializing or flex picking are two extremes that impact your gaming performance. Here is what professional players do.

💽 You Play Support! No, You do!

"In the dynamic ecosystem of gaming, where play styles evolve based on objectives, collaboration and competitiveness, player experiences are anything but static." [1]

When you queue up for a game of League (of Legends), you have to choose a primary and secondary role. Typically, players are stubborn when it comes to discussing who gets to play which role—in the case of a conflict. At some point, somebody will have to be flexible and willing to give up their primary (preferred) role for the game to be played. You’ve probably been there: two people hover mid, nobody wants to swap, and suddenly you’re stuck playing jungle for the first time in weeks.

In their work, the researchers explored a) the relationship between flexibility (playing a different role in LoL), and the user's skill level and play style preferences, and b) which attributes predict a player's flexibility?

In order to answer both questions, data were scraped using the LoL API and OP.GG. Data were filtered in such a way that only Solo Queue matches were included in the sample, comprising a total of 3,119 elite (Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger) and 2,304 non-elite (Iron to Diamond) players.

📊 What are the results?

The first result is more like "You don't say!": It was found that core roles exist (Assassin, Tank, Mage, Support, and Marksman). This isn't surprising at all since the game literally sorts champions and roles, progamer play them, and everyone else mostly copies them.

"As queues increase in competitiveness, flexibility scores drop for all users regardless of their rank." [1]

This makes sense, because the harder/more competitive it gets for each player, the more they'll have to play what they are best at. As we've seen in an earlier episode, teams who specialize also have a higher chance of winning a game.

What's more interesting, however, are the two following findings:

1. Players who prefer an Assassin-Fighter, Marksman, and Mage role were more flexible, and
2. Mage-Support and Fighter-Tank role players were separated into two clusters, where one cluster had low flexibility scores and the other one high flexibility scores.

When the researchers looked at differences between elite (higher ranked) and non-elite (low ranked) players, they found that: Elite players have a more even distribution across flexibility scores, in comparison to non-elite players. This was particularly the case for the Fighter-Tank and Mage-support roles. That's why we ended up seeing the two clusters mentioned above. As the researchers put it:

"This pattern suggests a notable prevalence of “One Trick Ponies” players specializing in a single role with limited flexibility—in higher ranks, especially within the Mage-Support and Fighter-Tank categories." [1]

Where this exactly stems from is up for debate. Mage-Support players being less flexible makes sense, as they have very little in common with damage dealers (e.g., last-hitting minions and knowing how to fight). Fighter-Tanks, on the other hand, may also be less familiar with fighting like Assassins (Jungle/Mid), Marksman (Bot), and Mage (Mid/Top) roles do.

"... elite players are more likely to experiment with new play styles, at the expense of competitive success, compared to non-elite players who are less likely to do the same." [1]

When looking at how flexibility evolved over time, it was found that constant game updates, new champions etc. encouraged elite player to explore novel champion roles. Over time, elite players became more flexible, whereas non-elite player's flexibility decreased.

Now, let's turn to the question of how performance is linked to flexibility. As you can probably imagine, playing the role you know best is what helps you to get out of elo hell. However, since non-elite players tend to have higher levels of flexibility, this likely contributes to why they may be lower ranked as they could be.

"... competitive success in League of Legends is more closely associated with mastery of a limited set of functional play styles (less flexibility) rather than a broad knowledge of many play styles." [1]

📈 How Do You Improve Your In-Game Rank?

Ok, so how can you use these findings to improve your in-game rank? First, don't flex too much—meaning, specialize in one role. If you can't play your role, have a backup. Specializing will help you to get better at playing your two main roles, leading to more experience and skill, and ultimately better performance.

Second, elite players test and play around a lot once a new patch hits or a new champion is introduced. Do the same! However, don't do it while playing ranked. You can innovate while playing unranked. Once you feel comfortable—or find a great way to exploit others—you can hit the Play button and climb.

I hope the duality of flexibility became obvious to you now. You don't want to be too flexible during competitive play (ranked/tournaments) but more flexible once you have the chance to innovate or getting an edge (new champion or patch).

Thanks for reading—appreciate you! Best,

Christian 🙂

References

[1] Chen et al., 2024