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The world of gaming continues to change, but for almost 15 years now, League of Legends has been something of a mainstay.
League of Legends has been described as the “main attraction” of the eSports industry in general, with huge viewerships for some of the sport’s main events. Riot Games has regularly reported over 40 million concurrent viewers on their biggest events.
You can even gamble on eSports and which teams are going to win – with many of the top bookmakers offering eSports markets these days.
So, whether you want to make predictions for the rest of 2023 or you just want to look back on a huge League of Legends year, we’ve got a list of some of the best League of Legends players in this guide.
Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-Hyuk
2022 may well have been the best year for Ruler in terms of his growth and achievements – even though it is five years since his first-ever world title. He played as a number of different roles and was able to adapt with ease. Adaptability is key as the game introduces new characters all the time.
Ruler shone in all of the roles and managed to get his first LCK title in 2022. He saw much more attention in the media, and in an interview, he spoke about the reasons he keeps improving,
“I feel like a lot of people look for motivation. But that wasn’t the case for me. I always thought that I wanted to be better. I always try to be better at what I do. That’s how I’m here now.”
Ruler is leaving GenG to build a team elsewhere that could see him win a title once more, and he’d be a real asset to pretty much any LoL team. The parting was amicable, with Jae-hyuk saying, “once a tiger, always a tiger” in a statement.
Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok
Faker was not at his unbelievable best in 2022. That’s being harsh, though, as Lee Sang-hyeok will always make it onto one of these lists as one of the top LoL players.
Faker was great all year, with the most champs played in professional games (a record extended to 77), and he also has a huge champion pool.
Faker is a real team player and is still adding to his reputation and list of achievements – he’s one of the greatest of all time in the world of eSports.
Ryu ‘Keria’ Min-seok
Keria (real name Ryu Min-seok) is a hugely important player for the T1 organization – they had the first-ever undefeated split in LCK history, and Keria was a huge part of this.
At times Keria and his teammates were so dominant that he could even experiment and play the games in a brand-new way that nobody had seen before. He’s an innovator as well as one of the most reliable and classy players in the whole game.
Bai’ 369′ Jia-Hao
369 may not have been the favorite to make this list after his split from Top Esports back in 2021.
An infamous documentary about the team criticized 369 and seemed to make the point that he was not good enough to play meta champions. However, he has gone on to prove plenty of people wrong.
He had ups and downs and also lost to Karsa, his former teammate, back in the spring of 2022, but he was able to help new team JDG make their way to the 2022 Worlds and play multiple roles in the team.
Former teammate Karsa had these harsh words to say to 369 before he left,
“You always pick Jayce and Lucian against Gnar, then you get camped by opponents Heca and Udyr. Tell me, did you ever manage to survive from the ganks?”
“Is it that hard to master Gnar in one season? Dude, you always first pick Gragas or Jayce, and you played Gragas like ****.”
369 may still have the last laugh as he proves he has got what it takes when playing on the JDG team in 2022 and beyond.
Summary
What do you think of our list? There were, undeniably, some who were unlucky not to make our list, including many players who were making some incredible money playing League of Legends.
2022 was another huge year for the sport, and 2023 promises to continue in the same way, with some huge tournaments and plenty of the names on this list thrilling us in their quest to get to the Worlds and add more to their list of eSports titles.
The number of people watching and playing League of Legends continues to grow, but these four are undeniably among the best out there and showed it in 2022.