IPL5... not quite done yet...

It's down to the final 3 at this point with Taipei Assassins and Fnatic about to kick off a game to decide who will play World Elite. The game continues to show how well balanced it is. Here's the relevant numbers

66 Total Champions played
55 Champions with at least one win
48 Champions played at least twice
34 Champions played more than 5 times

That's ALOT of diversity. I did notice a couple interesting things that are worth noting.

Ezreal is, by far, the most popular AD carry. He has been played 41 times with a record of 24/17 (58.5%). What's really interesting is that he's not been banned even once. That's really interesting. The next highest played, unbanned character is Caitlyn with 17 plays.

But that actually dovetailes into a really interesting point, the most commonly played AD carries (Ezreal, Vayne, Corki, Caitlyn, Kog'Maw) have been banned a grand total of 9 times with 8 of those being Vayne bans (1 Corki ban floated in there).

AD Carry is, far and away, the LEAST banned "position". Which is interesting to me because it seems like one that you could fairly easily push someone out of their comfort zone with. If you're first picking, Ban 3 AD carries and then pick your AD carry of choice. Your opponent will have to slip down to something that, hopefully, they're not as comfortable with. Maybe the perception is that they're all pretty similar and Ezreal having the low cooldown excape makes him preferable. But it's interesting, I think.

Diana continues to be the most influential character. She's been banned or picked in all but 4 games so far with 40 bans. She's dead even 12/12 but at least 5 of those losses were in games where the skill differential between the two teams was quite high.

Lee Sin has also been ludicrously important. And, unlike Diana, his win % is unbelievable. He's been banned 39 times and picked 21 with a 17/4 win/loss ratio (81%).

Some really interesting "losing" characters so far:
Lulu: 15/22
Jax: 4/17
Orianna: 8/13
Dr. Mundo: 4/11

Lulu is especially interesting. She's the second most played champion (behind Ezreal) and has struggled alot.

There are a few characters that have been banned disproportionately to their pick frequency. For example, Twisted Fate has been banned 26 times and picked 11 (meaning that he was bypassed 30 times) and Anivia who's been 14 times and only picked 7. In the case of Anivia, it has everything to do with the fact that CLG EU and TPA both have REALLY good Anivia players. So it was an auto-ban against them and not really banned against anyone else.

Finally, if you've watched the games, you're seeing a subtle shifting of the meta here towards the end of season 2. It's becoming increasingly frequent for Red to pick bruisers who can handle 1v2 matchups and then do a lane switch. The advantage of this is that the red buff is then next to your AD carry. It's worth noting that the blue team has won 60% of the matches at this point. Given the rough symmetry of the board, that's startling. I'd offer three possible explanations:

1) The standard team comp (1-1-2 + jungler with AD Carry and Support on the bottom) is not optimal for the red team. Because they have their AD carry so far from the red buff, it results in a disadvantage in lane.

2) Top red and bottom blue are the easiest ganking spots, particularly early on before wards get fully placed. The path through the tri-bush is much easier to take then the crescent bush on the other side (it allows ganks when the champion hasn't pushed much. But a 2v1 gank is better than a 3v2 gank. So the "easiest" gank for blue to make is the 2v1 top lane while the "easiest" gank for red is the 3v2 on bottom lane (and you see both of these alot). So blue gets a slight advantage here.

3) Camera perspective. My brother feels like the camera in conjunction with 3/4ths view combines to give a disadvantage to the red team. I can see this a little bit actually (I think he's overstating the issue). But I do find myself constantly centering my camera a slightly down and to the left of my champion when I'm on red whereas it feels about right dead center when I'm on blue. I'd be curious if anyone else things there's anything to this.

While it's entirely possible that a perfectly balanced map (50/50 chance to win from either side) would produce a 40/27 result through a tournament, it's somewhat rare (occurring about 20% of the time). It's something to keep in mind when watching future tournaments. Note, even if it persists, it doesn't necessarily mean that the map is unbalanced. It could mean that the current meta-game has not evolved sufficiently.