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This is a controversial topic apparantly. Let's be clear, measuring KDA as how much one impacts a game is not the best way to do it. But it might genuinely be the least biased one that is at least measurable. You obviously can't measure a roles impact based on its winrate in a game that has a static role count.
For example, a support karma running around speeding up people for assists in a winning game, obviously doesn't impact the game as much as the assists of an ashe or jhin locking someone up at long range with CC. And the death of solo laners are generally much more damaging for your team than the death of a support or botlaner because of the xp discrepancy. Stats are from 59 ranked soloq games, 20 on each server (1 ignored due to level 1 afk) of the #1 ladder player on NA/EUW/KR.
Average K/D/A by role on Losses
| Toplane | Jungle | Midlane | Botlane | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1/6.8/3.8 | 5.5/6.9/4.9 | 4.2/6.4/4.9 | 4/6.4/5.2 | 1.4/6.6/8.9 |
Average K/D/A by role in Wins
| Toplane | Jungle | Midlane | Botlane | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.8/4.2/7.5 | 10/3.3/9.5 | 8.3/3.6/8.8 | 7/4.1/8.2 | 2.7/4/17.1 |
The first easy to spot takeaway is the massive impact the jungle and midlane roles have between their win and loss stats. These roles nearly double their already high killcount, as well as lowers their death rate to values drastically lower than the other 3 roles. Teams where junglers and/or midlaners have low death rates are much more likely to win.
Now, technically theres cause and effect, one could argue what comes first with every stat here: does the games outcome affect the roles stats, or does the stats role affect the games outcome? It's not the most interesting topic to discuss back and fourth on every role and every stat, the only clearcut point I'll make on that is that supports as a role tend to piggy back much harder on free assists that probably aren't as impactful as the assists of other roles.
Relative stat improvements in wins compared to losses (average of individual stat % improvements)
| Toplane | Jungle | Midlane | Botlane | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 82% improvement | 100 % improvement | 85 % improvement | 63% improvement | 88 % improvement |
With this comparison we can see that toplane isn't as weak as you'd initially think, it has the same KD difference as botlane (5), but the relative improvement is still significantly higher. And it's not incredibly surprising that toplane doesn't improve as much as other roles since it isn't as much a team role as other roles. Despite that it still beats out botlane, and somehow manages to add considerably more raw assists on average (3.7 to just 3), almost making botlane the role with the least assists overall, even though it had the 2nd highest assist count after support on losses. Ironically, when teams win botlane stats improve the least of any role. Despite being this be all end all "teamfighting role" that many make it out to be.
Support probably also doesn't improve as much as this table would suggest, if we removed the kill improvement (almost 100 %) it would only sit on 79 % stat improvement, seeing as kills for supports are generally the least unindicative stat for how a game is going, and can even be seen as a drawback given a lot of scenarios.
Now, if there's a big problem with this analysis (except 59x2 sample size games, which I don't consider too bad for 10 stats per games makes 590 individual recorded KDAs). Its that two of the top players happened to be junglers, I wouldn't be surprised if that had tilted the stats a decent chunk with the insane KDAs we are seeing, but there was 78 recorded jungle stats not belonging to these two players compared to the 40. So its 1/3 rather than 2/3 jungle games as one might initially think.
I'll also mention that jungle is still an obvious role that gets curbstomped when sh*ts bad, and can snowball in winning games (even if enemy junglers more skilled). But this applies for any role, one could easily make arguments for every roles deathstat, adcs get asssassinated easily, melee bruisers are at higher risk of death in many fights, supports explode if someone looks at them funny, etc. Every role is snowbally, both on losses and wins, the only sure-fire I wanted to add on the topic is that I highly doubt supports are more impactful than midlaners on 2.7/4/17 stats compared to a midlaner on 8.3/3.6/8.8 in your average standard game. Yet it is technically the average stats of winning supports and midlaners respectively. I don't really have a huge conclusion, I'd rather see the subreddits discussion if this post gains any sort of traction.
Stats were taken from the 20 last ranked games of the #1 ladder players on NA/EUW/KR in that order (except 1 afk game). This means theres 59x2 recorded stats since its for wins and losses specifically. Some games were difficult to gague because there are roleswaps (irelia players...) but I'm pretty sure I nailed all of them correctly, had to look at runes/replays for a couple to make sure. I did not make all raw calculations there or in the post because formatting, but everything necessary to check should be there. I expect tons of great silver-plat takes, thanks for reading.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1snxI3FjjNNs0gJAH_MyZFpfRfKdYNvg5JRa8eUtF_fA/edit?usp=sharing
Ladder players https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Sn1per1 https://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=Raiden+Shogun+C2 https://www.op.gg/summoner/userName=7698
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