First pick is the worst seat in champion select. You lock in blind, they get to answer you, and if your champion has a long list of bad lanes you're behind before minions spawn.
Some champions barely care. We went through every God Tier and Tier 1 pick on the solo queue tier list, counted the lanes each one actually loses, and took the three per role with the shortest list.
Champion Select
Safest First Picks
Patch 26.16First pick is the worst seat in champion select. You lock in blind, they get to answer you, and if your champion has a long list of bad lanes you're behind before minions spawn.
Some champions barely care. We went through every God Tier and Tier 1 pick on the solo queue tier list, counted the lanes each one actually loses, and took the three per role with the shortest list.
The gap between them is huge. Some champions near the top of a role don't have a single losing lane against anything you'll realistically run into. Others sitting right next to them are the underdog in most of their games. Same tier on Patch 26.16, completely different pick order.
What Counts as a Bad Matchup
A matchup only counts here if it's a champion you'll actually run into. Some off-meta pick that turns up once a month doesn't get a vote on whether a champion is safe, and letting it have one is how you end up with lists claiming Kayle hard counters half of bot lane.
The bigger cut is the second one. A lane only counts as losing if our own ranked games say so clearly, not if it's a point or so under even. Most League matchups are closer than people think, close enough that calling either side a counter is mostly wishful thinking. Once you take those out, what's left is short.
Safest First Picks: Top Lane
Sett
2 losing lanes out of 37
Singed and Renekton beat him. Nobody else does. The rest of top lane either trades evenly with him or gets run over, and he doesn't need an item spike to start doing it.
Yorick
4 losing lanes out of 37
He beats every tank and juggernaut in the role. The four who beat him back are Yone, Renekton, Sett and Irelia, all champions mobile enough to fight him without ever standing in one place. If none of those four are on the enemy team you've already won the lane.
Garen
5 losing lanes out of 37
Kayle, Tryndamere, Teemo, Vayne and Sett. Four of those five just stay out of his range, which is the only real hole in the pick. Anything that has to stand and fight him loses, and most of top lane has to stand and fight him.
Safest First Picks: Jungle
Briar
No losing matchups out of 31
Not one jungler on the board beats her. She clears fast and she wants to fight early, and nothing in the role punishes either of those often enough to matter. The safest first pick in the game right now.
Wukong
No losing matchups out of 31
Nothing in the jungle beats him either, and he gets there without ever being forced into a fight he didn't choose. Take him over Briar if you'd rather decide when the fighting starts.
Shyvana
1 losing matchup out of 31
Sylas is the only jungler she finishes behind against, and it's close enough that you won't feel robbed. Everyone else has to let her clear and then meet her at drake anyway, which is where she wants the game to be.
Safest First Picks: Mid Lane
Xerath
1 losing lane out of 31
Fizz gets on top of him and stays there. That's the only lane he loses. Everyone else in mid spends the laning phase getting hit from further away than they can hit back.
Fizz
2 losing lanes out of 31
Lissandra and Sylas can survive him. He clearly beats nineteen other mid laners, which is the widest kill list in the role, and none of them get to see him coming if you picked first.
Ahri
2 losing lanes out of 31
Fizz and Zed, and both are close enough that a decent Ahri gets through them. She wins fewer lanes outright than Fizz does, but she has more even ones than anybody in mid, so there's nothing on the board that ruins your game.
Safest First Picks: Bot Lane
Jinx
5 losing lanes out of 26
Three of those five are mages parked in bot lane rather than actual marksmen. Against the ADC pool she's close to untouchable, and she scales harder than anything else you can lock in this early.
Tristana
1 losing lane out of 26
Seraphine is the only bot laner who beats her. The other twenty-five are even or worse. You can lock Tristana in without reading a single other name in champion select.
Twitch
No losing lanes out of 26
His lane can feel awful. Run into a mage bot and a poke support and you'll spend ten minutes under tower wondering what you did to deserve it. None of that turns into a losing matchup, because Twitch doesn't have to win the lane. He leaves, turns up somewhere nobody is watching, and comes back level or ahead. Nothing in bot lane beats him.
Safest First Picks: Support
Leona
No losing lanes out of 33
Nothing in the support pool beats her. That role has more playable champions in it than any other and she doesn't have a bad game against one of them.
Thresh
No losing lanes out of 33
Also clean, and he's been the answer to first picking support for about a decade now. He does something useful whether you're ahead, behind, or nine minutes into a stalemate.
Seraphine
1 losing lane out of 33
Zyra is the only support who beats her, and half the role can't do much about her at all. She's also the one pick here that doesn't need her marksman to cooperate with anything.
Champions to Think Twice About First Picking
Every champion below is God Tier or Tier 1 as well, and a few of them are the most picked champions in their role. They're just bad things to show the enemy team early, because the answers are easy to find and there are plenty of them.
Lee Sin, Jungle
Eighteen losing matchups out of thirty-one, and two thirds of his games land in one of them. Nobody else is this far underwater while still getting picked this much.
Yone, Top or Mid
Sixteen losing lanes up top and thirteen in mid. Wherever you take him, showing him early hands the other team a free answer and lets them pick which lane to send it to.
Darius, Top
Fourteen losing lanes. He flattens the ones he wins, which is exactly why the other team will take one of the other fourteen the second they know he's coming.
Kai'Sa, Bot
Twelve losing lanes, more than any other marksman on the board. Save her for after they've committed to something.
Caitlyn, Bot
Ten losing lanes, and most of them belong to the mages sitting in bot lane. Show her early and you'll get one of those across from you.
Lux, Support
Thirteen losing lanes. Every engage support in the game gets on top of her, and there is never a shortage of engage supports.
How to Use This
Lee Sin is Tier 1 for a reason, and so is Caitlyn. These are good champions. The point is narrower than that: when you're locking in before the other team has shown you anything, a short list of bad lanes beats a high ceiling, because the ceiling is the part they can take off you.
Let somebody else spend their counterpick guessing.
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