After leaks and weeks of testing on the Public Beta Environment (PBE), League of Legends’ newest champion Bel’Veth finally hit live servers in patch 12.11.
With countless clips on social media showcasing her mobility and uncanny ability to 1v4 the enemy team in the wake of patch 12.10’s Durability Update, she was believed to be overpowered and a true monster in the jungle.
More recently, Redditor u/bobek2137 posted a clip in the League of Legends subreddit, showing how they almost ended the game just 12 minutes in on Bel’Veth, thanks to her army of Voidlings and the Rift Herald, which broke through the top lane turret, inhibitor, and one Nexus turret.
However, her win rate doesn’t appear to reflect her supposedly overpowered nature. According to U.GG, her win rate at high Elo from Platinum rank and above is negative at 38.85% at the time of writing.
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Is Bel’Veth a high skill cap champion, or just massively underpowered?
Out of 48 champions played in the jungle role, Bel’Veth is currently ranked last in 48th place.
She has a decent 2.1% pick rate – higher than the least popular champions that hover between 0.5% and 1%, but still much lower than Volibear’s 6.4%.
Her pick rate is, of course, influenced by her high 10.4% ban rate. Players in ranked games tend not to trust their teammates with new champions they’re not familiar with, nor are they willing to risk losing LP against one they’re not comfortable playing against.
Content creator and analyst Nick “LS” De Cesare hasn’t found success on her either. He only managed a 30% win rate, citing problems with her slow jungle clear, poor ability to duel other champions, and long ability cooldowns.
He also doesn’t believe that Bel’Veth will be able to 1v1 any champion in the jungle even if they’re both on equal ground, he said in a stream highlight clip.
What’s more, since Bel’Veth’s passive grants her bonus attack speed by taking down large monsters, she’s pigeonholed into jungle and can’t be played mid or top lane even though she is a hard scaling late game champion.
“The other thing about Bel’Veth that is really bizarre is she doesn’t benefit from recipe items the same way other champions do,” LS added. “She’s extremely dependent on the completion of the item itself. There’s no other champion in the game that even comes close to mirroring this type of problem.”
This means that the benefits of equipping component items on her aren’t as effective as on champions like Kayn or Qiyana, who return to spawn to buy two Long Swords.
League of Legends players should also note that Bel’Veth’s clear is rather mechanically challenging. In order to full clear at 3:15 and secure the Scuttle Crab, you’ll need to consistently cancel her auto attack animations with Void Surge (Q).
To learn how to do this, watch Junhana, a Korean Challenger player, perfectly complete her first jungle clear.
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