How to Play and Win at League of Legends DFS

During these trying times, with almost no DFS sports to play (not including you, Turkish Soccer League), there remains one constant, and, fingers crossed, it looks like it’s here to stay. With DraftKings offering some solid League Of Legends content, we here at Stokastic bring you a rundown on how to approach League of Legends DFS.

What is League of Legends?

Just over five years ago, League of Legends DFS or LoL DFS was born. It was, and still is an extremely niche DFS community, one I believe others can find value in by just learning just a few basics. I’ll take you through what I’ve learned so far, and break it down by comparing general roster construction in LoL.

LoL DFS Scoring and Strategy

As you can see above, LoL DFS uses a showdown mode style of scoring, placing emphasis on a captain which receives 1.5x points. Unlike other DFS showdown slates, you don’t have the flexibility to select any player you want and must build within the constraints of the five positions of LoL. 

Scoring in LoL is pretty straightforward. You get the most points for kills (three) and assists (two). At least four positions in a game will have a creep score (CS) that will have any meaning. For each 50 creeps a player kills, you will receive one point. Certain roles will have higher CS totals than others. Deaths lose you a point, but very rarely is somebody going to die enough to have it be impactful. 

Stacking is pivotal in LoL . If you’ve played MLB or NHL, you’re probably very familiar with stacking. Stacking is finding two/three teams and playing only players from those teams in hopes their teams win big. LoL is no different. You’re most often going to want to select two teams who you think will score the most and stack away. Even when stacking two teams, you can have a multitude of different builds. 

Keeping with roster construction, when stacking two teams, you’re going to have a 4/3 split. This means you’ll have four players from one team and three from the other. Most of the time you’re going to want your captain in the group of four, but you can get unique lineup constructions by not doing that. You’re going to want to look at rostering mid laners and ADC as your captain a fair bit of the time as they typically score the most and this allows you to get two of them in your roster. 

LoL DFS Roster Construction and Player Types

LoL has five roles: TOP, JNG, MID, ADC and SUP. These five roles all provide a different function for the team and I’ll provide other sports examples as to what to expect a good chunk of the time.

TOP: Top laners function similarly to third-down backs, guys who hit seventh or eighth in the lineup or are on the second power play. They’re unlikely to be the slate’s highest scorers and oftentimes have lower floors. They will usually be the fourth-most expensive player on the team and score as such frequently.

JNG: Junglers are a weird role. They can impact every lane early game and look to facilitate objective control for their team (Barons, Dragons). Teams utilize junglers differently, so if there’s a team that really lets their jungler loose, it can be very good for DFS. Junglers are most like tight ends, lead-off or two-hole hitters or your first line power play defender. They will most often be the third-highest-priced players on a team. Junglers can be the highest-scoring players on a slate because of the variance of teams, but don’t expect it.

MID: Mid laners are similar to centers in hockey, running backs or receivers in football and the middle of the lineup in baseball. This role can score. Mid laners are provided a lot of ability to score most games. Looking to roster mid laners as captains is both good from a scoring perspective and can be unique in situations where you could instead get two ADCs. 

ADC: These are the big hitters, the Pat Mahomeses and Mike Trouts of LoL DFS. Sure, they might not always be the teams highest scorer, but you expect going into any match these individuals will be the ones given the most opportunity to score big. If you can get a roster construction with an ADC captain that you like then fire away. 

SUP: These are the babysitters, the scrappy third liners, bottom of the order hitters and third receivers. They can have their day and score well, but you’re not expecting this role to carry your lineup. You want your SUP to not actively hurt your lineup as this is easily the role that has the most negative scores in LoL DFS. This role correlates the most with the ADC as they are in the same lane together at the beginning of the match. If you can find a good ADC, most of the time you’ll want the SUP with him. One way to be different is not stacking your ADC and SUP.

Esports are not like traditional sports. There’s not a place you can easily go to see starting rosters on any given day and the game changes every few weeks. Play styles change, players can be substituted and there are a lot of unexpected results. All of this is why I love LoL DFS. You never know what you’re going to get in LoL until the teams are locked in and ready to hit the rift.