Who’s the best LoL player of the last 5 years?

No one is going to argue when you say Faker is the best League of Legends player of all time. But it’s been a while since the Demon King won a World Championship. Nearly seven years have passed since Faker last won Worlds, and in that time, the landscape of League esports has changed extensively. New faces have emerged across the globe; players who were once rising stars are now seasoned vets, and all the while, the GOAT has waited in the wings for another chance to win it all.

With five editions of Worlds having passed since Faker lost his first World Finals in 2017, the question arises: who is the best pro League player of the last five years if not Faker? 

Every region has brought its own candidates to the forefront of the discussion, and with dozens of players having lifted the Summoner’s Cup since Faker last did so, one of them has got to be the “best” across that timeframe. And hey, maybe it’s still Faker himself. Regardless, we’re out to answer that question.

Heading into what’s arguably the most stacked LoL World Championship ever, the debate needs to be settled before another era of pro League begins.  

Candidates for best LoL player of the last five years

Xiaohu

We can’t talk about the greatest of the last half-decade without mentioning the one player to win an international tournament in two different roles. Whether he’s in the mid lane or top lane, Xiaohu has shown mechanical brilliance, veteran experience, and, most of all, supreme consistency across his years.

He is one of the only players in League history to win three MSI championships, has won five LPL titles, and was the second player to pick up 100 international wins behind Faker. He’s only missed one Worlds since 2016 and has remained a feared competitor in the global community since. Although he has seen a few shoddy seasons, the 25-year-old star has experienced some of the greatest highs in the scene and must be respected as such.

Scout

At one time, Scout was Faker’s backup on SK Telecom. But after it became clear there was a GOAT-sized roadblock plugging up that team’s starting lineup, Scout went over to China and made a name for himself there. Scout’s meteoric rise in the LPL ultimately culminated with him lifting the Summoner’s Cup in 2021—a run that was capped off with Worlds finals MVP honors. 

Scout has reached the knockout stage at Worlds in three of the last five seasons, and this year, the one-time Edward Gaming franchise player enters Worlds with LNG Esports, with whom he is a world title contender. Should he win a world title with his second franchise this season, he’d immediately be recognized as not just the best player of the last five years but one of the most effective catalysts of all time. 

ShowMaker and Canyon

It feels almost like a cheat code to combine ShowMaker and Canyon as one entity, but their inseparability has been a trademark factor to their success. For five consecutive seasons, they’ve been the definition of consistency. It’s hard to mention either of these players without mentioning the other. 

Since 2019, ShowMaker and Canyon have appeared at every edition of the LoL World Championship, and every year they’ve gone, the duo has at least made the top eight at the tournament, winning it once and appearing in the finals twice. Each of the last four seasons, they’ve carried the Damwon organization to a quarterfinal appearance at Worlds, and we wouldn’t be surprised if they did it for a fifth straight year in 2023.

Even despite the names and faces changing around them in the lineup during certain years, it’s evident Canyon and ShowMaker are consistent factors in their franchise’s success. Few other players have been as stalwart at or near the top of the game over the last five seasons. 

Ruler

Uzi’s reign as the best AD in the world might have been cut relatively short, but a king has risen up to take his place with an iron fist. Historically, Ruler has never wavered in terms of pure mechanical greatness. Whether he’s in lane or in a game-deciding teamfight, the 24-year-old phenom is like the Baba Yaga to any teams that he faces. Since winning Worlds in 2017 with Samsung Galaxy, his career has seen some ups and downs, especially during his middling seasons with Gen.G. But even with so-so teammates, Ruler has always been one of the best in his class.

With JD Gaming, however, Ruler has become a frightening monster and the undisputed overlord of the bottom lane. Boasting destructive performances alongside a dominant JD Gaming squad, he and the rest of that star-studded roster are poised to etch their names in history by pulling off League esports’ first Grand Slam by winning both domestic and both international events in the season, immediately ending the debate. Ruler could also become one of the only players to top all that off with a gold medal at the Asian Games.

Maybe it’s still Faker? 

Despite not winning any World Championships since 2016, there’s still a case to be made in Faker’s favor. It’s one thing to narrow this discussion down to the scene’s most consistent title winners (something he hasn’t been for a while), but if we talk about the players that bring the most raw value to their team, Faker immediately re-enters the discussion. 

This season alone, it was evident how much value Faker brought to the T1 lineup. When he went down with an arm injury, missing the entire month of July as a result, his team went from an LCK playoff lock to a team that was in danger of falling out of the postseason picture. T1 lost seven of the eight matches they were forced to play without Faker, but were 11-4 in the summer in the matches he did play. You could argue Faker’s presence makes and breaks T1, as they go from a World Championship contender to a borderline last-place team without him in the lineup. Despite regression from his prime, Faker is still that dude, considering T1 cannot function without him. 

Even with that in mind, though, you could make a similar case for other players we mentioned earlier. Imagining where Dplus KIA would be without ShowMaker or Canyon is a scary thought, and picturing an LNG team that doesn’t have Scout in the mid lane is relatively bleak. Not only do those players make their team better, but they proved it by winning World Championships at some point in the last five years—unfortunately, Faker hasn’t. That’s not to say he’s washed up, but if you want to be considered the best player in the world over a certain period of time, you need to be beating the world during that period of time. 

If we were to expand this conversation to revolve around the best player of the last 10 years, Faker would be on top of the mountain and miles higher than anyone else climbing it. However, the fact that many of his international titles were frontloaded at the beginning of that 10-year stretch is what made us want to explore this topic in the first place. A large reason why we consider Faker the GOAT is because of his ability to win three world titles in four years—no one has done that since, and it’s why he’s still the greatest. But when you shorten the scope, compelling cases for other names in the game’s history rise to prominence. 

What is fair, though, is that so many other teams would kill to have the results Faker has had over the last five years. 

Tournaments in which Faker finished at least top four since 2019

Faker has finished in either the top four or as a runner-up in 10 different domestic and international tournaments over the last five years. If he and T1 even flipped one or two important series at any point during that span, there’s a chance this piece wouldn’t have even been written and he’d still be the unquestionable best player of not just the mid-2010s, but the early 2020s, too. 

It all gets settled at Worlds 

No matter who you think is the best player of the last five years, the debate is going to be settled at this year’s World Championship. The entire crop of ShowMaker, Xiaohu, Ruler, Scout, and even Faker are all arguably one Summoner’s Cup away from standing atop the field and pushing themselves into a class of their own. Should any of the players mentioned in this piece win it all this year, it becomes clear they’re the best player of the last five years, especially if championships are the biggest measurement of greatness. 

To make the case more intriguing, there won’t be any boundaries separating the greatest teams from playing each other in the early stages of the Worlds main event, considering the Swiss format will allow teams with similar records to play each other at any point. We could see the world’s best squads face off early and often at Worlds, settling a clear hierarchy of pro LoL’s best modern players. And after those faceoffs, we’ll be sure to have an answer to our original question. 

The LoL World Championship kicked off on Oct. 9 with the play-in stage, and all of the players mentioned in this piece will get their tournament runs underway when the Swiss stage kicks off on Oct. 19.