Ahri ban rates now twice as high after the Faker skin release

The Immortalized Legend Ahri skin is finally out, and it's affecting Ahri players all over the world. The player base has banded together to ban the champion in protest of the skin's steep price, dramatically raising the Ahri ban rate globally.

The Immortalized Legend Ahri skin to commemorate the induction of superstar Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok into the Hall of Legends is the cause of all this hubbub. From the time when Riot announced the price of the skin (hint: not cheap!) leading up to the release, the player base has been plotting a protest. This comes in the form of banning the champion.

All the data below come from LoLalytics from June 11 (before patch 14.12 shipped) until June 13 (the day the skin went live).

Before the skin was released, Ahri's ban rate ranged from 8-10%. Given that she is a relatively powerful champion in the current meta, this was not too bad.

The story changed once the skin went live with League of Legends patch 14.12. Her average ban rate jumped from 8.41% to 20.58% globally across all ranks, in under 48 hours. This is a 244% increase! She still isn't the most banned champion though - that spot belongs to Shaco who's banned in almost a third of games.

The rank bracket that cared the most was Emerald, with ban rates going from 8.64% to 23.73%. The ones that joined the protest least were players in Diamond+, going from 6.26% to 18.22%, marking the lowest ban rate across ranks.

The Ahri ban rate in EU West went from 10.01% to 28.31%. In North America, it was 10.1% to 26.91%. Meanwhile, players in the South Korea server had the least with a measly 9.94% ban rate after the skin was released. Before this, Ahri's ban rate was 5.55%.

Statistics are unfortunately not available for the Chinese server. Based on these numbers, EU West bans her the most. They are the server with the highest jump in ban rates (18.31% change, 183% increase) and the most bans.

Despite all of this, Ahri is seeing more total games. She's already not bad in the meta as a mobile mage and the Faker Ahri skin is also boosting her popularity. From being in 9.5% of games, she became more common after the skin was released with 11.71% presence. Now, she is the 9th most pick champion, but nowhere close to the top: Caitlyn in 21.67% of games.