Movistar KOI locked in Vayne for their AD carry Supa in their do-or-die match against Fnatic in Worlds 2025. Why? “For Uzi,” said Supa.
MKOI AD carry David "Supa" Martínez García locked in Vayne to save their Worlds run in the Swiss Stage of the League of Legends 2025 World Championship. For EU fans, it was an unfortunate day as MKOI had to team-kill fellow region reps Fnatic, but League fans were treated to a Vayne pick in the decisive game 3 of the match. When prompted about the pick, Supa's answer was simple: it was for Uzi.
Supa's Vayne in Worlds 2025
MKOI locked in Vayne for their AD carry after seeing four picks from Fnatic: Azir, Ezreal, Trundle, and support Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle's Rell. They had already locked Braum on B3, and Vayne B4 as a response to Rell R4 was creative but risky on MKOI's part.
In a bubble, Vayne's interactions with Rell greatly favor her. Rell wants to Crash Down on enemies and get up close and personal with the knock-up. Vayne can reliably cancel both Crash Down and the run-up from Mount Up with her Condemn, so this favors her.
Supa piloted Vayne incredibly well, playing around her invisibility during skirmishes and even repelling a dive on him in mid. By 15 minutes, Supa was already 4/1 and had a 1.1k gold lead against his counterpart.
He ended the game 8/1/11 on Vayne, and made Fnatic the first team out of Worlds 2025 (not counting the play-ins stage with Invictus Gaming).
"We're in China, so it's for Uzi."
In the post-match interview, Supa was asked about his rationale behind the Vayne pick by the host, Candice. He responded that it was partly to honor the legendary Jian "Uzi" Zihao.
"I mean... first, we are in China, so I need to make it for Uzi," Supa said, drawing loud cheers from the crowd. Even Candice thanked him for the gesture. "I can't lose in China with Vayne, no?"
Uzi was known for having Vayne as his signature pick. In fact, he was the second inductee to the Hall of Legends and received a Vayne skin in his honor.
Vayne's professional presence throughout the years
Before Worlds 2025, Supa last played Vayne at the SuperLiga Summer Playoffs in 2023 as the AD carry for Movistar Riders against BISONS ECLUB. Unlike against Fnatic, this game was a loss.
As a matter of fact, Supa has a negative win rate on Vayne. He has won on the champion three times, including the FNC win, and has four losses.
Meanwhile, the last player to play Vayne in a professional, tier 1 league was actually Upset at the LEC 2025 Summer Playoffs against GIANTX. Fnatic won this game, which became a contributing factor to their qualification for Worlds 2025.
As for the international stage, PSG Talon top laner Huang "Azhi" Shang-Jhih brought Vayne out in the play-in stage of Worlds 2024 against Pain Gaming, which resulted in a victory. Vayne was a prominent pick in the top lane last year. She was played as an answer to K'Sante and was quite effective at it. In MSI 2024, Vayne won six out of eight games, all against K'Sante.
Some players bring her out as a pocket pick, but the last time she was in the main Worlds stage was in 2020, where then-FlyQuest mid laner Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage picked her into Lev "Nomanz" Yakshin's Kassadin. This resulted in a win, and PowerOfEvil was 11/1/2 by the end of the game.
You may have noticed that Vayne has been more active in the other lanes than bot. The most recent AD carry Vayne game was by Chiu "Doggo" Tzu-Chuan for Beyond Gaming against Hanwha Life in the Worlds 2021 play-in stage. Unfortunately, this resulted in the loss. The last player to win on Vayne ADC was FunPlus Phoenix' Lin "Lwx" Wei-Xiang, who did it twice on Worlds 2019. FPX would go on to win this Worlds and Lwx chose Vayne for his Worlds skin.
The most recent time that Uzi played Vayne in Worlds was against SK Telecom T1 in the Worlds 2017 Semifinals, against Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok's Tristana. Uzi ended the game deathless at 6/0/3 and drove RNG to victory. Unfortunately, the match would still go to SKT, and this would be the last time we see Uzi on the international stage.
Vayne in your solo queue games
In League of Legends patch 25.20, Vayne is enjoying a winrate of ~52% in games Emerald+ worldwide. This places her as one of the better AD carries, but her pick rate is still relatively low. When compared to more popular marksmen like Jinx, Ashe, and Kai'Sa, Vayne is being picked about half (or in Kai'Sa's case, 25%) as much.
She wasn't touched at all in the Worlds patch, so it makes sense that her pick rate and winrate haven't really moved in the past few updates. As a matter of fact, the last (meaningful) buff that she got was in patch 14.22 last year, which gave her slightly increased AD from her Ultimate. In patch 25.17, she did get a buff on her Silver Bolts, but only its damage against monsters and no interactions against champions were touched.
Will we see another Vayne pick in Worlds? Perhaps, especially since these off-meta pocket picks have proven themselves effective under the right circumstances. We already saw an Anivia game courtesy of Rasmus "Caps" Winther — keep an eye out for more unexpected picks in Worlds 2025 after Vayne.
