Why NA sucks in international play

Having watched and played a lot of League for a few years now, I think I now understand why NA players have trouble competing against the rest of the world. This is just my opinion, but I think it has a lot of truth in it. I would be glad to hear back from the forums on whether you guys agree or disagree.

The biggest reason NA falls behind the rest of the world right now is meta picks. Whenever a champion(s) is FOTM, it gets played/abused at an absurd rate. This causes players to rank up due more to the champion being overly strong than the player's actual skill level. Hear me out on this one. How often do you see someone's profile (who is quickly moving up the ladder) on websites where it gives their champions played, only to see them spamming whatever champ is strongest at that time. They will have a very high win percentage on those champions that are strong, meta, OP (whatever you want to call it). However, they will have horrible win rates on the non meta picks.

If you look at the strongest region right now, Korea, (while they do play meta picks in solo queue) the ratio is MUCH lower than in NA. It is much more common and accepted for people to play the non meta champs without getting flamed (which happens way too much in NA). This causes two things to happen. One, the meta changes and different champions are going to rise and fall in power. If you are already skilled in a champion, you will really dominate once that champ becomes strong in a meta. A good example of this lately was Veigar. He was a viable champ, but probably slightly on the weak side until his latest buffs. Once he did get buffed though, the players who were great with him wrecked face to the point where you get the "OMG VEIGAR SO OP" threads popping up all over. On the other side, if you are playing champions purely due to their power level, when they finally get nerfed your win rate plummets due to the fact that you depended more on their sheer power than your actual skill level.

The second point is that playing in a queue that has a much larger pool of played champions allows you to actually learn the counterplay against all of the champions. How often do you see this in NA: A champion that had a very low pick rate gets a slight or moderate buff and then all of a sudden becomes meta because no one knows the counterplay to them, since they were basically never played before then. This doesn't really happen in Korea since they have die hard mains on champions regardless of whether they are meta or not. They will main their favorite champion thru thick and thin. This is a major reason the Koreans adjust so quickly to meta changes, they understand all the champions better from having faced them more often. Unless there is a major rework, the basic counterplay to that champion won't change with a buff.

So that's why I think NA is behind the rest of the world. Hopefully this post made sense. Let me know if there is anything that needs to be clarified. Thanks for reading.