Why I Love Unorthodox Picks: The Off-Meta Manifesto

The Off-Meta Manifesto

I’m sure you’ve heard this or said something along the lines yourself: “WTF Janna mid?! Are you serious?” Yet what many players don’t realize is that Janna was once considered a meta pick for mid lane when you wanted to stalemate the lane and just use her Q to easily clear waves over and over. Even Soraka mid was selected in the LCS by C9 Hai in 2014 prior to her rework. Or my personal experience of using a Trundle support in season 5 several times got flamed IN NORMALS for the majority of my games yet having solid success, then a few weeks later the undefeated Fnatic team pulls it out to great effect in some of their matches. I even remember before Gangplank’s rework having multiple 30 or 40 assist games because of his E providing a solid AD and MS boost to yourself and your teammates, yet you’d always find doubters.

Why Off-Meta Players are Doubted

One of the worst stigmas in the game is that off-meta players were usually just guys in ranked who were bored or frustrated or didn’t get what they wanted in terms of their role. Much of the time its true, even World Champion support Mata was fined pretty solidly for not taking a competitive pro game seriously with his Jayce support pick in a best of 3 series. Now if the Jayce served a purpose to his team’s comp it would make sense but it was obvious it was done with the intent of just ‘throwing in the towel’ and messing around after his team lost the previous game pretty hard.

But then there was AdellaideSkyhart, a frozen smite Singed support who used a very elaborate strategy in how he would win his games. This strategy involved leaving his ADC at several points early game, with intent of setting the enemy jungle behind and his ad carry to deal with the opposition of two opponents. No win rate is 100% but this often times incensed his teammates to the point of multiple reports and eventually led him to facing a permaban from Riot Games which sparked a lot of controversy: On one hand his strategy was unorthodox and netted him a solid amount of success, on the other it pressured his team to conforming to a strategy that much of the time played around how he would impact the game and not themselves. If he won the game then great, much deserved LP but if he lost he faced the scornful retaliation of frustrated teammates who played with an unusual player they didn’t know how to work with.

So the question is, when is it ok to try an unorthodox pick/strategy and when should you just go with something that is tried and true? Its honestly a murky subject. When you have diamond level adc LeBlanc’s and Ahri’s outperforming Gold level Katarina mains it can be tricky to determine what is viable and what is garbage so to speak.

Why We Off-Meta

The biggest reason of a serious off-meta player as to why we are willing to try to make these unorthodox picks work is that often times players will be facing it for the first time or haven’t faced it in years and that was probably in a forgettable norms game. Before it gained massive popularity the Yi/Taric combo absolutely crushed the Chinese servers boasting a staggering 85% win rate, even at this time it is still a prevalent strategy and has earned Taric mid a 61.32% win rate at the time of this writing with a 1.54% pick rate. That may not seem like a lot but he is getting selected ahead of mid-laners such as annie, lux, and mordekaiser. And if you don’t know the strategy behind it, just look it up, its pretty well known. Discoveries like that is what I live for with this game. Finding something unorthodox that catches your opponent off-guard, nets you a large chunk of victories, and defies the expectations of what is the best way to win a game. Albeit this occurs with a duo strategy, even finding something that is effective as a soloist is pretty cool nonetheless (and yes I won't try this in ranked until there is significant reason to believe it will work).

Off-Meta Etiquette

If you ever have an unorthodox pick, you’re likely to face more scrutiny than the average pick. I try to at least have north of 15-20 games with at least 60ish% win rate in norms before I’d consider bringing it to a ranked game. Even then it pays to have critical thinking in how that support would impact the game, very much like any other support.

If you have a strategy that is off-meta that is probably a much more delicate road to navigate. Even when AdellaideSkyhart clearly stated what his intentions were and had pretty good stats to back it up (around 70% WR I think) anytime he was on the 30% receiving end of defeat he was likely to get reported. For this it’d probably be a good thing to make sure something like this is known ahead of time. If the vast majority of your teammates are not for it then it is probably best not to implement it unless you’re willing to take a huge risk.

In the end we all enjoy this game for different reasons, I do play meta picks somewhat often (mostly climbed with Karma and Yuumi last year), but I also like to throw in my Heimer support or even Ziggs/Pantheon if the matchup or opposing team comp works for me. I am serious about the ranked grind but the occasional dark horse makes the ride a little less rough.