Off-Meta pick is not the same as a troll pick.

I see often times youtube videos of people showing off new builds and roles for champions, AP Miss Fortune mid, AP Tristana top, Rumble Jungle, Yorick Jungle, Heimerdinger support, or whatever. Of course, these builds often have a disclaimer saying, "DON'T USE THIS IN RANKED!!!"

And a lot of the times I'll see a bunch of responses that are, "Omg troll pick." And sadly, sometimes there are legitimate troll picks.

But what is the difference between an off-meta pick and a troll-pick?

First thing, people will often blame the off-meta pick for the team losing, stating that it's a troll pick. Saying, "We lost because we had a Mid-Soraka." When the Soraka is going 3/5/45, with max stacks on Majais. (Never have used Soraka mid so, I'm not sure if that's possible, but I'm sure someone has done it successfully).

Sadly, people don't really know how to use the term 'troll' anymore. Often they'll just say that anything that's not considered god-tier for that role, is a troll-pick.

What exactly IS a troll? The current top definition of a troll in the Urban Dictionary is "One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument."

In this case, it would be "one who picks a champion or role with an intent of causing maximum disruption and argument in his team." For instance: Player locks in as a support but wants mid. The mid laner doesn't want to trade for support. The player is pick number 5 and says that they want mid instead. After the mid laner picks their mid-lane, the player says they don't want to support and picks a mid-lane champion and heads bot. They don't build support items. They steal CS from the ADC and since they're not supporting, they're not warding or even trying to peel for the ADC. Then, they follow the jungler around to try and steal his farm or will run down mid to steal EXP and dies to the enemy mid-laner and now no one is having fun.

This, is a troll pick. They are literally choosing something to screw over his teammates purposely in order to get them mad, to get them to argue, to get them to not enjoy their game for whatever reason. Ether because they didn't get their way, or because they... just want to watch the world burn.

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Now let's go over this again with a different selection.

Player is jungle and you see them locking in Karthus. This is a very weird pick. You ask them why they're picking Karthus and they tell you that they read an article about it and they wanted to try it out. Sounds fine enough right? You know. You see something cool and fun looking, and you wanna try it out. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. People try new roles with new champs in norms all the time!

.....then you realize you're playing ranked.

They haven't tried it out before and they're using something new AND off-meta in a ranked game. You politely ask them to not use that, because chances are they will probably not get it right and you're gonna be without a jungler. Their response? "I don't really care, because this is my smurf. So it's whatever to me." You try and talk them out of it, asking them to pick an AD champion because you already have an AP top and AP mid, yet they just flat out don't care and lock in.

Of course, since they've never tried it before, chances are they ether A. Got invaded. Or B. Probably just died at red buff.

This is a troll pick. Not because he picked Karthus jungle. But the lack of any ability to care that he was most likely going to lose, didn't care because in his mind it had no effect on him win or lose. And because he knew it was a bad pick and did it anyway, just to see what happened, when they easily could have just played a bot game or a normals.

Everyone is mad. Everyone is unhappy because they pretty much lost for free, while the Karthus player just laughs it off and Kayne Shrugs to their next match.

They have been trolled.

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Of course, let's try that one more time:

You're playing a normal game. You see someone asking, "Would you mind if I picked Karthus Jungle? I saw an article on it and I wanted to try it out to see how it works." Everyone agrees with it. The same thing happens. But there's a difference. No one is angry, no one is upset, because it's a norms and everyone kinda expected the result.

This was not a troll-pick. Even if everyone is angry and pissed and called it a troll-pick, it wasn't one. They asked if it was alright for them to use Karthus Jungle and they warned that they haven't really tried it before and still everyone said it was okay.

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Off-meta picks exist. And some of them are effective, others not so effective. But it all depends on the player and the experience. If a person is really good with Teemo Jungle but they're absolutely horrible with Master Yi and Graves... the META (Most Effective Tactic Available) would NOT be them picking Master Yi, it would be them picking Teemo.

TL;DR - Unless it's picked especially for trolling, it's not a troll-pick.

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Here's my question to you guys!

Who is your favorite off-meta pick?

Currently, my favorite is Rumble Support. :D