Hello, all, my name's DefectivDetectiv, and I haven't played League since a week or two before the Mage Update. I've still followed it a little, but don't understand a lot of the stuff. Can anybody let me in on what I need to know? i.e. what champs are OP right now, what to do with all of the new Dragons, and basically the latest meta stuff. If anybody could do that, I'd love you forever ^.^
Wow, that's a big task you're asking for...
Meta champs: NerfPLZ is a good resource for playing catch-up. They have 3 series of articles for each patch, just read the most recent ones: optimal bans, meta picks, power picks. The difference between the last 2 is a bit complicated, I'll let you read their explanation directly:
Normal dragons: Fire is good for big messy team-fights, air is good for rotations/split-push, water for poke, earth for split-push/objective control. Determine what your team wants to do (if you have Malph/MF/Amumu/Yasuo, probly team-fights ; if you have Tryndamere/Zed/Yi, probably split-push) and what the enemy team wants to do. If the current/next-to-spwan drake is good for your team or the enemy team, it's more important than before to contest it. If it's not good, you don't really care, just take it if it's free.
Elder dragon: Dragons that spawn after 35 min will be Elder. Dragon already spawned before doesn't transform at 35 min, only the spawn counts. Basically, it's like old 5th stack, so quite important. You don't need to have acquired previous stacks, though, it's just based on the time of the game. However, it's more powerful if you have acquired more stacks, so it's still good to control all the drakes if you plan to go into late game until Elder spawns. Take care, he's not really strong, but he's really durable, you can't rush it like a normal drake.
Rift Herald: now, it's a one-man buff that is only active if you are isolated (think the "Assassin" T2 mastery), and that lasts 20 min, even if you die. Pretty good if you wanna split-push, much less if you wanna group. If your Top-laner is AD and winning, try to snatch it and have him split-push alone while you group on the other side of the map. Either he will take the whole lane, or if they send more than 1 guy to stop him, you can use the 4v3 on the other side of the map.
Itemization has changed a lot, especially the early components if you are AP. Lost Chapter is your generic AP+Mana and builds into Morello with 20%CDR. If you wanna scale into late game, Tear is probly the best. Chalice is now a sustain-item for supportive champions (Karma, Lulu, Oriana, ...), don't take it on any damage focus mage. If you wanna trade a lot during laning phase, new Catalyst is great. And new Hextech Revolver is good for all-ins, and builds into a set of items with actives (mobility, AoE CC, targeted CC, all with a bit of damage too); it's a bit strange though, because 2 of them have defensive stats and the last one has AD, so Revolver is a good first buy for AP Assassins, but its upgrades are not; maybe I'm missing something... Abyssal and Zhonya have been re-focused as defensive/utility items: less AP, but CDR instead, and Abyssal also gives a lot of MR now. On the defense side, Spirit gives more HP, Banshee more MR; Spirit is better overall and more slot-efficient, so only take Banshee if you really need the protection against an AP that snowballed heavily in early game.
Itemization for AS-based champs has also changed a lot, but I'm a bit lost myself, so I don't have any good advice.
