Rise of the Early Game AD Bruisers?

I Sushi I·1/10/2017, 7:06:10 AM·4 votes·777 views

As a top-laner who also enjoys support and generally plays utility/supportive champions and roles, let me just say right now: The current League meta sucks. Now, of course, everything I'm about to say might be biased and it might be only from my perspective. But look at the top 5 pick rates for top and jungle for d+ as of right now In case you're too lazy to click the link:

Top: Riven, Darius, Poppy, Jayce, Yasuo Jungle: Lee Sin, Vi, Kha'Zix, Hecarim, Graves

And this is only for diamond and above. This gets worse the lower the elo. Every single champion listed above can deal out a disgusting amount of attack damage in the early game, allowing for unending snowball and minimizing chances for comebacks. Is that inherently bad? Debatable, but the fact that this makes the meta centered around early kill pressure and destroys any opportunity for counterplay after two or three kills is ridiculous. The only people on that list getting any sort of changes is Lee Sin, who's getting the insane damage removed from his ult. The league community keep complaining about things like Camille and Yasuo being anti-fun. It's because they completely obliterate the shred of hope left for a team to win if they play they're cards right while behind. The fact that the entire meta is like this right now just makes for gameplay that isn't enjoyable and makes me frustrated because if I play other champions top lane that prefer scaling before initiating fights, like Gangplank and Kennen, I am UNDOUBTEDLY going to feed. Does that make me bad at League of Legends? Maybe. But I made it to Gold in season 6, and now every game feels like I'm bronze. SOMETHING happened between these two seasons where top and jungle turned into early game fiestas where there's a total of 20 kills in the game by five minutes.

I don't like it. And honestly, neither should you. Because the reasoning for Yasuo and Camille having the kits that they do (as justified by Trinimortal and Gbay99, respectively) is that if they had any parts of their kits removed, they would just fall apart as champions. If we use this mentality to justify the strength of early game champions in general, we set up a dangerous precedent that implies that Riot should just baby every player in the game and spoon-feed them the ability to get kills.

So for solutions, I'll admit I don't have that many. Maybe the diver rework should come sooner than later. But I think Riot should take another look at where they want to steer the game and whether or not they want to retain not only champion diversity, but gameplay diversity as well.

3 Comments

Critmaster Garen1/10/2017, 11:00:48 AM1 votes

{quoted}

Top: Riven, Darius, Poppy, Jayce, Yasuo

there are as many bruisers as tanks on that list. darius and poppy. yasuo and riven are skirmishers and pretty much always played, unless theyre nerfed to garbage. same for lee.

besides that, its probably a result of how snowbally games in general are right now. blame turret fist blood.

ømg1/10/2017, 8:12:58 PM1 votes

That's for Plat+, not Diamond+.

Also, different regions play different champions: http://www.op.gg/champion/statistics. KR is stricter when it comes to adhering to the meta. Less Rivens and Yasuos, more Poppies and Maokais. Riven and Yasuo are extremely rare picks at the KR challenger elo (http://www.op.gg/statistics/champion/ -> Graph Type: Win Rate -> League: Challenger -> sort by Games Played to see where Riven and Yasuo stand in terms of popularity). There are no challenger Riven mains in KR. Meanwhile in NA we have Revenge, Adrian, and viper.

GP is on the weaker side right now but still viable. GP is bad unless you're experienced with him, just like how a non-Riven main will suck at Riven or a non-Yasuo main playing Yasuo will go 0-10. You need good barrel placement and mechanics to be on par with other carries. Being able to phantom barrel, meaning chain with only 1 barrel present should be a basic skill. Kennen is still very viable and much easier to play. Kennen does not need to scale before initiating team fights.