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How to Break the Meta Intelligently

mi ramfan·4/27/2015, 10:05:30 PM·266 votes·23,165 views

We see posts all the time on Gameplay and Balance about how stupid the meta is, how it's defined by adcs, etc etc etc. A lot of these posters are raging at the meta for even existing, and to those people, I have only one thing to say:

http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbwniwC0do1qh2o7zo5_r1_250.gif

There is a right and wrong way to break the meta, and you can win when breaking the meta. The rules we've outlined for ourselves for picks and bans are not mandatory, and can be violated successfully. However, you can't just go "ROW ROW FUCK THE META" and expect to win. You need to have a strategic plan for why your strategy will beat the meta instead of breaking the meta just to break it.

##Know Thine Enemy

Before you can break the meta, you have to know both what a metagame is, and why League's meta is the way it is.

A metagame is any game as it is played and strategized by the players within the existing rules of the game. Instead of a set of rules, a metagame is a collection of strategies to win developed by players over the years. Multiple strategies can exist within any given metagame at any time. For example, in Chess, if white plays 1. e4, the professional meta would probably consist of 1. ...c5, 1. ...e5, and 1. ...e6.

http://physics.aps.org/assets/d8dffbea-2d12-423e-992a-74b97e7f6e4e/e97_1.png The opening meta of Chess

By the same token, there's a champion selection meta in League of Legends. Very loosely speaking, a team on patch 5.7 will usually consist of 1 ranged AD carry, 1 burst mage or assassin, two tanks, and a fifth, non-farming filler champion (usually a support or a tank). Also included in the "meta" is lane placement, usually with 1 champion top lane, 1 champion mid lane, two champions bot lane, and one champion in the jungle. This strategy has generally been considered to be most optimal over the past 4-5 years.

So with that in mind, how can you beat the most optimal strategy in the game? Simple: even the most dominant character or strategy still has weaknesses that can be exploited. For a more relatable example, consider Fox in competitive Melee.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/em3va1flcX8/hqdefault.jpg There's so much more to competitive Smash than this

Fox has a highly favorable matchup spread that lists him as having an advantage against every other character in the game except Falco, Marth, and Samus; there are many jokes within the Smash community about how Fox is the strongest character in the game and (in theory) beats every other character easily with optimal play. However, his short range, fast fall speed, and extremely high skill floor are all easily exploitable weaknesses that lead to him not winning tournaments nearly as much as you'd expect the consensus "best character" to win.

When you're trying to break the meta, then, you want to target the weak points of the existing most popular strategy with your champion picks and overarching team strategy. In order to do that, you need to understand why the metagame is what it is.

Let's look at the current meta on 5.7 for a bit:

> Top Lane: Tank or Fighter > Jungle: Tank or Fighter > Mid Lane: Mage or Assassin > Bottom Lane (farming): Marksman > Bottom Lane (non-farming): Support, Mage, or Tank

Bottom Lane: The Marksman class consistently has the highest late game scaling in the game and the weakest early game. Since Marksmen are essential to pushing towers and clearing objectives quickly in mid to late game, not having a marksman on the team greatly decreases your pushing power and hence your chances of victory. To compensate for their weak early game, Marksmen are usually paired with a second champion to protect them during their weak early game and help them secure kills; this second champion is usually a champion who functions well without gold. Since Dragon (between bot and mid lane) is an important objective throughout the early game, the Marksman-0 CS combo is usually placed in bot lane to help prevent the opposing team from taking it easily.

Mid Lane: While all three lanes have the same amount of available XP throughout the game, Mid lane's minions arrive more quickly than in the side lanes, allowing the mid laner to level up the fastest of any team member. As such, mid lane is usually given to the most level-dependent champion on the team, who is invariably either a spellcaster or assassin who needs to lower their cooldowns and rank up their base damages quickly. Mid lane also has access to Blue Buff in early mid game regardless of which side of the map they're playing, and are usually the best champions on the team to abuse Blue Buff. Finally, the central location of Mid lane allows for easy roaming and ganking on the side lanes, favoring mobile assassins and high burst mages over sustained damage champions.

Top Lane: Since Top lane is furthest from the Dragon, it's another solo lane that gets the least jungle attention and is also the least safe. The relative lack of safety and team assistance through early game forces players to choose strong early game champions, usually melee tanks or fighters.

Jungle: In order to ensure that all the gold and experience available is utilized, one champion is chosen to clear jungle camps. Since jungle camps are spread throughout the map, this champion is invariably expected to provide ganks and assistance for teammates as well. Thus, the most desirable champions are those with a good balance of damage, crowd control for ganks, and sustain for clearing. These requirements restrict jungling to mostly tanks and fighters with the occasional mage or support being viable.

The lane meta as we know it is based on assigning gold and experience in the most optimal manner possible, while ensuring safety for the players. However, it can still be exploited with off-meta picks. so long as you know what you're doing.

##Breaking the Meta Right

For now, we'll discuss breaking the meta on a lane by lane basis, and pan out to macro-level strategy later.

Let's say that you want to win top lane frequently, but you don't want to play the meta champions. Since the meta champions are your most frequent opponents, it's very important that your new pick has good matchups against the traditional meta picks-if your meta break can't even survive the laning phase, there's no way you can be successful with it in the long term.

It's also worth noting that when you're aiming to break the meta, you HAVE to aim for the stars. It's not enough to have an okay laning phase followed by an okay mid game and late game. If your off-meta pick is not consistently successful against the regular meta, then it's not worth going off meta at all. Ideally, you should be aiming to counter the meta laner during the laning phase, and either negate or exceed their impact later on in the game.

With that in mind, let's consider Nunu top lane, one of the more infamous off-meta picks.

http://leaguecraft.com/meme/asset/meme_760px_4103.jpg More annoying than that squirrel thing from Bandle City.

Nunu top aimed to make the life of the average top lane bruiser hell for the first 20 minutes of the game, granting him a farm advantage and drawing jungle attention away from the rest of his team. His E slows the attack speed of bruisers and hits fairly hard on a low cooldown, making it extremely difficult if not impossible for bruisers to trade effectively with him. On top of that, his Q provides him with incredible sustain to negate whatever damage he takes in trades. As such, he was an extremely effective pick against the meta top laners.

You might wonder why Nunu top has never really been in favor when it counters the metagame that hard. However, Nunu top has clear, exploitable weaknesses on a strategic level. Nunu scales very poorly with farm, even with an AP build, reducing his late game influence to getting off good ults (very difficult against a coordinated team) and Blood Boiling his ADC. Additionally, much of AP Nunu's value in top lane was dependent on enemy champions assuming that Nunu was a troll pick that they could destroy in lane, only to give up early kills or recalls when they attempt trades they can't win. The more popular AP Nunu became, the less frequently he succeeded as people got better at dealing with him.

For another example of a very successful off-meta laner, consider something like Season 2/3's infamous AP Master Yi in mid lane.

http://st.elohell.net/public/chill/1bd294ac8fbdd439e338905482489c97.gif PENTAKILL! PENTAKILL!

Master Yi had only two spells that scaled with AP, Alpha Strike and Meditate, and one was non-damaging. However, because he was casting spells very infrequently, his mana burden was not high, and his W provided obscene sustain in lane while Q provided both waveclear and burst. As a result, many players picked up AP Master Yi in mid lane to pentakill teamfights using his resets while being unstoppable in lane. The popularity and utter absurdity of AP Yi sparked a massive nerf to Meditate, followed by a major rework that resulted in the Yi we know today.

Note that in both of these cases, the players who developed these picks weren't doing anything crazy. They thought about the traits of the enemy champions in their respective lanes, and found picks that had an extremely difficult time dealing with them. That's how you break the meta successfully.

#Team-wide Meta Breaking

http://i.imgur.com/ykvhOs8.jpg My Champion is the Champion that will Pierce the Meta!

So you've run a few cheesy top lanes, and now you want to get your whole team involved in the meta breaking. There's very little new strategy involved here, you're just doing all the same stuff as before on a team wide scale. You want every one of your lanes to either be playing the meta or be strong against the meta picks in that lane.

There's not even close to as much information on breaking the meta on a team-wide scale. Much of the meta breaking out there is difficult to repeat, since everyone who has seen it will have an idea of how to deal with it. For a very well known example of a team meta break, look at the simple 2v1 lane swaps of S3/S4 LCS. Teams sent their AD carry and support top instead of bot, and chose an extremely sustained, bulky bruiser for bot lane in the hopes of invalidating the strong laning phase of the enemy bruiser while pushing down top tower early. It was so successful that there was a long time where Riot specifically made top tower stronger than the outer towers in the other two lanes to discourage 2v1 swaps.

Logically, the strategy made sense. It banked on the swapping team's ADC scaling better with the free farm than their opponents, and also that the swapping team's 1v2 laner would be able to farm better than their opponents. This was a solid bet, especially since the swapping team can plan around the swap knowing that it will happen while the opposing team cannot.

That's the key to most macro-scale meta breaking strategies: they're fairly easy to deal with if you know they're coming. Their strength comes from the meta-breaking team knowing the advantages of their switch and picking accordingly, while the opposing team picks as if the other team was playing standard meta.

##Wrapping Up

Hopefully this post has given you a better understanding of how to break the meta effectively. Instead of just picking Lulu jungle because they can, successful meta breakers use their deep understanding of the meta to make choices that are strong against the most popular style of play.

I hope to see all of your AP Nunus, AD Annies, and Mid Fioras on the fields of justice!

105 Comments

Terff4/27/2015, 10:20:29 PM38 votes

This deserves love its a good post.

IcyPepper4/27/2015, 10:22:57 PM22 votes

However, you can't just go "ROW ROW FUCK THE META" and expect to win.

I only do this if I have a compass, a map, life vests, a radio, and Wilson.

But in all seriousness, +1 OP

Hyrum Graff4/28/2015, 10:21:04 AM5 votes

First off, amazing post.

Second off, I think the end could use just a little more. Could I suggest adding in a sentence or two about how trinkets solved the "lane swap problem"?

>Now LCS teams do 5-man invades to get early vision, so they can see if they'll be up against a lane swap and react accordingly. >As a result, Riot was able to undo (well, modify) the changes to top and bot towers, making them equal again.

A Tall Joke4/28/2015, 1:56:33 AM5 votes

Great read; could benefit from more analysis of case studies though. It starts off pretty verbose and methodical, explaining a lot and then tapers off a lot in the end with case studies (an area, I think, serves the best explanation).

Well, your analysis is nice but maybe more case studies is a better way to word it.

Like in terms of weird-lane choices: The Mid J4/Riven meta, AP Ezreal, Quinn top, smite-support....

And in terms of team composition meta breakers: Double jungle, double AP Carry shut down bot lane...

Dyvius4/28/2015, 2:31:21 AM4 votes

Upvoted purely for the "row row fuck the meta" line. That was pure gold.

However, I did read the rest, and I loved how thorough you were, OP, great work.

Vellich0r4/28/2015, 4:09:05 AM4 votes

Lane swapping ADC to mid lane, with a strong SAFE mid laner to go bottom and a heavy scaling ADC is an excellent strategy that I used with an old competitive team. It's exceptionally difficult to counter if you pick it in the right situation and can completely destroy a weak mid laners game. In the game I remember best I played alistar support with a Kog' Maw ADC and we were against a Fizz. He could not walk up to CS and ended up with 8 cs at 30 minutes and this was a low gold player. On the other hand, we had a Solo lane Soraka go bottom (back when she was brutally overpowered as a solo laner) and she was able to survive no matter how much they tried to pressure her. With her strong waveclear she kept them off of our bot lane tower and her incredible sustain combined with being in a lane that traditionally didn't have ignite actually resulted in her getting a double kill when they tried a 3 man tower dive because the Soraka wouldn't walk out of tower range for any reason. It's safe to say we won using that strategy, like, a lot.

Aeolous164/28/2015, 2:48:35 PM4 votes

Upvoted for Gurren Lagann references.

But even aside from that, great explanation of what the meta is and what the purpose of breaking it is.

Sir ArmaMalum4/28/2015, 8:44:26 PM3 votes

mi ramfan, I'm always a fan of your balance posts and I am sad I got to this one so late. I'm usually quicker than this! >_<

Anyway, great job and I'm glad to see it getting support. +1 from me as well!

Actually, on top of that, with your permission I'd like to link this post to the "Welcome to the Boards" post I have pinned in Boards Feedback. It's not highly trafficked, but it's the best recognition I can do personally.

Dedrius4/27/2015, 11:14:40 PM3 votes

This is a very good post and I am confused on why there isn't much attention to it. You made a lot of good points on how a player should break the meta rather than "I'm going to go AP Zed Jungle because the meta is stupid!"

Good post definitely worth a +1

Buttigieg 20204/27/2015, 11:32:23 PM3 votes

Ahh... The west wing. Such a good show. But thank you for finally telling people how to break the meta. Too many idiots going ap yasuo support yet still maxing q.

The Red Goat4/28/2015, 2:27:08 AM3 votes

You make a good point here actually. I've recently discovered that Sivir can be quite the effective mid laner rather than being an adc.

Conversely I've also discovered that a Soraka built adc and coupled with a support Aatrox can be very effective against the hyper carry meta adc's like Vayne and Lucian.

MaidenX4/28/2015, 2:16:56 PM2 votes

Hey, I feel greatly offended the way you call support-filler champion Because us supports are the only reason adc is still in meta Else they are going die every time they are near enemy assassin

Volt Cruelerz4/28/2015, 6:02:12 AM2 votes

Something I've been trying a bit lately is Azir bot lane with some form of heavy lockdown support like Thresh, Blitz, Naut, or Leona. You have to build him differently because of the mana expenditures being higher than in mid, but if you can survive till level 2 without taking heavy damage, you come out actually really really nicely. Given that Azir scales as much as an ADC, and has comparable objective control, it's actually seemed reasonably viable so far. Just send an AD caster mid lane (either an assassin or someone like Jayce) and you've still got your damage bases covered. After watching the recent LCS games, I'm tempted to send someone mid with Varus, but that would require more friends than I usually have online at one time that play Varus. Ashe and Caitlyn might work too, I suppose.

The thing about the Azir pick isn't so much that it's breaking the meta directly (it is in the sense that you're going without an ADC for once, but fundamentally, the roles are still covered; he's just doing magic damage instead), but I figure late-game, his teamfighting potential is going to exceed that of an ADC, so it's a question of getting past early game.

The main value I see in it at this point is just if I'm duo-ing with a friend and am first pick, I can pick Azir. If I get countered by a Brand or something, I just go bot and someone else hops on Malzahar or Zed or what have you for the purpose of making the lives of the enemy mid miserable while I just farm away to my heart's content in bot lane.

Lockenster4/28/2015, 10:37:50 AM1 votes

Good post but who's the targeted audience here?

Can't be diamond or plat players because they are pretty much decides the meta. Can't be gold or silver because they think they are good but continues to go shy with tp and smite top without a clue. Shyvana summoner 11 summoner 12 And it can't be bronze because they don't listen to anyone

Done joking around here. Really good post really informative and i will keep it in my mind

Karen Kujo4/28/2015, 8:34:59 AM1 votes

Man, you're talking about Super Smash Bros Melee

Now we get to the fun part

This game is more like Super Smash Bros Brawl

CInderhulk = Meta Knight

OP champs = Diddy Kong

Sure breaking the meta will help

Ardond4/28/2015, 3:51:29 AM1 votes

I may need to send this to my friends to help them understand my "interesting" support choices. Great post, I will defiantly be using these points for future champion selects.

Angel Violét4/28/2015, 6:55:24 PM1 votes

Is Support Mundo viable? I tried him once and it's surprisingly effective.DrMundo

Worst Mid Ever4/28/2015, 6:48:38 AM1 votes

Good post but you should mention the fact that if you aren't already diamond level with standard meta picks you shouldn't be trying to innovate as you don't completely understand the game yet.