I wish riot would support off meta builds more.

xxxMadLionxxx·Jun 8, 2016·32 votes·3,198 views

There are some off meta builds that have potential, but if you main them, you're at risk of riot balance team changing something on that champ that can totally destroy your off meta build inadvertently.

For example, AP Lucian is lots of fun and plays differently to AD Lucian, but riot is always balancing AD Lucian with no consideration to AP Lucian. Another example is AP ratio that are sometimes completely removed once a champ gets reworked. This happened with Poppy and Cait. AP jinx provide an interesting way to play but simply lacks other ap scalings to make it viable.

Most of these off meta builds are not op, just a different way to play the champ that might throw the enemy team off.

I feel like riot needs to pay some more attention to off meta builds as they provide an alternate form to play the champ and bring more diversity/longevity.

53 Comments

HateDaddyJun 8, 201613 votes

In their defense, they typically do try to preserve off builds as much as possible but if it comes at the cost of balancing a champion, riot will sacrifice the off build for fair balance, which is how it should be. It sucks but it's just how it has to be.

We also have to remember some off builds are just plain unhealthy, like old AP trynd and AP Yi. So while I agree off builds should be spared so long as the champion can be balanced, that should only be true if it's not an extremely abusive play style.

WolfBVJun 8, 20161 votes

AP Tristana was the best assassin. :D

ImperialKainJun 8, 20163 votes

They have not really been trying to preserve off builds. Every rework they have done or new champion and items have slow but surely been removing or dropping the effectiveness of these off builds and making them more and more cookie cutter. The only champions that still has real off builds are the ones that haven't been thrown into the rework engine as of yet.

Back in the day, they had the balls to give Tristana pretty high ap scaling on her ult to the point if you had enough ap on her you literally played her like a AP assassin or a knock off Veigar . Jump on someone and blow them up with just the magic damage in her kit only. Their are a couple other champions that play just like this.

They were trying so hard to 'balanced' some champions, that they drove Ekko to start building tank, because they kept nerfing him for doing his job with his AP builds, same with Fizz . I watched a game where Ekko chased Vladimir from his second bot lane tower straight back to to the vlad's first tower with no way for him to fight off or escape him.

The new poppy is in the same both as many other off builds. The scaling isn't even worth making use of build her AP in her kit. They straight up destroying the fact that old poppy could build ad, ap or tank. Not just ad or tank and her ad scaling isn't even that great to warrant that with her new kit.

"not an extremely abusive play style" Many champions have abusive play styles with their meta builds. Rengar is one of those champion, building on point, can kill you in less than 0.1 seconds. But would build AP just so he can out right rawr you and the guy next you to death. The thing is, if he ever gets a rework, I expect the ap scaling on his w to take a hit, so their is no point to building AP on him or drops the ap scaling and give it an ad scaling as well.

But screws us for thinking a champion should have more than one viable way to play them, without them just being nerf into the gutter for it.

Clyp30 4funJun 8, 20163 votes

on the rengar's W, i think that they might even remove it, i mean, it doesn't fit totally his play style, why would an hunter yell a battle roar, scaring all of the preys. it's just a free stats and free sustain ability, which isn't even used in his actual combo, u just press W to get 1 point in the ferocity's stack

ImperialKainJun 8, 20161 votes

So you rather every champion just do what they were meant to be. So bunnies should be carrot farms, instead of cops right (couldn't resist XD). The beauty of his AP build is that's all it impowers, his W. But saying it doesn't fit is just chicken out of concept that he can do a thing while build AP or he's testing his voicels to join Karthus band. Hell if he ever gets a pirate themed skin and still has viable AP scaling on his W, I can think of him as a One Piece character using conqueror's haki and displaying his displeasure for your exist just by unleashing his haki on you. And compared to his AD builds.... I rather face AP, whose just yelling at me for being bad, instead of not letting me play league anymore if I'm alone and not even that if he's feed enough.

DeathBurstJun 8, 20161 votes

Saying that Ekko or Fizz started to build Tanks because Riot isn't supporting off-builds enough is kinda ballsy... The Tank build IS the off-build.

ImperialKainJun 8, 20161 votes

? No I said that they started build more tank/bruiser, because they where being nerf for doing their jobs to good building AP. When Ekko first came out, all you were hear about was he bursts to damn much or to much damage on his no cost ult or he can one shot a carry with two items. He get hit on everything and low an behold he comes back as a near unkillable tank just because he has so much utility, that it oozes out of everywhere. Fizz was able to something similar because of how his ult and 'w' use to work. All this because they where getting more and more nerf for doing their jobs the right way and make their off builds more attractive.

QuephaJun 8, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Back in the day, they had the balls to give pretty high ap scaling on her ult to the point if you had enough ap on her you literally played her like a AP assassin or a knock off . Jump on someone and blow them up with just the magic damage in her kit only. Their are a couple other champions that play just like this.

They didn't do that because they had more balls back then, they did it because at launch they thought of AP as the stat that increased your ability damage so every champ had AP scaling on their abilities. AP Tristana is a great example of why that didn't work, it was an incredibly toxic build when it worked and nerfing it caused AD Tristana to suffer.

ImperialKainJun 8, 20162 votes

Didn't work? Old AP Trist was exactly what assassin are suppose to be, from riots point of view. Get in, deal the damage and get out. Her secondary is still assassin after all. Her risks where their and plain for anyone playing as her or against could see. Her AA's sucked, had a horribly laning phase, if she tried to assassinate someone using her full combo and failed to get the kill/assist she had no reset, thus no escape if she tried this in a team fight on a fairly long cooldown. You could even compare this play style to Leblanc , but punished more if you failed. How did this make AD Trist suffer? All she did was hit 'Q' and AA everything in front of her, ult is just a targeted disengage, 'e' was magic damage ignite and her 'w' was her escape or engage to reset chase tool on kills/assists. And if you saying old AP Tristana was bad/toxic for jumping out of the fog of war to kill you, AP Malphite Hecarim Rengar could do same thing, but to your whole team if your not careful with their off builds.

Ulquiorra995Jun 9, 20161 votes

If AP Trist was so toxic, then why is LeBlanc allowed to exist?

AP Trist was just a weaker LB. Both had high PnC damage - with Trist's mains spell being DoT and LB's being instant burst. And Trist could only escape if she managed to kill her target, while LB's escape is unconditional.

QuephaJun 9, 20161 votes

{quoted}

If AP Trist was so toxic, then why is LeBlanc allowed to exist?

AP Trist was just a weaker LB. Both had high PnC damage - with Trist's mains spell being DoT and LB's being instant burst. And Trist could only escape if she managed to kill her target, while LB's escape is unconditional.

LeBlanc has more skillshots in her burst and zero resets.

Ulquiorra995Jun 9, 20161 votes

Zero resets argument is kinda working in my favor here because LB gets unconditionally what Trist was getting on conditional resets.

deadlychuckJun 8, 20161 votes

Well they completely removed the AD malzahar gameplay without even improving the champion's balance. If anything he ended in a worse state than he started.

AD use to be a completely different playstyle with the build, now it's just a worse version of the AP build.

LankPantsJun 9, 20161 votes

like old AP trynd and AP Yi.

Good old 0.1 second pentas.

JedenVojakJun 8, 20166 votes

Back in the day, LoL was a game that was about "play the champions you want where you want how you want"

It would be good if it got back to that.

DeathBurstJun 8, 20164 votes

Back in the days, people just didn't know the optimal builds, so they tried a bit of everything, and they could get away with it. Now that the game has matured, the average level/knowledge of the community is much higher, and you can't anymore. It's not a change in philosophy and "not supporting off-builds anymore", it's just a problem of maturation.

JedenVojakJun 8, 20162 votes

It's not simply a matter of meta knowledge; riot has been changing the champions to be less and less off build tolerant and off meta tolerant - read AP Sion, AD Carry Sion, AP Yi, AP Tryndamere, AD fizz, Anything-but-support Soraka, non-tank Poppy, solo lane Taric, solo lane Mordekaiser. When people played the game they wanted buy building whatever items they wanted, including jungle items in the lane, they forced junglers to all have smite (screwing over smiteless jungle and deciding the meta). When people took ranged champs to the newer deadlier jungle, they specifically changed it so reduce the number of leashes monsters had to screw them over. When people were doing double jungling as a counter to the 2v1 lane, they reduced the monster xp and changed the jungle items to give a bonus but only for monsters personally killed.

Photos of GhostsJun 8, 20164 votes

I miss AP Sion. I miss AD Malphite. I miss AP Mf. I miss AP Tristana. I miss AP Shen. I miss AP Kog'maw. I miss AD Ryze. I miss AP Cait. I miss spellvamp.

CeexSettJun 8, 20161 votes

Why is AD Ryze any different from before?

AP Kog'Maw, wasn't killed, it's still possible.

LadyRenlyJun 8, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Photos of Ghosts,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=b13kipE0,comment-id=000f,timestamp=2016-06-08T15:15:23.607+0000)

I miss AP Sion. I miss AD Malphite. I miss AP Mf. I miss AP Tristana. I miss AP Shen. I miss AP Kog'maw. I miss AD Ryze. I miss AP Cait. I miss spellvamp.

ap kog maw isn't dead

it's just aggravating to use when most midlaners are braindead manaless AD wavepushers who can indefinitely push a lane with a dorans blade

MLDzXnRRRJun 8, 20162 votes

Devourer+ 4 tank items + boots MasterYi Offmeta for the win...

HateDaddyJun 8, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Devourer+ 4 tank items + boots Offmeta for the win...

Believe it or not, bruiser Yi always worked even before sated devourer was added. People use to just do warrior/Botrk into full tank and do the same thing. It wasn't very common at all though, just a few Yi players who knew what's up.

TehNACHOJun 8, 20161 votes

Most of these of meta builds are not op, just a different way to play the champ that might throw the enemy team off.

I think this is in fact usually the problem.

Imagine if, for example, ADC Sion suddenly got super popular. What we usually consider a clumsy, slow, Hypertank of a champ is now artificially a quick, DPS centric, shin kicker. This is not just throwing somebody off like Mage Fortune or AP Tristana, this is straight up miscommunication between what that champ is at its core and what's happening in the game.

AP Lucian for example I would support entirely, personally, since it wouldn't detract from his damage based skill slinging play style. AP Poppy on the other hand? Compared to old JuggerPoppy, this threatening but ultimately DPS based and thus manageable ball of hurt is now a one shot wonder or worse, an instant 5v4 as she ignores the rest of your team and blasts one of your carries. Granted old Poppy just had a plethora of problems on top of her AP variants, but you have to get the point at this point. Small variations that stay true to the champ like AP Lucian or Mage Fortune or so on are perfectly fine. It's when the variation gets so out of hand that the champ is basically unrecognizable that we face a problem.

SasogwaJun 8, 20162 votes

{quoted}

I think this is in fact usually the problem.

Imagine if, for example, ADC Sion suddenly got super popular. What we usually consider a clumsy, slow, Hypertank of a champ is now artificially a quick, DPS centric, shin kicker. This is not just throwing somebody off like Mage Fortune or AP Tristana, this is straight up miscommunication between what that champ is at its core and what's happening in the game.

AP Lucian for example I would support entirely, personally, since it wouldn't detract from his damage based skill slinging play style. AP Poppy on the other hand? Compared to old JuggerPoppy, this threatening but ultimately DPS based and thus manageable ball of hurt is now a one shot wonder or worse, an instant 5v4 as she ignores the rest of your team and blasts one of your carries. Granted old Poppy just had a plethora of problems on top of her AP variants, but you have to get the point at this point. Small variations that stay true to the champ like AP Lucian or Mage Fortune or so on are perfectly fine. It's when the variation gets so out of hand that the champ is basically unrecognizable that we face a problem.

Yea but that's hardly a thing with all the champions that are predominantly one thing and can become somewhat viable with another build (examples : AP rengo, AP jax, AD mages...). The ratio can also be easily reworked if it becomes a problem, like they did for example with Yasuo who had up to 2.0 AP ratio on his E in the PBE after stacking it on creeps.

about your AP poppy.. Well it was basically poppy. She built AD or AP, she still became great lategame. Full crit Poppy didn't have much to envy to full AP poppy, they were both equally strong lategame. And since she wasn't close to being a must pick or ban, that didn't quite bring that much problems.

TehNACHOJun 8, 20161 votes

...yes it is for all of your examples.

As primarily an Assassin, one of the first things you can do to defend yourself from Rengar is to buy the right defense to him. If both his AD and AP builds were equally viable, it'd become substantially harder to predict his midgame build, and you just lost a layer of defense against him. This is even worse from a game design perspective given how hard its been to balance Rengar in general over the years.

Jax is primarily a DPS Fighter. His damage, while great, is backloaded onto his third hit passive and ramping passive. A build that throws that particular play style and weakness out the window and potentially nukes squishies in a single rotation is hazardous to justify.

AD Mages are slightly less egregious, but it's still a big shift between the Burst Champion that relies on abilities vs the DPS champ that relies on auto attacks.

That AP Ratio nerf also killed AP Yasuo.

Poppy was just an unjustifiable mess back then.

SasogwaJun 8, 20161 votes

{quoted}

...yes it is for all of your examples.

As primarily an Assassin, one of the first things you can do to defend yourself from Rengar is to buy the right defense to him. If both his AD and AP builds were equally viable, it'd become substantially harder to predict his midgame build, and you just lost a layer of defense against him. This is even worse from a game design perspective given how hard its been to balance Rengar in general over the years.

Jax is primarily a DPS Fighter. His damage, while great, is backloaded onto his third hit passive and ramping passive. A build that throws that particular play style and weakness out the window and potentially nukes squishies in a single rotation is hazardous to justify.

AD Mages are slightly less egregious, but it's still a big shift between the Burst Champion that relies on abilities vs the DPS champ that relies on auto attacks.

That AP Ratio nerf also killed AP Yasuo.

Poppy was just an unjustifiable mess back then.

Well we're talking mostly about fun yet not that viable builds. When you have a little usually unused ratio which is granted, kinda bad, but you wanna have fun and try something new (even if suboptimal) you can try it out. Like AP Xin too. But what is sad is that Riot is progressively removing all the 'weird ratios' on multiple champions just like that. Who would bother that there's an AP ratio on Cait's trap? Why remove it? Removing that is killing offmeta builds and that's a bit sad. It's always fun to experiment, and when we push every champion to have very specific scalings, it's basically saying "you get THAT build and none other".

Granted AP rengar was a thing. But the "unpredictability of the build" isn't really huge. You see his build, what items he goes for, his runes either from a website or easily detectable if you click on him and watch his stats. And it's actually kinda fun to make it a surprise.

TehNACHOJun 8, 20163 votes

AP Xin follows the rules of regular Xin, for the most part, so quite frankly he's more my side of the argument than yours.

You have to understand that some off meta builds just do not have a place on their respective champ when they so radically modify their behaviors. You can not possibly justify old Yi, slow champs going Assassin would be a mess, and there's no end to the problems presented when the off build fixes some of the primary weaknesses of the main build without losing its strengths Ekko .

There's a line that must be drawn. I fully support play styles that stay consistent through off builds while still offering something new, like Tristana or Udyr. Hell, this sort of itemization is literally what defines Dive Fighter itemization, the class that I play the most. But you can't cry about ruined diversity and the death of off builds when we know they did cross that line.

PoskeJun 8, 20161 votes

{quoted}

I think this is in fact usually the problem.

Imagine if, for example, ADC Sion suddenly got super popular. What we usually consider a clumsy, slow, Hypertank of a champ is now artificially a quick, DPS centric, shin kicker. This is not just throwing somebody off like Mage Fortune or AP Tristana, this is straight up miscommunication between what that champ is at its core and what's happening in the game.

AP Lucian for example I would support entirely, personally, since it wouldn't detract from his damage based skill slinging play style. AP Poppy on the other hand? Compared to old JuggerPoppy, this threatening but ultimately DPS based and thus manageable ball of hurt is now a one shot wonder or worse, an instant 5v4 as she ignores the rest of your team and blasts one of your carries. Granted old Poppy just had a plethora of problems on top of her AP variants, but you have to get the point at this point. Small variations that stay true to the champ like AP Lucian or Mage Fortune or so on are perfectly fine. It's when the variation gets so out of hand that the champ is basically unrecognizable that we face a problem.

Unless Sion gains range increase it will never become adc so that whole point seems pointless

facemelter710Jun 8, 20161 votes

Rip mage fortune when they reworked her

FeathermaneJun 8, 20161 votes

Yeah, AP Kog'Maw is so fun to play against.............. not in a million years.

SpeedphoenixJun 8, 20161 votes

Make this heard please

WolfBVJun 8, 20161 votes

I miss AP Tristana

Blue Moon WolfJun 8, 20161 votes

I agree, a build that I've enjoyed using is AP MonkeyKing ( item 3115 item 3100 item 3152 item 3026 item 3124 item 3111 ) . It doesn't make much sense at first since everything aside from his W builds off AD, but it's a lot of fun with all the combined effects from the items and the low cooldown making it so you can spam abilities. As far as the scaling on his kit goes, all you need to do is use your normal runes and masteries for AD Wukong and you can still get use out of his AD scaling, just not as much as you normally would. It's fun to play with but would make my team s**t their pants if I tried to bring it into a PvP match.

VvVVvVJun 8, 20161 votes

Yeah......I just finished a game where this shyv was complaining about my tank Heimer build. Said I didnt have enough AP. its not meant to have a shyt ton of AP. it has Ap just not the 350ap they said i should have. To me its a bait build because people think they can just kill you quick, by the time they realize you are not going down its too late for them to get out. But in this particular game it does no good once your team feeds the Fizz to high heaven after you completely punked him in lane and then refuses to group and not spend 30 min trying to get the 1st bot tower.

If I can sit there and ult and take on a Jax, Zed and Vi 1v3 and kill 2 of them and live....I say the build works.

DarkRitualJun 8, 20161 votes

If you have an AP jungler or toplaner, sure. But if the rest of team are AD or tanks, then you're lacking a real ap carry.

VvVVvVJun 8, 20161 votes

Well in this particular game we had a Karma support.....shes AP and also was leading the team in kills.....without going back to look at it...last I remember she had 12 which was at least 4 kills more than anyone else at the time the other teams support all chatted a comment about her kills.

ZT XperimentorJun 8, 20161 votes

It doesn't help that some times these off meta builds were gamebreaking; remember when yi had a large AP ratio on his alpha strike, a deathcap could let him literally telefrag while being unhitable.

Conversely the meta became what it is due to riot's support in the first place; because the majority of players are sheep. While I'd like to see support for off-meta, if it became significant then it would become the new/next meta. Strange isn't it?

xxxMadLionxxxJun 8, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=ZT Xperimentor,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=b13kipE0,comment-id=000c,timestamp=2016-06-08T10:49:25.030+0000)

It doesn't help that some times these off meta builds were gamebreaking; remember when yi had a large AP ratio on his alpha strike, a deathcap could let him literally telefrag while being unhitable.

Conversely the meta became what it is due to riot's support in the first place; because the majority of players are sheep. While I'd like to see support for off-meta, if it became significant then it would become the new/next meta. Strange isn't it?

Well that's good point, but what I'm saying is, there are some viable off builds, but riot never takes them into consideration when balancing. Riot does not have to make these off meta builds strong, just preserve the viable ones when they are balancing the champ. They also need to look at champs that have potential to be played differently when going with an off build while being fun at the same time. These champs might just need little extra scaling to make them viable(not op to the point it is the prefered build).

Overal, it just adds more reason to play the game. Part of the reason ppl love these games is because they can experiment and get customs builds that work. They have fun with that sorta thing.

ZT XperimentorJun 8, 20161 votes

Oh that I understand & agree with.

But over the past couple seasons I've noticed riot doing some odd choices of tweaks. Such as making missfortune's ult scale off AD instead of AP to 'streamline' her, instead making her conform to building only physical damage items. Though nocturne was a hopeful case since they actually added an extra AP ratio to his passive. I likewise enjoy playing champions strange ways just to have fun seeing if it can be done; however between the stigma for anything non-meta, and riot's obsessiveness with making things 'flashy', I don't expect most off-builds to stay playable.

But to not be such a downer, here's a build I discovered to be hilariously aggravating. Urgot item 3071 item 3033 item 3146 item 3116 item 3151

ZarvanisJun 8, 20161 votes

Off meta, eh? Annie item 3085 item 3124 item 3046 item 3031 item 3087 item 3006

http://imgur.com/7aypHeo

bill84Jun 8, 20161 votes

you have 110% crit

ZarvanisJun 8, 20161 votes

I know. I don't play crit-based champions, so I'm unfamiliar with their item optimization.

Is that better? item 3085 item 3124 item 3046 item 3031 item 3508 item 3006

bill84Jun 8, 20161 votes

Yes. Especially since this has mana sustain now.

JayrettJun 8, 20161 votes

yeah, that hits 1.91 AS with 225 ad without runes.

bill84Jun 8, 20161 votes

I would be so happy if they added an ap scaling to Jayce's cannon q. This could make ap Jayce a thing once he buys lich bane since he already has 1.4 scaling in his kit.

XilixerJun 8, 20161 votes

off meta builds are what ruined malzahar. he is now barely viable for mid anymore becuase of all the jungler mains.

Lord GalvatronJun 8, 20161 votes

The problem with that is because if they buffed something like AP Lucian so it was good, then people would begin to play it a lot more. Then it would cease to be "off-meta".

AlüeJun 8, 20161 votes

rip glass cannon builds for ap mages

kaltenashesJun 8, 20161 votes

ap MasterYi Tryndamere tank Ekko Fizz

plz dont rito (i actually love ekko's kit used as tank, the best tank i have ever played... i wish ap ekko died)

Teridax68Jun 9, 20161 votes

I think it's probably worth having a discussion on off-meta builds beyond just mentioning about how Riot doesn't support them (which isn't entirely true; Riot left in Miss Fortune's AP ratios to support her Mage Fortune build, for example). If "off-meta" simply means building an AD champion with AP, purely because they have one or two AP ratios on their kit, then I don't think that's worth supporting, because the amount of power you'd have to stick into those AP ratios would be so high that the end result would be a very stilted and potentially unhealthy kit (e.g. AP Rek'Sai with the original 100% AP ratio on her Q). If the request is simply to add more AP ratios onto champions, I don't think that's worth supporting either, because past a certain point those champions end up with pretty much the same playstyle as their "meta" builds.

Generally, the idea that these alternative builds are "off-meta" tends to suggest that they're not realistically viable, or just not as good in some form or another as a "meta" build. Imo, there shouldn't be off-meta builds at all, only alternate builds. If a champion can support two different builds that lead to significantly different, yet equally fun playstyles, e.g. AD and AP Ezreal, then it would be worth balancing those builds to both be viable, even if doing so might be difficult. If AP Lucian really does play differently to Lucian, in a manner that isn't just gimmicky W poke, then he deserves to be viable too, and the same goes for AP Jinx, AP Caitlyn, etc.

TL;DR: The idea of "off-meta" builds kinda peeves me, because if an alternative build is fun and unique then it deserves to be viable. Off-meta builds are, by nature, bound to be either strong enough to be worth evaluating in terms of balance and game health, whereupon they become meta, or so weak as to be essentially one step removed from deliberately giving oneself a handicap when playing.