What if there was no meta?
Wouldn't it be cool if all champs were viable and had their pros and cons? Of course, this would be extremely hard to do and probably wont happen :( [zombie-nunu-bummed]
7 Comments
It would be literally impossible, not just "extremely hard to do"
Meta stands for "Most Efficient Tactics Available", and there's going to be something that is the best. Players will find that, and use it till it's no longer viable, and then move onto the next thing.
It's not Riot creating the meta-game, it's the players. Always has been.
Lol was like that before and during season 1. Pretty easy for something impossible.
Too bad that was 9 years ago. The players evolved the game into that after s1
There will always be a Meta as there is no such thing as perfection, BUT....... DOTA kind of does this as there are the common high priority picks, but MANY picks outside of the upper echelon that are absolutely viable.
Riot has pigeon holed themselves by trying to make the game casual/new player friendly.
To explain: There is a list of things champions can potentially be good at right? Engage, disengage, mobility, CC, lane pressure, range, objective hitting, champion DPS, burst damage, sustain damage, defensive utility, vision control, clear speed,...... the list goes on and on. Then there is scaling too, early-mid-late, and then some in between smaller spikes.
Riot does not balance linearly, meaning they do not directly reduce value in certain areas based on their strengths in other areas. For instance, a late game carry needs to have SOME way to aggress in lane otherwise they are considered useless as it would take them way too long to get strong enough to overcome their laning weakness. There are ton's of examples where there is give but not enough take, WW being able to ult to escape for instance, despite the fact that he has a lot of engage tools (3) and 2 CC's and decent damage, they give him an out to hedge his bets so that as long as he didn't all in literally, he can save his ult and use it to escape if necessary. Now while I love skill based gates on champ value, for the sake of this particular discussion that is a bit too much (I don't actually think WW is OP or anything in the game's current state).
So, the result we have with Riot is the top tier picks across all roles tend to be kind of generalists. Maybe really good at 1-2 things, but decent at a LOT of things. Let's use Janna as an example, obviously the whole shielding team fight disengage thing is her main strength. But now they have actually made her trading in lane pretty damn good, where as in the past you could poop on her in lane to try and bypass her amazing team fighting. This is just one small example.
So to summarize, when you look at the things a certain role or champion can potentially be good at, there are way too many boxes that end up being checked. If you specialize champions, and move away from the idea that counterpicking is not healthy counterplay, you can achieve champion diversity. When you want to make anything work into anything to SOME extent and not force people to learn the game, think creatively, and learn matchups (AKA catering to casuals) is when everything feels homogenized because all of the most played stuff provides too much coverage. The new runes and recent item changes only exacerbate this.