What are you even supposed to do now?
Ive tried every play style, and nothing is working anymore. In season 7 and before, id be in plat elo with diamond mmr sitting at 90% win rates when I would smurf. I had a play style, I knew what I needed to do, there was strategy. This season, every playstyle is just revolved around luck, not strategy or skill.
Playstyle #1: Farming
- Get 9-10 cs/m, out level enemy laners, group in team fights, win fights win game.
Problems with this? Your bot lane is 0/15 combined at 12 minutes into the game. The enemy mid laner is 11/0, etc. The enemy team is fed basically. This playstyle revolved around a meta like season 7 and before where it was somewhat rare to see people dying 8+ times in a game. Today you see people dying 10+ times almost every game now. So this playstyle is trashed because 15 cs is equal to one kill, so while youre sitting at 300 cs, the enemy adc is sitting at 244 cs with 13 kills. Good luck with that. Next play style.
Playstyle #2: Roaming
- Go invade enemy jungle, go take scuttle, gank mid, do stuff around the map while wave is shoved into enemy tower.
This is the playstyle I used to use back in the days when I smurfed. Today its hard to use due to a few reasons. First off, the enemy junglers have more sustain than ever. So trying to invade them in their jungle is almost 100% useless unless theyre playing a squishy assassin jungler like Eve/Elise/Nidalee. Second reasoning is you will miss 2+ cs everytime you leave to roam. Thus your enemy top laner is just leveling up more, becoming more of a problem. A problem to the point where you cant even 1v1 them anymore. Thus this playstyle doesnt work anymore.
Playstyle #3: Dominate lane
- Be as aggro as possible. Go for kills = winning game. Dont let enemy laner get cs at any condition for free.
The major problem with this now is junglers camp you to death. I had a game not too long ago where I was trying this strat again to see if it worked, and the enemy jungler ganked me 4 times in less than 5 minutes. The jungler only had 8 cs, but still ganked me 4 times just because I was playing aggro. With junglers not really having to worry about their camps and falling behind as much, they can straight up gank 24/7 and be relevant all game. Thus this playstyle is screwed.
Playstyle #4: Splitting
- Split lane as much as possible, go for enemy inhib as quick as you can.
Problem? Pretty obvious, its that team mates will force fights 4v5 without you, of course losing those fights, then losing game. In this meta, youre forced to be with team mates unless youre playing a literal champ designed to split push like Trynd or Yorick.
Playstyle #5: Normal
- Play lane casually like everyone else. Farm, harass, roam a bit, etc.
This is the safest playstyle to do, whats the problem with this one? It doesnt allow you to carry games. Youre not going to be getting 10+ kills playing like this, and youre mostly going to be depending on your team to not die a lot. Youre pretty much the jack of all trade, where in the end your final score will be 4/1/2 with 7 cs/m. Pretty casual but nothing carry worthy of a score, while your adc/mid/top is 10/1/14 carrying the game.
So my question is, what playstyle are you actually supposed to be doing now? I have tried tons of other playstyles, but these were the top 5 that seem to be decent, but not best. I simply dont understand what youre supposed to be doing in this game anymore. Season 7 I had a strategy for everything, and since season 8 started I have not been able to find one playstyle that values skill over luck.