Post Your Preseason Meta Predictions Here, Prepare To Eat Your Words Once It Hits Live
Everyone is having different opinions on the preseason - For example, everyone is saying how bad plants are going to be for the game health, how Shaco and Akali are going to be trash now amongst many other things.
I'm posting this to basically just show how stupid it is to make Meta predictions and pretend like it's definitely going to happen, especially if you do it in the form of angry posts on the boards and then pretend like you never said anything when it turns out to be completely different.
I have been guilty of this myself - when the release of Duskblade was announced, the one we have right now, I made a post on how it was going to be absolutely broken on assassins and how it would be the AD version of what Deathfire Grasp used to be. I think I got more than 100 upvotes on that post.
What actually happened is that for the longest time it didn't make a difference just to turn out to be mostly a marksman item. No one ever talked about it again but I still felt like an idiot.
So I'm going to post my Meta predictions down here and expect some of you guys to do the same. On every patch that will come after the Preseason, I will make a new post with a link that will refer back to this post to see how many of our predictions actually were true and how much of them will turn out to be bullshit.
Penetration Marksmen Are Getting Nerfed:
Right now some caster marksmen like 
and 
are building penetration items in the early game, something like 
and 
, to enhance their ability damage and synergize with their high AD ratios. Since Youmuu's also gives attack speed and it helps an absolute ton in the early game since armor values are really low and the penetration build makes those diminishing return matter, these builds are outclassing early crit investment for these specific champions. They still invest in crit later on though, since that is still the best option for the late game, when the enemy has stacked enough armor through levels and items to negate the power of the early penetration investment.
With the upcoming changes, Youmuu's will lose out on its attack speed which matters more on marksmen than it does on assassins like 
or 
who never really made much use of it anyway. On top of that, the penetration marksmen now lose their early game snowballing and killing power that the old flat penetration items gave them, since the new lethality stat scales with the enemy level instead of giving you a high flat value. The new Duskblade is pretty shitty for all the caster marksmen since they don't have any special stealth interactions. They also don't make as much use of the extra out of combat movement speed as melee champions and assassins do, who spend much more time roaming and chasing to land a kill.
There's still the Essence Reaver build as an alternative and the new lethality items might still be better than I'm expecting them to be, so maybe this won't make that much of a difference. We will have to wait and see.
On-Hit Champions Are Getting Nerfed:
With Guinsoo's and the old Kog being gone, on-hit has been pretty meh over the last few patches. I think it will become even more rough for them with the Fervor of Battle rework, now it will grant you AD per stack instead of extra on-hit damage. For champions who don't really have that much alternative keystones to pick, like 
etc., this just seems like a straight out nerf, a pretty big one at that. A lot of champions can make better use of the new Fervor but for the champions I listed above, I predict that they are going to struggle a bit ( except for maybe Kayle, with everyone probably playing assassins in the preseason ).
Will Be Insane:
Urgot has always been really good when assassins were good, since he has always been hard to kill with his shield and the damage reduction on his ult and passive, combined with the ultimate that is able to immidiately shut down an assassin after he/she tries to kill someone. Not only that, his itemization is also getting a pretty huge buff - 
gold cost gets lowered, 
now gives CDR and extra AD when the shield pops and all the new lethality items like reworked and Edge of Night also seem pretty good on him since he always was a champion that builds a lot of penetration and prefers the mid-to lategame over the early game.
It'll be super hard to see if anything actually happens with him since there are only are a very few amount of people playing him and nobody really cares about him. Information on whether he is good or not will be super hard to gather. But with all the stuff happening that I just mentioned I can't see how he wouldn't become a god.
Let me know what you guys think and post your own predicitions below.
(500 AD minimally) >:D
+ 
will be the new meta of bot lane, i can feel it... mostly because I will be playing it.
with 
or 
Probably going to be perma ban for a while. -_- Sadly these are the 2 assassins that I want to play when the patch hits. New Rengar looks like he could pull off a hellacious bruiser build. Kha'zix evolution changes are cool but really don't fulfill the goal of providing choices (Still going to be a set pattern for nearly all situations).
Picks are prob going to be a bunch of feeders / do horrible from the number of players used to her kit having a ridiculously low skill floor. The rework is adding extra mechanics to a champion that is notorious for being easy to play and hard to play well.
His max range ult seems to be a bit too big right now.
in his build. Other adcs will probably start trending towards those items to counter the upsurge in assassins that will happen at the start of the season . Adcs will be posting complaint threads again due to be in the hell meta for adc.
These champions alongside tank supports are going to be played more often. They're generally good in assassin metas.
{{champion:57}
and is going to be op if it is released how it is on pbe.
Support!
being busted with it.
will be a good top lane counter, and some strange shit like 
ADC (APC) will be tried to make it so Zed can get almost nothing from his ult change He will be joined by AP 
who will probably need nerfs to AP and buffs to AD. 
is actually going to be just fine, as long as you are playing Tank Akali. AP akali is gone. Tank 
is coming back some time this season as well, probably when the Vanguards get their update and he can abuse a good chunk of their items, but i wont get into that much more because it doesn't relate to the preseason much. People will probably try to give Tank Ekko its last stand with COTC but wont be able to do it as well. 
will have her clone spawn range nerfed hard, cant say much else but im biased towards her now because i want to add her and Talon to my champion pool. Tank Supports and Junglers will be the meta for their respective roles, Assassin junglers will split play with tank junglers, while mage supports are just thrown out of the meta. As a result of this, 
Support will be a good pick again and 
, who will end up being in every game for a while. He'll probably be nerfed so hard that it kills tank Jarvan as well. Other things that will wind up as new mid lane assassins. 
but wont really work that well. 
will still be a massive pain in the ass and once 10 bans come he wont really exist anymore. 
will be th best ADC, as she not only counters Vayne,but she will be brought mid for a short time because of how she can push in assassins and bully them in lane, and because of how broken her sieging is, and she probably wont take any nerfs for it.
will be much more common on mage supports once 
is not a must buy in nearly every game.
Is going to be very common, and assassins will actually not be all that popular and'll just bring the rebirth of the hyper control aoe CC meta.
and proceed to make him batshit broken
Kled Will Rise into Common Play
Kled's changes make remounting a ton easier to do since the delayed has been more than halved (the time it takes Skaarl to run to you). It only comes at an extremely small damage cost (2% max health damage on W at max rank). Kled is also actually one of the few current Fervor uses that benefits from the changes to it. While his W volley of attacks won't deal as much damage (maybe), the AD from Fervor goes to INCREDIBLE use on his Q, his W final hit, and E. His bonus AD ratios are insane, and this change really goes well with that strength. This allows Kled to build tankier since he doesn't need as much AD as before to make his Q and W deal major damage.
On the other hand, Kled has Edge of Night now if he wants go full offensive, incredibly boosting his defensive properties with it. Ever tried to engage as Kled only to get hit by a Morgana Q or something similar? Not anymore.
Of course, this entire prediction runs on the hope that people will try out listed changes and try and see who is successful AND that Kled's success is broadcast to the public. We will have to see.
Annie Will Have to Be Kept an Eye On
With Assassins across the board having their burst become less instant, Annie shines as a champion that still has incredibly strong and quick burst. When you combine that with her E's % damage reduction to make the stream of Assassins less harmful for her, she is someone who will have to be watched carefully because she might just explode into the meta. While her range is limiting and she relies on sneaking into the enemy team, she still offers some major burst and Tibber's Revenge even offers some incredibly follow up damage that can be incredibly boosted if the target is slowed by Rylai's. Annie seems to be someone who can replace the Assassins' previous role of instantly killing targets that NEED to be instantly killed.
Long Range/Control Mages Return
When Rylai's is nerfed/changed, it's abuse users will likely (hopefully) fall off from the meta a bit. For at least a little bit, people will be looking for some champions who have burst and still provide some equivalent control over a fight. Long range Mages and Control Mages will answer the call. Artillery and Control Mages offer some good zoning and control over team fights that teams will love. Plus, they are some of the best Mages when dealing with Assassins, especially Control Mages.