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Can we take a moment to talk about the current meta?

InvisibleDagger··4 votes·2,289 views

I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time starting this up, i just wanted to pool peoples ideas and thoughts on the current meta.

This is my OPINION of the current meta. I've noticed that the majority of team comps lately are highly geared towards very tank champions with high mobility and great cc (Hello Blitzcrank, Udyr, Sejuani, etc) I get the point of tanks, to soak up damage and maybe make engages and the occasional "OH MY GOD" plays. But I've come to feel like the tank balance of the game is slightly askew. With the addition of constant new tanky items that are -- surprisingly -- actually good (Cinderhulk, Bami's Cinder, Sunfire, ZZ'rot in its own regards) are throwing the game into a super tanky beating each other over the head with a pillow while slowing burning the squishies to death with the insane amount of magical damage tanks have with Sunfire/Thornmail. Some might say," but Invis! Why not just play tank killers like Vayne, Kog'Maw, etc?" While I do love playing these ADC's, a lot. I find it hard to lane as Vayne in the current meta of people spamming Graves and blitz/thresh bot for "freelo" and with Kog while he has the potential to do very well in lane he still gets destroyed in team fights due to the high mobility tanks running through the team and smashing him with hard cc due to his lack of mobility. Lastly, I also feel like we are missing out on viable armor pen. items. Yes we have three, but lets be honest, only very select people use Black clever and I feel that BC should be updated into a new armor pen item to answer for this frustrating new meta.

This is turning into a rant and that wasn't the intention. I was just trying to bring to light how I've seen the "meta" in this new season. The hope of this thread is for you (the readers) to comment your views, criticize (not attack), or even add on to my post.

P.S. I'm sorry if there was already a post like this, I did look but I could have missed it.

TL;DR Feel free to post about your view of the meta in hopes of pooling the communities thoughts in one place. Have a good day :) ~Invis

15 Comments

redniwediS8 votes

As a tanky, immobile melee main I have the exact opposite opinion about this meta. For the longest time my preferred role has had to answer to highly mobile mages, assassins, and marksmen. One mistake when it comes to positioning usually kills someone outright, with there being little I can do as a front liner besides either spam CC on whoever's diving and hope it works, or dive the enemy backline and hope they focus me.

My role is almost always talked about as being a member of the "wet noodle fight" in top lane, yet most bruisers and some tanks have significant burst and/or sustained damage. Bruisers are almost always grouped in with tanks, and tanks are almost always considered to be low damage, even though the truth of the matter is not so black and white. We cannot one shot carries and tear other tanky champions apart the same way carries and assassins do, but our damage has almost always been significant enough to turn fights.

Now, for the first time I can remember since season 2, tanks as a role are able to carry games without the need for heavy team coordination. Teamfights are less about initial positioning and more about maintained positioning. There are chances mid fight to correct mistakes, and there's finally enough CC to punish mobile champions who get too cocky.

With every meta some champions rise, and some fall, however I feel that more champions are viable at the same time than there has been in the past few metas. Things are different, but it doesn't feel overwhelming. Graves and the other supercarries of bot lane will eventually be replaced by carries who can survive this tankier meta a bit better, and perhaps that means now is the perfect time to tweak the tank busters of old. Bot lane has been a bit stagnant lately, and this meta might be just the thing it needs to move things along.

With all that said I'm hoping things stay on the tanky side for a while to come. Maybe it shouldn't last until the end of the season, or maybe it will last well into season 6, however I just hope it lasts long enough to shake things up in a way that won't just return to the old after it's gone. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

InvisibleDagger1 votes

As someone that has never liked going "full tank" I've always preferred building off tanks or playing bruisers top lane, while yes I do win my lane most of the time because I'm a scumbag and play easy champions lol. I still find it annoying that literally anyone can build tank and still do well. Just the other day I was playing with a tank Vayne. She started off with a normal build (BotRK, berserkers) but then she went full tank. And she completely dominated the game.

I don't mind tanks as much as I probably seemed like I did, one or two tanks aren't that bad that is easily dealt with just go behind them and take out the carries. It's when the ENTIRE team is going tanky that's obnoxious because if your team isn't ahead there's honestly very little you can do because teams don't have enough damage to deal with tanks especially teams with champions like Pantheon and Lee who both fall off stories late game. Call me crazy but I just find games like that straight up boring to play regardless of the high action wet noodle fights or while they stand behind their big minion waves with baron spamming taunts while you can't do anything to stop it (ok that taunt part has never happened to me before but I can picture it happening)

I feel like tanks are anything but wet noodles with the item paths they have available to them at this point. They are able to go toe to toe with fed adcs and win thanks to thornmail/sunfire or cinderhulk especially on sej/rammus. While their ability skill sets may be low damage those items can easily rev up their damage and dueling potential in lane.

SmokingPuffin3 votes

You really need to present more evidence and less "I feel" statements if you want to convince anyone of anything. Also, you say this meta is "frustrating", but I don't see much discussion of why you think that is.

For example, you complain that Vayne is too hard to lane with, but she's a winning champion in every elo today. Admittedly just slightly, at 50.4% in diamond and 50.2% in gold, but she's working just fine right now. No need for changes on her account.

On the Kog front, your complaint sounds more like "people need to learn to peel" more than any real balance problem. Let's get serious here, Sejuani doesn't stick to anything Thresh doesn't want her sticking to. With a hitbox that big, Q into E into R is basically guaranteed on a diving Sejuani. Pretty sure Kog likes this sort of jungler way more than he liked the Kha'Zix meta, and certainly the current stats say he's doing well.

I think this "tank meta" thing is being way overstated. The only place tanks are any different from patch 5.4 is in the jungle, because Cinderhulk is really strong. That item probably needs some tuning downwards, but it's still only one champion different per team. We were already playing Thresh bot and Hecarim top patches ago, and it's not like the previous jungle picks of Jarvan and Vi were super squish or something. Doesn't seem like that big a change for the rest of the game if we swap out bruiser junglers for tank junglers.

InvisibleDagger1 votes

The purpose of my post was not to convince anyone of anything. I have been taking writing classes for all of my life so far, I'm well aware that I need to not have "I feel" in -- more or less -- all of my statements if I was trying to prove something, but I'm not. If you want I could spend a day gathering my thoughts and write a super stellar post on why tanks are "super broken m8."I feel like everyone got hung up on telling me things I already knew about how to deal with tanks. I was aiming for this to be a tell me what you think about the meta thread and not a "This guy thinks tanks are broken lets all tell him why he's wrong" What I stated in my initial post was my opinion Mind blown If i was trying to prove anything I wouldn't have started this thread off with anything close to resembling the initial post. Although good luck proving anything in League boards.

As with Vayne, she is a skill match up in most of the games shes played in, Vayne is fine there is nothing bad about her. Just right now Vayne is not that good against Graves and his "Im'a blow you up" combo.

Kog'Maw, I love Kog. He is probably one of the most fun champions that I have always been playing even since when I first started in early season 2. My complaint isn't the lack of peel, it's his lack of mobility. Sure he has a slow that is, fairly good IMO. But it's simply not enough in teamfights. A linear skillshot with only a 52% slow at max rank is fairly easy to get around. Buying item 3078 and item 3252 is the only way I've ever been able to kite with Kog, I've even considered item 3022 in some cases. If you are able to have a team that by some miracle has more CC than the other team that is using that meta then good on you.

This tank meta has always been around. I'm not referring to just this recent patch. Since the beginning of Season 5 It has been very good just underplayed. Now that tank junglers are being encouraged that's usually three BIG beefy dudes on their team, more if mid is playing someone like Swain, Annie, Diana, etc. who do tons of damage while being able to stack RoA's for days (kind of a troll thing to do, but it was just an example)

A example of this being frustrating, try playing a assassin or fragile bruiser like Riven against a team with no one to assassinate and that has more than enough hard CC to deal with you and then move on to the rest of your team. Having 5 very tank champions really makes this game boring to play. Whenever I see a team going for that team comp it forces me to play champions I really would rather not play because the champions I would have played would have gotten slaughtered or would have just fallen off post laning phase. Or even imagine a tank team that has baron sitting in the back of y our base laughing while you have to deal with the baron minions, you can't get them out of the base and it's just a matter of time until you get over ran by the minions.

My main complaint with this meta is the fact that I can't play anyone that isn't a "Tank Buster" in solo or blind queue's. Oh you want to play Ap/AD ezreal? Or full ad panth/lee top? Lol good luck vs our team that shits on anyone without built in armor pen/ HP shred.

SmokingPuffin2 votes

I was aiming for this to be a tell me what you think about the meta thread and not a "This guy thinks tanks are broken lets all tell him why he's wrong" What I stated in my initial post was my opinion Mind blown If i was trying to prove anything I wouldn't have started this thread off with anything close to resembling the initial post.

Ok fair enough. You didn't come off the way you intended. You sound like a guy who doesn't like tanks and wants them to go away.

Kog'Maw, I love Kog. He is probably one of the most fun champions that I have always been playing even since when I first started in early season 2. My complaint isn't the lack of peel, it's his lack of mobility.

Kog'Maw must be immobile. Can't have all the good stuff he has and also have a dash.

This tank meta has always been around. I'm not referring to just this recent patch. Since the beginning of Season 5 It has been very good just underplayed.

This is objectively false. As recently as 5.4, the vast majority of tanks were stupid picks, and going with a 3 tank comp was just asking to get rekt. If you are feeling like tanks are always good against you, I think you should consider trying to figure out why your playstyle gets countered by tanks.

My main complaint with this meta is the fact that I can't play anyone that isn't a "Tank Buster" in solo or blind queue's. Oh you want to play Ap/AD ezreal? Or full ad panth/lee top?

I really can't agree. I think the ADC meta has never been wider than it is today. Ezreal works fine right now; he's benefiting from a switch away from Vi and Lee to things he can poke more easily. The top lane meta is also quite wide now -- you can play a wide variety of different kinds of champions. Just to name a few: Hecarim, Riven, Lulu, Irelia, Lissandra, Vladimir, Rumble. This is the first time in a long time that we haven't seen one class of champions dominate top.

IcyPepper2 votes

In my opinion, tanks aren't dominating. Keep in mind that bruisers were the gods, and I rarely if ever saw a "bruiser meta" thread (though we did get jungler gods threads).

Considering that adc+support bot lane has been prevalent for so long, and tanks are just coming back into the meta again, it's perplexing people will complain about a tank meta but never really argue against that one.

Also, I don't really mind the new meta. If someone builds cinderhulk, item 3153 is going to deal even more damage. And considering the number of anti-tank items item 3035 item 3135 item 3151 item 3031 item 3153 , I'd say it's relatively even field to counterbuild each other (tanks got thornmail, randuins, etc).

You're still going to get assassins, mages, bruisers, adc's, and supports. Just because tanks are back in the game doesn't necessarily mean they'll crowd out other choices, considering there are a lot of tank counters Vi Gnar Vayne KogMaw Taric (only a little, but he does help) Irelia Twitch.

I'm not joking. Whenever I play Sejuani (haven't played her after cinderhulk came and waited until her nerf, to be honest) and see a Vayne on the enemy team, I cry inside.

InvisibleDagger1 votes

It's funny because whenever I see a Sejuani I cry inside a little too xD

I think the reason that you never saw the "Omg Brusiers so OP" threads is because while they were strong (very very strong) They were still able to be dealt with. Which is what this tank/high cc comp did well and why I feel like I'm starting to see it more now. I feel like this was the answer to the brusier meta. Anyways back to what I was saying, the reason I started this thread is because I find the tanks to be a much more difficult thing to deal with, sure you can cc them with whatever cc you have, but it usually isn't enough, and if you are dumb enough to blow cc on the tank then what about their one MAYBE 2 non tank carries?

While being outdamaged and Aced is annoying but it is the main way league games are won. I can accept that, certain teams get ahead and simply do more damage and play better together. But being out tanked? That is far more frustrating, by a lot. You can't do anything about a tank team that is ahead, especially if you don't have a very good tank killer on your team. Having a bunch of beefy dudes with more cc just rush your backline makes it very difficult to peel and regardless of the fact that they are tanks, if you have 3 or 4 people rushing your carry and you can't stop them and your carry isn't capable to dodging it then that carry is dead and you just lost your main damage for the teamfight. Then they continue to cc lock the rest of your team to a slow and painful death while out healing the rest of the damage your team can do with their warmongs, spirit visage, and heals.

TL;DR Basically you didn't see threads about the brusier meta because it was fairly common throughout all recent seasons of league, so people could deal with it, this is such an awkward meta where you have to use out of meta champs/build paths to deal with it that it is more frustrating and is why I eventually started this thread.

Kitten of Evil2 votes

I main immobile mages and supports. Personally, I like the increased variety of this meta. I got so tired of seeing assassins every single game in season 5, because the entire meta could be boiled down to "how fast are your reflexes?" and "press some combination of QWER to delete squishies in one burst". I still take Exhaust every time I blind pick mid.

As far as I'm concerned, a meta where all members of the team are valued is better. And that's what we have now. Assassins can still dive the backline and kill carries, while tanks now can survive the early game and so can now be disruptive in teamfights. Mages provide AOE which is much more useful now that fights last a longer time and involve more people. Supports provide peel, utility, and damage mitigation. AD carries help kill enemies, but also secure objectives. In assassin meta, the only teammates who matter are the carries, because tanks didn't get beefy enough to do their job until it was too late, and support CC is often limited.

Not to mention, there are a ton of champions who counter tanks -- ADC: Kog'Maw, Vayne, Varus Mage: Brand, Malzahar, Vel'Koz Bruisers: Vi, Irelia, Gnar Tanks: Amumu, Sion? (I'd assume, with his max HP % shield and passive)

There are fewer champions who counter assassins -- virtually every ADC and mage were weak to them (notable exceptions being Lissandra and Malzahar)

InvisibleDagger1 votes

I know there are champions to deal with tanks like those you mentioned, but if you look at the ones you did mention, almost none of them have any mobility to boot, while yes I'll admit most of them are exceptional at killing tanks they just can't do much in team fights due to hard engage "tanks" like malphite. This tank meta wouldn't be so obnoxious if the good tank killers were more viable in lane (Kog, Varus, Vayne) If a team is already ahead and then start getting tanky it is GG from there because you can't make quick picks anymore and you already don't have enough damage to beat them so how are you going to be able to kill them now that they have 150+ armor?

Kitten of Evil1 votes

There are also many items that deal with tanky champions. Of the champions I listed, they are about as mobile as you'd expect given their role. ADCs generally are a pretty immobile class, and it makes sense that the ones with longer range or more tank-shred capabilities are slightly less mobile. Mages are also usually immobile.

Vi, Irelia, and Gnar are pretty mobile, and Sion and Amumu both have a gap closer and strong amounts of CC.

MindSmash2 votes

The previous meta, it almost felt as if playing a tank was a mistake, because they would be paper thin due to their lack of farm in jg. The cinderhulk item simply brought out what was already there by giving them viable wave clear. This meta is harder, but as a squishy you shouldn't be in their engage vicinity. Simply poking them slowly with a skill or two before you reach a position to deal real damage to their back line. I like this meta. It forces me to be a little less aggressive, and a little more patient, waiting for opportunity. Before, carries could destroy a tank before they could do anything, so hard engage bruisers like jarvan and vi were the meta, bit now the slower more calculated approach this game has taken has brought a little more intensity to the carries I play. The balancing has definitely brought me more joy as a mid apc main.

KaisadiIIa2 votes

You haven't played Season 2, when tanks were REALLY painful.

Tanks aren't dominant now. Tanks are just another viable option. People is playing more tanks now because we are were bored of playing the same champions: In my specific case, when Cinderhulk came out, I shifted from playing Rek'Sai or Vi to playing Nautilus or Zac. It's not because "omg they are op", just because I was getting bored of picking Vi every time I had to jungle, and it's cool to be able to play Zac again without feeling useless passed 10 minutes.

Also, as an assassin main (Mainly Talon, but also LeBlanc, Zed and lately Katarina), pre-cinderhulk I could just ignore tanks throughout all the game. Even more, if an enemy Zac was being problematic, I could burst him down with no problems. Now I have to think more about what I can do, not only "let's get fed and win every teamfight".

InvisibleDagger1 votes

It seems to me though that unless you are very far ahead you either can't get past the tanks to the squishier champions (who buy the way will eventually buy defensive items to guard against this) and if you are able to do this good on you, but if you don't end before late game when everyone more or less has full build then your assassin will usually fall off if you are playing against higher elo players due to high cc lock brought by the tanks and lack of assassination options due to everyone buying tanky options (adc's can buy GA,Omens,Banshees if they feel the need to and still be viable) then who are you going to be able to assassinate? And if you aren't assassinating anyone then you are either not helping much in temafights or not being able to help at all.

I'm not saying that tanks are OP, this is just the team comp that I have to deal with the most regularly and how frustrating it is to deal with this kind of team.

Ruudi1 votes

Tanks, huh?

item 3153 item 3071 item 3035 item 3078 item 3135 item 3089 item 3717item 3001 Darius Katarina Heimerdinger Zyra Volibear Olaf Nasus

What tanks?

InvisibleDagger1 votes

Yes there are items that you can buy, but I feel like if you are forced to make more or less your entire build around the enemy team with almost none of your usual core items you won't have enough damage to deal with the rest of the team. If a tank that does a lot of damage gets a head you need almost all of those items to deal with them. But then comes the issue of dealing with their carries, now that you have less damage good luck trying to go toe to toe with a normal build adc/assassin.

I can agree with most of the champions you have brought out. The only one I don't really see is Kat, if everyone is tanky there is no one for you to assassinate, and due to the high amounts of cc that most of these team comps generally have it is very hard for anyone that is fragile to do much if you are playing Yolo queue. While there are exceptions to every rule, i find it very hard to see Kat's doing amazing against a tank comp any day now.

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