By William Dinh
Let's take a moment and address the subject of the "best League of Legends (LoL) champions". Is it a champion that is literally better than any others? Perhaps it's the champion that's popular right now from the professional scene. It's hard to describe a singular champion being the "best", because of something called the "META". What "META" stands for is "Most Effective Tactic Available". Another way to describe it is the most effective strategy (or item build) that is considered popular at that time. The meta is always shifting as time goes on, which in LoL's case, that would be the patches that come out every week.
To discuss these things, I had a fun opportunity to briefly interview my good friend, Kyle Tran, who is in the top 0.07% of League of Legend's Solo-queue ladder. I also interviewed another good friend, Peter Tran, who has been playing League of Legends basically since the release of the game back in 2010.
To put into perspective on the popularity of the champions they mentioned, here's a visual to showcase the most picked champions in each lane after the first week of group stages at League of Legend's 2017 World Championship.
Kyle Tran - Buffalo, NY
Hey Kyle, what is your rank this season?
- My rank this season is currently Diamond 1 with 97 LP. I was Masters last season.
Do you notice any differences (or similarities) in the different ranks?
- To be honest, it seems like the differences and similarities are pretty broad. This is a pretty complicated question but just pure mechanics and macro movements are a huge difference. I notice that in high ELO—like diamond 2 and above—everyone plays one role and a couple champions. Some people play champions that are meta and some play are "one trick ponies" where they only stick to one champion. It's pretty hard to be high ranked if you're solely focused on being a jack of all trades.
Do you believe someone should learn/play a champion because it's meta, or play what they're good at?
- I think that you should always play what you're good at. If you practice meta champions but aren't comfortable or good on them, then it won't work out. Especially as you get higher in rank, because players are able to punish you more often
What would you personally say is the current meta overall? if you watch any of the pro games, what do you think about the meta there?
- The current meta is pretty easy to describe—it's dominated by ardent censor and engage. This is why Rakan is so popular right now because he can use ardent censor and be a reliable engager with his W and R. The meta right now is heavily bot-lane focused while drafting tank junglers in the team composition. The top lane is hit or miss because it goes from tanks and farming the lane to carries trying to deny the enemy laner. The mid-lane hasn't really shifted since control mages have been meta for a while—champions like Orianna, Cassiopeia, Syndra, and Taliyah for example.
Why do you think that is the meta right now?
- The meta is like that because ever since ardent censor was buffed, healers and shielders became widely popular. The buffs to Ancient Coin allow the healers and shielders to spam their abilities.
What were the ardent buffs that gave healers and shielders this chance to thrive?
- Well, the patch came changed ardent censer from a flat 20% to a scaling 20%-35% based on a target's level. This made it better late game, but mainly the introduction of the new Ancient Coin that allowed healers and shielders to sustain their mana and HP allowed them to farm gold safely. Also, nerfs to redemption and locket made ardent censer the best support item to rush because redemption doesn't heal as much anymore and locket doesn't scale unless you build bonus HP.
Thanks for doing this brief interview with me! Do you have any tips for any players trying to learning new, possibly meta, champions?
- No problem, happy I could help explain some things. It might seem pretty straightforward, but reading and understanding all of the skills and numbers behind it. Can't learn the champion without knowing what he/she does. Oh, and also know how to animation cancel.
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Peter Tran - Lincoln, NE.
Hi Peter, we usually watch a lot of pro games together and always discuss the draft. What do consider to be meta right now and how do you feel about it?
- Two words—Ardent Censer. I feel like it is garbage right now because it makes bot lane boring. There's not a lot of engage supports like Thresh and Alistar compared to the billions of Janna and Lulus every game. If I ever play support, that means I only play Rakan because he can still give ardent but still engage. Few supports can do that. For the pro scene it's also a bit boring for the spectator because all they see is 3 things: scaling, big team fight, game ends. There's not much in-between because both teams are trying to get their support to finish rushing ardents.
What makes Ardent Censer that great?
- Ardent Censer is super broken, especially the patch worlds is being played on. Most ADCs already run Warlord's Bloodlust mastery which give them a free heal. Now there's Janna and Lulu to provide them with even more shields and healing. What made Ardents strong is because it also gives a lot of attack speed as well as on-hit magic damage and healing based on level. This essentially means that teams need an insane amount of dps or nuke to kill an ADC through all of that. A noticeable change at worlds too is the summoner spells that botlanes run. Typically heal and flash are for the ADC, while the support runs flash and an option between ignite or exhaust. Now, it's a lot more popular for the ADC to go flash and barrier while supports run flash and heal.
Do you think because of Ardent Censer becoming so strong, champion picks in other lanes are affected by it?
- 100%, no doubt about it. Unless you are super good at playing from another lane and playing a quick, clean game—at least in professional anyways—ardent with hypercarry ADC outscales everyone. Your top carry would get shredded and your jungler will be the only tank because engage supports, who are typically are tankier, aren't meta. Even if a team plays a standard top lane and the jungler ganks for him, it isn't always a guarantee win because a fed tank isn't going to do much. At a bigger stage like Worlds, teams can't always rely on having a solid carry lane all the time. They need to rely on the map and other lanes.
Can you give some specific examples of champion picks that have shown up at Worlds that were affected by the popularity of ardent censer supports?
- For top lane I'd say Cho'Gath is the most popular for teams to try and grab in their draft. Maokai is up there as well. Since Cho is a priority for teams, soft counters have come up too. Things like Shen, Gnar, and Trundle. If allowed, Cho can scale up and get super tanky with a lot of damage.
Sorry to interrupt—why do you think Shen, Gnar, and Trundle are soft counters to Cho'Gath?
- Shen does okay against Cho—more of a skill matchup really—but Shen gets outscaled. He won't ever do as much damage nor be as tanky as Cho. So drafting Shen allows teams to use him to run around the map with his teleport and ultimate to get other lanes ahead and essentially snowball them. Trundle basically avoids team fighting and split pushes all game to force Cho to stay top. Without his ulti, Trundle is basically useless. Gnar has a mix of team fighting and splitpushing. He can abuse Cho early, but he's not as tanky. He can team fight with his transformation into Mega Gnar and can snowball teamfights through that.
Fair points, continue on with your examples.
- In the Jungle, the picks typically are either tanky or aims for early to mid-game abuse of the opponent jungler and lanes. Sejuani, Gragas, and J4 are all really good at being tanky and having solid engages for teamfights or ganks. Rek'sai is sort of there too, but she can be built damage as well. To go for early to mid-game abuse people would normally pick Kayne, Nidalee, Ezreal, and Elise to try and snowball their lanes or shut down the enemy jungler.
- Mid is anything that's basically a control mage or lane bully to snowball botlane or help ADCs late game. This could be through winning mid lane or roaming top and bot to influence the lane. These picks are champions like Corki, Orianna, Ryze, Syndra, Leblanc, Taliyah or Cassiopeia.
- ADC is pretty simple, a lot of the picks are hypercarries that scale well into the late game. Things like Tristana, Kog, and maybe Twitch. Xayah and Varus could also be thrown in there for mid game too.
- Supports in the meta now are any champions that can use Ardent Censer—Rakan, Lulu, and Janna.
Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts and opinions on the meta!
- No problem!
If you like this content, be sure to check back every week to see interviews, info-graphics, and much more things related to League of Legends!
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