League META: Wait… You Aren’t Playing an ADC?

Meta, whether  you play Jungle, Top, Mid, Support, or ADC; Everyone ends up fitting into the meta.  At times I feel like Riot enforces the Meta–after all almost all the new champions are designed with one thing in mind, and when the community finds a new way to play that champion, it gets nerfed right into the ground. (I’m talking about you AP Tryndamere). Yes, sometimes that role can be overpowered–if you look at AP Tryndamere, it was broken, but I think Riot could have fixed the problem without making something that was playable completely useless.

My question is–what is going to happen to the Meta of League? I remember back at the beginning of Season 3, a lot of people were talking about double bruiser bottom lane, but yet now we are working our way back to the world finals and people are still playing the same thing. 

Meta schmeta

The problem with the Meta is there is really no diversity.  When I got into champion select I instantly know from the picks what I will be playing against, and because I usually play bottom lane, I always see the same champions over and over again. 

For me it has gotten to the point where League is starting to feel the same; I either play against something that is super common (Caitlyn and Taric) or I play something totally out there, that I know won’t work, and it’s an easy win (AD Leblanc, please stop trying this). At the same time, I don’t see a lot of the champions that I like to play, or play with.  Janna, Corki, Sivir, Varus, Quinn, Soraka, Nami, and Urgot (I probably missed some of the bottom laners) seem to never end up in my games.  Instead everyone plays Miss Fortune or Draven or Ezreal, because they are the easy picks that people deem overpowered. 

The fact of the matter is, Riot is going the wrong direction with League of Legends. Instead of making it so all the champions are relatively balanced, there seems to be a direct few who are really strong and played a lot–or banned for that matter (every game I swear, same bans) whereas the champions that are harder, or not as good, (unless playing certain match ups) are neglected, even if they would be really strong against the opponents’ composition.

Conclusion

All in all I think some changes need to be made to get us further away from the current meta of the game, and make it so that champions can be played in more diverse roles.  I give props to people that can play Quinn or Vayne top, but at the same time they need to communicate that they are playing a combo like that, so that the rest of us can coordinate, so we have that bruiser or tank in the late game.

For all my fellow summoners, this week I challenge you to try playing “against the meta.” Play someone in a lane you haven’t played yet and see if it works for you!  If it does, tell me all about it in the comments, and when you are out there running around good old Summoner’s Rift, please don’t get mad that people aren’t conforming to society by going against the meta.