[SmG Dragonrage]

Some stuff I found. Ill try to add more later and give some if my thoughts as well.
At present, League of Legends suffers from (or is blessed by, depending on your perspective) a very stagnant / stable metagame. When LoL players say "meta" what they're referring to is the general strategy and team comp typically employed. This strategy has persisted despite significant changes in the jungle and items from Season 2 - Season 3. So what IS the current meta?

ADC (auto-attacking DPS champ) and support - generally bottom lane on the map below
Jungler
Bruiser - generally top lane on the map below
AP caster (bursty magic damage champion) - generally mid lane on the map below



There's some caveats to this and we'll get to those in a minute but these 5 comprise 90% of the games played competitively both before and after season 3 started. What I wanted to get to is the reasons why this meta gets played and why it's so stable. The first question above, "Why do we play A meta?" is relatively easy. Solo Queue is generally a collection of individual and duo queueing partners. They don't have the time to do a coordinated, complicated strategy. They need a template to work off of so that the team's expectations are set. So while Talon may be a great counterpick to LeBlanc mid, if you pick him you throw off the physical / magic damage balance of a standard team comp and those ripple effects can't always be handled in the 3-4 minutes of ban / pick time. As a result, you tend to see a little more innovation from true team play (Fnatic winning Dreamhack with a triple bruiser comp or M5 in IPL4 with a double jungle, for example) but in solo queue, innovation is greeted by calls of "Troll Pick. Screw it, I'm feeding!"

The broader question of why THIS particular meta is a more nuanced, but arguably more important, question. The answer lies in an understanding of some basic facts about the map.

Baron is closer to top lane and Dragon is closer to bottom lane.
Dragon spawns at 6 minutes. Baron spawns at 15, and for all practical purposes, generally isn't killable until 20+.
Mid lane is the "shortest" lane both in nexus - nexus distance and outer turret - outer turret distance; the latter is probably more important.
XP is shared based on proximity (with a 10% bonus to each player involved) but gold is based solely on final blow.
Auto-attacking characters tend to scale better off of gold while casters ("ability oriented characters") tend to scale better off of level.
A balanced team of magic and physical damage minimizes build efficiency for the other team; i.e. armor and magic resist are least efficient, gold wise, when you're dealing exactly 50/50 split magic vs. physical.
Any strategy that can be neutered just from bans and a single counter-pick can't be considered stable.
So let's look at what these mean in aggregate

Control of bottom lane (i.e. Dragon) is more important early game than top lane, so playing two here is probably best.
A support is best teamed with an ADC because they can feed all their gold to their laning companion while leeching xp.
Jungling provides a captive source of gold and xp that needs to be "mined" for the team, so we need someone (or multiple people) to be responsible for clearing the jungle. The jungle also gives the ability to gank and move around unseen. For these reasons, a dedicated jungler is generally preferable to the laners simply picking up the jungle neutrals as they have time. However...
The jungle lacks sufficient gold/xp to support two junglers.
AP casters tend to be squishy so putting them in the middle where they have a shorter distance to safety makes sense.
Top lane is most exposed due to have only one person and being isolated from the rest of the team.
Because top lane is so exposed and mid lane generally contains champions like Katarina and Diana (pre-nerf) that snowball hard, the junglers will frequently focus on ganks here. It helps, as well, that 2v1 ganks are easier to pull off than 3v2 ganks.
So the natural team composition that flows from this is:

An ADC and support take the bottom lane.
The AP caster mid, where he's least exposed due to the proximity to the tower.
Bruiser at the top. Most bruisers tend to be AD focused but there are plenty of exceptions.
Jungler (which are generally hybrid damage dealers but, again, lots of exceptions) jungles.
That doesn't quite get to the goal of 50/50 magic / physical, but it's pretty close, and the support will typically be contributing some magic damage as well. The actual ratio will vary wildly depending on the choice for top and jungler. If you play Malphite and Amumu, you're going to have a LOT of magic damage. If you play Lee Sin and Hecarim, it'll be far more physical.

There are three developing trends in this otherwise stable meta.

The first is the trend in lane swapping. Many purple teams (more on why this is largely a purple team phenomenon in a minute) are opting to send their ADC/support duo top and create a 2v1 on top and bottom. Riot has admitted (and recent tournaments have validated) that the blue side has a "slight" statistical advantage. This lane swap evens out those odds somewhat. Generally there are a few reasons why teams switch. The first is that they're avoiding a perceived bad matchup (either top or bottom) or they have a hyper-carry like Vayne or Kog' Maw who would benefit from an easy laning phase. The other factor, and I think this is the reason that you don't see the blue team initiating these lane swaps, is the location of red buff. Red buff is bottom lane adjacent for blue side but top lane adjacent for purple side. As a result, the decision for purple to lane switch is a lot simpler. What AD carry wouldn't want to have a 2v1 lane and have the red buff in easy access? The answer is none!

Remember too, the goal is to catch someone off guard and quickly take down the top tower. If you find your team swapping, you're effectively giving up control of the Dragon so it's important that they aggressively counter jungle and ward to maintain vision and disrupt the inevitable Dragon attempts that will be made.

The second growing trend is away from traditional "sustain supports" to more aggressive supports. A "sustain champion" (Soraka, Taric, etc) is one who specializes in keeping their laning companion active and alive. This is the closest thing to a "healer class" that we have in LoL. The more aggressive supports (Blitzcrank, Alistar, etc) work to pressure the lane and focus on the assumption that a dead enemy ADC is better than a heal on your ADC. The current trend is to pick supports that can grow into carry or pseudo-carry roles. At present, Zyra is very, very popular at high ELO and competitive play. The reason is that she can be played very aggressively (landing her root is often all it takes to kill an enemy) and she also grows into a second AP carry late game once she can get some gold. As a result, her power level is highest at the two phases of the game that are most important (first ten minutes and last ten minutes).

The final "small" trend is to have an AD caster mid and an AP bruiser top. This is a fairly small tweak but it's definitely more common to see a Talon mid and Malphite top than it used to be. The problem with this is that there aren't that many AD Casters in the game right now. Talon is clearly the top tier of this small type with Pantheon and Zed being the other members of the family (Rengar and Kha'Zix could, in theory be one but they need bushes to be effective and there aren't any close enough to work in mid lane). Zed has a crazy high skill cap that even the pros struggle with (go watch Chaox's play of Zed from this past weekend) and Pantheon is generally spurned (though I'm not sure why). Three champions is insufficient to have a stable meta, however. The list of AP bruisers is similarly short (Malphite, Vlad and Irelia are the ones that come to mind). So banning Talon and Malphite (something frequently done lately, from what I've seen) can really hinder this plan.

What changes has season 3 brought? Not many to be honest. The potentially big meta shifting events (nerf of oracles and sightstone which means a lot more wards, jungle changes, re-itemization) haven't yet pushed any big changes. There was a period of time where Black Cleaver ran amok and you saw teams of 4-5 AD Bruisers running around but that's been "fixed" with the cleaver nerf.

There hasn't yet been a tournament played with Season 3 post-cleaver patch. There was a solo-mid series tournament where the final round was played season 3 but with cleaver still in its OP state (pre Nami / Vi as well). As a result, it's probably not worth exploring too thoroughly for clues as to the meta. We'll have to see what happens in the next big tournament to really get a good feel. In the meantime, get some friends and explore. Today's "Troll Pick" can be tomorrow's meta-breaking discovery.


An interesting article I found.
A new approach to laning in LOL… an introduction to the double jungle roaming support meta.





I’ve watching, playing and analyzing the 3rd ranked season for league of legends with particular interest.

I know our current meta revolves around a couple of basic concepts;

1) An adc + support in one lane

2) Two solo lanes

3) A jungler

The way these lanes interact is variable, with 2 v 1 lanes happening frequently in competitive games, looking to “starve” the opposing solo player of both experience and gold. The second outcome of doing this revolves around establishing “map control” over the opposing team, by effectively taking control of their jungle.

Now, jungle changes in season 3 have made jungling a bit more difficult. Jungle mobs have more health overall, and are more difficult to take down. Junglers can still gank early, but have to do so with a high CC jungler, in order to ensure kills, lest they die themselves in the process of ganking; and nobody wants to solo lane against a double buff opponent at 5 min into the game.

Which leads me to the following…

I have been watching a lot of DOTA 2, as gaming in general is a big hobby of mine and I don’t discriminate watching matches based on gaming preference, and became extremely interested in their meta.

I will try to VERY briefly explain what I mean.

The DOTA 2 meta sometimes employs triple lanes to deny farm and experience, they sometimes play 2 v 1 in both lanes and just hope that ganks are sufficient to snowball the lane, and sometimes they play a rather peculiar double roam support game, which looks to capitalize on early aggression in order to snowball the lanes in their favor; it’s this last one that particularly interested me.

It stands to be said that mid is typically left to their own devices, the top and bottom lanes are where the majority of lane switching and champion denying take place.

Currently, junglers fall into one of two categories

1) Carry Junglers

2) Heavy CC support junglers

I can safely say, that after watching 3 weeks of LCS, the latter has taken over as the role of choice in the current meta. Which got me to thinking: Don’t we have two champions in the game that fulfill similar roles? The Duo-lane support sacrifices gold for utility, and only gains experience in the lane. The support jungler also sacrifices gold for utility, they do achieve better items than traditional supports, but late game they are also not the primary damage dealers in their teams, the carries are.

All this lead to the following theorycrafting…

The possibility of a double support-jungle meta is completely viable. And before you call me crazy, hear me out.

The jungle offers two things that supports want: money and experience. In season 2, I would have told you that having two people roaming around in the jungle was a bad idea, not so in season 3.

Currently the amount of experience to be gained in the jungle is:



Jungle Camp

Gold

Exp

Ancient Golem
66

221

Big Golem
55

137

Giant Wolf
55

153

Golem
15

38

Lesser Wraith
3 x 3 = 9

4 x 3 = 12

Lizard Elder
66

221

Wolf
4 x 2 =8

10 x 2 = 20

Wraith
30

103

Young Lizard
5 x 4 = 20

40 x 4= 160

Total
324

1065



If we divide this by sections, that means that Blue buff side gets 474 xp, while red side gets 591 xp.

Now, here is where it gets interesting, and I need you all to follow me on this.

The total amount of experience that a champion gets per minion wave in lane is:

Castor Minion x 3

Experience: (29.44 x 3)/2 = 41.66 exp (+2.76 / 3 min)

Melee Minion x 3

Experience: (58.88 x 3)/2 = 88.32 exp (+4.6 / 3 min) (+4.6 / 3 min)

Total experience gained in lane after first minion wave = 129.98, every 30 seconds a new wave will spawn, and every 3 waves will include a cannon minion in them. The waves take about 30 seconds to reach the first turret, and about another 30 seconds or so for the ADC to last hit the waves adequately (we are not assuming he is pushing the lane). The first wave will arrive to lane at about 2 min, be farmed at about 2:30, and the second wave will be arriving shortly thereafter, being taken completely at about 3 mins into the game, and so on. We can say, that the AVERAGE experience gained is about 289.96 every minute (I divided the siege minion xp by 3 since they span every three waves and added it to the total xp for a minute), without taking into account other factors like pushing your lane or being denied experience.

In the jungle, you have an average of about 1065/2 = 532.5 exp after the first run through with both supports taking the jungle.

Now, a champion needs a total of 280 xp to get to the next level (2), so, theoretically, champions sharing XP from the jungle, and doing jungle together should reach level 2 fairly quickly (it takes exactly Blue buff, wolves, Red Buff), but even better, this should allow the duo jungling team to keep abreast of the xp they would be gaining in lane! The power of this team is not farming, but GANKING and applying pressure to the rest of lanes. This includes denying experience, denying gold, and denying map control.

This also tentatively means more wards, more counterjungling, and better map control for the team that has this duo roaming support team.

Supports and junglers are usually behind in levels at the mid-late stages of the game anyways along with being starved for gold, their CC and auras making up for their lack of levels and gold. Their main focus in to lock down the opposing enemy in order for their carries to melt face, with this method, you would potentially have 3 high level and highly farmed carries on your team, with 2 champions supporting with CC in the backlines.

This strategy is by no means foolproof, and needs intense ganking coordination (to chain CC) and champion synergy in order to be pulled off.

That means that choosing the correct champions for this role is essential, and early ganking is encouraged with a heavy cc dual support jungling team.

The great thing is that any of the following supports and junglers can mesh well with this theory:

J4, Trundle, Taric, Leona, Zyra, Xin, Cho’gath, Morgana, Lux, Elise, Thresh, Blitzcrank and Sona to name a few.

Some junglers and supports that I feel are not apt for this kind of gameplay are:

Nocturne, Lee Sin, Vi, Hecarim, Soraka, Shaco, Shen, Malphite, Udyr, to also name a few.

All interactions are potentially viable, but I feel that the second set of champions make coordination even harder, due to the lack of hard cc available at level 2.

Season 3 opens up new possibilities, and it’s up to us to find new and exciting gameplay that pushes the current meta to it’s very limits.

[SmG Phoenix]

I prefer if you linked us to the article. Give us a general overview of what it says with your thoughts. :P That's what I would do anyway.

[SmG Dragonrage]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://themittani.com/features/lol-persistence-meta">http://themittani.com/features/lol-persistence-meta</a><!-- m --> first article

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lolreport.com/category/analyzing-the-current-meta/">http://www.lolreport.com/category/analy ... rent-meta/</a><!-- m --> second

Ill talk about the second one first. Basically if gives a suggestion of a new strategy of having two junglers that work as a team to provide early aggression to win the lanes and to get 3 fed carries with two heavy cc supports as back up. IMO it would only work in prearranged teams and I think one team actually did use. It once but it can be very risky and would most likely require a highly mobile adc bot lane to survive 2v1 and he would waste some of the extra gold by having to ward himself. It could be easier to lock down kills on ganks but if the other teams bit lane was strong enough they could keep the solo adc out of exp range and starve him of gold. This would require the two junglers to babysit him and wouldn't really add anything to help.

The second article does a better job explaining things IMO. The way I see it there hasn't been a huge shift in the meta. There have been a few tweaks that allowed for different playing styles such as ad casters mid and other strategy changes but these generally require a full team to keep a mix of physical and magic damage to reduce the effectiveness of the other teams defenses. The reason there is a meta is because it is too hard to try and plan out a strategy in the few minutes of champ select so there has to be a general guideline to follow. The biggest change I have seen is in the support role where disruptive apcs fill the spot and scale into another apc later in the game while still protecting the adc. Also with some of the new items the is more burst damage in most champions so hard cc can be very fatal. The way one if my favorite commentators puts it one stun one kill. If u can catch one person out and stun then they r dead then u can usually win the teamfight that ensues immediately afterwards. Another slight change is that junglers usually have to gank a bit later into the game or risk dying as they r generally burning a pot on the way to gank a lane and usually rnt full health when they get there so without hard cc they could give away a free kill. That's enough for now. I can answer any questions u might have but remember this is my opinion Feel free to add ur thoughts as well

[SmG Phoenix]

Should have edited the first, but ok, it works.

[SmG Conan]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yPkFVtre-U[/youtube]
This was trolling but now that i read this, this works. ADC with smite so he can get the siege minions quickly. EZ is a good choice to solo since he can farm long range with his q which consume not much mana

[SmG Phoenix]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yPkFVtre-U[/youtube]
This was trolling but now that i read this, this works. ADC with smite so he can get the siege minions quickly. EZ is a good choice to solo since he can farm long range with his q which consume not much mana

Best embed ever.

[SmG Dragonrage]

Ikr^ and I can't even fix it for him. How sad. Oh well I guess I'll copy and paste the URL to watch it

[SmG Conan]

You said what about my embed

[SmG Dragonrage]

Ahh u fixed it. Saves me the trouble of copy and paste

[SmG Phoenix]

OMG SEJUANI'S PIG IS SO DAMN ADORABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!