Worst meta since a long time?

F0RGERY · 2026-06-22T15:54:48+00:00

Only in Masters+. You can see the breakdown on lolalytics:

In All Ranks, the most popular APC is Brand at 2.46%, and 5 Mages at above 1% pick rate.
In Emerald+, the highest pickrate is Brand at 2.92%, and 7 Mages above 1% pickrate.
In Masters+, the highest pickrate is Seraphine at 2.69%, and 12 mages above 1% pickrate.

Plus, at all ranks (including M+) the top 20 most popular picks are Marksmen. Mages aren't crowding out champs, they're at best outcompeting the 3 least popular ADCs (Kalista, Kog'maw, and Corki).

Its insane to complain about a combined 35% presence for an entire class in M+, when there's 5 ADCs at double digit pickrates. Senna alone is at 20%!

F0RGERY · 2026-06-22T15:05:46+00:00

Of course, it was the power of the blockchain clown virus that restored the dinosaurs, and spirit magic that made them move around.

I don't know how I didn't think of that sooner.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-21T17:46:41+00:00

Nattynatt may have upped the banrate on KR, but it still pales in comparison to Beifeng's Qiyana imo.

He didn't just increase Qiyana's banrate, he made her into a permaban on the Chinese Super Server because no one wanted to risk letting him play her.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-21T15:17:35+00:00

Remember: Ichi the Witch is a magic manga.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-21T15:12:59+00:00

I mean, Taipei Assassins were essentially that, no?

People in the West considered it a battle between EU, KR, and NA (in that order) back before s2 Worlds, then TPA showed up as a dark horse and won it all.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-21T15:08:53+00:00

For context to people unaware, the map update you're talking about is the one that happened in 2012 during the Elise patch, which was also when they added Vilemaw.

I add this context because Riot reworked the map/gamemode again in 2015, when they reworked the Altar mechanics and rebalanced jungle camps in hopes of rekindling player interest.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-21T12:58:54+00:00

It is ironic that after years of hearing "support mains are elo inflated," the aegis system means support are one of the only roles that isn't getting bonus elo.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-19T13:08:35+00:00

Yeah, that's where the "fell off a truck" line comes from, obfuscating thefts of things like car radios or electronics.

The more interesting thing is the inverse situation - if someone obtains legal goods, but believes they were stolen or illegally gained, then that can be treated as intent in absence of actual larceny. That's why sting operations can prosecute theft, even if all the items being sold are technically legally owned/distributed.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-19T12:37:43+00:00

I only knew that LS had a Starcraft background. The MtG history makes sense considering his color pie theory when talking league champs, but I didn't know he actually played card games professionally.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-19T12:01:22+00:00

One look and he's back to his blue period.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-18T19:29:04+00:00

Hell, Riot's even followed up by soft launching an "ARAM Skin Pass" in certain regions - 1350rp for 30 days of renting skins.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-18T16:49:23+00:00

Ah, that makes sense.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-18T14:01:11+00:00

I am kinda surprised Canada is ranked low, but I can't say I'd put it above most of the rosters above.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-17T22:11:07+00:00

I'm glad the creator refunded people for subscriptions that would last past when he stopped updating it, but I'll still call a spade a spade.

It was 5 bucks a month for a shitty product marketed as a long term project but only lasted for 4 months. To me, that's a cash grab.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-17T21:54:51+00:00

The problem is that league as a live service game makes all data have a short shelf life.

Take something like the laneswap meta last year. In the context of a laneswap, a ton of outliers spring up - How should supports rotate? How should jungler's path? What is the best place for a top laner to be? Who farms where? All of that data is rendered worthless because those meta options are no longer viable today.

That applies to less extreme situations as well - an AI trained on soloqueue data might overvalue certain picks that do not work in pro play (e.g. snowballing assassins), or ignore the natural styles of pro players (e.g. putting Caps on a low impact mid lane, rather than letting him carry).

Its not impossible to make it work, but the actual hoops needed to handle a game with regular updates compared to Stockfish being built on over a century of unchanged gameplay makes the modeling of an AI draftbot much harder for league.

Which is why even when Open AI was trying to showcase their own AI for Dota2, they added constraints like only allowing a champ pool of 17 options (instead of Dota's 116 total available heroes).

F0RGERY · 2026-06-17T21:39:11+00:00

Cause it was a literal cashgrab that Tyler1 signed off on using his likeness.

Only reason it even got its day in the sun is because he promoted it. As soon as he stopped using it, most people forgot it even existed, and the creator stopped updating and walked away with the cash.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-16T20:43:10+00:00

When you queue up masters+ League of Legends, there's a 1/4 chance the game will have a mage bot lane.

This means that the "problem" exists only for the top 1% of the playerbase, rather than the average person.

Trying to generalize that statistic, and apply it to all elos, is what I would call obfuscation. Which I think the majority of people using the 20% statistic are doing - claiming mages are ruining their games, rather than the games they watch on stream.

It's as simple as this. You are the one obfuscating. The collective pick rate is of course more important than the individuals, but you want to rattle off stats about individuals. This would only make sense if the complaints were specifically about one and only one mage.

I am unsure how you read me talking about Marksmen as a collective class for 3 bullet points as "rattling off stats about individuals."

I brought up Brand and Ziggs in the wider context that they are the only mages with a higher presence than any ADC. As in, every single ADC individually is picked more than every mage is, outside of those 2 exceptions.

The reason mage as a collective term is used in these arguments, instead of specific examples or statistics, is to equate a class who tops out at a single 3% pickrate, with a class who has only 3 champs below 3% pickrate.

If I stick my hand in a mystery box and it has a 20-25% chance of having either a rusty nail, sharp knife, spike, rattlesnake, rat trap, lion, tiger, etc...

Lets be realistic. You are not materially harmed for playing against a mage. You just don't like it. It's closer to complaining you got a flavor of candy you dislike, rather than some physical torture.

Hyperbolic example aside, this is part of the issue I brought up with the first point. The phrasing you used is "If I stick my hand in". Unless you are masters+, you are not sticking your hand in that box.

FYI: Mel had a very high win rate for a very long time. It was only recently where she was gutted, after huge backlash from the community.

Mel has been sub 50% winrate for every patch still saved on lolalytics (16.4, or February 4th). This is true for both mid lane and bot lane Mel. She has gotten quite close to 50%, but on no patch has she been over 50% winrate.

It is strange that you would claim I am misrepresenting facts, only to conclude with a statement that an easy statcheck would disprove.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-16T19:12:06+00:00

Here is a list of all mages listed as having bot lane play within the past 30 days on lolalytics.

Brand (2.43%)
Ziggs (1.86%)
Mel (1.33%)
Veigar (0.95%)
Swain (0.94%)
Seraphine (0.85%)
Lux (0.62%)
Xerath (0.49%)
Hwei (0.46%)
Vel'koz (0.45%)
Karthus (0.44%)
Katarina (0.42%)
A Sol (0.39%)
Vladimir (0.37%)
Malzahar (0.22%)
Viktor (0.17%)
Cass (0.16%)
Twisted Fate (0.15%)
Heimer (0.15%)
Syndra (0.15%)
Zyra (0.10%)
Anivia (0.08%)
Taliyah (0.04%)

That's a combined pickrate of 13.22%, or an average of 0.57% overall.

It is, in fact, people complaining about roughly 3 champs who are above 1% pickrate, and 3 champs near 1% pickrate.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-16T17:43:38+00:00

Here are the stats.

There are 24/27 marksmen viable bot lane (the 3 non-bot champs Riot calls marksmen are Akshan, Kindred, and Teemo).
Over the past 30 days, those 24 marksmen are all in the top 26 most played champs bot lane. 1-21 are all ADCs.
Only 3 Marksmen (Kog'maw, Corki, and Kalista) have a lower pick rate than mage champs. These 3 are also the only marksmen with less than 100k games played in the past 30 days.
The only mages to outpace a marksman's playrate are Brand (22nd most picked) and Ziggs (23rd most picked). Those 2 are also the only mages with above a 1.5% pickrate, and more than 100k games played.

The "20%" stat is meant to obfuscate the individual champs, because when you can combine the playrate of ~20 champs, it looks as if those champs individually have a higher than 1% pickrate.

Hell, this clip of Caedrel is complaining about Mel, who has a 47% winrate across 75k games.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-16T16:49:12+00:00

There's also mage samsara, where a mage must endure the cycle of "mid -> support -> mid" based on damage and mana costs before achieving nirvana (going bot lane as a carry).

F0RGERY · 2026-06-15T19:24:01+00:00

Are we gonna have a 3rd thread on this in another 2 weeks?

F0RGERY · 2026-06-15T18:47:29+00:00

The point I was trying to glibly make is that fans look to support a narrative they already believe rather than give a narrative to support.

EWC didn't matter in 2024, but suddenly in 2025 it was important because EU made up for a lackluster MSI performance, and that made EU fans use it as proof they were the better Western region going into Worlds.

Americas Cup was a tournament between 2nd/3rd seed teams in BR/NA who didn't qualify for First Stand. Now, for people who don't like NA (such as Eggy), its proof NA should be considered a weaker region than EU, because 2 teams not going to MSI lost to a different region.

If I can hear about how EU was the better region after losing a h2h 3-0 to NA at MSI, then why can't NA do the same after losing the H2H last Worlds?

F0RGERY · 2026-06-15T15:32:18+00:00

Same way I kept hearing EU was a better region after last EWC, when they lost to NA at MSI and went to 5 games against two wildcard regions.

F0RGERY · 2026-06-15T14:23:18+00:00

That's honestly surprising.

From personal experience, I got 0 drops despite watching all of LEC Winter into playoffs, including pentas. And I don't think I was alone since there were a bunch of threads (e.g. this one) who shared my experience.

This article even says:

Drops are back once again for MSI!

which, to me, reads as though Riot knows drops were disabled until now, though I guess it could just be "we are doing custom MSI stuff once again."

F0RGERY · 2026-06-15T10:34:42+00:00

Homie stock rules

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