Analysing The Season 7 Meta Shift

The pre-season changes have shifted the meta. At the end of season 6, Ashe and Jhin were priority pick or ban. The meta AD carries at the time were mostly immobile (Ashe, Jhin, and Caitlyn) and if a team couldn't pick Jhin or Ashe, they resorted to picking second tier AD carries such as Ezreal, Lucian or Sivir. The meta allowed such immobile AD carries like Ashe and Jhin to thrive in the backline, dealing consistent damage and adding valuable crowd control, mostly due to the fact that the teams weren't focusing or diving the AD carries as much. Even if there was a dive onto the Jhin or Ashe, powerful peel support like Alistar and Nami allowed them to be safe from any potential dives that came.

These immobile carries were essential in a meta where a portion of the crowd control had shifted onto the AD carries. The traditional tank tops that were in the meta were dismissed in favor of low CC, high damage tops like Rumble and Jayce. Tank tops provided the necessary peel for the team, allowing AD carries free reign to go ballistic on an enemy team while still being safe. With the top laner going in on the enemy team, dealing most of the team's damage, it wasn't a necessity for the AD carry to be outputting massive amounts of damage because the mid and top positions were the primary carry roles.

Utility, zone control mages were by far the strongest picks at the time. Syndra was a must pick-or-ban at the time with the mid-season patch that changed the ability power ratio to her Q and changed her empowered Q which made her spheres last an additional 2 seconds. Cassiopeia and Vladimir also saw changes in the mid-season patch that made them contested picks when Syndra wasn't available.

In the beginning of Season 6, tanks were the go to picks for the top lane. Champions like Maokai, Poppy, and Ekko were often picked to provide reliable CC and engage. The Grasp of the Undying mastery (dealing 3% of your maximum health and heals you for the same amount) was heavily abused by tanks, allowing them to deal a considerable amount of damage while still being resilient. Towards the end of Season 6, tanks were being phased out. A slow trickle of nerfs and a few number tweaks to Grasp of the Undying made it so tanks were viable, but not overpowered. With the tanks slowly exiting the scene the carry top picks like Kennen, Rumble and to a lesser extent, Jayce, ushered in the familiar era of carry tops.

Jungle for the most part had been the same throughout Season 6. Nidalee, Lee Sin, Elise, Olaf, and Rek'Sai were contested picks. Nidalee, despite having constant number tweaks, nerfs, and slight changes to her Hunted bonuses, saw constant play. Her insane early game damage, mobility, and early game skirmishing made her quite the beast in the jungle. Lee Sin never seems to exit the scene entirely, always finding a way into a pick-orientated team composition or a composition that needs an early game jungler that can help the mid and top lane rolling. Elise fits the same role in a composition as Lee Sin, however few junglers can outduel her in the jungle before level 6. Olaf saw play towards the end of Season 6 when the cooldown of Ghost was lowered to 180 seconds from 210 seconds, making Ghost an amazing asset for Olaf to pop his Ragnarok and run through an enemy team to get to any priority target. Rek'Sai's mobility with her ult and her durability as a tank has made her an essential pick up for any team that needs an initiator in a team fight.

The support role saw an influx of different styles of champions being played, from peel supports like Nami to engage supports like Braum and Alistar, to lane bullies such as Bard and Karma. The support being picked relied on the composition of the team with no support being inherently more over powered than the other supports in the pool with the exception of Alistar.

With the new assassin reworks in the pre-season, the meta was shaken up. The AD carry position drastically changed. No longer can you safely pick a Jhin or Ashe blindly with the likes of such powerful assassins as Talon, LeBlanc and Rengar in meta. Assassins are back, diving and killing AD carries that are immobile with ease. The need for CC from an AD carry dwindled when these champions could hardly live to have any meaningful impact on a teamfight.

The rise of assassins has made it vital to play safe, mobile AD carries like Lucian and Ezreal in order to have a chance to survive. Vayne being the other noticeable AD carry that has seen recent play, as she is one of the few AD carries that can go toe-to-toe with assassins and come out on top. Playing AD carry at the moment is a constant struggle to survive against the assassins and hoping that your team can peel them off of you in time.

The support role has been readjusted to suit some of the needs to survive the bursty assassins in the meta. Peel supports are a necessity. Supports like Nami and Janna have been useful to provide heals, shields, and peel to prevent their AD carry from being killed in one rotation from Talon. Lane bullies such as Karma and Bard aren't picked as much with the prevalence of assassins, being able to do very little to stop them or even preventing them from being killed over and over once they have burned their summoners.

Recent jungle changes that added more raptors and ever dividing krugs have created a need for a jungler to have average to good AoE clear, giving rise to Zac, a champion that had been receiving small quality of life changes and buffs over a series of patches, including a shorter respawn timer on his passive the later the game got.

Mid lane is still dominated by utility, zone control mages such as Syndra, Cassiopeia, and Orianna that provide much needed control over assassins with the ability to zone them out of a fight, or completely delete them before they have a chance.

Top lane has been seeing a resurgence of Poppy, Jayce and Riven, champions that can easily abuse the new mastery, Courage of the Colossus, which gives the champion a shield for 4 seconds after hitting an enemy champion with hard crowd control, such as stuns, knock ups, and pulls.

Assassins like Rengar and Talon will continue to be the strongest picks in this meta with the drastic changes to their kits from the pre-season patch.

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