The Meta Altering Chain

It isn't a secret that the League of Legends meta is constantly changing. As innovative teams bring out new strategies, strategies are made to counter them, and then strategies made to counter those strategies, and the chain goes on. This action is what keeps the game changing, and in my opinion, fun to watch and play. With this being said, I'm going to go into detail as to of what effect this has had and I think will have on League of Legends in the future.

There are certain champions in this game that are considered to be lightyears above almost every other champion in it's respective role. One of these is Orianna in the midlane. Every one of her abilities par her passive offer utility matched with very high damage output. When you have champions like this that are generally very safe in a 1v1 farmfest vs. champions such as Twisted Fate, Anivia, etc., there has to be some champions that can close the gap and punish poor positioning.

With the slew of evelynn buffs that came pre world championships, heavy European favorite and well-known innovator Moscow Five popularized Evelynn middle as a high-damage output burst mage utilizing her high percent slow, high damage ultimate that also gives a shield matched with a Deathfire Grasp to near instantaniously destroy mages such as Orianna if they put their ball into poor positioning.

As more people realized how good Evelynn was, more teams started trying her in different ways, like roaming very heavily, different item paths, and she was considered to be too strong, especially with the item Deathfire Grasp being as arguably overpowered as it was pre-nerf. This led to the recent Evelynn and Deathfire Grasp nerfs that crippled her and other burst mages quite heavily. So the meta changing chain comes back into effect.

What else could come out to punish champions like Orianna? One strategy I've seen several times that has worked was a build on Diana used by Team Dignitas' mid lane player scarra rushing either abyssal or haunting guise with sorcerer's shoes to get maximum damage output seeing as the deathfire grasp crippled the assassin champion's damage quite heavily. Innovative item build paths like this, especially considering the fairly large item re-work coming in season 3 are going to take this type of gameplay to an entirely new level.

Another example of this meta chain is detailed fairly well in this article. A top lane champion like Jayce can be a huge bully. The damage from his acceleration gate / shock blast combo coupled with his strong disengage knockback in hammer form made him a lane terror for certain champions. So people got to thinking, champions that can close the distance after he attempts to disengage can counter him quite well, such as Irelia and Lee Sin with their Blade Surge and Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike.

I firmly believe that this chain will go on for years to come, and League of Legends will evolve far beyond any one of us can foresee. It's already come leaps and bounds from back in the day when attack damage mids such as Ashe were the norm.