Breaking the Meta, is it a bad thing?

We all know the meta for League of Legends is not set in stone. So why all the hate when someone tries to play support Leblanc? Or AD Thresh?

Now, I'll make it clear here that I am talking about going into normal, blind pick and trying something a bit unconventional. I am not talking about playing a strange build for the first time that might not work in ranked. Now that we have that clear, let's continue.

A lot of players, at least on the EUW side of things, seem to always need to stick to the meta. Even in a normal blind pick game, where a lot of players go to have fun while still practising their skills, players get branded with the horrific title of the 'troll' if they take a step outside of the 'meta game'.

Of course, if someone has taken say Lux mid and everyone agrees and then you take a troll pick Veigar because you wanted mid but you need a top lane, then you probably are just trolling your team. But, if you are in a situation where your team needs a top lane and you want to try something new, fun and something that could definitely work, then why not take someone like Quinn top or something like Lissandra support if a support is what the team needs? I'll tell you why, because you, for the most part, will still be branded as a troll and a heretic. Ok, maybe not as a heretic, but you will definitely be branded as a troll.

And it is this mentality of the player base that stops innovation within the game. It stops progression and stops newer players from trying different and interesting tactics. I don't know if it just specifically on the EUW side of things but when myself and a friend want to have a bit of fun, we go blind pick and we decide to take Thresh AD with Blitzcrank support. We take this because this little combo has some hilarious potential and can do some amazing things. But, when we do pick this, we see the chat light up with such phrases as:-

"OMG Thresh what are you doing? We need an AD!" or "Well, we lose this troll bot has lost us the game."

Even these two examples show how bad calling out a troll has become. All we tried to do was try out something new, that we hadn't seen before and seemed to work. But we got shouted at and our mid lane decided to feed the entire game...

This may come off as a rant of sorts but this is not my intention. The point that I am trying to drive home is that trying new things, new builds. new combos or even taking a champion into a different lane, breeds innovation within the community. Which in turn could help the constantly altering beast of League of Legends continue to thrive. All I'm trying to say is that breaking the meta, in a normal blind pick situation, is definitely not always a bad thing... unless you are a support and you forget to buy wards...