Thought: Neophobia

The League of Legends community is a complicated amalgamation of players, and any generalizations regarding it are typically of limited value. There are, however, some truths which can be firmly stated, one of which being the certainty of hostile resistance to that which is different.

Before I harp heavily on the problems that result, let me be clear that there are understandable reasons for this common attitude. League of Legends is a complicated game, and it's difficult enough as it is to play to the meta, let alone trying to play against it. When a player makes an unfamiliar choice for a role, build, or lane it's just as common for them to be trolling, selfish, or ill-prepared as to be carefully and methodically innovating. It's not simply fear of the unknown, but experience with abject failures that effects this viewpoint.

For the innovators, this means intense and unforgiving scrutiny. Every game where you jungle Akali, play Caitlyn mid, or test support Maokai is a game where the slightest failure, misstep, or questionable statement can bring a torrent of disparaging remarks and threats. Even in games where you have been effective and positive you remain a convenient target for blame. It's not enough to be as good as everyone else, you must be better.

As innocent and understandable as it may seem, this cultural hostility enforces and reinforces the rigid, unadaptable thinking which plagues many players. Players seek set build orders, the "best" champion picks, and "correct" strategies because they are conditioned to do so by the harsh, derisive judgement of their peers. Taught to mimic rather than to think, these players struggle to fill in the blanks whenever they encounter a unfamiliar problems and situations.

This often results in the common fixation on winning over learning. When you believe in an unambiguously right way to play there isn't much use in doing anything other than pursuing that one righteous path. From that perspective if you aren't playing to win, then you're trolling or messing around or otherwise being a burden on your team rather than an asset. While victory is obviously the objective of the game, this mindset is a quick ticket to getting stuck and looking at every patch as a punishment rather than an opportunity.

The slow-to-change meta also has its routes in communal neophobia. It takes tournaments, sweeping balance changes, or particularly intrepid players to alter the meta because the community is actively hostile to all but the most irrefutably potent ideas. Unless convincingly demonstrated, and even then, the community is content to sit on what worked historically even though the conditions in which those ideas prospered are long past.

Curing neophobia on a community level is likely impossible. While it's demonstrably better for everyone to experiment, learn, and improve, the convenience and mental effortlessness of sticking with the known is powerful. All that innovation nonsense is work; there are champions to be killed, creeps to be farmed, and towers to be pushed. The best we can do is work on the individual level, starting with ourselves.

Theory: Donating to Junglers

It is currently normal, even expected, that junglers will donate their Wraiths and even the rest of their jungle to the lanes as the game goes on. This is because it's generally assumed that the lanes, not the jungler, will carry the game later. However, it's mathematically possible, and even practical, for a jungler to achieve or exceed solo lane levels of farm by reversing this relationship.

The math is pretty simple. A jungle clear of the small camps is worth 154g and 441exp before scaling and can be done approximately once a minute. Two creep waves, one minute's worth, are worth 228g and 529exp before scaling (and without siege minions). Donating as few as four creeps to a passing jungler is enough for them to surpass both the gold and exp potential of a solo lane who nails every last-hit. Even if we take into account scaling this remains true throughout a game.

First and foremost this illustrates the importance of coordinating recalls with your jungler. Even if you are only going to miss a handful of creeps while you are gone, having the jungler there to collect them boosts a jungler significantly. More often it's the case that many creeps will be missed, and giving them all to the jungler is enormous. Junglers like Nocturne, Udyr, or Shyvana, who thrive on farm, go from decent to powerful if they can cover for lanes.

But simply covering lanes isn't the point of discussing this topic. Rather, the point is to suggest that instead of having a farm-dependent champion top or mid and a tanky/support jungler feeding them jungle farm, it's entirely possible, even safer, to have a tanky/support champion top or mid feeding a farm-dependent jungler lane farm.

There are many tanky/support champions perfectly capable of holding their own in a lane, but who don't make quite as good use of the farm as a carry. Having them roam or recall frequently to allow their jungler to quickly clear a creep wave before returning to the jungle has the potential to provide the carry with more farm than any solo lane save those rare cases mid where it's safe to clear both Wraith camps repeatedly.

The big advantage to this strategy is that it's very hard to counter directly. So long as the relevant jungle entrances are warded or the nearby lanes keep tabs on their opponents, the jungler is perfectly safe even if their jungle is warded. Only an extremely concerted counter-jungling effort could threaten the farming jungler, and only at great risk. It's really the easiest way to guarantee a given champion will be farmed.

The disadvantage is that it's much easier to track a roaming mid or top lane than it is a roaming jungler. With the jungler tied up in farming, and conspicuously mid or top when their ally is absent, there will generally be fewer ganks or at least far more predictable ones. This can be offset in various ways, but in general the lanes will have to be significantly more self-sufficient than normal.

At the same time, having Smite on a carry is awkward. It's not impossible to work around, and there is the potential to have some shenanigans with Smite on your mid champion, but it is a difficult adjustment that teams will have to deal with.

Ultimately, however, this is the best alternative to the current meta I'm aware of. As it stands junglers are almost always tanky, while carries in the lanes take their farm. Many underused champions might see the light of day again if we reverse this relationship.

Meta: Swapping AP and AD

The current lane setups have largely been set in stone for months, leading many players to declare the meta stale. While arguably the game hasn't been this multidimensional in its history, there are many alternatives to the current lanes which have yet to be fully explored. For the benefit of those players tired of the current lanes, here's an idea.

Swap your AP and AD carries.

Before we dive too far into this, let me emphasize that this idea has yet to be fully explored. This may not be the transformative idea players are looking for, or it may. It is, however, a different setup that has the potential to be competitive.

This idea is exactly as stated, place your ranged AD mid instead of bottom, and your AP carry bottom instead of mid. Pick an AD who scales well with levels (e.g. Ezreal, Corki) and an AP who scales well with farm (e.g. Cassiopeia, Veigar), and you're good to go. At face value it's a very simple idea, but there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

First and foremost, there are many AP champions who are weak against AD, such as Kassadin and Morgana. Though the threat of burst damage is always there, the AD carry can abuse their auto-attack range and their ability to push lanes without using mana to put the AP carry in an awkward position. In addition, Life Steal is cheaper, more readily available, and more effective than Spell Vamp. With the right matchup an AD can dominate an AP opponent.

These weaknesses get turned upside down bottom lane. Using auto-attacks to sustain is dangerous for the AD because the lane is much longer. Auto-attack harass is more dangerous and less effective due to the presence of an enemy support. Meanwhile, the high burst damage of the AP is a huge benefit for ganks and skirmishes. In the bottom lane it's the AD carry who is typically weak against the AP carry.

Blue buff is the most obviously hitch in this strategy. If you're on blue team you almost certainly need Soraka to support your AP. Thankfully on purple team Blue buff is readily accessible even from bottom lane. For this reason this team composition heavily favors purple team.

Again, this is not a tried and tested setup. It is, however, different and something to try if you're tired of playing with the same lane setup. Just be careful with your picks, give it a whirl, and see if this breaks your meta-boredom.

Quote: On the Meta

"Every generation laughs at the old meta, but follows religiously the new."

-Henry David Thoreau