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for me the worst example of this has to be AP shyvana, not just because riot abandoned her AD bruiser build (ya know, the way she was meant to be built) but kept buffing the AP build which consists of ulting, spamming E and 1shotting your entire team

remember when they said at the beginning of statikk shiv's revival that off meta builds like shiv veigar were fun gimmicks that werent that oppressive and will keep them as is but as time went on, they kept nerfing the AP ratio until eventually no more ratios

"Play the way you want unless we say so" - Riot

I remember when Riot actually bragged about not forcing a META and letting things happen organically. Nowadays they try their hardest to force everyone to play a specific way.

Its really weird how riot is against such builds and nerfs them into oblivion but forces some into existence like bruiser or onhit kata and ad tf at the same time

I have to say that in the case of Kaisa, her off meta builds are part of the champion identity to an extent. She was specifically marketed to be an adaptable champion with a variety of playstyles and builds, unlike say stuff like tank ekko/fizz, or bruiser Katarina.

Just to show how different the design philosophy of old vs new league is, in the old days basically every champ was made to have an ad or ap build, now we have to have the discussion as to whether we should even allow off meta builds at all.

Sometimes "gimmick" builds also become so entrenched that they become the new default for the champion. Gragas was originally a tank, but the AP gimmick became so common that now it's all he's known for.

They should be allowed to a certain degree. Unless it's game breaking, removing this kind of things only reduces variety of the game. A good example is allowing Karthus becoming mainly a jungler despite being made as a mid in the first place. A bad example is how they got rid of Nilah jungle (Wild Rift) despite being only played in the jungle and not being that opressive. Now absolutely no one plays her nor as adc or jg.

Ap twitch was not just allowed to stay, it was purposefully put into the game, i remember the patch when riot just added ap ratios to twitch ablities that were not there before.

I think you are almost correct in these conclusions, in my opinion. What I feel is: It is not that some off-meta builds are removed because they go against what is expected of the champion, but that some of these off-meta builds ruin interactivity. And so yes if interaction is expected in the game it goes against what is expected of that champion. Interactivity can be a little vague but generally speaking players should be able to fight one another, having clear strengths and weaknesses; either in micro-combat, or macro strategy. Some of these builds lower interactivity, either literally where the off-meta champ can simply never be approached or put in danger but is still highly effective (Think of AP Poke Zeri/Kaisa at long range). Or as a team strategy the enemy can't overcome the off-meta champion's team due to their superior tactic for whatever reason (think of Inting Sion before all of the nerfs and changes Riot attempted to stop Baus, or things like funneling Taric/Yi.) Or maybe their off-meta build supersedes the original intention of the champion's playstyle, which then shows Riot more they failed in their design more than them punishing the players (like ADC Neeko being just better than her Mage intention on release, or AP assassin Galio when Riot overdid his ratios not expecting players to build him full AP.) Some off-meta builds still exist and are doing quiet well, the only thing stopping them is peer-pressure as mentioned in the video, but as far as I am aware these off-meta picks are still able to be interacted with? For example, AP Kog'ma is still a fragile back-line damage dealer, just like crit/on-hit Kog'ma is....still a fragile back-line damage dealer. Why do you want interactivity? Well because its a video game, ultimately made for enjoyment even if it is a competitive e-sport. It would make for a pretty poor experience for everyone involved if there was no interactions, no cool fights and instead someone uncovered some mystical tactic where you can destroy the Nexus with the push of a button. This is a hyperbole.

Another issue with alot of builds is how the kits of the champions can make a playstyle unbalanced. Like for example kaisa w was designed to give her some long ranged poke mostly to ult onto a champ but when it had its full AP scalings it basically became a single target jinx rocket that could hit someone from 2-3screens away which has no counter play except dodge a ability coming from fog of war and 3 screens away

11:37 Basically what differentiates LoL from Dota 2.

off meta is the peak of league

I've been having a blast with AD Neeko lately, a very different playstyle but she still has some big weaknesses akin to her usual playstyle (squishy, low mobility, not a ton of range) so I'm hoping Riot doesn't decide to nerf it into the ground

So that means that pyke mid is completly legal since the playstyle of cc the enemy with the grey screen stays the same.

A good example I always think of when talking about gimmick builds is old AD Sol before his rework. For those new to League, Aruelion Sol's old kit involved stars that orbited him as part of his passive that did small amounts of damage when they made contact with an enemy, and his W expanded the range of these stars and increased the speed of their orbit to let them hit harder and more often. His Q and R were built around this larger orbit, with his Q growing in size so long as it stayed in this outer orbit, exploding once it was out of it or Sol manually detonated the skill to stun every enemy inside of it, while his R would blow enemies in a rectangle shape towards this outer orbit, setting them up for the Q and W. AD Sol would eschew this by just flat out ignoring the stars and just build Sol like he was a Marksman, sometimes even taking him into the Jungle like Kindred (since his E, which would become his W, was practically the same as it is now with how it worked). His Q was more relied upon since it was an AoE stun that worked well in getting in more poke, and his R was a helpful self-peel that could be used to turn around a tower dive. The stars were practically ignored outside of the rare instance that they actually secured a kill. Frankly, and this is just speculation on my part, AD Sol was the main reason Sol's Rework went the way it did, so that he would have to be played as a Mage and not a Marksman, and by extension the development of Smolder being to make a new psudo-AD Sol without the stars but still having some of new Sol's mechanics.

theory crafting builds is so fun. I main Kalista and have 1 official theory crafted glass cannon build. Two other builds im still testing. Metas get boring really fast.

I believe one of the main reasons League is such a good game in concept is being able to have your own unique playstyle, which includes gimmick or off-meta builds. Example being; "Hi I'm so-and-so and I play ___ champ, in ___ role, with ___ summoner spells, with ___ runes, and with ___ build" out of 5 variables theres so many ways to have your own way of playing the game. What makes some of them bad is simply if the off-meta or gimmick build is uninteractive or just overpowered, likely the ladder, as you said when most people see a champ they expect the meta build and so on and so forth, and when it isn't that, its unexpected and can/usually does give the person playing the off-meta a advantage from them knowing the limits of what they can do and the enemy doesent. The thing is that if its uninteractive like a lot of the examples in this video: AP Kai'sa, AP Zeri, Tank Ekko, etc, everything else i mentioned gets thrown out of the window for game balance, cause Kai'sa chucking a singular ability off the screen that does a quarter or more of someone's HP bar is surprisingly not interactive gameplay or fun to play against, or AS for that matter, I doubt the AP Kai'sa player is having fun after a while after the high of the gimmick wearing off and your just spamming one singular ability and R'ing in every once in a while to assassinate someone. In-general, unless the specific playstyle is toxic, uninteractive, not-fun, OP, etc, i think alternative playstyles to champions are fine and beyond that, should be encouraged, again unless its inherently toxic.

Vainglory did the two build paths so well. One of the champs I played was kestral. A marksman who shot you with a bow. She looked a lot like Ashe. Ap, was a mix of long range artillery with her arrows exploding in a long rectangle behind their target or just their max range and setting up a trap in players paths as they tried to get on top of you, only for you to blow them up, go invisible and repeat the process. But if you took any damage your invisibility/trap would go on cooldown so you had to sneak around an area before a fight, place a trap and get out. The invisibility duration and trap damage scaled with AP. Ad your arrows granted you armor pen so instead of bombarding the back line you crushed the front line. Your trap/invisibility no longer went on cooldown if you took damage and it granted you a big burst of movespeed when activated.

Because sometimes they are better than the normal ones,like the manamune into ludens kaisa top,or the eclipse and nashor and berserker boots kaisa top that have all 3 evo,or the ap kaisa mid,or double marksmen kaisa support,or just lethality kaisa with all 3 evo and duskblade,or just kaisa kaisa

As someone who is always trying all the gimmick builds on marksmen champions, the reason why most of the builds get nerfed is that the popular ones are usually exploiting design oversights to make certain abilities more effective than originally designed. There are a lot of builds that people try that never get any kind of mainstream popularity that are just a little bit better than the average build so nothing happens. Right now there's an Ice gauntlet Vayne top build being experimented with that hasn't received much attention yet, but could get the champ or the items nerfed if enough people start to spam it.

interesting that you didn't speak about Twisted Fate too being able to either go full AD or full AP

Amusing you didn't bring up Shyvana when talking about champs with many types of builds. Since there's here Ap focused build and then the AD type. Also missed opportunity as it is the year of the dragon.

i think every champion that can, should be allow to have "gimmick" builds, the problem is when their design and the build makes it so they can circumvent their weaknesses or the weakness of the build, like tank ekko, not fair for a tank to have that level of sticking potential, kaisa's issue was the safety of W spam, very apparent in aram. a build i like to use is straight up tank janna support, her kit has the CC already so making her harder to kill is as valuable as going full utility

look at kaisa, corki and smolder then ask this question again

I think there are 4 archetypes of builds: Tank AD AP On hit If a champion normally builds 1 of these archetype, but goes a different one, then the champion should feel different to play as and against. AD TF plays different then AP TF, good. AD Sion plays different then Tank Sion, good. AD Varus plays different then On hit Varus, good. On hit Kata does not play different from AP kata, bad. AD Mastery yi does not play different from On hit Yi, bad. The thing why a build should be removed for example AP Kai'sa, is when a playstyle is toxic/unhealth, same thing for inting sion where you bash your head into the tower etc. Or maybe better said, when a build/playstyle changes how the enemy must play. AP Kai'sa bullet hell, int Sion tower defence, Jana top farming simulator that is when Riot does not like the build and tries to change/remove it.

I think it is more how oppressive+prevelant the builds become. Tank ekko became widely played while also impossible to deal with. Ap kaisa and zeri could safely deal tons of poke damage while still being able to rush you down with autos.

I think the biggest aspect about weather a build stays or not is agency. AP Kaisa was toxic to play against because playing against it didn't give you any agency. Same with AP Tryndamere. Where as something like AP Cho or AP twitch, you still have agency versing them.

It's a longer way of saying "champion builds that exceed or approach the popularity of the intended build(s) design will be dissuaded. In some cases, said build is too strong because it abuses a particular mechanic with unforeseen consequences."

FACECHECKSKARNER MENTIONED RAAAAGH

it would be really interesting if you made a video like this but on specialists specifically it's kind of an old video but this video reminded me of your specialists video "Specialists: The Class No One Plays | League of Legends"

I'm surprised you didn't mention Kennen. We've seen AP Kennen, on-hit Kennen, ADC Kennen, tank Kennen and even support Kennen in pro play over the years. In fact he predated Neeko's AD top build and you can still see it getting build every now and then. Rekkles' AD Kennen even got featured in the Gods music video.

Feels bad tho, I was the only high elo AP Zeri player, talked to August myself to try to find a solution for her to work but never found success in it, main reason being W dealing magic damage was hard to play around in proplay according to him

Popularity certianly enhances the dislike. However I am again stressing the main point. How UNFUN it is to play against (correlated with counterplay).

RiotAugust responded at some point to this subject, saying they promote off-meta builds as long as they don't create degenerate gameplay. As in, Kai'sa and zeri spamming w is uniteractive and unfun to play against, and probably a bit boring for the Zeri,Kai'sa too. It doesn't add value to the gameplay.

pre-rework AP tristana was my favorite. That poke with the dot was just absolutely silly, and in teamfights you removed one enemy at the start no questions asked and then played like a diet kata with the resets.

i feel like a champ should have 1 main playstyle and any off meta styles that are chose should have diminished effects or not work as well as the main style. my favorite off meta style is pyke mid, while he is a support champ with the new prophane hydra giving him a form of wave clear pyke mid is doing really well. Hes still better as a support pick over all and playing him mid can result in a poor performance because you arent playing an assassin that can carry the game.

Kha'zix was a poke W champ on release because his passive damage after going invis or into fog of war applied on his W before the nerfs

I love gimmick builds and think they are a necessary thing to keep the game interesting and fun. The more build variety the better and gimmick builds compared to meta builds can make 1 character feel like 2 different characters

we need a part 2, i feel like AD ahri/leblanc, lethality udyr, and full AH (impregnator) gragas shouldve been talked about

Since you talked about AD Neeko, you probably should've also talked about AD TF and what allowed him to stay, as he even got a buff recently.

I remember one of my favorite gimmick builds that actually worked was bruiser Akali before she got her rebuild, it was so brainded it was so fun to play lol

There was a channel dedicated to those, Evelyn Sunfire, AP shaco (Long before was popular), and specially AP Caitlyn Rip Nhipia

What are your thoughts on the new Ingenious Hunter tank builds? Like they seem strong but I like how the use items that riot has just kinda abandoned like Fimblewinter and Unending Despair

"u know what else u can cook up? hello fresh!" okay take my sub funny guy

Honestly i think some gimmic builds work out though such as Thresh top as it allows him to lane by himself. However it does also deminish some of his team fight perks like not being as durable if he is jumped by an assassin

I think gimmick builds that change a characters playstyle are one of the best things in league and should be encouraged. Playing a champion in your own way making your own build is one of the most interesting parts about league and is why I like the game. For unique builds that end up being viable then get nerfed in to the ground I find is dumb. Its fine if a build gets nerfed but I don't think they should be nerfed out of viability I think the more build variation the better.

What about shyvana? From a close range fighter(AD/Bruiser) to a mid range poking fire breathing dragon(AP), two different playstyles/two different builds, is it allowed just to keep the "fire dragon fantasy" alive?

I REALLY miss AP Zeri. Back when she was viable I used to spam her mid, bot, top, jg, and support. She instantly clicked with me, and even though now I have more LP, I would sacrifice the elo I’ve gained just to play her again in her peak… When they gutted her, a piece of my heart went away with her

Playes themselves will hammer down on off meta strats (sometimes understandably)

I think Riot's approach has been good. Many of the things taken away I'm happy with being gone. Kaisa being off screen and 1 or 2 hitting you doesn't have counter play. Tank Ekko (which was so fun) was so frustrating to play against because of you ever whittled him down low enough he could just ult out. That sounds like how he is now, but he can get one shot being squishy, so that window is small currently. As a tank he had tons of time to decide when to ult. I love off-meta stuff, but I agree that it can be unhealthy.

12:37 - where is that clip from? Sett jumping on teemo n sht

On a side note, I remember a couple seasons ago when I was able to play Pyke mid to great success before riot decided to nerf his laning phase almost completely out of existence. It just seems like nowadays they’re so against people not following the norm on how you’re supposed to play the game.

There is a pretty big difference, between off meta and hard/soft inting your team/trolling/trying to lose. I think off meta picks and playstyles is just as important as the meta ones. For the health of the game and players sanity if nothing else. I don't play League myself but playing the exact same build, every single game sounds awful. Sometimes players need something different to prevent the game from getting boring/stale. And sure your supposed to itemize for what the state of the game is, what your opponents are building, what champs your fighting but how often do most players even bother?

I think theres another layer and one you're absolutely expecting, these off meta build too often put people in no gameplay scenarios. Ekkos so overloaded that he could build tank to take no damage and then stick to you. You cant outpace him, out damage him, evade him, or win even kill him, cuz he uas so many get off me tools that you're not allowed to win. His fragility is what 'justifies' his tools. The Adc ap artilery sisters were out performing the equivalent ap artilery at their jobs. They both had mobility for safety and did more damage from farther and with less action investment. Kaisa even has execute damage on hers while zeri had aoe. And you can already see the problems with leathality sion. We do not need a tryndamere that deals assasin damage, by dying, after being an assasin engage tank Champion identity matters, but I think its important to look at why certain champs arent allowed the play styles by asking if this would be acceptable as a stand alone champ. Would they be the type that would have to be nerfed till theyre not good?

I do think intoing sion in toerms of intong to kill towers was a bad idea, but i do believe that the ability to build him lethality whould stay as strong as his tank build. It makes him very feed or famine, and isnt very strong anyway. If anything its a little weak at the moment cause of successive Sion nerfs.

Man I miss playing AP zeri lol. The right click and r damage was so fun, and hitting all three after jumping a wall was satisfying af. I get why they nerfed it but I wish they could add a reset to her charged right click on her dash or smth because now she doesn’t have a full combo in AP

I’ve been an Ekko main through all his meta’s and Tankko was by far his most fun time to play, it also felt really intuitive as well, everything in his kit made sense for a sustained fight rather than an in and out engagement. Being able to fight your opponent and push them towards your W is far easier than trying to predict the near infinite amount of directions they could go and missing means you don’t get to fight. His ultimate has so much damage that ap Ekko uses mostly to save him from dying after or in the middle of a single engagement, Tankko could fight you until his ult was right where he wanted it. Right now they over tuned his scaling so all Ekko has to do is build one ap item then build tank and it’s bar none my favorite way to play him because ap Ekko just feels useless especially with the damage creep because Ekko could very well die before he could even finish getting his damage off or ult to safety with out doing anything because he couldn’t proc his passive which is basically where all his burst damage is.

i think i recognize your voice from ages ago did you make maplestory content in the past?

I think there should also be exceptions like JakSho Yone where, all he had to do was buy Bork and get max CD Q and then go full tank. And because his base numbers were so insane, he could go full tank and still be a massive problem changing him from a one shot assassin to a 2 shot tank. At least if you caught him out with crit you could realistically hurt him as long as shield bow was off CD. But with full tank, he could stay in the fight for as long as he wanted and just delay and buy time for the carries to come help while he shielded non stop and still had insane CC. Also, the tank build gave him like 50 AH so his R was on only a 25 second CD allowing him so much mobility as a tank that could hold his own. Thankfully, jaksho doesn’t heal anymore and now he needs jaksho and unending despair to get the same results but the point still remains. Yone has too much base damage and cause of that, he was a max health shredding, AOE knock up, hard CC, assassin tank. I personally love the idea of champions building however the fuck they want. But you should have new weaknesses to counteract the fact your build changed. Example with Varus, if you go AD it’s harder to eliminate a backline but you have more sustainable damage. As with AP, if you miss that R WQ combo, you have nothing since you have 0 attack speed. With ap kaisa, if you missed W, it was harder to kill since all your damage was on W. With Yone, that didn’t matter. He was still one shotting, but now he was unkillable. Same applies to goredrinker blue Kayn.

I think gimmick builds are a good thing for the game , I don't mind having one month or two of weird but strong picks , it switches things up a little and it's fun (also you can just ban these champs if you really don't like them). But it has to be a temporary thing , I remember abusing fizz and ekko tank during the tank meta , had so much fun ! But i'm glad these builds aren't around anymore because it wasn't balanced and certainly not fun for the enemies

I have all the characyers in the video on SS. Should I attempt going for SSS Luna or Plume? Or don't bother and go for SS on older frames so they are more usable?

Most Offmeta builds which are being gutted have the problem that they use absolut unfair interactions in the game which the designers did not account for. After these interactions are commonly known, they get nerfed and the metaslaves who abused the strat are uninterested from this point. Point in case is bausff, he still plays ad sion, but he is one of the only ones. The reason is, that the builds cannot be abused any longer. In general riots lets ppl play offmeta and they are totally fine with gimmicky stuff in the game. Gamebreaking stuff on the other hand, they will nerf to the ground, and rightly so. The game should be fun, and one should not get two shotted by kaisa W.

i dont understand why ap shyvana seems to be an exception to this entire concept, ap shyvana significantly changes her playstyle and her strengths and weaknesses (i'd argue it's even pretty toxic to play against) and yet rito seems to be heavily encouraging the playstyle while nerfing a lot of other picks that don't even seem that problematic like sololane pyke, lethality yorick and ap malphite that combined with them recently pushing ad tf makes it seem like they just randomly decide that some picks are allowed and some arent

Right now exploring off meta builds for Hwei. Kinda scary with some of them too. One of the funniest so far has been high mobility Hwei.

Where was teemo but at the same time he’s a specialist

Neekos On-Hit build is literally Dev-approved as they mentioned on reddit they wanted to maintain that playstyle.

Honestly I just think they nerf the builds they don't like. 13 years ago they were a lot more open to unusual builds, most champion had AP scaling even if they were intended to be played AD. Now it's like they have a unique plan on how each champion should be played and if a build that goes against their vision becomes popular they nerf it to the ground.

nobody: blitzcrank in your aram team with AP build when you have 3 other mages: I’m A mAgIcIAn ✨

Just throwing it out there but full ad Sion that more threatening when dead is basically just fast zombie instead of slow zombie both kinda work

I still do AS Neeko sometimes. Like, to goof. ARAM's or special game modes. I think it's a fun build.

Alex Ich playing AP Master Yi. I'll never forget that.

Riots need to obliterate any and all playstyles that are different from the meta is what pushed me into Dota2, it feels terrible to find a playstyle you enjoy just for Riot to come in and gut it for not conforming to what it believes the game should look like everytime.

I think it just comes down to the gameplay health of the build. Ap zeri and kaisa were just uninteractive, doing most of your healthbar from further away than xerath can, and still having mobility on top of it

I feel like having the option for offmeta builds is essential to League. Smite has (or had) set item choices per champ back when I tried it and it ruined the game for me. I like variety and trying stuff out.

One issue with gimmick builds is that the community wants the builds they like but not others. So i see why Riot just removes the off builds in general.

There's something to be said for consistency, but also giving players the option to play their favorite champs in a new way keeps the game fresh and exciting .

Its also about versatility. If you give a champion 3 builds that each radically change when they can do, You’ll create a champ who can be picked for all 3 positions

Tank Ekko was so much fun man

I remember when Karthus Jungle used to be an off meta pick and now its the only lane you see him in

What do you think about AP master yi? He’s still a squishy, massive-damage carry but his damage is more burst instead of sustained. So why was that removed?

This season will be the season for off meta. Look at the crazy synergy between ingenious hunter and some tank/bruiser items. Everyone cooked up some insane build. From baus and his fimbulwinter+eclipse+ingenious j4 to xpetu with unending despair+titanic hydra+spirit visage+ingenuious shen. Even high korean challenger tops are playing perma shield insane heal voli. It seems like riot nerfed ability haste but added items with cooldowns and forgot to nerf item haste. But what riot's crackdown on these strategies will be we dont know yet

curios for gimmicks that didn't work out as riot intended, like giving senna good ap ratios, but no one builds her full ap

As much hate as Shaco gets from the community, i'm very happy he can still just build whatever and work, and has multiple playstyles in one champion's kit.

I've been destroying ARAM and URF games with AP Zeri

I’ve also been into gimmicks, my favorite was Adc LB for over a decade which got fucked up bc of the reintroduction of shiv and they had to nuke her base stats to compensate for a now overnerfed item because they thought it was funny putting lich bane’s ap ratio on it and very high base damage and overtuned triforce which surprise surprise both got nerfed after butchering her while keeping her stats so low it’s actually unplayable for the first time ever, thanks Riot

My fav one had to be chemtank akali, it was fun for 1 patch

Isn't Manamune - Luden's - Cryptbloom Kaisa still really strong? And while that build itself is really unfair, I feel like Kaisa in general has been designed to have build variety and quite well so.

HAHAHA the Mordekaiser, i remember this moment 12:20

In the case of Kai and zeri, and a couple others, why is the ap ratio on long range abilities? They do this all the time with new charas, slapping ap ratios on AD champions in the most random spots and then going "we want build diversity" THEN NERFING IT WHEN IT DOESNT GO THEIR WAY INSTEAD OF FIXING IT. Why put the ap ratio on specific parts of the kit when an ap build endorses an unwanted playstyle? Either make it more consistent with the rest of the kit in another way, or don't out it there at all.

at 2:40 whats the anime from?

I still remember AP Tristana before her rework. She was so damn fun.

Honestly, off-meta builds is the main draw of mobas to me. I can't imagine wanting them to dissapear.

I'm a firm believer in taking sejuani in either top or mid. She does a surprising amount of dmg and if she goes rod of ages or titanic she clears waves really well

I’ve had decent success recently with onhit neeko lmao, and if you run hybrid with something like rageblade and nashors you absolutely wreck towers

When you talked about khazix W I immediately had flash backs to Kha midland with old brutalizer 😢

Still dreaming of the day they give teemo an ad scaling on something, even if it's just the attack speed on his passive or the move speed on w

13:23 TL;DR For anyone who doesn't want to waste 14mins of someone explaining how a monkey's thought process works