How appropriate this dropped less than an hour after Baus posted an AP Irelia video

The difference is that you have more fun than the enemy team when you pick off meta, bc they don't now how to respond. Whereas when you troll pick, you have more fun than your tean

I'm a little saddened by the lack of mention of how Mathematically Correct Sett and AP Shyvana both made the transition from "Off Meta" to to getting to the point that if you _didn't_ use those builds you were considered to be soft-inting.

Difference between off-meta and troll pick: If you play yuumi jungle and win, it's off-meta. If you play yuumi jungle and feed, it's troll pick.

This is why you should just play blind pick where you have better chances on tank nami jungle than on a normal pick.

Off meta makes the game more fun tbh. I like seeing if something works or not.

I think Shaco is a troll pick since the only thing he does is being a troll. (and he is pretty good at it)

I would like a "The Most Meta champs" vid, where you explore the champions who have been Meta a lot of times since they were released/updated

I'll just say what I tell my friends whenever they get spooked by whatever latest nonsense I was cooking in Champion Select: "There is a method to my madness." Granted I almost exclusively play Top Lane and Support, which IMO are the roles that grant the most potential for pushing against the boundaries of what can or cannot work: Support because there it largely boils down to "How well can this Champion play around having an ally and two enemies around?" and "How well can you do with them without having minions or monsters for Gold income?" Top Lane because it's Top Lane.

As someone who currently sits at 220 LP Master playing only full support Ivern mid. People overestimates how much the meta matters. The most important part of climbing and getting better is to know your champion. I see people switching champions because they feel as if their champion is bad in the meta. But even if that’s true, it will not make you a better player if you go and learn a new champion. You won’t get higher rank just because you play a meta pick

To me the line between Off Meta and Troll is simple. For it to be not trolling the pick must have a gameplan or strategy to succeed. I love going Yorick Jungle for example because he has high objective damage allowing him to solo baron, being the jungler gives him a lot of flexibility on where to push towers and he provides good utility in a gank. Other junglers are stronger earlier and have less conditional DPS than Yorick but Yorick has certain attributes to make him competitive.

Forgot to mention that a secondary, almost parasitic category is the counter-meta. Where there's the objective meta, which is the most generally effective/efficient. And then the counter-meta is what works best to counter that meta, despite not generally being as strong.

Video/Series suggestion: Compare Champions(and maybe also items) to their Wild Rift version if there are any differences,then give your opinion on which version is better (or if a mixture between both would be better and what would that mixture be?) I feel like this would be very interesting as some champions (and items) are VERY different in Wild Rift like Karma,while some others have just a few changes but those changes are already really significant like Vi. (Btw i suggest not analyzing champions like Zeri or Aurelion Sol in this series since their Wild Rift version is their Pc version pre-rework)

Ornn Support main here, I'm glad off-meta is a thing within the community. These players are often the players that figure out new tricks within the game which then become the meta. Many of the things that people can do like a cheater recall or a fake flash once started as a weird thing to do. Now they are the sickest plays you can pull off and are ways to gain advantages within your game.

There are no troll picks. Just troll players!

One of my favorite off meta builds I ever used was Jungle Syndra with Spirit of the Spectral Wraith (a looooooong time ago). I discovered it by accident after a miscommunication caused our team to have two mids and no jungle. All of her abilities do AOE damage and it turns out that a level 3 Syndra with double buff coming out of the brush kills literally any top laner.

As an AP kaisa one trick i appreciate this subject very much Vars. The stigma related to anything off meta being troll by default causes my champ to be banned alot. If i dont go 10/0 im usually the cause for anything that goes wrong. "Dont play kaisa mid youre not faker" is a big one

Off meta builds and playstyles are probably the sole reason I haven't quit League many years ago. There is just something magical about being able to successfully theory craft new working builds, picks and playstyles. I feel like my raw knowledge of how different champs, items and runes work and interact got me into a far higher rank than where I should reasonably be based on my mechanical skill and in-game knowledge. In some cases, this lead to me actively abusing op strats that wouldn't become meta until months, in the case of the Manamune ADC meta, until years later. The interesting thing about low and mid elos is that you can easily mop the floor with someone who's much better than you, if you play something which you know better than the back of your hand, but your opponent barely has an idea how to play as or against.

I love taking sups and put them in carry roles. The satisfaction of a ap on hit thresh soloing two actual carrys. Priceless

This is one of the reasons I generally prefer 1v1 games over team games (Still love team games, though). Thing is, team based games are inherently hostile to experimentation: you're not only gambling your own wins on an unproven idea, but your entire team's wins as well. Your team is probably not interested in the results of the experiment you've forced them into and would rather you downloaded your build off the internet like everybody else. In something like a fighting game I can lab it out, figure out *why* what I'm doing doesn't work without breaking the game's social contract, not so much in League.

3:16 the change to supports wasn't about an ally nearby (that was far longer the case, longer than I play lol), but about objective bounties being worth less with more than one support item in a team and cs value reduction

Regarding thebausffs, I don't think you've brought attention to why his strategy works. If you watch his stream, he does the 'inting sion' strategy on a whole suite of champions. He will intentionally head toplane with 20% hp on rammus to die, or rush behind enemy lines on quinn to proxy only to get hunted down by the enemy jungler. Both strategies work because in both cases he is winning economically (levels, gold, cs etc). In the first, he denies the enemy platings and he has a faster way to get to lane (tp, Powerball, etc) while in the latter giving 300 gold and a solokill of experience to the enemy jungler isn't as impactful as screwing over their tempo by forcing them to chase you for a minute. Not to mention that he gains gold and experience from minions which rival or surpass that gold gained by the enemy. My point is that thebausffs's strategy shows that league is far from solved, and that a viable method of playing is focusing on resource management . The moment you exclusively fixate on k/d, broken champions or items, or anything else you fail to grasp the complexity of league as a whole.

DUDE it’s so hype seeing marss react to your smash content! Your doing great stuff man keep it up!!

Old AP Pantheon or Old AD Viktor were my premiere Off Meta strats, especially Pantheon. Just remembering oneshotting people on spawn with the ultimate, brings a smile to my face.

Ornn jungle is sleeper amazing. You can get soooooo many unique timings by never having to back to buy items. Very fun.

Love the video, ever since the new item changes were revealed I’ve been thinking about trying attack speed neeko again and while my own skill needs to improve, it’s good to know that it at least checks a few boxes in terms of being off meta, but not troll! Plus I tried it on pbe and it’s quite fun

Really love the breakdown, also great shoutout to Chimes

Hey Vars! Been a fan for a long time. Question: what are your thoughts on wild rift as a game? I play smash competitively as well, and explaining it to my friends, I say that PC league is "Melee" and Wild Rift is "Ultimate" (when it comes to mechanics and depth)

I'd like to give Riot a bit of credit for this. Off-meta picks are one of the things that make League such a fun game, and they are only possible because Riot allows them. AP Ezreal is a personal favorite of mine, completely changing his play-style from a spammy mobile poker with good dps, to a high-burst nuker. If Ez had no AP ratios, this would obviously not be possible. The issue arises when an "off-meta" build becomes more effective than the "normal" build. For example, Varus' "normal" build would be on-hit ADC build, but recently, he's been outclassed by both his lethality and AP builds recently, the first because poking you for half your health from 8 screens away is pretty strong, and the second because why would I on-hit someone if I can just root them and one-shot them? If you didn't notice, I dislike (current) AP Varus because it's always been a fun and rare gimmick of his, which was historically effective into tank-heavy teams, but was utterly outclassed by his other builds against conventional/not especially tanky teams. I've recently seen AP Varus played into squishy teams, but be far more effective than either of his other builds could even hope to be, because he is able to delete anyone from the map in one combo with Nashor's Tooth + Riftmaker. The same idea applies to when an item is so broken that it outperforms all other items even on champions who it, by all rights, shouldn't be good on. Blue Kayn with Goredrinker, Talon with Goredrinker, and Irelia with ... also Goredrinker come to mind. Fortunately, when an item is too strong, just nerfing the item generally suffices. When an off-meta build becomes oppressive, it's not as simple, because any direct nerf to the champion would also nerf their other builds, and buffing other parts of the kit to counteract the nerf to the oppressive off-meta build may render the champion too strong.

I hope this opens the eyes of some people who just hate on any off meta build especially when it can make sense

The imagery of AP Darius looks hilarious

I dont know how things are on PC, but in wild rift there are lot of player in chalenger who in premade teams. Because of it the tank and enchanter builds from the top players may not be the best for soloQ. The youtuber Broken Suport makes lots of videos explaning it.

Teemo support is easily my favorite one and so many people think it's troll but like: 1. You can blind the majority of ADCs and completely nullify their main damage output for a few seconds 2. Still have a solid amount of damage pressure 3. Cheap build, get Liandry's to function and it's all nice bonuses from there. 4. Teemo is a champion who by merely existing on the map takes a ton of focus. Either because the enemy team is dumb and tiltable and will focus you over the ADC, but also things like forcing an enemy to get 4 oracles, making their vision weaker only to take out a fraction of your vision and traps. 5. My personal biggest reason: The zone control your mushrooms offer go from being a rather self-focused defensive tool (mostly discouraging top ganks which hardly happen anyway) to being a valuable early game objective control tool that helps dissuade the enemy jungle from ganking the much more popular botlane and control the dragon pit, which as you go into the game (especially building CDR) offers you significantly more vision control than the enemy team. 6. Teemo can also stall a game for a long ass time, being one of few supports who can dissuade multiple waves of minions crashing into your base in the scenario you're a lone survivor, a situation most supports do not function well in. This stalling ability and ability to viably sell your support item without sacrificing vision control means you can quickly catch up in budget with your other teammates, giving you 5 fully-budgeted champions. Next time the enemy ADC locks in Vayne, supports, I encourage you, go CDR Teemo support and perma-blind her. The resulting ragequits are priceless.

I'm a support main, and I love experimenting. If something has cc, I see if it can work as support. It's more fun than playing the same 5 supports for every game. Sure I suck and lose a lot, but then I get games where somehow Evelyn support wins lane.

12:46 little did he know singed mid is regularly played by singed mains in all skill levels, heck even faker drops some ap singed mid games every once in a while

I love ADC lb (especially with statikk shiv again soon™) It's not the best as you don't have as much raw damage buffs such as onhits/attack speed, but you're incredibly mobile, chain (or multiple) for setting up kills, the W charges up your energized ridiculously fast (if you walk away from your W position and aa for proc and aa+blink back, both your attacks will proc energized for extra healing, damage, and safe trades/bursts and catches people off guard), attacks from poking also is a lot faster/more reliable than your usual AP build and scales far better in longer games due to the fact that LB loses games she can't close, the main struggle is very early game against waveclear and reliable poke but snowballs much harder than adcs IMO

Yuumi jungle got me to bronze 4 so im pretty sure its a genius strategy. Also started playing league about a week ago.

11:19 oml this just reawakened this repressed memory from half a season or a full year ago where I encountered a yone jg in low silver lmao. Mans powerfarmed the entire time with shitty clear speed and no kiting whatsoever and expected the rest of us to just be okay playing 4v5

i can't wait to run that new guinsoos rageblade on illaoi real soon

Will never understand why people complain so much about people playing off meta. I have to listen to my teammates whine about it constantly. The biggest reason why it irritates me is because I can't get teammates that know how to play META correctly, so what does it matter if I play meta or not. People care way too much about playing meta without actually knowing how to play the game correctly in the first place which is extremely silly. Improve at the game before you start caring about meta.

petition to add "u" after r in Vars's name

For me, the big thing is what does the Off Meta offer that the original does not? Some may build something full AP despite having one scaling that AD does jsut as well. But at that point, why build the AP? If the items dont offer ebough otherwise, its now a troll pick. AP Twitch is a good example of an off meta that works for unique reasons. Normal Twitch uses his passive to help with his E damage, his q is to help position, and ult to help shred in team fights from afar. AP twitch uses their Passive and E as a burst tool, Q is there FOR the passive and to reposition, and ult is to help continue to apply passive. The mentality is classic, consistent ADC vs Bursty APC. Another one is Bruiser Voli vs AP attack speed Voli. Bruiser is meant to dive into the enemy and be disruptive, with just enough sustain to be hard to deal with, his E is meant to give a shield and help control a zone or catch a foe, Q helps CC and engage, and W is mainly his sustain. His passive is there as a neat bonus for engaging. AP makes more use, and benefits more, from the passive, E and ult, but makes his Q entirely utility based and W more if a passive stacking tool and minor heal. Its about the raw, fast damage over the sustained, drawn out frontline he normally does.

the world of league still isnt ready for the terror that is on hit ivern

There was also the cases of AP Kai’Sa mid (which got her W AP scaling nuked from 70% to 45%) and on-hit rage-blade in the top lane.

AP Rengar is THE perfect example of an off-meta pick imo. Traditionally, he's an AD assassin who deals practically all of his damage on one target with an empowered auto-attack. With AP Rengar however, you trade off the crazy single-target damage (and any semblance of DPS) for far superior AOE damage and waveclear. You're still playing the same champion, but you're essentially choosing to opt into different stats to get a different experience, almost as if you were creating a character in an MMORPG.

Ever since I’ve started watching riste playing Garen mid in high elo, I’ve been chasing that dream of getting just as good with my old favorite 😊

Ultimate bravery....how that brings back memories

I've played probably more off-meta stuff than meta stuff over the years, and probably half the time something I did became meta or at least well known after the fact. In season 3 I was playing AP Lulu mid and getting flamed for it, yet not too long after pros were playing that shit so ridiculously they not only get her nerfed but they permanently got Lich Bane's AP ratio lowered because of how busted it became on her. I was playing Nocturne in lane plenty for awhile, and then that shit became popular a few years ago. I played Nautilus mid well before Doinb made that pick famous. The thing about off-meta stuff is you have this annoying burden of backing it up. Teammates don't know how to play around you as well because they're used to what a pick does in its main role, and people are so quick to lose faith in you if something goes wrong despite things going wrong being expected. It sucks because off-meta is just a more fun way to play the game for some of us, yet people will insist on making that experience less fun for you solely because they're frightened by the unfamiliar.

Tried the Assinn Vi after watching the vid on happychimes channel, is real fun. I'm not good at it. far to reckless but im having a blast with it. along with the new neeko ( its fun turning into a caster minion, ganking a bot lane and R+E+Q suprise attack

divine sundere on yone is his best mythic item, change my mind, I’ve been building it on him since forever, it just makes sense

I've always wanted to make jungle split push zigs work. My logic is that you could shove towers down all around the map after helping laners shove in and have a semi global ulti for a pseudo gank

My most iconic build is a healer Kindred build. I'm a support main who likes playing off-meta supports, but this particular build came about from me looking at Kindred's kit - an AoE area denial, a slow, a self heal, a way of getting out of danger, and quite possibly the best support ultimate in the game - and I realised she actually has a number of factors that would make her a decent support. I decided to double down on this by building moonstone renewer, redemption, and ardent censer as her main items. Moonstone allowed me to heal allies consistently by just hitting enemies with an attack or ability, meaning I could sit back and use my W to get heals without ever being in danger, or I could be dealing damage and healing simultaniously. Redemption just stacks onto that with additional heals (you can take Heal instead of ignite to double down on that). Then finally ardent actually has a pretty wild effect: it can trigger to buff both you and an ally to deal more damage for 6 seconds when you heal them. Moonstone has a cooldown of only 2 seconds. That means that if you're consistently doing damage, and thus constantly proccing moonstone, both you and an ally can have effectively permanent ardent buff. This turned Kindred from a marksman jungler into a hybrid damage and heal character. Admittedly it wasn't incredibly strong and the AP from the items goes to waste, but it certainly wasn't as much of a troll pick as it first sounds. Unfortunately with the new moonstone changes it'll no longer be possible.

syill remeber my one of the best off meta strategy pick: split push tristana top she had good push and destous turrets fast while having resorses how to run away from enemy :P (I rarely play this bcs it's range top)

Depends on how well the pick works, like the Jayce support I had yesterday, it was as a very INTeresting choice.

off meta for me is when u pick a champ u know more then most in a role they will not be played normally in to give u advantages in draft (bates them into picking mid vs ziggs when ziggs was apc or sup) or in lane (u know the matchups they dont) but still needs to give u what u want from that role (like top being able to split and sup having vision control and or cc) or it does what other "meta" picks in that lane but offers other disadvantages and advantages like ziggs support (not to off meta but it gets my point across) he is like vel'koz he has range and great neutral but at the cost of true damage and super high burst he gets higher up time and higher dps with turret damage and global ultimate and other picks are picks that give u fully new tools but does not loss much has long has u are really good at both the role and champion and items/rune options (zoe sup TF sup and lissandra sup/top being my favourite picks)

And it will be really interesting how the meta changes will patch 12.10 and the next pre season in which, at least, Riot will change fighters and magues items.

One thing I've noticed about HappyChimeNoises' videos is that the players he talks about usually have years of experience playing those certain champs/builds before they reach higher ranks. Like one of his more recent videos covered Pink Ward's AD Shaco, a champ PW has been very proficient with for longer than most of us have been playing the game. If AP Sion ever gets buffed, I'll bet Chime makes a video about Tilterella because Tillt used to do it LONG before it was effective, and climbs with that experience.

Video suggestion : Do you think we should add something like talents or a system like the Aghanim's Scepter into LoL as a pre-season change?

Back in season 3, I played support and thought Naut would be good in that role. I looked around on KZfaq and found an off meta video of him being played and tried it myself. He became one of my three rotating supports the other two being Thresh and Leona

I was so shook when I saw the acronym Then I saw it was a backromym and was calmed again

Well let me tell you I started playing off meta mostly because I couldnt always get an S with my favorite champions so I would take them outside their roles, all of them are M7 now lol

The reason it's often frustrating when an off meta strategy hits mainstream is that then you encounter a bunch of people in your own games trying to replicate it without having the knowledge or skill or make it work. Right now Kayn top lane has become a thing, but a lot of the time it doesn't go very well because the players trying to replicate the strategy won't have much knowledge of Kayn as a champion, might not have the macro knowledge of the game to know what to do at what time, and might not understand the ins and outs of top lane leading to them getting crushed. This is very frustrating when it's your teammate.

I play a lot of heartsteel sona top. It pretty much always beat my opponent. The problem with it is, since i have no save clear. My opponent usually gets to sit on my tower until its gone. And after tower is gone i can hardly handle the 1v1 if i dont have at least 2 items to fight with.

I think the game is in such a strict champion and item defined era that the meta is a large reason why the game is less fun and more toxic

100% Off-meta: - You have a net positive KDA with the pick, and you also have a positive win-rate with it. A legitimate "off-meta" build does not feed the enemy team gold or cost your team wins. It is just a different way to build/play the champion that also functions, as well or sometimes better than the meta build/strategy does. Whatever raw damage/durability you give up, you are getting something equally valuable in return - or vice versa. 2/3 Off-meta, 1/3 Trolling: - You have a negative KDA with the pick, but you hav a positive win-rate with it. Thebausffs "inting Sion" strategy is this. You are feeding the enemy team gold, so your teammates are against more fed opponents. But you are doing it in a way that gets wins, so it can't simply be called trolling. The complaint here can be that you could have avoided feeding and still win the game just as often, with less effort from your team to do so. So in order for this to be fully legitimate, you need to demonstrate a win-rate that is higher than with a non-feeding strategy. 1/3 Off-meta, 2/3 Trolling: - You have a positive KDA with the pick, but you have a negative win-rate with it. These picks are common. Someone will grab an early-game champion and snowball with it, then give up their giant bounty later and end up losing the game for their team as their pick falls off a cliff the longer things go. At the game's end they have this amazing KDA and a lot of damage into the enemy team, but the truth is that they didn't play well after getting ahead and are costing their team games by not protecting their bounty with caution and defensive purchases. What I personally find interesting about this subset of builds is that some of them are considered meta. Your team is "supposed to win before you fall off", as if that's always an option when it almost never is. Usually such builds are only meta while people are smurfing on them, and then they phase out as the mostly-troll rubbish they actually are. 100% Trolling: - You have a net negative KDA with the pick, and you also have a negative win-rate with it. This is AP Master Yi support and other such nonsense, where it's almost never an accident that the game ends in a loss. No matter how well you play the build, you will not do well AND you will likely cost your team the game. One of the typical picks for this is Yuumi - someone builds her in a random way, takes her into a solo lane (or jungle) and build support items there, or both. There is no excuse for picking something you cannot consistently pilot to a win. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By my own definitions, I play several 100% off-meta picks and nothing less viable than that: - on-hit/tank Yuumi (with a carefully crafted build that outperforms AP Yuumi, to balance vs the risk of detaching) - AD Aurelion Sol (BotRK to get targets in execute range quickly, Axiom Arc to use his ultimate extremely often) - AD LeBlanc - AD/tank Rell - on-hit/AP Annie - on-hit/AP Zilean - on-hit/tank Veigar ...and a few others; you get the idea. Absolutely I do not ever make the game harder for myself or my teammates to carry, with any pick. I only lock in picks that I know I will perform well with and will win my team the game. I do not deviate from meta builds on any champion unless I find that I perform better and win more often by not doing so. Out of roughly 65 champions I play well, I play maybe 10 off-meta builds. And with some champions, LeBlanc for example, I don't always play the off-meta build - it depends on if it will work better in the game I'm about to play, with my team and/or against the enemy team. And I expect this level of scrutiny in picks from my teammates as well.

Rest in Peace Pyke Mid.

My favourite off meta used to be jungle singed. That was some seasons ago xD

I just play to have fun, so I guess its a little bit of both off meta and troll pick for me. Im a support main and I do stupid stuff like Shurelya supp/tank J4, Moonstone supp Twitch, Shield spam iron solari Lee Sin and more other stuff. I just make sure i play with friends so they don't get mad at me, we're all having fun here.

I think the most important factor of if something is off meta or just trolling is if the person who picks it actually thinks it is good and tries to do well with it, or if they are intending to do badly.

not gonna lie, i literally been playin pyke mid on several accounts since the day he was released. And that early on, people would threaten to report me and dodge simply because i locked in pyke mid. Now its meta

When I do it, it's "off meta", when my teammates do it, it's "troll pick", when my enemies do it, it's "god tier one trick pick".

Doesn't "Meta" come from "Metagame", as in "the game you play about the game, usimg data and patterns, in order to solve it outside of its intended eviorment"?

In a game based on team work with multiple choices and decisions to make. Playing off meta is literally trolling. Every role has defined goals and expectations. When you deviate from it too much you will be grinded up by the harsh realities of Summoner's Rift. It's survival of the fittest. (While Riot may not be the best at communicating how to play, and terrible at enforcing community standards. The game is still balanced around the meta that was establishedsince the game's inception).

Funny thing is that my 3 favorite picks are off meta. My favorite, which is kassadin, but with warmog’s armor last. My second and third, which is crit pantheon adc and crit renekton top, are also off meta, since I build as an adc in those picks. I actually perform better as these picks than the normal meta builds and play styles for those champions

Thank you for acknowledging that the idea of "M.E.T.A." is a backronym, it's been a pet peeve of mine for so long!

In wild rift I basically exclusively played Thresh Mid for a while, and I honestly had so much more fun playing the game when I was playing him in mid

is the background music on this the blue archive ost?

If there’s one thing that isn’t that bad about having dementia, it’s that I can watch some of my favorite videos over and over, mostly Vars!

I used to main hybrid kai'sa jungle, before the item rework, around 2019. I would rush bloodrazor --> beserkers--> gunblade-->hurricane-->zhonyas-->dcap. I had everything strategized out, if i was blue side start redbuff level 2 invade blast plant over q --> w finihs with autos and steal their jg run mid or bot. It was so fun people would be like dodge we lose blah blah blah. It's what got me to diamond unironically with a 76%wr and I was silver the season before. I quit playing her after the item rework and gunblade was removed tho, I honestly think it was sleep and kaisa was just OP but she always is so. RIP my gunblade kaisa :( (p.s. you could sneak drag with bloodrazor and beserkers level 5-6 really easily)

I been playing a lot of off meta mid lane these days. Cait, Zyra, gragas, AP kog and jhin.

The biggest Off-Meta into Meta strat was the AP Mage Sup. Back in S3 Sups were slaves to the ADC. You picked a tank with high CC or an Enchanter, one gold gen item, boots and all wards you could possibly have, and that's it. If for some reason you got a kill, maybe a second sup item. But then people realized some supports could use the mana regen from their kit and their high base damage to be quite threatening in the early game as mages. Thus, Annie Sup was born and she was scary. AoE instant stun on her ult, making her an amazing catcher, a target stun on her Q or her W for AoE stun if the ult wasn't available. Regardless of the method, her full combo could 100-0 an ADC and their Sup, and that meant you still had a another ADC with their entire kill to unload and Tibers as a tank, as well as she should be half-through ther next stun. Then Vel'Koz came around with true damage on his passive scaling with level, and more range than anyone else in the botlane (as well as a poke that could hit two people at once with ease). This lead to several changes to both champions as well as other mages who were starting to see play as sups in order to buff their mid-lane playstyles and directly nerf their support playstyles, yet Riot never managed to beat this off-meta strat (this thing survived the ardent meta), even today we see plenty of mages as S tier picks in the sup role and are particularly strong in SoloQ as poorly coordinated teams usually have a hard time dealing with it.

2:24 this sound shredded my ears

back in my old days, before Soraka gets her rework my friends used to troll me by sending ME into the jungle so I would troll them by picking whatever I felt was worth a try And one day I played Old Soraka jungler Because her q was spammable aoe and she could replenish her own health My Soraka ganks were like this : ally : Please, I need a nurse ! Me : Coming ! give health and mana and off to the jungle We obviously lost that game but it was very funny 🤣

The weird thing is "off meta" doesn't nessesarily mean not developer intended. Tom Kench support is condiered off-meta, for example. Picking a character in a non traditional role might be better sometimes than picking a character in thier intended role when they're just super weak at the time.

Step by step on how to play offmeta: 1. Play at least one game in draft mode to make sure you didn't overlook anything essencial. 2. Make sure you understand your win condition/lose condition. 3. Draw conclusions from the first 50 games to check if your understanding in step 2 was correct. 4. If it was, congratulations, you are now offmeta. Go play 500 games to check if it works.

As an off-meta enjoyer I feel following the meta to be extremely boring and needlessly stressful. I just want to play the game and have fun, and I find the most fun in using the champions and re-learning in ways that dont put me under any stress, and surprise, so far I have over a 70% winrate. This proves that, at least in my case, the mental state have a way better impact on the game compared to any tier lists.

reminds me of when i was playing with my dad and he was arguing that its ok for him to play Kindred and Lee Sin support because arguing what a "real support is" is semantics and doesnt matter. Even if we won the games, lane was just insanely horrible. You can barely justify those support picks

That being said while off-meta builds are a thing people do and why some believe them to be trollpicks all boils down to perspective and whether or not it's found disruptive by members of that player(s)'s team. This is what determines whether or not they're trolling, soft inting, intentionally feeding, or attempting to throw by doing virtually nothing. The thing is, if you constantly do an off-meta pick with a playstyle your team doesn't like, it's clear it bothers them enough to be disruptive to their gameplay. I can understand from theBauss's perspective that he's trying to win the game and he isn't trying to commit to any gameplay-disruptive behavior, but yet from the perspective of his teammates, I fully understand why it would be viewed that way and warrant a possible ban, mind you not a confirmed or total ban, just one that can possibly happen.

AD leblanc is one of the wierd actually good builds with 0 AD ratios only because of the surviveability

Chime videos be like "heres a great off meta pick! Its only used by one guy though. Who is a massive one trick pony since the fall of Rome and already knows the ins and outs, but its a good pick I swear!"

great video

i kinda miss Pyke mid and Sett / Pantheon support

Vars I absolutely love your content, and hope you never leave us. But I'll have you know I'm an otp pantheon sup, and he is still a VERY viable support pick.

l ove off meta picks, kayn/thresh top, urgot/aatrox jng, its fun playing a champ you like in a different role.

Don't know the differences between troll pick and off meta but I'm gonna assure there will be no differences in the insults you gotta receive from your team mates.

I haven't watched the video yet, so this is my opinion before hearing yours. The differences between off-meta picks and troll picks are personal experience and time. For example, someone who wins a match with AD Janna on their team would have a more positive opinion of the abnormal pick than if the opposite happened. In addition, the more times a person sees an off-meta pick, regardless of experience, the more likely they are to believe there is some merit to the strategy. Essentially, there is no difference besides personal opinion.

This is actually less a state of the game’s community and moreso a symptom of how the game was designed in the first place. The problem here is the game design behind itemization. If the game did not feature items as a system, this would not happen. For example, HotS had a talent system instead, where you got character based upgrades as you levelled up. These would still drastically alter the playstyle between talent trees but was not only easier to balance but also didn’t feature “troll builds” because there was no troll build. No matter what unless you picked nothing, it was very hard to pick a wrong choice. With the only thing being that in some cases there would be a few trees that would work well together. This was something that they also alleviated though and would have continued to do if the game continued to recieve updates. Instead of having specific things all tied to one particular set in some cases if build diversity was low they would turn talent trees into particular levels focusing on a type of upgrade with the player moreso choosing how they wanted to execute that. Dont mind me going on about how Heroes was actually very well designed and people don’t give it enough creditz

My favorite off meta pick right now has to be the reworked ASol in the Jungle. Fast scaling, REALLY good Ganks with his W, insane damage and he is an infinite scaler. Also his E delays everything, when it gets big, because the zoning potential is just great on his champ

I love playing off meta, I enjoy play sej and shen both in jg and support

i think off meta / troll pick are balance by knowledge if you or you'r opponent play off meta champ the knowledge of you'r strenght vs his strenght value way more than skill