LoR Meta Snapshot #35

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The first ever 5 stars in our snapshot had to go to the strongest deck in the history of the game. If I’d told you 2 months ago that Fizz would be part of the best deck we have ever seen, you’d have laughed at me. Yet, here we are. Fizz-TF is crazily unbalanced, being able to cheat the mana system, level-up TF in one turn, make an untargetable Fizz a big 4/4 and never run out of options thanks to the high amount of card draw.

That being said, let’s review the possibilities we have to counter that annoying fish and the card dealer. The Box, Withering Wail, Ice Shard, Avalanche, Blighted Ravine and even Death Lotus! So many options to stop the fish from crushing your Nexus. Wait, what are you saying? Wiggly Burblefish cost nothing? While all the AoE costs mana?!

So they can force the removal out by pushing the boundaries with Fizz-TF as they level-up, the Ballistic Bot eroding your Nexus, then use the Burblefish to kill you in one turn, as you don’t have enough mana to defend yourself?

Well, forget everything I said prior. Play defensively, don’t ever use mana, and if you have to, pray to whatever you believe in that your opponent doesn’t have all of the Burblefish and ways to duplicate them. Slow spells won’t help you if the opponent knows how to play, fast spells can’t deal with the 4/2 Burblefish if you don’t have multiple copies of them.

Your opponent will be able to use up to 6 mana a turn while you’ll be stuck not using 8 to 10 of yours (if your deck even has the required answers). So how to beat Fizz-TF? Be patient and wait until the opponent makes a mistake that you can finally punish. If they don’t make mistakes, they’re going to win the game, and there’s nothing you can do about it. (Write-up by Ultraman)

Shadow Isles splash

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Bilgewater splash

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Freljord splash

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Aphelios is no longer paired with TF in most of the current builds, that distinction goes to Zoe now, forming what’s undoubtedly the most flexible champion pairing the game has to offer. Both champions are from the same region, and both are capable of carrying the game on their back with the absurd amount of value they can generate if they remain well-protected.

This makes Aphelios-Zoe one of the most feared duos on the ladder nowadays. While Fizz-TF is the best deck, Aphelios-Zoe can definitely brag about being the most flexible and unpredictable. The deck has access to a never-ending flow of Celestial cards, two early game champions forcing the opponent to react to them and a low curve which can still play 7-9 mana bombs in the late game. This archetype is the definition of an “all-around deck.”

Proof of this is the amount of splash possibilities we’re currently seeing, as Targon has been paired with SI, Bilgewater and even Frejlord to add the final 3 or 4 cards to the deck. SI looks to be the best combination for now, Atrocity being another card that could be in the discussion for a potential nerf.

It allows the deck to gain access to direct damage to the opposing Nexus, one of the few things Targon isn’t capable of doing. Cards like The Box or Withering Wail can also help against Fizz-TF or Aggro decks for example, in case you wouldn’t feel like the healing capacity was enough.

When you see Bilgewater added to the deck, it’s due to Boxtopus, arguably the best 2-drop to pull with Aphelios’ Crescendum. The region also offers Mind Meld or Pick a Card if you would like to add a finisher or some more card draw to your deck.

While the Freljord splash might appear weaker than the other two, it has its merits. Starlit Seer is strong in this deck, as we’re playing spells each turn. If there’s The Veiled Temple in play, 3 spells will be more common than 1. Having Seer as the 2-drop helps the deck create beefy minions and fight the board much more efficiently.

This can help a ton against Midrange decks trying to beat us in combat. The addition of Troll Chant is another great tool with which to protect our champions or our health against Aggro decks.

For now, Aphelios-Zoe performs like the second best deck on our snapshot. It’s fascinating that Aphelios can perform that well despite being nerfed. It wouldn’t be shocking to see this deck rise to the very top if Fizz-TF is next up on the nerf hammer list. (Write-up by den)

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Every meta has a damage-based deck that punishes anyone who forgets to play in the early game. In the Shurima patch, that deck is Azir Burn. With a straightforward game plan and a Slay-based explosive start, it’s capable of dealing a ton of damage early on before attempting to finish off with direct damage.

However, the deck isn’t just a one-trick pony. It excels at punishing decks that would leave it alone and it’s great at keeping a high damage flow for a long period of time, making significant healing the only reliable option against it.

The small units in the deck are what make it flexible, as they deal damage early and later on help blocking the opponent while we drain their Nexus with Doombeast, Phantom Prankster and the many cards we have to support them. Crucially, these two cards will help deal direct damage even if the board is lost and our attack turns are worthless.

Given the high amount of draw the deck is packing, trying to outlast it like most decks attempt to do against Aggro strategies isn’t the best way to go about it. While the deck should lose some potential over time, it’s already facing erosion in the meta due to the increasing prevalence of healing (e.g. Aphelios decks, Fiora-Shen and Lissandra-Trundle all have some form of it).

Tier 2 decks can still be pounced on and outpaced as more board-centric decks should give us enough time to set up enough damage to close out the game before they can kill us with their units. The gameplay of this archetype might take a little bit of time to grasp, as the general concept isn’t to deal as much damage as possible, but try to put your opponent to 0.

This is more subtle a nuance than it might appear. If you go for the maximum damage output each turn, you also become very predictable for your opponent, who can focus on solely defending and wait for you to draw until they can be more aggressive. Instead, try to keep a regular damage flow and go for the kill when you’re sure it will actually result in a win.

That patience aspect is what makes the deck really scary, as the opponent will usually assume a defensive stance against you, giving you the time you need to set up properly and plan ahead for even more potential damage. Once you have this mastered, you’re ready to be a real terror on the ladder. (Write-up by den)

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Similarly to Fiora-Shen, Discard Aggro is a deck that doesn’t change much from one meta to another, but then again, it doesn’t really need to. I consider this deck to be the gatekeeper of good decks in the current format. If you can’t handle Discard Aggro properly, you probably won’t have a good time against the other decks.

While the deck is capable of some insane high-rolls and could OTK someone on Turn 4, it’s also fairly predictable if you have the tools to deal with it. Although the deck has stayed basically the same, the meta being centered around slow decks helps it a lot.

Amazingly, I managed to maintain a positive winrate vs Lissandra-Trundle on my way to Masters with the deck, showing that even this control-packed deck more often than not didn’t have the answers to counter a heavy dose of early game aggression.

Suit up! is also a decent card to play around AoE and a leveled Jinx is a pain to remove for a lot of decks at the moment, so she’s free to generate a ton of value with her Super Mega Death Rockets turn after turn. I personally think the archetype still deserves the title of the best Aggro deck in the game, and its capacity to flood the board and present different levels of threats should be treated with respect. However, the aggressive decks as a whole aren’t looking so good right now.

Even if on paper, the top 5 decks should almost only be favorable matchups (although Fiora-Shen is incredibly hard to beat), the capacity of these decks to generate cards and get out of situations through healing or sheer value is incredible. As such, Discard Aggro feels like a really good deck, but one that can’t really consistently keep up with the big boys. Having no new cards to feed into the deck adds to this feeling.

Still a solid pick to climb the ladder, Discard Aggro can be regarded as a  “quantity first” deck, whereas the best decks on our snapshot opt for the “quality” approach. It sounds like good news that the aggressive decks aren’t out of the picture though, and if decks keep on trying to be greedy, Discard Aggro could get even better matchups with time. (Write-up by den)

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Swain’s back, and he has found a new and improved ally in Lissandra, who can give him access to an excellent stun and some damage on her level-up.

On top of this, the fact that she has a decent statline and a potential to eventually spawn an 8/8 with Overwhelm makes her an excellent partner for Swain. Multiple AoE spells help with Swain’s level-up, which he obtains easily by Turn 5 almost every game, pressuring the opponent while also handling aggression in the early turns.

Ice Shard and Blighted Ravine give your leveled-up Swain free stuns by hitting the opponent’s Nexus at the start of the turn, forcing the opponent into either having a removal spell or a 3+ strength unit with more than 2 health on the board in order to stop the mighty strategist from hitting their Nexus too hard.

For obvious reasons, we are fans of The Leviathan card. Its synergy with Swain is often a game over message for your opponent, and the multiple draws of the deck makes it virtually certain to find your war ships in every game.

Finally, something that’s a Noxian tradition at this point: if the game is going dreadfully, just find your Captain Farron for an exit doorway right into the steal of your life. 8 damage to face plus two Decimates in hand ain’t no joke and multiple decks won’t be able to find the heal necessary to survive. (Write-up by Ultraman)

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Most of the Overwhelm lists I see online feature Renekton and Sejuani, which makes sense as Sejuani applies a Vulnerable tag that Renekton can use to grow when attacking. My issue with this, however, is that most of the top decks in our snapshot aren’t exactly board-oriented and Turn 6 is rather distant when we look at the currently popular strategies.

Thus, I chose to adopt a  faster version of the Overwhelm archetype, which includes Sivir alongside the terrifying crocodile. She’s great at using the Vulnerable tag as well, since she has Quick Attack, while her Spellshield makes it very difficult to remove her, even for a control deck.

In essence, Renekton-Sivir is a pressure deck, where you should aim to develop their board before unleashing a ton of damage on their opponent. While control matchups are straightforward, as the board is almost given to us for free, it’s the board-centric matchups that can be more complicated to navigate.

Those will require a great vision of how things can develop on figuring out how to trade and when to flip the switch and try to seal the deal. As a rule of thumb, I’d say Sivir is the control matchup champion and Renekton is the board matchup champion. So make sure you support the right one depending on the opponent that’s in front of you.

Recognizing that decks like Fizz-TF and Lissandra-Trundle will be prevalent in the meta, I think this deck should be built to aim at killing your opponent no later than Turn 7 or 8 (depending on if you attack on odd or even turns), otherwise you will likely get comboed out of the game - and there’s nothing you can do about it with this deck.

This is the reason why the deck is playing triple Battle Fury and doesn’t feature expensive units that we wouldn’t have time to develop in most games anyway. The idea is to dominate from Turns 3-4 to Turns 6-7, before delivering the killing blow with a timely Battle Fury. Against decks that you know cannot pull any trickery and will fight you on the board, a slower approach is also possible, especially with Ancient Yeti in hand.

Take good trades, use spells to protect your important units and build a board that the opponent can’t do anything about. In a lot of scenarios, dealing 20 damage at once is possible. Overwhelm looks to be in a good spot in the current meta, the problem comes from the other top decks that have reached an incredible power level, to the point where you cannot do much about it.

I’d advise playing around what you can when planning how to put your opponent on edge, but keep in mind that most of our top 5 decks will beat you with the perfect hand, no matter what you do. I still recommend this deck to climb with, though, for those who like board-centric gameplay and beefy units. There’s certainly something to be said for the pleasant feeling you get when you hit your opponent with a 15+ attack unit in the face. (Write-up by den)

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Noxus and Frejlord are usually paired in the Frostbite archetype, and its most recent iteration, LeBlanc-Ashe, has gained some popularity over the last few weeks. But the deck at the forefront of this regional pairing lately is Vladimir-Braum, a list that has been sighted popping occasionally since the release of its foundational landmark: The Scargrounds.

With the last expansion, this deck received a lot of help. Cards like Ice Shard, Blighted Ravine and Crimson Bloodletter became staples in the list almost immediately. For now, it doesn’t look like a clear 40 card deck has clearly emerged as the best list for the deck. This doesn’t mean the pairing of these two champions can’t make strides, as the deck is being played by many high profile ladder players in the community.

The concepts behind the archetype are simple: get The Scargrounds down and then abuse the Tough keyword to protect your minions while buffing them to absurd amounts of attack points. The best part of this plan is that it works almost the same way whether you’re trying to be aggressive or defensive, as cards like Death Lotus, Ice Shard or even Avalanche can simultaneously destroy the opponent’s aggressive game plan while serving as a mass enabler for our board to push a ton of damage.

With good matchups vs most Aggro decks and the capacity to pressure damage-based defensive decks like Lissandra-Trundle, this appears to be a deck that could be a possible “meta breaker.” It could represent a decent Midrange strategy that’s actually capable of flexibility instead of solely focusing on developing the board and pressuring the opponent.

This initial impression may be coloured by the deck benefitting from being somewhat unknown and opponents consequently not playing optimally against it. Yet, Freljord/Noxus seems to be on the rise. Last week it was Lissandra-Swain, this week that distinction definitely goes to Vladimir-Braum. Since the deck hasn’t even been fully optimized yet, it seems the only way is up for it at the moment. (Write-up by den)

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Aggressive decks have returned lately, as the current top tier lists are too flexible to try and counter them with a slow approach. As such, we have seen decks like Discard Aggro, Pirates and Azir Burn rise in popularity in order to pressure Fizz-TF early and prevent it from easily developing.

While those mentioned decks have been in the meta for weeks now, Elise and her spiders have been a much quieter presence, lying in wait for their time to emerge once more. As probably the fastest aggressive deck if left unchecked, this isn’t the kind of deck that can have much staying power in terms of popularity. This is because it’s fairly easy to counter.

Instead, this deck is to be used when it can feast on non-reactive decks, trying to play their strategy and force the opponent to answer it. Well, spiders don’t (and can’t) answer to anyone (except maybe Elise). They aim to set up quickly (e.g. Precious Pet into Elise) and get in an absurd amount of damage when the opponent can’t respond in the first few turns.

With a 20 health Nexus, this deck can kill you as soon as Turn 3 if everything goes its way, and usually aims to win on Turn 5 or 6 if it was slowed down. While it’s a predictable deck that can be countered easily with cheap AoE and healing, the current meta doesn’t really feature these kinds of tools frequently.

Lissandra-Trundle keeps losing popularity over time, as Fizz-TF players are adapting to the matchup, and board-centric decks are switching to a more damage-centric approach. This leads to a perfect environment for Elise Burn, a deck that’s very happy to take on a race against anyone, considering it basically starts the race at lightning speed from Turn 1.

The deck needs the surprise element to be successful. If it keeps on gaining in popularity, we might see some defensive decks come back, which would be a huge punishment for it. With a patch on the horizon for this week too, spiders might lose their best matchup and go back to being a surprise pick.

Until then, if you like super aggressive, pedal-to-the-metal strategies, you might be able to cheese some wins with what is the king of face damage for this week. (Write-up by den)

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The addition of Kindred to the original mix had to be met with some adjustments, slowing down the deck a bit, following the Pack Your Bags nerf that did quite a bit of damage to the formerly aggressive playstyle of Go Hard.

No more do we have Ravenous Butcher and Elise, we’re now a full fledged anti-Aggro list with even more draws and removals for bigger, stronger minions. TF and Withering Wail do wonders against most aggressive decks nowadays, be it Azir and his Sand Soldiers or Fizz and his army of jellyfish.

Compared to many of the top tier decks, Go Hard lacks a way to cheat the mana system, so losing control over a situation will quickly snowball into you losing the game. Your comeback potential is dependent on Pack Your Bags meeting no opposition, or a leveled-up TF destroying the board turn by turn, until even the opponent’s Nexus disappears.

Kindred benefits from you killing your own units to draw, but will most of the time require a full turn of mana to be played out to make an impact. Thus, she mainly works to consolidate your advantage once you’re dominating the opponent - don’t expect her to shift the game in your favour on her own.

She also does wonders against decks with few to no ways to answer the card. Furthermore, Kindred ensures that you aren’t too disappointed to topdeck small minions in the late game, as these can be sacrificed to her benefit. (Write-up by Ultraman)

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This is a slower version, with multiple control tools layered around a powerful core of drawing mechanics and Thresh. With so many removals, Thresh will level-up rapidly, allowing you to “let the dogs out” as soon as Turn 7 most of the time!

The removals also help with stacking Nasus, making him grow big and strong enough that your opponents will struggle to find answers for him. Your low mana minions can handle early game aggression while also serving as tokens for the suicide mission. This allows you to keep a full hand with many options while also activating some cards, such as Black Spear.

If some of your low mana minions are on the board when Thresh comes in play, they’ll now act in a triple role of a) keeping the opponent in check while pressuring them with damage, b) Thresh stops them from using AoE and trades to get rid of them and c) at the same time, they get used one by one for drawing purposes.

Finally, a decent-sized Nasus hitting anything will often result in him leveling-up, and that Spellshield obviously works wonders with Atrocity, allowing you to hit a surprise lethal. This is especially strong given that you now have access to Rite of Negation. (Write-up by Ultraman)

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LeBlanc is still a debatable inclusion in the current meta, as her 2 health makes her feel very weak to any Piltover or Freljord deck running Mystic Shot or Avalanche. Against other board-centric decks though, which don’t run spells but instead rely on combat to control the board, LeBlanc-Ashe can definitely make an impact as a pairing.

It has to be said that Frosbite wasn’t doing so well last month, and we aren’t expecting this archetype to make a comeback as a top 5 deck anytime soon. The showcased list was used by Taytwo, who reached Masters with a 60% winrate. According to him, Reckoning is the card that makes the deck function.

With most decks being centered around low-cost minions and very synergistic approaches, it’s fairly rare that a unit will reach the 5 attack mark in most of the current best decks. Having access to such a good removal tool gives the deck enough time to develop the board and pressure the opponent. Being able to kill Aphelios or TF when they hit the board with Culling Strike is another reason the deck can be a real contender.

Against other board-centric decks, the Freeze package and two attack-focused champions give this deck every chance to be winning a trading battle, which usually will end up with Ashe naturally evolving and taking over the game. Keeping LeBlanc safe on the back row while she generates Mirror Image also is a valid possibility if we’re in no rush to close the game.

Most minions in this deck have a lot of upsides to be copied and contribute to building a solid edge over time, which we can capitalize on later. Frostbite doesn’t look like a deck that will take the ladder by storm, but Noxus appears to be a great region currently, as it allows the player to both pressure and answer the game plan of popular champions. (Write-up by den)

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After seeing their colleague TF dominate the meta, Gangplank and Miss Fortune decided they wanted their spot back in the snapshot. Being polite and giving everyone a chance is important to us, so we obliged them.

Pirates have always been a staple of the ladder for simple reasons: it’s easy to play and can be adapted by changing a few cards for personal preference or to try and target certain matchups. The main goal is to push reliable damage to the opposing Nexus with low-cost units such as Crackshot Corsair or Legion Saboteur, with the possibility of doing this even during your opponent’s turn by trading your Legion Grenadier or playing Imperial Demolitionist to speed up GP’s level-up.

Then, when your opponent’s Nexus is quite tender, push the remaining damage with Noxian Fervor, Decimate or the notorious Captain Farron - who remains a huge threat even following his nerf. You will most likely have to take hits so as to avoid losing pressure potential and tempo, but that’s not a big issue.

You don’t necessarily care about board domination, more so about pure aggression: almost all of your cards are made to Burn down the opposing Nexus, and non-Aggro decks will be hard-pressed to keep up with your speed. Don’t hesitate to push some damage in by attacking with relatively precious units such as MF or Crackshot Corsair, as their attack might be the difference between a win or loss in the end.

But this deck isn’t one of the top dogs for a good reason: you will burn through your resources quickly and your gameplan is very predictable. If your opponent is able to read you or counter your early game, you will find yourself out of juice and unable to finish the game. Pirates lack the bench threats (e.g. Jinx), card draw and the flexibility of some superior Aggro archetypes, like Discard Aggro. (Write-up by Othal)

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Quinn and MF have always worked remarkably well together due to the synergy of their level-up conditions, and there’s been a variation of Scouts in every meta I can remember. Similarly to Pirates Aggro, this deck is easy to pilot and allows for fast games, whether you win or lose.

Your aim is simple: board domination. Not only will you be able to flood the board with followers, the Demacia toolkit will also ensure you get to dictate the trades and protect your key units with combat tricks while getting to your opponent’s threats with your numerous Challenger units. While Aggro decks are usually vulnerable to removals like Withering Wail or Avalanche, Ranger’s Resolve and Vanguard Bannerman will help you bulk up your units to keep up the pressure.

Cataclysm synergizes well with your champions and Scouts, as it serves multiple purposes: it gives you the attack token back during the opponent’s turn if you target one of your Scouts, it helps your champions level-up, and it gives Challenger to one of your units for when you really need to remove something from the enemy board - or if you want to pick on the weakest unit to make sure your Scout stays alive for another attack.

Cithria the Bold and Genevieve Elmheart are both efficient game-ending tools who will allow you to go for a final strike on the opponent’s Nexus. You will also need to keep in mind that this deck is attack-focused: your champions and threats both rely on having the attack token, and without it - or any tool to get it like Relentless Pursuit or Cataclysm - you won’t be able to do much except for building your board for an open attack... which makes you predictable.

All of this will rely on you being able to keep your units alive: the deck’s only source of direct damage is Miss Fortune and even she needs some units to attack and proc her skill. You need to keep the pressure up on your opponent and make sure you’re the one overwhelming them with units and not the other way around. If your board is lost, well, it’s likely the game will be too. (Write-up by Othal)

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Until recently, we thought that the male ego was the most fragile thing on Earth, but this deck... This deck created a whole new ranking system for that. Although very aggressive, your minions have so little health that every spell will easily deal with them. Boosts in your possession will help you get some damage in, but you empty your hand so quickly that refilling it will be difficult.

When you don’t have Reputation activated, they will be an insane cost in mana and tempo. So, why does this deck even exist, if it’s so fragile? Well, Sivir and Ruin Runner offer you alternative options that can actually survive both a trade and a spell.

These alternatives will be your base for boosts, and most fast spells that you want to use to trade with your opponent’s threats. It will also help you activate Reputation, and then, finally, all of your cards become dangerous for your opponent. Unlike before, you can refill your hand often and deal damage or force bad trades on the opponent each and every turn.

Your resistance to aggression is weak, although Dunekeeper and House Spider help you greatly in delaying the damage output of your opponent. Navigate that fine line between dealing damage and not having all your minions dying as you drop them on the board - if you do it right, you will win if the opponent lacks a way to remove that pesky Spellshield! (Write-up by Ultraman)

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Despite being popular in the first few days of the expansion, Azir-Lucian has since lost a lot of momentum. When compared to the feared The Grand Plaza archetype that Miss Fortune and Quinn formed, it looks like this deck might follow the same route of the other Plaza deck: Lucian-Hecarim.

In a similar fashion to the deck we’re comparing it with, Azir-Lucian can bulldoze its way to victory, leaving no chance for your opponent who can only do so much against the army of cheap minions. Lucian and Azir are both perfect in the deck, making the various synergies stronger while gaining a direct advantage from it.

Lucian acts as the immediate threat that the opponent has to remove to prevent themselves getting overwhelmed with board pressure and multiple attacks each turn, while Azir is a long term investment, keeping the deck relevant as the game goes on.

But the downfall of Lucian-Hecarim came from its unilateral nature, being able to only produce pressure through the board and having limited ways to interact with the opponent outside of its attack turns. This leaves the deck with a very predictable game plan, and experienced opponents will know exactly how to punish you, if given the tools to do so.

While raw power can be a good thing, the current meta is dominated by very flexible decks. These can orientate the game to leverage a good position into a winning one. As good as Azir-Lucian is at what it does, the deck doesn’t give the pilot enough room to manoeuvre and thus isn’t flexible enough to be relied on at the highest ranks.

It gives the opponent a way out if they know how to approach the matchup, which makes it easier to punish the higher up the ranks you go. For those reasons, we can’t consider this deck to be a reliable pick to climb the ladder once past a certain point.

The deck performs quite well in the lower ranks, though, as players there don’t necessarily plan ahead of time and may not have mastered the fundamentals of the game. This is also true for the Azir-Hecarim deck, which is basically the other half of the split Lucian-Hecarim archetype from the previous meta. (Write-up by den)

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Deep is a deck that has always been around, but has never truly threatened to reach the top of the tier lists. With the Shurima expansion, the archetype gained a pretty interesting duo of cards with the Sea Scarab and Lost Riches. Both cards fit very well into the list, the former helps with reaching the Deep status and the latter rewards you for a thinned deck, as you will draw the treasures consistently.

With these additions on top of some good foundations from older cards like The Slaughter Docks, the deck was expected to be back on the map. However, the expectation that Deep will see a resurgence seems to arise every expansion, and each time it fails to deliver on this and propel itself into a potent deck.

The first thing to note is that defending in Legends of Runeterra isn’t an easy task when we see the power level of tempo decks. Decks like Fizz-TF, Fiora-Shen or Aphelios can be extremely difficult to contain because of the sheer amount of pressure they can create. Unlike Lissandra-Trundle, which can win the game with a combo and go from a defensive position to a winning one very quickly, Deep needs more time for that transition to take place.

Currently, the game is in a pressure-packed state, which doesn’t really give Deep this necessary time. As such, Deep is stuck as an anti-control deck which takes advantage of a slow meta when the situation calls for it, something that’s getting rare lately.

In essence, Deep is a classic case of a good deck in the wrong meta. As an archetype, it can be seen as having a good synergy and therefore ready to take into battle. Unfortunately, there aren’t many battles where it looks likely to emerge from the depths with a win. This means Nautilus and his flurry of Sea Monsters might have to be a bit more patient before assuming their place as a serious contender. (Write-up by den)

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Once seen as a contender for the top spot in the game, Ezreal-Draven has vanished after the Shurima expansion. The archetype didn’t become bad all of a sudden, but this is a textbook case of a deck not fitting the meta anymore.

Ezreal-Draven is a deck that relies on continuous tempo, controlling the opponent’s resources throughout the game and then relying on Captain Farron or Ezreal to seal the deal by focusing on damaging the opposing Nexus. With Fizz-TF’s emergence, Aphelios’ release and the overall draw capacity of decks being increased, the resource management aspect is essentially gone for this deck.

Moreover, Targon has established itself as the best region in the game, as it features both plentiful healing and card generation, both of which are soft counters to this deck’s strategy. On the other side of the spectrum, aggressive decks, which weren’t such bad matchups before, have become much better at dealing direct damage. This means that another strength of Ezreal-Draven (clearing boards with spells) has also lost some overall power in the current environment.

While looking at it without going into details, the deck could still have some merit and arguably be playable at multiple levels. When being more cautious though, we can see that several of its former strengths just don’t work too well in the current meta.

Trust me, it hurts to rank Ezreal-Draven so low, and fans of the deck shouldn’t necessarily drop it entirely, as there are still good matchups around. It’s just that out-tempoing an opponent or making Captain Farron connect with your opponent’s face isn’t so easy to do anymore. (Write-up by den)