If you told someone last season that one day Urgot would be a contested pick and be receiving multiple bans in ranked, their response probably would be “lol get out of here bronze scrub.” If you picked him you were probably going to be flamed. The joke's on them, because that ugly, weird, adc thing is in fact one of the hottest picks in League right now, being played to incredible success in professional and higher tiers of ranked. While Urgot may seem like the most extreme case, we do see this new meta encompassing more champions that ever before.

A major outcry for a long time was the lack of tanky junglers. They just didn’t seem to fit into the game, and they were pretty much useless in terms of jungling. There was always something else that could be picked, usually a jungler focused on dueling and skirmishing. All of that changed when Riot introduced Cinderhulk into the game, and after several buffs and tweaks to the items, tank junglers exploded onto the scene. It was actually recommended that a tank jungler be picked instead of some fighting jungler. They could still gank and clear camps just as fine but added another person to protect your back line. It also gave all those Nautilus mains a reason to finally take their champion off of the shelf and dust him off. Until the supports stole him.

Here we see items and champions getting buffed in accordance to other champion's strengths. Instead of just nerfing whatever champion the community is crying about being OP, other aspects of the game have been brought up to speed. As mentioned before with Cinderhulk, one of the lacking areas was the jungler earlier in the season, especially since most games were most just full of Vi and Sejuani. While both are still perfectly fine jungle options, there are many more viable options being picked.

But jungle isn’t the only thing that has been effected by this new, diverse meta. Mid lane is no longer full of assassins trying to press R and kill you. While some are still picked, LeBlanc and Zed being the big ones, we have seen an influx of control mages. One of the more popular picks, seeming to surpass even Xerath, has been Cassiopeia. With her late game scaling and ability to control team fights while remaining difficult to hit, it’s no surprise that she is being picked. Her ult even stops the remaining assassins from just jumping in on her, and the speed up on her E helps her kite backwards as long as they're poisoned.

Then there's bot lane. With more supports and adcs being viable than ever before, we get to see a more energetic and interesting bot lane. Perhaps one of the most interesting additions has been both Kalista and Nautilus. With Kalista’s ability to control lane and then control the team fights, she is a very difficult champion to deal with as we saw Bang do in MSI. Nautilus is another hook champion that scales his tankiness very well into the rest of the game, as well as having an AoE slow, a snare, and an unstoppable ultimate. That doesn’t mean that Sivir, Thresh, Corki, Graves, Janna, Annie, and the other bot laners aren’t viable. Kalista and Nautilus are just the most interesting additions to a bot lane meta.

Season 5 has one of the most interesting metas we’ve seen in League of Legends. Champions we never thought would be useful (Urgot, cough) are suddenly top tier picks and have been winning games. People are no longer crying about the jungle being too narrow and even the concerns over the bot lane meta diversity has been subdued. With the end of MSI marking the halfway point of the season, it will be interesting to see where the game goes from here, and if we will still see that fat, ugly, crab thing Urgot in Worlds.