Season 13, thus far, has been a wild ride! We’ve had major champion reworks, we’ve had new and unique Champions introduced, we’ve had item rebalancing and, of course, the usual Champ adjustments all the while. But, for some, you may still be struggling to grasp the Season’s meta while you try to push towards your ranked goal before the first split ends in July. So, we’re here to unpack what this season has brought to the table and tell you what you can play right now to really focus on that pattern!

Top Lane - The Perpetual Coinflip

Historically Top has been the most counter-heavy lane in all of League of Legends. And it's remained so this season. This long lane is all about wave-manipulation, back timings, and trading properly. Concepts which can be rough for new or lower ranked players to develop on their own. Thankfully, here at Dignitas, we’ve got a ton of guides to help iron out those skills! As far as Champion picks go, the meta has been surprisingly balanced between all typical Top Lane options. Tanks, Duelists, and Bruisers, but despite each paradigm holding solid representation, there are clearly defined differences between win-rate of each class.

Tanks have been consistently strong since their item reworks, often becoming unkillable monsters in those later stages of the game while also possessing a surprising amount of individual damage through the lane phase. Typical Top Tanks have also been quite consistent from last Season’s primary picks with Shen, Ornn, Malphite, and Sion holding down priority spots in both solo queue and pro play. Shen rocks in by being an excellent pick for ‘protect the ADC’ shells while also being an adequate split-pusher. Ornn provides solid in lane damage, but also brings great teamfight disruption and additional scaling to his comps. Malphite comes in as a guaranteed engage piece that works extremely well in this ADC-focused Meta, and Sion does a little bit of everything that all these picks bring.

But, even while Tanks are holding strong, they are still outclassed in many ways by their Bruiser contemporaries who are able to keep up not only frontline ability, but also bring in more impactful damage. Champions like Mordekaiser, Aatrox, Olaf, and the recently buffed Poppy have stood right alongside their Tankier lanemates, serving as excellent checks to the scaling abilities of Tanks while also serving their teams as legitimate carry points if they can get off the ground.

Duelists, while still extremely viable, have suffered in comparison to the other two class identities of Top. Mainstays like Gwen, Jax, and Fiora have remained consistent picks in solo queue and have floated into pro picks on occasion, but ever since the Dragon rework a few years back, split-pushers have struggled to hold a impactful definition in the Meta of both solo queue and pro play, since games have become far more reliant on instant burst and big teamfights which Duelists struggle at executing on unless they’re extremely far ahead.

The Jungle - Simplifying Day After Day

One of Riot’s biggest pushes this season was to simplify the Jungle and make it a more approachable space for non-Jungle players to come into and pick-up either as a new primary/secondary or, at least, make their auto-filled games a bit easier to handle. Their first effort to make this happen was sweeping Jungle-centered buffs to Champions like Maokai, Mordekaiser, Morgana, and more non-traditional Junglers to give mains of those Champions reasons to pick-up their Champions within these roles. Unfortunately, across most of their adjustments, only Mordekaiser and Maokai seemed to come out as difference makers from these tuning efforts.

The second measure of simplification was adding the Jungle Pets. Jungle pets operate quite similarly to previous augmented Smite modes we’ve had before, except to reach their augmented states you must utilize your Smite summoner to level-up your assisting Jungle Pet to unlock the enhanced effects. The Jungle Pets themselves will follow you and assist in clearing camps which, in theory, creates more opportunity for off-meta selections to find their way into viability for the Jungle role. Especially so since the Jungle Pets and their associated Smites removed some nuance of the Smite decisions from game to game since now the choices can be boiled down to: Green for tankiness, Red for damage, Blue for movement speed.

The stats above are taken fromu.ggand reflect Patch 13.8

As far as Champion designs go, there’s been a solid balance between Ganking and Farming Junglers across each patch, at least when looking at solo queue. But the edge between the two modes of Junglers is seemingly given to the more aggressive Gank-focused Junglers. Champions like Jarvan, Elise, Hecarim, and Nidalee have remained consistent picks in the Solo-Queue space due to their ability to take over games quickly by themselves and use their fed states to facilitate aggressive control and plays around the map.

But this hasn’t stopped more farming focused picks, like Fiddlesticks, Viego, or Mordekaiser, from maintaining solid win-rates and presences from patch to patch. While farm-focused might not be the modus operandi for every player, these picks pay off by coming into teamfights with highly impactful ultimates that can quickly swing games in their favor if enemies aren’t compensating for what they bring to the table.

In terms of pro play, many pro Jungle picks have centered around the ability to disrupt a teamfight and lockdown priority targets. Vi, Maokai, and Wukong have all found stride in this regard. Each of these Champions has the ability to impact early if the opportunity presents itself, but they very much come online at level 6, where their ultimates serve as their primary draw.

And truthfully, it’s not simply just that these Champions have high disruption that makes them a focus point, but it’s more that the current carry targets of the professional meta have been extremely mobile choices that deserve pointed attention. Champions like Azir, Sylas, Akali, Zeri, Xayah, and Lucian all come packaged with the ability to slip out of incoming damage, especially when paired with pro play’s Enchanter-focused Support Meta. So, bringing in these Champions has been highly lucrative to teams when looking for answers towards League’s primary damage dealers.

Mid Lane - Mainstays and New Blood

Mid, I think, has been in one of the healthiest states it's ever been in through this run of Season 13. While looming titans like Aurelion Sol and Annie remain balance concerns, especially for solo queue players, we’ve seen a high amount of variation in Champion choices across Regions and patches showing that multiple Champion paradigms are highly viable in this season.

Regarding pro play, the same miscreants from last Season maintained a solid presence coming into Season 13. Azir, Akali, Sylas, Viktor, and Ahri all held down the fort while the Meta of the other lanes evolved around them. In fact, there were some Pros wishing for a bit of a Meta shake-up since these picks were blue-chip choices from their Season 12.

Riot, seemingly ready to jump on this, announced their rework to Aurelion Sol and major buffs to Annie, which many speculated could shift the Meta since both of the Champions became oppressive in solo queue. Though, instead of this being the case, we saw increased priority with other Champions like Orianna, Syndra, Ryze, and Taliyah from Mid. Though, this could be partially due to pro play playing behind on patches where these buffs and reworks were released.

Something that’s been even more exciting and enlightening to research was the differences in Regional priority for Mid Lane. The LCS for example stuck to those Season 12 tried and true staples. Largely same for the LEC and LCK too. However, as patches came along, the LEC showed an increased evaluation of Cassiopeia and the LCK and LPL started to put a higher emphasis on Gragas and Syndra respectively. Even CBLOL got into the variation mix with a big focus on Jayce Mid, emulating a similar focus from LPL, throughout their regular season.

The above is the Pick Rate of Champions within the LPL during their Spring Season. Stats taken from gol.gg

Overall, it’s an engaging and exciting time for Mid Lane Pro Play. Solo queue, however, is seemingly terrorized. Aurelion Sol and Annie remain monsters. Even through nerfs. The design spaces for these Champions just make them far too viable for the solo queue atmosphere. Games typically run longer and are far more dictated around one or two big teamfights which these two scale well into and can clearly define with their AOE-focused kits.

And while go-hard Assassins or burst picks like Fizz, Pantheon, and Talon can take advantage of these two titans of Mid, they don’t have the same ability to gift wrap teamfight wins as ASol and Annie do. But still, it’s nice to see that even with these two picks defining a chunk of solo queue, they haven’t outright warped the Meta entirely around their abilities.

Bot Lane - Fiesta Season 2 Electric Boogaloo

Bot Lane has been as defining as ever in the League Meta Games and looks to continue on with this trend going into the MSI and beyond. Last season, we saw an adjustment to overall health and resistance stats for every Champion, and for Marksmen and Mages that call Bot Lane home, this really helped bring them into more self-sufficient spaces where they didn’t seemingly die to every stray Rengar that just happened to get an early double kill. (In truth, it went from dying in one second to dying in two, but hey, at least they can burn flash to maybe live now.)

As we entered into Season 13, sweeping changes to Crit and ADC items were announced and elaborated on by the community’s beloved Phreak who had transitioned to the Riot Balance team. These changes immediately increased the presence and impact of Marksmen in the Meta and brought an increased desire to center play towards Bot Lane now that ADCs could come online harder and faster than before. When you factor this in, on top of Bot Lane’s proximity to the game’s most important and impactful objective, Dragon, then things become quite clear that the fiesta-fest of Season 12 Bot Lane was going to continue. Just this time, ADC had a little more agency for themselves.

In ADC picks, we’ve seen balance between the archetypes of ADC, though only one or two shining stars from each bracket of Marksmen maintains itself. For early game-focused lanes, Lucian and Draven have been the go-to choices from patch to patch and region to region. Zeri holds down the scaling and safety queen crown, but Xayah nips right at her heels in that same regard just to a lesser extent. Additionally, Varus has cropped up as a pick with a surprising amount of damage through the lane phase that also rounds out into solid teamfight utility thanks to his ultimate and free access to grievous wounds. Otherwise, Champions like Caitlyn, Aphelios, and Sivir have all had their chances to round out drafts.

Of course, there’s one way solo queue has defined itself against pro play in regards to Bot Lane and that’s Solo-Queue higher presence of Mages. Seraphine, Swain, Karthus, and Veigar have all come into focus as viable carry threats within Bot Lane. Unlike Marksmen, these picks provide a higher emphasis on scaling and lane safety to hopefully reach teamfight phases where their higher emphasis on zone control gives their team increased priority over objectives despite their lower overall DPS output.

Support - The Jack of All Trades

In 13.3, we received some sweeping changes to various members of the Support cast aimed at increasing the viability of picks that had fallen to the wayside. Champions like Alistar and Braum, for instance, had largely been ignored in both the Pro and Solo-Queue communities because they simply didn’t provide enough for the game’s prominent ADC picks, and they were better suited into situational compositions and matchups. The buffs brought their way were aimed to adjust them upwards so that they could be considered more blindable and maybe even shake-up the Bot Meta, especially for pro play, which had become largely dominated by Zeri.

Unfortunately, these adjustments weren’t enough to get the likes of Braum and Alistar off the ground immediately. Instead, we saw a resurgence in Rakan and Thresh within a largely Enchanter-focused professional meta. These two alongside Nautilus came to serve as the variants of pro play and solo queue took note of their presence and have been having great success within their own realm of play as well. Thankfully, in recent patches and with more adjustments, Alistar has started to shine within solo queue, so it’ll remain to be seen if he works his way into Pro focus.

Largely, much of Season 13’s Meta has been dictated by the strength of Enchanters up until the Annie buffs and adjustments to Rakan and Thresh. With these three picks coming into focus as of patch 13.4, the meta has begun to shift away from Enchanters and towards these more pick or engage focused Champions. Though, despite the higher presence of the Champions that naturally overcome the defensive utility of Enchanters, Enchanters themselves are lingering in high presence thanks to the introduction of Milio, League’s newest Support, and as of 13.8, adjustments given to Janna to increase her presence to help counteract some of the oppressive nature of the previously mentioned picks.

Largely, though the Support meta still feels pointed at these pick-oriented options, there is a great level of variance between Support Champions and largely any Champion can be selected if played well or within the confines of a good matchup. Champions like Milio, Rakan, Thresh, Janna, Senna, Alistar, and Blitzcrank really highlight the wide scope of viability options at Support at this moment in time. It remains to be seen what a post-MSI world has in store, but with Yuumi and Milio disabled for the tournament, we’ll see what Riot has in store after Pro-Play gets their hands on those Champions.

Closing Out

Overall, Season 13’s Meta is still largely shaped around Bot Lane dominance and Dragon Control. ADC’s that can scale well and act as inevitability conditions over games like Zeri and Aphelios will continue to hold down dominating presences in Pro-Play until some adjustments have been made either to Dragon or towards objective viability on the Top Side.

For Solo-Queue, while ADCs still can largely shape the Meta, the dictation there is a bit different through ELOs below High Diamond. Within lower brackets, Top Laners, Junglers, Mids, and Supports, often possess a higher game impact. But, as you climb the ladder, the viability of ADC increases despite the role still being in an unforgiving state within the Solo-Queue atmosphere.

Genuinely, not much has changed from Season 12’s overall direction, in my eyes, besides what Champions have come into focus of flavor of the month. As I mentioned, it remains to be seen what changes Riot will pump out between their new seasonal splits and how pro play will shape out according to these or any other post-MSI changes. So, for now, things stay steady, and we trudge along until adjustments are made.