The History Of The Most TOXIC Metas In League of Legends 

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It's not actually a " tank meta " when every other class is abusing the new tank items better than tanks themselves ....

Let's not also forget the dreaded "Gold Funnel" Meta. For those who don't know, there was a time in which jungle items didn't penalize junglers for taking CS from minion waves, meaning hypercarry junglers such as master Yi could farm lanes after farming their own jungle. Pair that with a support in the midlane that could have enough sustain to keep themselves alive such as Taric and you basically have a Jungler who's also getting gold, as the name of the meta would suggest, "Funneled" towards them. This was also during a time in which if Taric was tethered to an Ally that was untargetable they would still get his E stun primed as well as Taric's ult channeled. So basically by 10 minutes you would have a 3 item master yi roaming around the entire map, followed by the Taric pocketing him to a point where Yi was essentially unkillable.

Who remembers the feral flare meta? Games were literally 4v4 for 17m and was a race to see which jungler could fully upgrade their flare the fastest.

Smite Support Top was the greatest toxic meta that got snubbed out as quickly as it arrived. It was so hilarious to watch unfold for like two patches

The history behind Ardent Censer meta was the change on enchanter items so that the class would feel more impactful during the game: it was the time when "healing and shield bonus" was created and some items like Redemption had their debut. So part of the reason people found it so strange (and maybe even _toxic_ ) was no one being used to enchanters having so much relevance.

If you do a part 2 of this can you add the s11 tank/brusier mythic meta where there was a different OP mythic every other week. in one season you had the goredrinker meta, sunfire meta, chemtank meta, divine meta, stridebreaker meta, etc(not a frostfire or trinity meta because no one cared about those items)

The banner of command meta for 2 patches was easily the most memorable change of how the game was played for me. The entire game became who can get baron first and built teams around that idea.

Always loved your History of LoL videos. Can you make one on the history of the Jungle, from its humble begininngs to its current state, maybe even predict the future? Or the Evolution of the supports, with their role specific items and changes to the roles and champs typically played as Support?

Do you remember the time where no one wanted to play support ? that time when vision was a team effort...the support had to build the vision stone and the other teammates told the support to build the vision stone...and to place wards do you remember the time where support items were allactivable items ? because you know...what's the point in having a support character with support abilities when you're only expected to build and use active items do you remember when riot decided they didn't like the marksmen anymore and litterally got rid of them ? the worst part is the death dance item which was created during the marksmen class update...but in the end is better on melee champions

Atma's Impaler Warmog was a much bigger problem than tank assassin. You had no chance of surviving this with a support having 2 heart of gold and 2 philosopher stones.

I wonder how bizzare metas will get as time goes by

Most tanks have horrible pathetic winrates right now, the new items may look scary and good on tanks, but none come near what sunfire used to be, sunfire used to give damage, resistances, health, wave clear/jungle clear and did I mention damage? Also like you said, tank busting is so common and widely available nowadays. season 13 is not going to be a tank meta, in fact tanks are A LOT worse(rip sunfire), it's a bruiser meta.

I loved the ZZ'rot + Banner with rework Yorick or Singed. Or how I called it "Single player mode"

Ardent meta, tank meta - I'm really ready for anything that is NOT assassin meta. That 1-shot-no-counter is toxic, other may be problematic but somewhat bearable in comparison

The only reason I will say Arden meta was the worst is because many ADC players have refused to accept that the game changed years ago and continue to play the same way and flame you when you play support and dare to help someone else but him. They always were like this but the fact that a meta supported their ego broke my wishes to play support ever again.

I do greatly miss the whole kleptomaniac items you got like mana pot and stuff, it was incredibly fun and I would take even if that was it's only buff to potentially give you small useful items when engaging in a trade. They need to make fun items but in a way that you get some fun stuff without it being op, just exchanging damage or stats for other things like small items, speed or make it like, exchanging tankiness for damage or vice versa.

Don't forget back when ardent censer was meta there was NO ANTI SHIELD ITEM OR MECHANIC. The first anti shield mechanic was Reworked Aatrox's passive applying mutilation and later Irelia dealing more damage to shields. Later they added blitz ult and renekton empowered w removing shields. Even later still they added serpents fang to finally counter shields.

I'll never forget the juggernaut update immediately followed by the release of Illaoi. The meta that forced red side to ban either Darius, Morde, Garen, or Skarner just for blue side to pick up whichever one wasn't banned (typically skarner). Followed by the release of Illaoi, teams were rushing for whichever juggernaut or illaoi they could grab first

I still stand firm that nexus turrets should do true damage.

death dance meta :^) my favorite to play against as a mage player who gets to build the same items every game since we got 10 viable items but you need 3 of them in every build.

Assassin one shot meta was and is the worst meta in League history. Yes I am one of those "League Boomers", I do have "back in my League day" stories, and yes I will die on this hill.

There has never been a "Tank Meta" That wasn't other champs abusing tank items, or tank items being so damaging that tanks were just another version of bruisers. Think about last year's sunfire craze where we had it on irelia and diana every game. Or what about the beginning of mythics when, yeah tanks were strong, but it wasn't because of their ability to be unkillable raid bosses, but because the tank items actually made them outdamage things like morde and aatrox who are supposed to drain tank their way through them

Bleach new episode and Vars premiere Mondays can't get any better.

I can't put an actual timeline on it, but there was a time I first played league back in season 3, where the meta was just wacky off the wall stuff. I will forever cherish those moments where you could play things like critplank oneshotting people. Or Veigar with deathfire grasp absolutely nuking whoever he hit. Things that were broken, but kinda hard to achieve sometimes?

One thing remind me about Ardent censer meta was that one game, SKT Wolf use Trundle to beat the shit out of the buff sp but still bought this item so Bang could still had the buff from it

Thats kinda recent but I hated it when Stridebreaker meta just switched to Divine Sunderer Meta and instead of getting oneshot by a Garen or Urgot everygame you would just face Camille or Fiora... Man, that was fun

I gotta say, of all the things riot learned from bad meta's, tank might have the worst consequences. As I would argue the excess of tank busting items hurts tanks more than it helps, to the point where we are getting stuck in a fighter/tank meta. And not just Fighters and tanks, but fighters BUILDING tank, alongside all sorts of other classes. As a fighter can build heartsteel, gargoyles or even warmogs, then still have room for a black cleaver a last whisper item and it still be super gold efficient for them.

Not mentioned: assassin meta. I think the only reason why people didn’t complain as much about assassin meta is bc most of the people who usually complain about this shit are assassin players lmao Oh and goredrinker meta bc jeez

Isnt it lovely how every role gets their giga super broken meta for a really extented time. Support / ADC - Ardent meta; Mid lane - perma roaming, no farming, insta oneshot meta; Jungle - just being super broken the 3 season in row; and then there is top lane that never really got a carry meta, but was forced to play tanks otherwhise people would wish you death in champ select and team chat, because not picking a tank was griefing. Riot really hates top lane.

Idea for tanks: Just make tank stats scale opposite what they do now. So if I only build like 50 armor it dont do shit but if im full tank build I actually take less damage. Suddenly the problem of assassins, bruisers, etc. building a single tank item and being unkillable because it gives just enough survivability to 1v5 with their in built shields + healing is gone. *Looking at tank diana among others that would build sunfire into full damage but be tankier than anyone known to man because w shield + conqueror healing). Armor pen then also will feel like it does more as taking away 300 armor from a 600 armor tank takes the % down by like 3% from all those diminishing returns. EDIT: This is obviously not going to suddenly fix anything without other changes involved. This idea is solely meant to allow for more flexibility and bring more balancing around the actual tank champions in the game. If the scaling was completely flipped right now with no other changes it would undoubtedly be worse for the game as the game has been built around armor and mr stacking as it does currently but doing something like this is not without precedent. If you would like an example just look at CDR and what is has become, Ability Haste. This was not just a one to one change but a relatively well thought out change to make it feel better to build and work with the champions that wanted to build other items with the stat and give the stat to other champions that were otherwise blocked from building it.

To me high damage metas is far worse than low damage ones, but thats mostly personal perferance. I like adcs and midlaner being the carry and the rest of the team existing to support them. I like slower fights as i feel it shows more skill expression than just who facecheked first and got oneshot. I generally hate burst damage and thus assasins and burst mages (and maybe think they shouldnt exsist at all in league). So i applaud if tank meta (to a lower degree) returns

Weird Riot try to tune everything, items, builds, runes and champions, to be as distributed as possible then there's every single player who not playing Shaco picking flash.

One of the worst parts about the ardent meta is that on the patch ardent was supposed to get nerfed, riot in typical riot fashion did an “adjustment” to the item which actually buffed it even more.

Season 8 Banner of Command Meta. That was a horror to deal with.

What about that time where practically every champion was running Thunderlord’s Decree because it was free damage and very easy to proc?

Season 13 lining up to be kraken slayer meta after they inevitably nerf tank items

I loved tank meta, miss it so much, those were the best days. Playing tank engagers supports fighting all the time, team fights were long and had a sense of strategy in them, juggernauts were truly raid bosses. Only thing bad were tank assassin's

It hard to say what meta was the most toxic because it really depends on case by case adc did not hate the Arden meta some top player didn't hate black clever some tank did not hate the tank meta and so on and so forth so to answer the question it depends on what lane where you maining and what role in that labe were you playing

I have had countless games of just 10 assassins running around for the last few years. DMG is so overturned that it makes you almost wish for tank meta again.

the current meta when a full tank 700/700 tank melts in 3 secs

Something maybe worth mentioning in a followup video to this would be the time that Thunderlord's Decree ruled the roost, when it wasn't uncommon to have 7-9 people running it in a game (at least in lower ELOs). It was so much better than any other option in most cases (barring situations where a champ really fit the niche of something like the green (tank) mastery which junglers like Sejuani took that gave health from killing jungle monsters) that Riot took the unique approach of not nerfing Thunderlord's, but instead giving a buff to everything else, as TLD was the sort of impact they wanted in a game from a mastery; aka meaningful choice pre-game with your runes/masteries, which eventually came with runes reforged. Though I'll always have a soft spot for the wet noodle fights of season 5/6...

I wanna add that ardent censer meta coincided with windspeakers blessing being really strong too. A mastery that empowered heals and shields and gave armor and MR to healed/shielded units

Tank Ekko/Fizz Top. Back then they would have missing health dmg as a passive on their W. They would essentially delete squishies with base values while remaining unkillable. Darkest time in top lane for me personally.

The Ardent meta has a special place in my heart. It was the first time I got to Gold. But not because I played Lulu or Soraka or anything. I used to like playing engage supports like Leona, Blitzcrank, Thresh etc. and I was getting super frustrated that no matter how many hooks I landed, no matter how much I peeled, we would always lose to an enchanter support who just over-buffed their carry. As a tank support I could never do enough damage to really help my team, but I stubbornly refused to play echanters because I just didn't like that style of play. And so I started playing Brand, building full AP and just blowing kids up. The Ardent meta was basically the first time I said YOLO and played the game how I wanted to play it, and it actually worked out for me. Was very satisfying to play against enchanters who had no answer for the overwhelming damage I would put out as Brand or Zyra with a full rotation that hit mutliple people. The burst, the DOT, the coverage, good times. I miss it.

ZzRot and Banner of Command, had to be one of the most infuriating metas

The Goredrinker Meta was insanely fun, beyond how broken it was. Thus us undeniable

Ardent meta was amazing. Those team fights were top notch. Dunno why so many ppl cry about it :(

The actual tank meta was only in season 5. Tank builds on non-tanks don’t make it a tank meta, and neither does tanks being picked top/jg often. Riot definitely overcorrected and made tanks borderline unplayable for years. An no, there won’t be a tank meta this season, with how much anti-tank stuff exists in the game these days, it’s probably not even possible anymore.

You already mentioned it but Banner of Command meta was something different man, it started bc of a *bugfix* on an item no one ever used, and then after they just flat out removed the item from the game instead of trying to salvage the concept. It lead to some of the least interactive gameplay I've ever seen.. Watching someone wail on a cannon minion for 2 full minutes while its solokilling your inhib tower was truly a spectacle for the ages lmfao

Banner of Command meta when the buff gave something ridiculous like 90% magic damage reduction on minions and people were picking things like ChoGath, Sion, Nunu just to get rid of the damn minion.

8:50 Since Wild Rift is literally League 2, they already vanished this by not allowing you to have more that 1 of the same item

Banner of command meta literally made me stop playing league. Depending on your comp sometimes you could never kill the siege minion..

The “Arcane” meta has been the most blatant one since I started playing in season 9, and by Arcane I mean Jinx season 12. This champ got huge buffs paired with lethal tempo changes right around the time the hit Netflix series was released, and for the next 6+ months Jinx would sit around 55% winrate across all servers and elos, keep in mind people like to call this time “assassin” meta, the class of champions supposed to be the counter for a long range immobile dps carry, yet still Jinx was the best champ in the game at this period. Keep in mind that Jinx is a champ that prefers 5v5s and melting down her targets, in a gamestate where allegedly everyone and their mother was dashing around the screen and 1-shotting everyone.

This "Tank" meta is a farce, everyone can oneshot the actual tanks, and other champions can clearly use tank items better than tanks themselves, if anything this is a Bruiser meta.

I I don't think this is necessarily the worst meta ever but the anti-marksman meta where crit items were nerfed followed by a bunch of other changes resulted in Marksman being more of a liability as opposed to being an asset stands out. The reason for this is that it essentially made an entire class of Champions obsolete and therefore an entire group of players obsolete as well.

Ya'll forgot about the Sated Devourer meta and how it made on hit junglers like pre-rework Warwick an actual 1v9 raid boss

I don't think we're actually in a tank meta. We're in a healing meta. A drain tank meta if you want to go that far. That's why they had to nerf Ravenous Hydra Omnivamp. They overnerfed Grevious Wounds to the point that it's grief to buy if you're not a mage with burn damage or an enchanter. So now you've got stuff like Jak'sho Mordekaiser being very hard to kill while healing through all damage. This is also why Aatrox was tier 0 in World's. Same thing, drain tank meta. It's just the new items made it even more pervasive.

11:07 i really miss omnistone. It was the most fun keystone, it was just held back by the inspiration tree not being strong enough. Or rather, the other trees being too strong as they would later get nerfed.

I love the choice of using FF14 music. Can't say I was expecting it, but it's lovely. Keep up the good work and keep on making amazing videos that are enjoyable to watch.

I can't believe there's no mention of Banner of Command + Zzrot (+ Redemption the Cannon minions) meta. The Imaqtpie video on it was glorious to behold.

This taught me 2 things, that riots twisted sense of logic will not let there be a balanced meta once, and that META is an acronym.

"Demaciaaa!" - J4 with 4 cleavers sending you to gray scaled narnia with no counterplay.

Banner of command and Funnel were really toxic too. Having a jungler lvl 6 while everyone was lvl 4 was an abusive tactic.

here's a throwback, Philosopher Stone spam, extra health, mana, regen and gold, suddenly you're up to 7k gold by the 15 minute mark and can buy whatever you want. was nutty if a bit silly.

That wasn't original Black Cleaver. Black Cleaver used to give 0 health or CDR, it was AD, attack speed, and a passive that reduced enemy armour on hit by 15 stacking up to 45. It was part of what made release Xin Zhao so insane.

Personally I think the s5- S7 tank meta was the closest point the game was ever to be actually balanced and fun to play in any role.

Back in the ardent censer meta I could climb to Diamond 3 with Sona and Nami alone, that item provided alot of things, mana, cool down reduction, mobility, I usually didnt have to get boots back in the day. Now with enchanter I could climb to Platinum at max

Illoai and GP were the 2 worst Klepto users. Illaoi especially because she'd E you and just get 2 safe W off on you, while also dealing massive damage.

4:00 Love to see a Corki rush bramble vest

Here's one: Season 2. In general. You had the trifecta of ADC's; Corki; Graves and Ezreal. You had Supports who never got to have items. GP10 and Wardbitches. You had junglers who didn't get to have items. GP10; Wards and Oracles. Pretty much the entire game was decided by botlane 95% of the time; and the ADC's were the strongest characters early; mid and lategame. This meta lead to the removal of generic GP10; Oracles; the introduction of Trinkets and the Wardstone [which eventually became modern support items] and supports and junglers... actually being allowed to have items. I lead to more items for mages and bruisers to help cut the ADC dominance at every stage of the game.

Feral Flare, watching every hyper farm jungler just delete you when they finally decide to join the match. Especially old WW with his point and click ult. Banner of Command was also notably annoying.

I once saw a pillow that said Ezreal's passive should be Klepto, and honestly if they hard nerfed the item I think it could be much more interesting than his atk speed one.

the Force of Nature Meta back then was the most toxic for me. Dr Mundo, Singed and i think also Udyr, they would be so tanky and can run away scott free without any damage at all especially Mundo he regens a shit ton of health without even taking damage at all

Z'zrot + Banner of Command - The true splitpush degeneracy. I don't think it was necessarily ''meta'', but it was still very annoying to play against.

I Hope Riot Brings Back toplane Tanks and Kills all this bruiser and Assassin stuff thats making everyone but the bruiser/Assassin Player unhappy with 0 counterplay and being forced to Play the exact Same stuff, being straight Up better than any other class because they oneshot mages&adcs and cant be killed by Tanks.

Zz'Rot + Banner of Command. It only lasted for a couple of weeks but it was literally the worst solo queue experience with everyone building it

I ain't sure if it could be called meta... but i still remember how fun was when jgl item called Devourer was added into the game. For quite low price it was giving you +40% attack speed and +30 on-hit magic damage which you could stack up to 60 by killing monsters or champions after stacking it up it was giving phantom strike passive which allowed for melee champs to proc on hit effect twice every second AA which was insane on champs like Xin Zhao, Warwick, Master Yi, Udyr, Jax etc.

The Black Cleaver meta was the reason I had stopped playing LOL for around 2 years and switched to dota 2. Ofc I came back afterwards, it's Scorpion, it just pulls you in..

Not the most toxic, but Stridebreaker when it had it’s dash was pretty toxic. Made Darius, Garen, Sett, any AD juggernaut(even Illaoi surprisingly) have next to no counter play.

Ardent censer was nothing compared to the Banner of command + ZZ'rot portal meta. Literally the only counter was picking minion dematerializer and saving it until the baron buffed canon minion with banner of command came around.

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you forgot when lethality items got reworked basically assasin meta where they had to change khazix ult because of how obnoxious it was to fight against a duskblade khazix

as someone who played during tank, ardent, and klepto meta, i fucking miss them, not so much klepto but the other two were so fun as a support main, galio got bonus points because before he was reworked that champ would heal from tower shots building only MR, it was insane and i want him back 😭 got all the way to mastery 6 with him in a week upon discovering how fun he was until the rework was released

I also remember a Thunderlords meta where every game atleast 6 or 7 people ran the keystone

My favorite was banner of command and zzrot as yorick. Such a fun yet toxic time

My Karma still loves Ardent Censer, R+E in a teamfight is chef's kiss.

The worst meta is right now, 1 shot or be 1 shot

Currently I hate this support meta, this dude picked Pantheon sup, started with Doran's Shield, kept poking minions making me lose some and taking some others and I left the bot lane 0/1/4. Even Riot recommends champions like Neeko and Heimerdinger for support this patch. They barely has any crowd control and no ally boost at all. When first they made damage based supports like Senna or Pyke, it was fine, Senna made ADC untargetable, rooted enemy, healed slightly and gave shield, and Pyke hooked enemies, stunned them and doubled kill gains, which's a huge adventage. Now Riot encourage supports to just act like a second ADC

Pretty sure tank ekko became a thing because they nerfed his scaling damage to the point that he couldn't one shot people effectively, so he was just a menace permaban as a tank. Or that's what I remember.

Is the fact that bruisers build eclipse considered META?

Thunderlords Decree meta and Lethality Meta (During assassin rework) were fun.

the worst "meta" was prob the one when you stacked sunfire on evelyn and just stand near ppl in stealth and watch them panic good ol' days

Ironically as an ADC main I didn't mind the tank meta to much, just mained kog and abused his W to a point where people were getting shredded

Assassin meta was much more toxic than everyone remembers just too much on too many

Got a video about the removal of the Frozen Mallet, and the nerf of the Glacial Augment, making it impossible to use for most champs.

The ardent meta was more enjoyable than any assassin meta.

forgot funnel, banner of command, feral flare, roaming support toplane, we need part 2

The “ardent sensor meta” lasted a couple of patches I swear and it was near the end of the season.

Seeing keyori black cleaver gameplay trully brought me back to the past.