Monday Meta Report

‘sup everyone. The meta has survived its chaotic early stage and is now shedding inflated stats on meta decks. This means that we will see higher playrates on decks across the board as the meta is beginning to take shape, and lower winrates since fewer players are playing bad brews.

Legends of Runeterra Eternal Decks

Sorting MaRu’s LoR Eternal Meta Tier List and meta stats by playrate (PR), we see the following:

After a chaotic patch week, high-winrate decks start getting more popular. Particularly Nasus Thresh is benefitting from this development, with Poppy Ziggs and Annie Katarina following suit.

Annie Jhin (Jhinnie) didn’t do anything wrong and can deliver in the winrate department, but had to make way for the other three.

Ezreal Seraphine (Bandle Bar) is my favorite LoR Eternal meta deck and I can’t hide it any longer as it’s getting increasingly popular.

Sett Trundle is starting to see less play despite its solid winrate. Meanwhile, despite its mediocre success, Ryze Ionia is catching up to Sett Trundle!

Draven Sion didn’t sign up for a famous TV show but is the biggest loser this week anyways, halving its weight on the meta.

Norra Bandle City is in a weird place, where some lists run Concurrent Timelines and others are playing control. Either way, these archetypes have a combined impact on the meta!

Azir Irelia is barely holding on to its spot in the meta, with average success.

Turning to winrates (WR), we get this result:

All numbers are less inflated as people start playing more Legends of Runeterra meta decks and fewer experimental brews.

When the dust settles, Poppy Ziggs remains the best LoR deck. With an impressive 61% WR, it is three percentage points ahead of second place!

Nasus Thresh is the second-best deck in the game and has another two percentage leader over its competition.

There are quite a few LoR decks with a 65% winrate – Annie Katarina, Sett Trundle, and Jhinnie. Especially Sett Trundle can be teched well for the meta accordingly with ramp or board clear tools.

Draven Sion also took a big hit in the winrate category. Last week, it counted as one of the decks to beat, while it seems perfectly mortal today.

Bandle Bar is also experiencing a sizeable reduction in winrate.

The first time I faced Jack Twisted Fate on ladder, I took it as a meme deck. A couple of days later I have to write about it in this meta report! The brew exploits Condense in combination with Fleet Admiral Shelly, Bibi Mischievous Marai, and Riptide Rex.

Norra ‘sometimes Timelines’ is also seeing solid success on ladder.

Factors Shaping the LoR Eternal Meta

We analyzed Poppy Ziggs and Nasus Thresh last time, so if you want a breakdown of those decks check out last week’s report!

Annie is the most-powerful control brew right now, relying on Lord Broadmane to fatigue enemy resources and Tybaulk to win the game.

As we can see, Annie Kat’s strong point is to beat big unit decks. Have a 10|10 Trundle and Sett? Cool, look at my Disintegrate!

Azir Irelia is reliant on its champs in the backline, where Annie Kat can easily reach. 

On the other hand, the deck is struggling heavily with Aggro. Contrary to the thought that Annie Kat has ping spells to deal with early units, they are too inefficient.

If Poppy Ziggs plays Crimson Pigeon on round one and Legion Rearguard and Legion Saboteur on round two, Annie Kat has no way of dealing with every threat given three mana. The biggest problem for them is that they need two cards to remove a unit with more than one HP, paying a heavy toll on their mana.

Other than Aggro, the Bandle City Noxus control deck is only struggling with Bandle Bar due to Annie Kat’s inability to pressure before Ezreal flips and OTKs.

Another strong meta contender is Sett Trundle. I already eluded to previously – Trundle Sett is very flexible in its tech cards. 

Need more board wipes? Play a second or third copy of Avalanche and Blighted Ravine. 

Need protection from burn? An extra Smooth Mixologist or Kindly Tavernkeeper works wonders!

Need more pressure against control and combo brews? Get even greedier with an extra ramp card like Catalyst of Aeons or Faces of the Old Ones.

This flexibility in tech means that matchups should be taken relatively. We average over every version running rampant on ladder but no matchup is set in stone with the right deck list.

Generally, Sett Trundle performs well against Bandle Bar. Sett Trundle gives little targets to shoot for Ezreal to level, so Bandle Bar has a hard time racing it before Feel The Rush hits the board.

Trundle Timelines is another good matchup, as Ionia gives Sett Trundle great ways of disrupting single big units like Trundle (level two), Vi, or a transformed Combat Cook. 

On the negative side of things, we already saw why Annie Kat beats Sett Trundle.

And no matter the techs, Poppy Ziggs is a nasty matchup as well. Their units tend to be three health, especially if Poppy gets to swing once. So Avalanche and Blighted Ravine don’t wipe the board. In this matchup, the lack of Shadow Isles removal tools like Vile Feast can be witnessed.

Annie Jhin also beats Sett Trundle convincingly, as they can disable the few blockers of the FTR deck with stuns while Jhin is close to impossible to remove.

Honorable Mentions

Bandle City Timelines

Championless Bandle City Piltover & Zaun is the latest craze on ladder. It is already seeing a 3.3% playrate on ladder, making it the third most popular!

Bandle City Timelines sports a 60.5% WR over the past three days on ladder. It looks like an unstoppable force in recent days, with several top-cut finishers in the Mastering Runeterra Open tourney. Especially the first-place player used this brew alongside two other Timelines decks to win the entire thing!

Jax Ornn

Jax Ornn is a well-known concept explored (and discarded) in many different metas. Recently, I even brought it to a Standard tournament myself as a counter to Kai’Sa and Ekko Jinx!

Now in Eternal, Jax Ornn is wreaking havoc on ladder. It achieves a 59% WR over 1.4k games in the past three days.

Generally, you are looking for early Forge units. Once you figure out in which matchups you want to go wide with Improvise units and in which you want to go tall with Bone Club and Ornn, the deck will feel fairly straightforward!

Tristana Shadow Isles

Not many might remember, but Tristana Shadow Isles was the reason Atrocity got nerfed to slow speed shortly before rotation. 

With the recent Tristana adjustments, the more aggressive archetypes of her died down, while this control variant is relying the least on flipping Tristana early or pushing damage through a Spellshielded Bandle Gunners.

On ladder, Tristana Shadow Isles is already making itself home, sitting at a 57% WR over 1.7k games in the last three days.

If you miss Tristana, or want a different Atrocity experience from Nasus Thresh, try out this promising brew!

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this week's meta-report and making it this far. If you’re still here and read this, leave a “Hi” in the Reddit thread comments, and I will “Hi” you back! =)

The data has been due to MaRu’s Eternal Meta Tier List while the matchup tables have been from Legna’s brilliant homepage. They are doing an insane job at collecting all this data and presenting it to us in an approachable manner. They deserve all the praise in the world!

The talented Hazy has been converting the metadata into stunning graphs for the Monday Legends of Runeterra Meta Report, I can't express my gratitude enough to him!

Thanks to Herko Kerghans for his ever-lasting influence on this series and my writing as a whole.

You can reach me on Twitter (@Leer97) or Discord (Leer#2026).

Thanks for reading this Monday's LoR Meta Report and see ya next week!