Monday Meta Report
‘sup everyone. Last week we got a hotfix just before Riot went into hibernation, where Aatrox Kayn, Ziggs’ Acolytes, and Champions' Strength
decks like Jinx 
Demacia were hit.
Let's find out how things look now!
LoR Meta Decks
Sorting MaRu’s Meta Tier List by playrate (PR), we see the following:
As we can see, Vayne Quinn Aatrox has trumped Aatrox Kayn. This is partly due to the hotfix shifting power levels, and partly to us merging Vayne Aatrox and Vayne Quinn Aatrox in the data. While both Vayne Aatrox decks play some different cards, like Roar of Icathia
, their performance and playstyle is similar enough to justify aggregating them.
Ezreal Seraphine went once again from zero to hero in the blink of an eye. This time with 
Bandle City, as Teddy highlighted at Worlds, the Sera Ez pair is again at the top. And I thought Ezreal
had a crush on Lux
...
With the popularity of Aatrox
brews, Aggro rose up to the challenge of keeping up, namely with Katarina Gwen Elise (Red Gwen), Jinx Draven (Discard Aggro), and Annie Jhin (Jhinnie).
Hecarim Zed looked like a promising deck a few days ago with a 57%+ winrate. As today’s data shows, though, Heca Zed’s spike seems to have been just that – a short-lived fluke.
Pyke Rek’Sai (Urgh) is making a small comeback after being away for a long while, catching the high tide of the aggro hype.
Azir Xerath (Mono Shurima/Sun Disc) got a really sick visual feature with Azir
’s Corrupted skin. Unfortunately, this skin is the most exciting thing about Mono Shurima, as the archetype still shits the bed with a sub-50% winrate.
With Lulu Jinx, we have one of the strongest aggro blends closing the graph.
Turning to winrates (WR), we get this result:
Vayne Aatrox is the undisputed top dog that no one can contest. The WR is also the reason we merged both Vayne Aatrox decks – they would both stand at the peak with a 59.5 and 57.9% WR.
Jinx Lulu might be one of the least-popular Aggro blends around, but it remains the strongest one with a 55.5% WR.
Ez Sera Bandle City can also secure third place here.
As Jinx
's buff tended to evade player’s memories, Discard Aggro made a surprising comeback out of the blue. Not as strong as Lulu Jinx, but still a top brew!
Rumble Vayne is suffering under the popularity of Aggro blends, and can only maintain its standing due to Aatrox's ongoing hype.
Similar things can be said about Gangplank Sejuani (Plunder) and Red Gwen, suffering under Jinx blends.
Aatrox Kayn is wounded but still alive. With a 53.3% WR, it remains a relevant Aatrox blend.
The meta is desperate enough to allow Urgh a place on this chart.
Akshan Varus Sivir is, despite the nerfs to The Unforgiving Cold
and Blooming Cultist
, still a solid deck with a 51.1% WR.
The fact that an archetype with a WR as low as 51% is making the chart shows that Aatrox Vayne and Aggro brews monopolize the ladder.
The Reasons
Remember last week’s Emotion chart?
With Aatrox's biggest adversary (namely Jinx Demacia) gone from the meta, even the heavy tax on Cultist cards has left Aatrox Kayn in a playable state. And since Ziggs’ Acolytes was only a slightly favored matchup (55% WR), Aatrox could pull his weight without Ziggs’ Acolytes anyways. And then some.
Last week, we also noted that Kayne Aatrox and Vayne Aatrox were ladder powerhouses. With Riot overlooking this fact, they only touched Kayn's cards and warped the field so Aatrox Vayne could win even more.
The second-biggest winner of this spectacle was Red Gwen. The deck was slightly unfavoured into all of the above, and with two of them gone Red Gwen moved from the top nine to the top seven best meta decks.
With Ryze and other LP donors losing steam, WR numbers are much less inflated than they were a week ago – despite Red Gwen’s ascension in meta ranking, it lost 2.4% WR points compared to seven days ago.
The biggest shift in the meta can be observed in the number of viable Aggro decks, though. Last week, excluding Champions' Strength blends, only two Aggro brews made it onto the PR chart – Red Gwen and Jhinnie.
This week, we count six – Red Gwen, Discard Aggro, Jhinnie, Zed Hecarim, Urgh, and Jinx Lulu. Usually, Aggro decks tend to trend in the first week of an expansion, where they farm suboptimal homebrews. This time, Aggro isn’t stopping.
While only four of those six Aggro blends make it onto the WR chart, there is a trend. Before the hotfix, Champions' Strength archetypes choked midrange and Aggro decks alike – and without it, Aggro thrives even when losing to Aatrox decks and Ezreal Seraphine.
As we can see, the most-winning aggro blends suck against Aatrox Vayne. This is because Aatrox Vayne has access to Demacia one-drops, and aggro has no counterplay to a Challenger unit with The Darkin Harp
. And Ez Ser has an unending wave of ping spells.
But, on the other hand, Aggro beats mostly everything else. Especially Jinx Lulu has some bonkers stats against other Aggro competitors and Sun Disc… well, everything has bonkers stats against Sun Disc, so that doesn’t count! =)
The above Aggro decks pay the “top 3” tax to feast on anything other than Aatrox or Sera Bandle City.
Then there are those who challenge the World Ender:
… or, well, they try at least. Both Urgh and Red Gwen have a WR around 50% against Aatrox Vayne, and Urgh can even win convincingly against Aatrox Kayne, a deck that has no easy time dealing with high-Power, low-Health units.
Honorable Mentions
Elise Gwen
13 cards
27 cards
27 100
Didn't have enough Aggro yet? Or are you looking for an off-trend brew that you can impress your friends with?
Then Elise Gwen is your best option! With a 67% WR over 100 games in the past three days, this Aggro blend is the highest-spiking deck (with a low sample size, beware!) And hey, maybe someone will think you’re playing Red Gwen without Katarina
and play around your non-existent Ravenous Flock
. =)
Aatrox Akshan
27 cards
13 cards
36 500
Haven’t had enough Aatrox yet? Want to pair Kayn
(or Rumble
) with Vayne
and need another partner for Aatrox? Then Aatrox Akshan might be your solution!
Similar to how Pantheon Aatrox rose as an alternative to Pantheon Vayne, Akshan
and Shurima bring the same package to Aatrox’s Darkins. The synergy of targeting units to strike with them, simultaneously advancing you Warlord's Palace
and World Ender
, proves quite promising – Aatrox Akshan is sporting a 55.6% WR over 160 games in the past two days.
Kayle Zoe 
Noxus
12 cards
28 cards
30 300
Enough of this Aatrox and Aggro nonsense. Let’s stop repeating the same boring two concepts and bring innovation to the table!
If this is what you were thinking until now, lo and behold: the latest questionable creation – Kayle Zoe Noxus.
With no sound reasoning as to why this Noxian abomination should work, it simply does.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Throw your reason overboard! Close your eyes! Win some games! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
This seems to be the motto of Zoe Kayle Noxus. The brew boasts a 55% WR over 190 games in the past two days, and I can’t explain to you why.
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 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 these stunning graphs for the Monday Meta Report, I can't express my gratitude enough to him!
Thanks also to Herko Khergans, he has been doing lots of editing and proofreading that deserves appreciation!!
You can reach me on Twitter (@Leer97) or on Discord (Leer#2026)!
Thanks for reading and see ya next week!