Monday Meta Report

‘sup everyone. The grandparents of LoR rallied this week to top the charts. Furthermore, an old ladder menace, Plunder, is back, stronger than ever. Finally, Ezreal Kennen is struggling for the first time since the buff of Mark of the Storm!

LoR Meta Decks

Sorting Balco’s Meta Tier List by playrate (PR), we see the following:

Norra Heimerdinger (Control Sneezenuts) made a journey from zero to hero of the meta in one single week!

Miss Fortune Twisted Fate (Pirates) is still going strong, with Katarina Gwen as a second Noxus aggro deck following behind.

Stocks for Nasus Kindred are dropping, especially considering their 50.4% WR.

In the meantime, Trundle Timelines and Ezreal Kennen, two meta giants of past Mondays, now comfortably sit in the midfield of popularity.

Evelynn Viego and TF Nami Ionia are dropping in PR, despite their above-average WRs.

Finally, Taric Poppy (Tappy) is seeing more play in response to their success last week. Guide for Tappy coming soon by yours truly! =)

Finally, Akshan Lee Sin is gripping their spot in the meta by the skin of their teeth. I recently wrote an easy-to-follow, punny deck guide for the archetype, check it out! =)

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

Pirates is still kickin’ butts and remains one of the best LoR decks, while Miss Fortune’s old pirate buddy Gangplank is making a return from the dead with Sejuani GP (Plunder), a deck that dictated the ladder meta in ancient times!

Scouts is still one of the most-winning decks in the meta, with their Demacian fella Tappy following close behind.

TF Nami Ionia is fluctuating more than the dollar these past weeks, now up again at a 54.4% WR.

Viego Evelynn and Katarina Gwen took a big hit to their WR but still maintain a more-than-solid position in the meta.

Ezreal Kennen is the biggest loser this Monday, dropping from a 55.2% WR all the way down to (still solid, but much less impressive) 52.4%.

Finally, Trundle Timelines is still a deck, just as Gwen Sejuani (Gwejuani).

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The Reasons

We see a lot of archetypes drop in PR as a natural result of Norra Heimer (LoR’s grandparents?) taking up their PR points. What is the fuss about this deck anyways? Let’s take a look:

As we can see, granny and gramps are real good at controlling the board and warding off Pirates, as well as dealing with decks that have one big wincon like Kindred Nasus.

On the other hand, we quickly see the reason why Heimer Norra has made an entrance into the meta only now – their matchup versus Trundle Timelines is horrendous, and in the first two weeks of the season, they had no chance to compete in the Concurrent Timelines-branded meta. Ionia decks like Nami TF were also a factor! =)

The rise of LoR’s grandparents gives game to a lot of decks from two Mondays ago – Timelines and TF Nami. This is exactly the reason why those two decks saw an increase in WR this week.

Does that mean you should play Timelines or Nami TF? Yeah, they are good decks. But if you’re looking to one-up the meta? Not at all. Norra Heimer has a WR barely above 50% and is doomed to crumble. Basing your deck choice on a meta-defining archetype that is soon to fall is not the best strategy, IMO. 

Am I the only one that thinks about Heimer Jayce when I see Heimer Norra? Let’s quickly check up on them and how they are doing!

Well, never mind. They seem to have fallen to the power creep, failing to utilize the new powerful cards and succumbing to decks that do use more up-to-date mechanics.

Talking about old, outdated mechanics, why the heck is Plunder back?

Plunder has strongly favored matchups against most of the popular meta decks. Pirates in particular gets punished by Plunder’s up-to-par early game, and can’t get out-tempoed by cards like Riptide Sermon since Gangplank and Sejuani level up at a similar time. Turn out Pirates runs plenty of tools to counter themselves, being high-grade targets to Nab!

On the other hand, Plunder also beats Nasus Kindred thanks to Sejuani countering Nasus’ entire existence.

Even Plunder’s bad matchups are only slightly unfavored and very much winnable. Facing this matchup table, there is no good reason not to play this deck right now!

So, Plunder seems to have taken Ezreal Kennen’s spot in the meta. But why has the most-dominating deck in the past month taken a breather?

Ez Kennen always struggled against Pirates, but that was really the only archetype being able to compete with them. As we saw, Heimer Norra doesn’t have the most promising matchup table. But to Ez Kennen’s Miss Fortune misfortune, one of the few good matchups happens to be against them.

While Ez Kennen is only slightly unfavored against LoR’s grandparents, their 10% PR puts a heavy weight on this matchup, dampening Ez Kennen’s underlying strength.

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Honorable Mentions

Poppy Lulu

NicMakesPlays invented this deck and climbed with this. There was also another person hitting rank one on the AM shard with this archetype.

Since Tappy and Scouts are hot right now, why shouldn't a different Demacia Rally deck blaze off as well?

Lulu Poppy has a 52.4% WR in the past two days over 1.7k games!

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Scouts but different

Ever had the feeling the list you net-decked from some website wasn’t doing it for you? Rocksaint made me aware of this build, doing very well for some pilots.

It utilizes Weaponmasters and Ranger-Knight Defector over Vanguard Sergeant and Island Navigator for more tempo and value, rather than one big For Demacia! turn that runs into Deny and Rite of Negation.

If you dig deep enough in the data, it shows that the Weaponmaster Scouts variant rocks a 55.9% WR over 260 games in the current patch!

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Diana Nocturne aka Nightfall

Remember the buff to Duskpetal Dust? Yeah, that’s probably not the reason Nightfall is good again.

Nonetheless, Nightfall makes a comeback this week after what feels like an eternity. MonteXristo is probably the only person that would tell you it was never gone, regularly including it in his Gauntlet Lineups article. 

Talking about Nightfall enjoyers, I took this specific list off DoombeastDyna, who climbed to high Masters with it. 

Data-wise, Nightfall sports a whopping 56.4% WR over 430 games in the past two days. Quite promising if you ask me!

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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 the fantastic website by Balco 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 Balco's data 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!

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