Monday Meta Report – July 31st

‘sup, Leer here. The last week has been tumultuous, with Shadow Isles decks ending up on top. While these control blends are growing roots, a new type of Aggro is sharpening their axes to cut them down…

Legends of Runeterra Decks

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

Heimerdinger Jayce Shadow Isles (Shadow Tech) has become the most popular LoR meta deck. It showed up out of nowhere, performed, and now stands at the ladder's pinnacle!

The same can be said for Nasus Veigar. Together, these two Shadow Isles control decks decisively decide the metagame.

Two Noxus Bilgewater brews oppose this idea, in fashions that couldn’t be further apart – Fizz Samira and Illaoi Swain. Especially Fizz Samira comes as a surprise, with a rejuvenated Elusive build!

Jinx Kennen Bandle City started making waves during the latest dark age of LoR, aka the Siren Song meta and continues doing so now.

Teemo Puffcaps took a big hit in popularity and struggles to keep up with the developments of the meta as can be seen in its 50% winrate.

Pyke Rek’Sai (Urgh) is, as always, allowed to exist with no impressive nor awful stats about it.

Vayne Aatrox is a meta staple ever since its creation and will likely never be completely pushed out of the meta unless it gets nerfed. 

I’d call Jax Ornn the biggest loser of the week. It was in a commanding spot both in popularity and winrate last Monday and has close to no upsides in this newly developed meta. 

Teemo Targon (Elusives)is the second Teemo deck seeing a big hit in popularity this week. Shadow Tech’s Shadow Isles strats around Quietus and Soul Harvest have proven especially effective against the Yordle scout.

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

Jinx Kennen Bandle City is the most successful Legends of Runeterra meta deck! It was an honorable mention last Monday and gained enough popularity this week to appear in the stats.

The same can be said about Nasus Veigar Shurima. It was another honorable mention last week, but a fringe fragment of the Mono Nasus Shurima archetype.

Illaoi Swain took quite the hit in winrate compared to last Monday, but this is to be expected after the first week of a patch. As fewer experimental brews get played on ladder, all LoR meta decks tank a bit of their winrate.

Miss Fortune Quinn (Scouts) is another evergreen blend that performs well in this turbulent meta that is in fierce competition between Shadow Isles control and Bandle City aggro blends. 

Vayne Aatrox continues to perform at a lower winrate baseline, staying in the top five Legends of Runeterra decks. 

The appearance of Mono Jinx Bandle City proves the point that Kennen is an actual improvement in the deck and costs the archetype quite a bit if ignored. 

Teemo Elusives took a major blow but continues to perform solidly in this new meta. Be aware that the latest version with Yuumi is performing better, so you shouldn’t miss out on including this adorable kitten in your list!

Fizz Samira was the third honorable mention last Monday and quickly picked up Steem steam over the week. Forgot how to pilot the old Elusive build? Don’t worry, Sorry got you covered with this updated Fizz Samira guide!

Shadow Tech sees a sizeable reduction in winrate. The overall lower winrate level due to bad decks seeing less play, and Shadow Tech having a target on its back due to its high popularity are the reasons for this development.

Jhin Gnar Norra is the final deck having a high winrate.

Factors Shaping the LoR Meta

Jinx Kennen Bandle City shot to the peak of the LoR meta and appears unstoppable. Its high winrate is already attracting pilots to try the deck and its playrate is steadily increasing.

But why is Jinx Kennen suddenly so successful?

As we can see, Jinx Kennen beats both Nasus Veigar and Shadow Tech, the two most popular LoR meta decks. This puts Jinx Kennen in a commanding position where it runs into a favorable matchup most of the time.

The archetype also beats the up-and-coming Fizz Samira due to its faster aggression against this Elusive combo brew.

Jinx Kennen also beats Urgh thanks to its early tempo plays and Electro Harpoon shooting high-attack, low-health followers.

How do you beat this demonic deck then you might ask.

Illaoi Swain is the perfect counter. Make it Rain is an efficient answer to Jinx Kennen’s 1-drops and Illaoi can value-block due to her high health. Also, she doesn’t get chump blocked due to her Overwhelm keyword. Watchful Idol is another evil card that generates blockers on demand. 

A truly hideous matchup for Jinx Kennen!

Aatrox Vayne and Scouts also have an easier time against the Bandle City aggro deck due to their chunky units like Blocking Badgerbear that trade two-for-one and Challenger units that can take out Flame Chompers! for free.

Aatrox is a great way of out-healing Jinx Kennen’s burn, while Miss Fortune is a powerful tool to kill Jinx Kennen’s one-health units for free with Love Tap.

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This brings us to a comprehensive meta triangle that summarizes the power relations, or as I like to call it – the LoR Emotion Chart:

Heimerdinger Jayce (and Nasus Shurima) is dominant in the meta and beats Illaoi Swain. This gives rise to Jinx Bandle City, who beats up these Shadow Isles control decks. This in turn rejuvenates Illaoi Swain, who eats Jinx Bandle City for breakfast.

I think this pretty much sums up the meta we are facing – no deck is strong against all and everyone is keeping someone in check of breaking the rankings.

Only Jhin Bandle City is an unimpressed onlooker, having game into all three of these archetypes. Jhin is enjoying the overture and waiting for its grand finale! =)

Honorable Mentions

Jax Teemo Bandle City

Jax Teemo is the love child of Jax Ornn and Jinx Kennen Bandle City. The archetype relies on its overflow of Improvisements as discard fodder to Manifest powerful Mecha-Yordle and dominate the board.

Personally, I tried this deck and fell in love. After being forced to abandon Jax Ornn due to its bad position in the meta, Jax Teemo is the adapted successor of the deck. The early rounds play quite similar to Jax Ornn and instead of Ornn you slam powerful Mecha-Yordles.

I liked the deck so much that last week, I forced convinced my team to bring it to the Aegis play-in stage, and lo and behold – we qualified for playoffs! 

Personally, I’d play Entrancing Lure for more board control against Samira Fizz and Heimer Jayce. I am yet undecided between Piltovan Castaway and Innovative Blacksmith. 

The first gives you better tempo and allows you to play Jax -> Piltovan Castaway and have two spell mana up for Fish Fight, Entrancing Lure, or Electro Harpoon. 

The latter gives you access to important heal against Jinx Kennen and Fizz Samira, though in my opinion Entrancing Lure is a more impactful tech against Fizz Samira to reliably remove Samira and Fleet Admiral Shelly.

Here is the list we brought to the team tourney

As it so happens, MaRu writer yang was on the very same team as me and is working on an insightful premium guide for the deck, so keep your eyes peeled! =)

Norra Veigar aka Darkness

I know this deck is quite polarizing when it comes to preference. But as a data cruncher, I swore an oath to deliver you the best-performing meta brews no matter their popularity.

And Darkness is an overperformer right now.

This makes a lot of sense, as Nasus Veigar is the most successful Nasus iteration, and Shadow Isles control decks are overall doing well. Quietus and Soul Harvest stocks are high against Aggro, Illaoi Swain, and even Heimerdinger, and so are board wipes like Dess & Ada.

Darkness sports a 54.5% winrate over 470 games in the past three days!

Teemo Tristana Demacia

Scouts is performing well and where one Champions' Strength deck is, another one isn’t far. 

Tristana Demacia got gutted after last season and got quickly forgotten with the switch to the Eternal format. Now that people have discovered Scouts again, it’s natural to try other proven Champions' Strength blends as well.

On ladder, Tristana Demacia upholds a 53.5% winrate over 850 games in the past three days. There’s a comprehensive Tristana Demacia deck guide by Yang available on Mastering Runeterra!

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 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!