Monday Meta Report

‘sup, Leer here. Last week was a perfectly fine meta Monday with no complications at all. 

This week, the meta isn’t slowing down one bit. We get three new toys to analyze and a significant shuffle in power levels of the top meta decks!

Legends of Runeterra Decks

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

Maokai Nautilus (Deep) is still the #1 deck when it comes to popularity, with solid success when it comes to winning games.

Karma Sett has claims #2 this time.

Tristana Noxus lost #2 to Karma but for different reasons than you might think. It shared some of its spotlight with Tristana Bilgewater, what a nice gesture!

Ashe  LeBlanc remains a popular deck choice with similar success to Deep.

Pyke Rek’Sai (Urgh) is still a powerful meta deck with an above-average winrate, unfortunately.

Azir Nasus (Mono Shurima) is not a deck you should play if your LP count is dear to you.

Samira Fizz was able to recuperate from its nerfs, with its lists being split into combo and aggro versions.

Ekko Jinx climbed the ranks to see the light of day in this meta report!

Heimerdinger Jayce (Shadow Tech) also exists.

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

Tristana Noxus and Tristana Bilgewater are cool ‘n all, but have your heard of Tristana Demacia?! It appears to be the strongest of the three sitting at a 58% winrate.

Jinx Samira (Discard Aggro) enters the stage with a bang that would make Jhin proud. It might also be Aggro’s last hope together with Tristana Noxus.

Illaoi Swain was an honorable mention last report that came out big this week. An unlikely combo of control and midrange beatdown, Illaoi Swain is pulling numbers that only few decks can match.

While Tristana Demacia has the best stats, Tristana Noxus and Tristana Bilgewater count as two of the best Legends of Runeterra decks.

Samira Fizz is the biggest winner of this week, gaining almost 3% in winrate.

Shadow Tech remains as the go-to control brew this meta.

Illaoi Jarvan IV and Aatrox Vayne had a short stay at the top of the standings. With new aggro brews popping up and Tristana Bilgewater being better against Demacia thanks to Prize Fight, the Demacian duo has lost quite a chunk of their momentum.

Nasus Vaults of Helia is an impossible combo deck that somehow got found by a player.

Factors Shaping the LoR Meta

Tristana has split into three shards – Demacia, Bilgewater, and Noxus. This week, Demacia has proven to be the strongest… for now.

Since we discussed Tristana brews last week, let’s look at the other newcomer of the week – Samira Jinx. 

Samira Jinx is the reincarnation of Discard Aggro. Where Sion failed and Draven got rotated, nerfed Samira succeeded. Samira Jinx relies on the same Flame Chompers! discard combo to go wide and cash in with Vision – no Reveler's Feast to be found.

The matchup table looks amazing! Deep can’t deal with early go-wide strategies, and neither can Ashe LeBlanc with their Can’t Block units. And Fizz Samira as a combo deck has a hard time holding on, especially when buffed Flame Chompers! can drag their Elusive units.

Surprisingly, even Tristana Noxus struggles slightly against Discard Aggro due to their even early game and Jinx. The Tristana Bilgewater version is slightly favored for Tristana though thanks to Pie Toss and Group Shot.

Overall, it’s easy to see why Discard Aggro is making waves. With the worst matchup against the best LoR meta decks being almost even, the only thing that can hold back Discard Aggro is their own inconsistent draws!

Nasus Vaults of Helia features a landmark thought unplayable by 99.9% of the LoR community. This deck didn’t become viable only because of the Nasus buff but rather because Nasus’ buff induced players to find new Nasus brews. 

How many times do I want to write Nasus in a sentence? 

Yes.

The combo of this deck is as simple as it is brilliant – You play Rockbear Shepherd on round three, Vaults of Helia on four. If you didn’t play a unit on round five or your opponent removed Shepherd, on round six, the Hibernating Rockbear will activate, summoning Grumpy Rockbear. This five-cost unit in turn will get sacrificed by Vaults of Helia to summon Nasus.

What makes this combo so powerful isn’t necessarily the fact that you can burst-speed attack on round six with Nasus, but that you’ve slayed a handful of units with Vaults of Helia, buffing your Nasus.

The matchup table looks pretty horrendous. The Karma Sett matchup is unplayable due to Aftershock and Fizz Samira rushes us down before we get to Nasus. 

Tristana decks run into more trouble, as Nasus (level 2) debuffs their full board and can even outgrow Bandle Gunners and Tristana.

Ashe LeBlanc can simply Frostibe Nasus, while Nasus goes taller than Sea Monsters and eventually even Nautilus.

Why is Mono Nasus winning so much on ladder then if its matchup table looks this bad? Because it’s a polarizing deck that beats most stuff that doesn’t run landmark removal or aggro them down. 

With landmark removals not being that popular and Aggro being practically dead apart from Samira Jinx and some Samira Fizz lists, there are few decks that beat Nasus apart from the top meta blends.

Honorable Mentions

Kennen Jhin

Regions

Runeterra
23 cards

Bandlecity
17 cards

Rarities

25 400

6

2

9

23

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

15

1

15

2

2

3

5

4

0

5

2

6

1

7+

Champions

6

1

Kennen

3

4

Jhin

3

Followers

26

1

Byrd, The Bellringer

3

1

Crackshot Corsair

3

1

Legion Saboteur

3

2

Conchologist

3

2

Imperial Demolitionist

2

2

Solari Sunhawk

2

2

The Stagehand

3

2

Tusk Speaker

3

4

The Witness

2

6

Augmented Experimenter

2

Spells

8

1

Pie Toss

3

2

Quicken

2

3

Lightning Rush

2

10

Treasured Trash

1

If you want some crazy brew to lighten up your day, how about Kennen Jhin? I’m 90% certain this deck has to be an error in the data but you might as well try it out.

Jhin Kennen sports a 57% winrate over negligible 400 games in the past three days. If you hate Noxian schoolgirls but really want to play Jhin, why not give it a shot?

Miss Fortune Quinn

Regions

Demacia
28 cards

Bilgewater
12 cards

Rarities

27 300

6

3

13

18

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

6

1

17

2

8

3

3

4

3

5

0

6

3

7+

Champions

6

3

Miss Fortune

3

5

Quinn

3

Followers

23

1

Fleetfeather Tracker

3

1

Shellshocker

3

2

Durand Sculptor

3

2

Marai Warden

3

2

Petricite Broadwing

3

3

Blocking Badgerbear

3

3

Vanguard Sergeant

2

4

Island Navigator

3

Spells

11

2

Blinding Assault

2

2

Form Up!

3

2

Inspiring Light

3

9

Champions' Strength

3

Scouts saw a resurgence in play at the beginning of the season as an answer to Samira. With bigger Demacia showing up, it vanished quickly though.

As we saw today, big Demacia is on the downtrend again, giving room for Scouts to return to. Over 1.3k games, the Demacia Bilgewater archetype achieves a 55.6% winrate in the last three days.

Kai’Sa Garen Jarvan IV

Regions

Demacia
20 cards

Shurima
20 cards

Rarities

29 200

6

6

6

22

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

8

1

9

2

8

3

6

4

5

5

4

6

0

7+

Champions

6

5

Garen

2

5

Kai'Sa

3

6

Jarvan IV

1

Followers

24

1

Voidling

3

1

Xer'sai Hatchling

3

2

Belvethi Elder

3

2

Petricite Broadwing

3

3

Domination

2

3

Greenfang Warden

1

3

Merciless Hunter

1

4

Combat Cook

2

4

Void Blaster

3

6

Genevieve Elmheart

3

Spells

10

1

Chain Vest

2

2

Form Up!

3

3

Cataclysm

3

3

Quicksand

1

4

Rite of Negation

1

This weekend, the 1.500$ Mastering Runeterra tournament played out, and BaJAtakk won it including this Kai’Sa brew! Garen enhances an early go-wide strategy and presents an alternative win condition to Kai'Sa.

While we’re not all able to pilot decks to the highest of levels, Kai’Sa Garen is also picking up steam on ladder. There, it holds a 55.3% winrate over 1.8k games in the past three days.

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 on Discord (Leer#2026).

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