Standard LoR Meta Report - May 30th
‘sup everyone. Standard is now the backburner of LoR, with support shifted to the Eternal format for the rest of the season.
Nonetheless, the Standard meta is continuing to develop and heading towards a well-balanced environment!
Legends of Runeterra Decks
Sorting MaRu’s LoR Meta Tier List and meta stats by playrate (PR), we see the following:
Karma Sett is the most popular deck of Standard. After the Samira
nerfs, Samira Fizz and Jinx Samira (Discard Aggro) have to bow down to the queen!
Nasus Vaults of Helia
lost quite a bit of its playrate, mostly due to its horrendous matchup against the prior three brews.
Kai’Sa DE wasn’t affected by the balance changes and surges through the ranks ever since. Its biggest prey, Tristana
, vanished with the patch but Kai’Sa DE has little bad matchups nonetheless.
There are a handful of decks with a 2% playrate: Shen J4, Pyke Rek’Sai (Urgh), Senna Veigar (Darkness), and Maokai Nautilus (Deep).
While Darkness made a return to ladder, it struggles a lot, winning less than 50% of its games.
Turning to winrates (WR), we get this result:
Annie Jhin (Jhinnie) is the king of the hill both in Eternal and Standard.
As mentioned before, Kai’Sa DE is in a prime spot to dominate the ladder, with few bad matchups.
Heimerdinger Jayce (Shadow Tech) makes a return to ladder, showcasing together with Jhinnie that you don’t need to be popular (have a high playrate) to win games.
Shen J4 beats a lot of midrange blends while being one of the few brews that can keep up with Fizz Samira.
Jinx Samira has overtaken Fizz Samira, relying less on the Rally of Samira (level 2)
.
Tristana archetypes fell off since the nerfs to Tristana and Bandle Gunners
. One blend though managed to prevail despite these hits – Tristana 
Demacia. Playing around Champions' Strength
and a wide board, an early Tristana flip was never the goal to begin with. And the deck doesn’t rely on Bandle Gunners to close out the game as heavily as its 
Bilgewater brethren that runs Prize Fight
.
Illaoi Swain remains a silent overperformer that not many players know about or believe in.
Aatrox Quinn Vayne is a proven archetype that shows up again and again, especially since Tristana DE, one of the worst hunters of Aatrox, has become less popular.
Fizz Samira is still kickin’ but with less force. In terms of balance changes, Riot seems to have hit the perfect spot of getting Samira into check without killing her!
Nasus Azir is a reimigantion of Mono Nasus, running Azir
to discount Glory's Call
.
Factors Shaping the Standard LoR Meta
Jhinnie has sprung up since the last Standard meta report. Aggro has been close to extinct on ladder were it not for Samira, so it’s refreshing to see a non-Samira Aggro blend pop up.
Excuse the unusual matchup table. If a deck has ~1% playrate and is also played in Eternal, you need to get a little creative on how to find the matchup data you want! =)
As we can see, Jhinnie has a great time against slow 
Shadow Isles decks that lack access to Vile Feast
, like Mono Nasus and Deep.
Annie Jhin also beats Lurk thanks to its stuns countering Rek'Sai
and overall strong early game.
On the other hand, the deck struggles against brews that can keep up with their early game and create enough blockers to mitigate their stuns, like Jinx Samira and Tristana DE.
Samira Fizz is a very close matchup, where it comes down to how fast Jhinnie can go wide and if Fizz Samira has answers like Pirouette
.
In total, the matchup table doesn’t look too great for Annie Jhin. But the fact that their good matchups are heavily favored (around 60% winrate) gives them the percentages to be the highest winrate deck on ladder right now!
Kai’Sa Garen Jarvan IV is another superstar rising up in recent times. After a long time in prison, Kai'Sa
is finally back to prior glory!
Well, I said Kai’Sa is back but the matchup table might not look like that. It’s the same phenomenon we experience with Jhinnie.
What’s most important to note here is that all bad matchups are winnable for Kai’Sa. Fizz Samira and J4 Shen are only 45% matchups, though the Nasus one can get a little rough.
Especially in the Nasus matchup, Kai’Sa Demacia needs to rush down the foe or pray they don’t have a big Nasus
or Vengeance to answer Kai'Sa.
On the other hand, Kai’Sa steamrolls Karma Sett thanks to its go-wide tendency. This is a matchup where Garen
and the alternative wincon of Kai’Sa Demacia shines.
Another reason Kai’Sa DE performs so well on ladder is that it beats a lot of less popular decks. It’s surprisingly consistent, even when missing out on Kai’Sa.
Honorable Mentions
Aatrox Vayne
26 cards
14 cards
35 300
Wait, didn’t we feature Vayne Quinn Aatrox already?!
Nope, this build cut Quinn for a third Aatrox and runs 2x Single Combat
. It might only be a slight change but it works wonders.
These changes are made to improve the Fizz Samira and Jinx Samira matchups, giving the deck more fast-speed interaction. Especially finding Deathbringer Sweep
(who knew what this card was called?!) is great to chain heals with Aatrox
.
On ladder, Aatrox Vayne outnumbers Aatrox Quinn Vayne, achieving a 57.5% winrate over 600 games in the past three days!
Miss Fortune Quinn aka Scouts
28 cards
12 cards
27 300
Ah, now we’re talking! Scouts is an old friend I used to enjoy on ladder back when Pantheon Yuumi was prevalent – good times.
Today, Scouts has adapted quite a bit. It runs Champions' Strength and can flexibly change between playing for Miss Fortune
or the big Demacia spell.
On ladder, Scouts has been no small feat. It sports a 56.5% WRover 1.1k games in the past three days.
If you want to improve your (already decent) Samira and Karma Sett matchups, you can cut Champions' Strength for Genevieve Elmheart
because she doesn’t force you to keep three spell mana up for round six and is immune to Deny
.
In fact, my team brought a CS-less Scouts variant to the semifinals of the Aegis league against the team of Bajatakk, SaltySimon, and Broken Ball!
There is a comprehensive Scouts deck guide available by yours truly! =)
Malphite Taliyah
22 cards
18 cards
29 400
At the beginning of the season, Malphite Taliyah was a solid replacement for Taliyah Ziggs post-rotation. Over time, the deck struggled to keep up, especially against Tristana and Samira.
With both of these archetypes toned down, Malphite Taliyah can return from the depths and see the light of day once more!
On ladder, the deck sits at a 56% WR over 1.6k games in the past two days.
We have an in-depth Malphite Taliyah deck guide by the Malphite Taliyah goat himself, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson GrandpaRoji available!
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!