What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Most players pick out champions to play either based on the ranked meta, or just champions
they really enjoy playing.
That meta is often influenced by the professional players, but sometimes niche picks slip through
the cracks unnoticed even though they can be super powerful.
One tool that we’ve been testing out to check the stats on these pro picks is a website
that is our new sponsor LoL Matrix.
They give all sorts of in-depth statistics for league esports, including a custom made
rating system that gives you a measure of performance over the recent games for players
and teams.
The overall team ratings are based on their win loss ratio, as well as how big or small
each win or loss occurred, also factoring in the opponents rating into account.
The overall player ratings measure their performance, based on a complex model of: opponent strength,
kda performances, team fight performances, laning skills, CS score and more!Now these
ratings don’t reflect actual skill, but they’re a great indicator on recent performance,
perfect for fantasy drafting or to further your understanding!
They’ve also got a nice replay search feature, which helped me put together the footage for
this video a lot easier, as well as a bunch of other awesome features!
We’re also doing a giveaway with them to celebrate our sponsor, and we’ll be giving
away 2 RapidX gaming chairs, a headset, mouse, keyboard and some RP and it will be super
easy to enter, just check the link in the description!
The first champion on our list for discussion today is Aurelion Sol, and he’s changed
massively from being a must pick champion to someone with only a 1.1% play rate in the
middle lane.
Despite his lack of popularity in ranked at the moment, we recently saw an epic display
of Aurelion Sol’s potential in the hands of Maple, the mid laner for Flash Wolves.
Maple used him at IEM Oakland against Longzhu, and he proceeded to absolutely dominate with
a 6/0/11 score by the end of the game.
The only player in the NA LCS to really jump on the Aurelion Sol train was Huhi, although
his popularity did surge during the international events of MSI and Worlds.
The assassin reworks probably did a lot to discourage people picking up Aurelion Sol
in general, but the power Maple demonstrated with him should definitely highlight him as
a potential pick for mid laners that aren’t matched up against the assassins.
He packs everything you need to carry a ranked game - easy farming and waveclear for generating
a gold advantage, tons of kill pressure and even the ability to quickly roam and help
snowball other lanes.
Aurelion Sol’s play pattern can take some getting used to, but landing a huge Q stun
on the enemy team puts you in a position that is hard to lose from.
If you’re a mid laner that likes to take command of your team and dictate the pace
of a game, you should definitely take a look at Aurelion Sol!
Our next champion for today is Rek’Sai, who was one of the most popular junglers not
just through the latest IEM tournament, but through 2016 as a whole.
She’s been played in every region in the lead up to the international event, but was
most favored by NA teams who played her a total of 178 times in the NA LCS.
Despite her popularity with the pro players, it hasn’t really brought her into the standard
ranked meta, with only a 1.81% play rate overall.
We can see on LoL Matrix that the most recent tournament usage of Rek’Sai was by Move,
who was playing jungle for the tournament winners Unicorns of Love.
He picked up Rek’Sai for three games in the best of five, and he played really consistently,
showcasing Rek’Sai’s strength as a tanky frontline and initiator for the team.
It’s easy to ignore Rek’sai in favor of carry junglers that specialise in picking
up kills, but the more controlling style of play offered by Rek’Sai is really powerful,
especially in coordinated teams.
That might make Rek’Sai a worse consideration for the solo queue junglers out there, but
it means in situations where you have good communication - such as in flex queue with
premades - you can really exploit the power of Rek’Sai to work picks and force objectives.
Her kit is well suited whether you want to focus on farming up or ganking early, so she
offers a lot of flexibility that you can’t get out of a lot of other junglers who have
to be way more focused on one specific approach to a game.
Our next pick for today is Tahm Kench, who currently has a play rate of only 2.37% overall.
His most recent showing was in the Finals of IEM Oakland, in the hands of SwordArt of
Flash Wolves against the Unicorns of Love.
LoL Matrix stats show that it was a super grindy game, with a relatively low number
of kills overall for each team and the game length going really long at 48 minutes.
One of the reasons behind this was that Tahm Kench was constantly saving allies from death.
In fact, SwordArt was so hard to deal with that Unicorns of Love made sure Tahm was banned
out in every game after the first match of the best of 5, preventing SwordArt picking
it up again.
To carry as a support, you either need to be crazy good at getting picks with a champion
like Thresh, see great chances to initiate teamfights with Ultimates like Sona’s Crescendo,
or be able to just flat out deny the enemy team the chance to get kills.
Tahm Kench is pretty much on a level of his own at the latter, and it that’s what set
SwordArt up to carry the first game.
Those same strengths of the pick are true for ranked too, Tahm Kench is the perfect
babysitter for fed carries on your team, and keeping them alive with your Devour or getting
them back into a fight with Abyssal Voyage is an awesome way to win a game.
It’s best used partnered up with an ADC friend, but you can definitely run Tahm Kench
solo and just focus on helping out whichever player on your team is having the most impact
on the game.
It’s not just IEM Oakland where Tahm has shown his power - SKT T1 Wolf showed off his
power in the LCK this year, and so did ahq’s Ziv in the LMS.
TK is a support with a ton of potential, ready for the support players amongst you to exploit.
Varus ADC is up next, showcased by DoubleRed of the FlashWolves.
He broke out the Varus pick in Game 1 against Longzhu at IEM Oakland, and Flash Wolves won
the game without him even picking up a kill.
It’s one of those cases where the KDA is a bit misleading, since instead of using a
true ADC, FlashWolves decided to use Varus as a niche counterpick to Longzhu’s bot
lane.His performance was solid overall, and he had great synergy with both his support
and the rest of the team, which helped secure their spot in the finals.
Varus only has a 1.97 % pick rate right now, making him a truly off meta choice for an
ADC, but he does bring a lot of pick potential to a team.
The main way of making Varus work is using him in a team composition with other powerful
carries where you are focused on poking down enemies or locking them down for your team
to clean up.
He has huge range and a ton of damage that he can put out from a safe distance, and a
well timed ultimate can catch an entire team off guard, giving a lot of free kills over
to your team.
One mid laner that has seen plenty of play this year, particularly in the hands of TSM’s
Bjergsen is Zilean mid.
IEM Oakland was another strong display of the power of Zilean, with Bjergsen using it
to crush the Unicorns of Love in the first game in their Best of 3.
Using the wave clear, hard CC and raw burst damage that Zilean offers, he carried the
game super hard and really showed off how good Zilean mid can be.
Despite all that, Zilean is still seriously under picked in ranked, with a play rate of
only 0.94%.
Maybe it’s just because he’s seen as kinda boring to play, but the pick is actually really
strong, in fact Bjergsen was so hard to deal with that Unicorns of Love proceeded to ban
Zilean in the next two games, allowing them to win the series.
One of the advantages of playing Zilean is that he’s quite a flexible choice for mid
- you can play him in poke comps, use him to generate picks or focus on teamfighting
and keeping your ADC alive with peel and your Ultimate.
He’s really diverse for a champion with a relatively simple kit, so it might be worth
testing out if you’re a mid laner who enjoys unorthodox champions.
Turns out mid lane is the best place to find off meta champions played by pros right now,
since the next one is Kassadin.
Kassadin’s popularity has varied a ton over the years, and at the moment he’s just under
2% so once again he’s pretty under played.
The Kassadin pick was most notably used by Exileh from the Unicorns of Love, and he carried
pretty convincingly against TSM with 8 kills and the highest KDA in the game.
This performance on Kassadin pretty much secured Unicorns of Love their spot in the finals,
and it just goes to show how hard it can be to deal with a Kassadin when he starts picking
up items and snowballing ahead.
Kassadin is one of those champions that is way harder to use successfully against coordinated
teams, so a strong performance like this just goes to show how strong he is as a champion
right now.
If you decide to master Kassadin for solo queue, you’ll have a way easier team thanks
to the general lack of communication on the enemy team, making him an awesome mid laner
for hard carrying games.
Anyway that just about wraps up today’s video on the OP Off Meta Champions that pros
have been showing off at IEM Oakland, all of these champions can carry super hard so
they are well worth looking at if you want something interesting to play in ranked.
A big thanks to LoL Matrix for sponsoring the video and providing such a great source
to gain info for these video, really recommend you guys check them out if you want to be
the first time discover these kinda picks in the future!
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time.