The League of Legends competitive season is kicking off across the world, with some of the major regions having already started their respective 2023 Spring Splits. The LPL, the LCK, and the LEC are already underway, while the LCS is set to begin this week.
Following the introduction of the new items and the new League champion K’Sante in the preseason, the meta has undergone some changes, as new champions have begun rising in popularity. That said, the overall meta doesn’t seem to have shifted that much, especially in the bot lane.
With some data collected from the first matches played across the three major regions, there are various patterns that can be seen in every role and must be analyzed to see how things are standing currently. Here are our initial impressions on the current League pro play meta.
Top – The rise of carry top laners
Toward the end of the 2022 season, the top lane meta was dominated by tanks that had tools to hard engage like Sejuani, Maokai, Ornn, and Gragas. Aatrox and Fiora were the two main outliers for two different reasons: the first was overpowered with the amount of healing that his build provided, while the latter was the main counter to said tanks.
At the start of the new season, however, the only meta champion left among the aforementioned is Fiora. Despite receiving a small nerf, she still remains a top-tier champion. The LPL has always had great Fiora players, which explains her high ban rate: a 93.1 pick-or-ban rate, with 22 bans, according to Games of Legends.
That said, the most-played top laner in the LPL is K’Sante. While he has a lower pick-ban rate than Fiora (89.1 percent, according to gol.gg), he has the highest amount of games: 14, twice as much as the second-most played champion Gwen, who’s currently at seven.
Fiora used to be the only damage-oriented, split-pushing option last year. Things have changed this year. Camille, Jax, and Gwen have all risen in priority, with seven, six, and five games played respectively in the LPL (stats taken from gol.gg). In particular, the newly reworked Jax seems to be a higher priority pick, with 13 bans in total, compared to Camille’s two and Gwen’s three bans.
Renekton and Gnar seem to be the two main outliers in this meta, as both LPL and the LCK are picking these champions. Renekton is more popular in the Chinese league, while Gnar is played more often in the LCK. The main reason behind their popularity is the fact that both are strong blind picks and do not have terrible matchups. While teams are still figuring out what’s optimal, expect these two champions to be relevant until Patch 13.2 hits the official games.
The LEC seems to have a similar top lane meta-read, with K’Sante and Jax as the most picked champions (eight for K’Sante and six for Jax, according to gol.gg). That said, K’sante currently only sits at a 25 percent win rate and it’s the lowest win rate across the three major regions.
Jungle – Point-click engagers are the way to go
The jungle received yet another major preseason change, disincentivizing invading junglers and giving more value to skirmishing and champions that excel at ganking.
In particular, junglers that have point-click engage spells or long-duration crowd controls are becoming more and more popular. Vi, Wukong, and Maokai are the champions with the highest priority: coincidence or not, all three champions have the same presence rate in the LPL so far (79.3 percent, according to gol.gg).
Following this trio, we have Sejuani and the “evergreen” bruiser champions like Viego and Lee Sin in the priority order. That being said, the LPL is already starting to experiment with new tank champions that can abuse the new Mythic item Radiant Virtue like Zac and Skarner.
While they might not be pick-or-ban status, they are likely going to be picked again at the right moments. A similar argument can be made for Poppy, as she counters enemy team compositions with lots of mobility and dashes. She has been picked four times in the LPL so far (sixth most-played jungler, according to gol.gg).
There’s one outlier in the jungle pool, and that is Kindred. Usually picked in solo queue on both the Korean and Chinese ladder, the champion made her competitive appearance solely in the LEC, with three games played but only one win on the board. Having said that, the champion has all positive stats at the 15-minute mark (stats taken from gol.gg) so we will likely see her picked again in the near future.
Regarding the AP champions, the only viable choice seems to be Elise, with four wins out of five games played between LPL and LCK (according to gol.gg). If you’re wondering why Elise is making a return to the meta, it’s mainly because she’s great at early-game ganks and dives.
In a meta where most champions scale into the later stages of the game, she’s strong at shutting down scaling champions by not allowing the enemies to reach the item spikes at an even game state. If bully lanes bot lanes like Lucian-Nami or Caitlyn-Lux are going to remain relevant in the meta, expect Elise to be also present.
Mid – The return of control mages and Rod of Ages champions
So far, it looks like the meta has changed slightly but there haven’t been any major upheavals. The mid lane meta is also having a similar treatment, with Worlds 2022 top picks Akali and Sylas still being played in the new season. Having said that, they are no longer the most contested picks: There have been only four Akali games and three Sylas games in the LPL so far with low ban rates (according to gol.gg) .
Instead, the current high-priority champions are Syndra and Ryze. It’s worth mentioning that Ryze currently has a 100 percent presence rate in all three major regions, meaning that he’s either picked or banned in every single game (according to gol.gg).
Ryze is making a return to the pro play meta now that the Rod of Ages has been reintroduced back into the game. His new Mythic item allows him to survive the early game better and scale faster to his item spikes. Kassadin is also another Rod of Ages user that people should keep an eye on for the same reason, although he requires even more time than Ryze to get going.
After being nerfed into oblivion for years, Ryze might become the most-contested pick out of all champions in League.
Syndra, on the other hand, is the most well-rounded mid lane champion. She doesn’t have a weak laning phase like Ryze and scales well into the late game. Not only that, but she has immense burst damage. With hard-engage champions in the jungle, she can use Scatter the Weak (E) to disrupt the engage and counter any potential follow-up.
Aside from these two picks, most mid lane control mages are back in the meta. Champions like Azir, Viktor, Taliyah, and Lissandra have all stepped on Summoners’ Rift in the LPL and the LCK. Having said that, their success is divergent: in Korea, both Viktor and Taliyah have negative win rates, while the Chinese League has positive win rates for both champions. The game samples are still small, so it might be still too early to jump to conclusions. As more games are played, we will see which of these champions perform better.
The EMEA region, despite picking mages like Azir and Viktor, hasn’t tried Taliyah or Lissandra in official games so far. Instead, we were able to witness Cassiopeia’s return to professional play, as well as less conventional mid-lane picks like Jayce and Zac who was played by Caps.
Bot lane – Things haven’t changed at all
If there are roles that had little to no meta changes from Worlds 2022, then those are ADC and support. Aside from Aphelios, who dropped in priority, the best-performing bot lane duos have remained more or less the same, with Lucian-Nami and Zeri-Lulu (or Zeri-Yuumi) head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of play rate.
In China, Zeri and Lucian have 17 and 14 games played respectively out of 29 games in total. If they are not played, it’s because the champions are banned. A similar situation seems to be unfolding in Korea, with both champions sitting at six games played out of eight games in total.
The current meta has too many strong champions that need to be banned, which means that some of the strongest champions will always make it through the first ban phase. In the current bot lane meta where Lucian-Nami and Zeri-Lulu are top-tier, there are two main ways teams deal with this issue: They either let all bot lane champions go through the first ban phase, or each side bans one champion to negate the combos. Considering Lucian and Zeri’s play rate, the leagues seem to be comfortable letting both champions go through the first ban phase for the majority of the games.
When that doesn’t happen though, teams will usually pick Sivir and Varus as they are considered the second-tier ADCs in the meta. On one hand, Varus offers a stronger early-game presence with his poke (most pros go for the lethality build), while Sivir scales better into the late game and can use her ultimate to force and initiate teamfights.
Overall, the bot lane meta read by both leagues seems to be identical. Having said that, there is one major difference between the LPL and the LCK, and it’s the view that the two leagues have on Caitlyn. The Piltover Sheriff had zero bans in China so far, yet she has a whopping 93.1 percent ban rate in the LCK (according to gol.gg).
It’s a major divergence that cannot be fully explained, even though it might be related to Korea’s slow approach to adapting to new changes. They are slower to get there, but once they do, they become the best ones at playing the meta: pay attention to Caitlyn to see whether this will be the case.
What’s interesting, though, is how the LEC bot lane meta looks a little bit different from the others. While the same champions are being picked or banned during champ select, the ADC priority is quite different.
Aside from Lucian who currently has 100 percent presence so far, no one else has a similar pick-or-ban status, not even Zeri. Weirdly, the Spark of Zaun was only picked four times and banned three times, with a total of 46.7 presence rate (stats taken from gol.gg), proving how the EMEA region doesn’t view the champion as highly. In her stead, Varus and Caitlyn seem to be the top-tier behind Lucian.
