Creating Your Own Off-Meta Strategies



Foreward

This guide was inspired by xPetu, an amazing

Shen

xPetu's Video About Off-Meta Strategy Creation

Intro

Hello dear reader, today in this guide, we will be learning how to to create your very own off-meta strategy! Off-meta stuff is so fun to play and I really hope you find success in your off-meta journey! Now, without further ado, let's get into the article.

What is Off-Meta?

The definition of an off-meta build is subjective, technically, off-meta means anything that isn't strictly 'meta'. Some people think off-meta means something completely unexpected and way out there, like Taric jungle with

Pros and Cons of Off-Meta Strategies

Pros

• Fun to play
• Increases you understanding of the game
• Theory-crafting is fun!
• Throws enemies off guard, and creates an advantage for you
• Depending on what you are playing, you can very easily tilt your enemies

Cons

• Teammates will sometimes get tilted by your strategy
• Off-meta builds don't always work
• Lots of time an effort has to be put into the creation of off-meta strategies



Identify-Explore-Optimize

These are a set of general concepts to think about when creating your off-meta builds.

Identify

• What do you want to play?
• What champion?
• What role?
• What playstyle?

Explore

• Look at the champion's base stats, ability scalings, and base ability stats
• Synergies between items, runes, the role, and the champion
• Create a general idea of the build, then test it!

Optimize

• Take notes on your games, see what works and what doesn't
• Try new items and/or runes
• Keep playing more games with different builds

Example

We will now try to apply these general rules to create our own off-meta build.

Identify

I love playing warwick because his kit is so much fun. I love chasing people down and ulting people from a million miles away, but I'm not good at playing him in the jungle or a solo lane, so why not play warwick support? I live playing engage supports because they are exciting and interactive, you actually do things instead of afk poking the enemy laners.

Explore

Strengths

Now, we have to identify some of warwick's strengths.

• Warwick's passive,

  Eternal Hunger

  , gives him a lot of base lifesteal, and is espescially useful early game.
• His Q,

  Jaws of the Beast

  , provides instant healing and has good AD and AP scalings.
• His W,

  Blood Hunt

  , provides ramping attack speed, which pairs well with his passive healing in the early levels, and the movement speed towards low health enemy champions is useful for roaming to other lanes quickly.
• His E,

  Primal Howl

  , provides flat damage reduction while active, and gives a aoe fear on recast.
• His R,

  Infinite Duress

  , gives suppression, and healing because of his passive. All of warwicks abilities have amazing synergy with each other, and all have very good base stats and effects.

Overall, warwick seems to have decent cc, amazing early game power, good damage reduction, and quality roaming.

Weaknesses

With strength also comes weakness, what is warwick lacking?

• Mid/late game scaling
• Range
• Healing/shielding for allies

Warwick lacks a lot of mid/late game scaling, although his damage reduction and cc make up for it a bit. He can also get bullied very easily by bot lane combos like Caitlyn and Morgana, who have lots of long range kill pressure.

Item Options

Now that we've pinned down some of warwick's strengths and weaknesses, we can start looking at item options. We don't have lots of damage, so utility/tank items are going to be our best bet. Stuff like

The Off-Meta Build

Boots

The boots are standard, mercs for magic damage and cc, steelcaps (or ninja tabis as you boomers call them) when they have attack damage, mobility boots when you need to roam, and swifties when you can't decide what other boots to get.

Runes

There are a few keystone choices for warwick support,

• Glacial Augment

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Skill Path

As we near the end of our exploration into the champion called warwick, we have to know what skills to level up. We are playing warwick as an engage tank, so maxing his E first for more resistances and lower cooldown is obvious. Secondly, maxing W is great for roaming, since the cooldown gets cut in half at max rank. Lastly, maxing Q does basically nothing except give irrelevant damage.

• Skill Path

Warwick

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Putting it All Together

The last and most fun part of all of this is putting it all together and playing an actual game of league of legends. I admit, I am a casual bronze player, but that doesn't really mean anything in this case. I had tons of fun in these games and showed that the warwick support pick has potential. Of course I'm not maining this or anything, although I did gives some thought to it. But it was fun to play a few games and showcase the majesty of this off-meta pick.

Reflection

After playing a few games I learned a few things.

• Bush control is vital for this pick
• It's really fun to play
• Getting early advantages is key, especially with early 2v2's
• You can solo kill the enemy adc at level 6

If I were to play more games of warwick support, I would make sure to swap out the

A Last Word

I cannot stress enough that creating off-meta builds is up to you, yes dear reader, you. You can do whatever you want within this glorious game. If you want to play Azir jungle, go ahead, nobody will stop you. Remember league is about having fun, not raging at your egotistical gold teammates. So next time you boot up your computer, go try something new! Build a different item! Try a champion in a different role! Do whatever makes you happy, good riddance, and stay safe, and have a good day!