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LoR Competitive Week in Review for 3/21 - 3/27

                                                                      LoR Competitive Week in Review for 3/21 - 3/27 by @CasterBoulevard

As we lay patch 3.2 to rest, I’ve got a special treat just for you - the Online League Series. As much as I’ve enjoyed my monogamous relationship with Fight Night: Legends over the last few weeks, there’s a pretty big difference between the 8 person invitational meta and that of a nearly 100 person 7 round event, and the latter is more relevant to a larger amount of people. But to kick things off, please see below for exactly what decks performed at each event.

Fight Night: Legends

BR

1st Trivo - Sivir/Akshan / Pantheon/Taric/Yuumi / Yordles in Arms Demacia

2nd Sudrakon - Feel the Rush Noxus / Plunder / Gnar/Swain

EU

1st Broken Ball - Feel the Minah / Lux/Aphelios/Zoe / Yorldes in Arms PnZ

2nd Castmin - Bandle Tree / Scouts / Sivir/Akshan

AM

1st FloppyMudkip - Pantheon/Yuumi / Draven/Sion/Vi / Gnar/Sejuani

2nd Void - Kindred/Viego / Lee Sin / TLC

Online League Series #40

1st Ruan né amor - Spiders / Bandle Burn / Pirates

2nd Gravetrayal - Yordles in Arms Demacia / Pantheon/Yuumi / Sivir/Akshan

Top 4 OTK Camilari - Yordles in Arms Demacia / Pantheon/Yuumi/Taric / Sivir/Akshan

Top 4 MF Teneryx - Yordles in Arms Demacia / Pantheon/Yuumi / Sivir/Akshan

Top 8 Angelo2s - Yordles in Arms Demacia / Scouts / Sivir/Akshan

Top 8 AK TomasZamo - Yordles in Arms Demacia / Darkness / Zoe/Lux

Top 8 SonikHolik - Yordles in Arms P&Z / Lee Sin / Draven/Rumble

Top 8 MF Brunito - Lurk / Pantheon/Yuumi / Anivia

Normally I don’t have the space or a clean way to break down the top 8 of an event for you and instead just post the lists and let you do the mental math if you really want a by-the-numbers approach, but this time it’s really easy; 6 Yordles in Arms, 4 Pantheon/Yuumi, 4 Sivir/Akshan, 1 of everything else. On top of that, 3 of our top 4 finalists were running those 3 decks together as their lineup, giving us an extremely clear picture of success for the weekend as it was the same lineup used by Trivo to win Fight Night Brazil. 

That being said, it was actually triple aggro that ended up winning the OLS as Ruan né amor took a clean 10-0 throughout the weekend to claim complete and total victory over the triple Demacia lineups that dominated the stats. While many people consider aggro to be an effective counter to Yordles in Arms, that was actually the deck Ruan wanted to ban as he looked to outpace the Pantheon decks that so many players had brought to the top 8. With patch 3.4 coming out aggro will likely take over ladder for a few days as it was one of the untouched strategies. But with Demacia being relatively unscathed there’s a good chance it will continue to perform admirably in tournaments as well, giving aggro an old friend to continue to bully. 

But let’s be real for a second, and talk about some important numbers. Obviously there’s a lot of Yorldes in Arms decks for you to click on above, but it is also just one tournament and doesn’t paint the entire picture of the meta or even the weekend. Across all 3 Fight Nights, Yordles in Arms was played by 14 of the 24 players but had less than a 30% conversion into top 4. Now you can make whatever you want out of this statistic, but it was one I wanted to share given the high dominance of the deck in the OLS. Is this deck easier to counter in a smaller field like Fight Night, or is it being banned more there and we need to look at the other decks the players are running? The Piltover & Zaun variant was much more popular in Fight Night. Was that the reason it didn’t perform well? Even with all my wisdom and experience analyzing Runeterra metas, the fact of the matter is one weekend is not enough time to answer these questions, but they are the ones I’m currently asking and will continue to ask as Yordles in Arms will likely go on to dominate the early stages of patch 3.4.

Now that I’ve spent a sickening amount of time talking about Demacia and board-based decks, let’s talk 1 ofs. They’re one of the most exciting things for a spectator as they tend to be unique decks you’ve never thought of before, or an old favorite coming back to test its merit against the new meta. In an average Runeterra meta we tend to have a very clear picture of what the top 3 decks are after a few weeks and going into a Seasonal I can tell you with some degree of certainty the order of said top 3 and even round out the top 5 without much issue. Recently this hasn’t been the case, partially because we only had Fight Night where odd decks shine more often, but even barring that we haven’t had a clear #4 and 5. We have our top 3, and then the rest gets filled out with whatever one ofs people are bringing. While it’s fun to watch, it’s hard to make sense of, especially since very few of these one-off decks perform consistently over multiple events. When I catalog and look back at this patch in a few months, and I’m reminiscing on the year, I don’t know what I’m going to think about this patch. Sure Yordles in Arms was dominant and Pantheon/Sivir rounded that out, but that's not the entire picture, is it? A lack of consistency from anything else makes it difficult to contextualize, but maybe that's just how this one ends. Maybe patch 3.2 will be my white whale this year, never really getting to fully understand it.

Boy that sure took a weird turn, huh? In summary, we finally got our open event to look at and it went as expected with Yordles, Pantheon, and Sivir absolutely running the show while Fight Night finally went totally off script and had quite the spread of decks amongst its finalists, with the only repeat decks being Yordles, Pantheon, and Sivir. You see the pattern here, I presume. But that’s fine, because that is a wrap on patch 3.2. While the nearly untouched Yordles in Arms looks unbearably strong heading into patch 3.4, enough significant buffs came through that it’s hard to know exactly what the opening weekend meta is going to look like, especially now that after over a year community favorite Aphelios is out of nerf prison. Be sure to check back next week to find out if the new decks can take on the old guard, or if the wheel simply continues to churn. 

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