I hate playing League of Legends solo queue during Worlds. There are so many people trying the same picks from Worlds 2021 as Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok in my silver lobbies.
I was just starting to see fewer Yasuo players in my games, and then out of nowhere, Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon locks it in and proceeds to hard carry against Fnatic. Great, now I have to perma-ban him so I don’t automatically lose at champ select. But, honestly, that’s the tamest pick to come out of Worlds 2021 so far.
YASUO LOCKED IN FOR CHOVY! #Worlds2021 pic.twitter.com/o2M7XixYMu
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) October 11, 2021
Players in low Elo already don’t know how to play Yuumi, and then guess what happens? DWG KIA first pick it. So you already know that cat will infest games going forward. Now I have to decide between banning Yuumi or Yasuo. I’m not banning these champs to take away them from enemy teams, I’m trying to protect my team from themselves.
And don’t get me started on the assassin junglers. Talon and Qiyana players are so annoying to play with and even more to play against. Qiyana has a 44% win rate in the jungle, but an 80% win rate at Worlds. So now whether I get the Challenger smurf on my team or the hard-stuck bronze is a dice roll. Either way, she is going to be involved in 10 kills within the first 10 minutes. The only question is whether she’s the one being killed or not.
That’s just the returning champions. At Worlds, there have been a plethora of unheard-of champions in new roles. I’ve already seen an increase of Kled mids thanks to Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang, and that increased even more when RED Canid’s Daniel “Grevthar” Xavier picked it during the play-in stage. But more than anything, the most egregious pick (for the health of solo queue) at Worlds has been Syndra top.
It's TOP SYNDRA for Xiaohu in @RNG's first game at #Worlds2021! pic.twitter.com/QrkAYNvYyR
— LPL (@lplenglish) October 11, 2021
These players in my games need to realize they are not Li “Xiaohu” Yuan-Hao. League of Legends Pro League caster Joe “Munchables” Fenny did say that, “Xiaohu can play anything he wants, he is a god!” But the top laners in my games are definitely not Xiaohu. Too bad they carry the same confidence, though.
Now, at first glance, Syndra top doesn’t seem that big of a deal. I mean, I’ve definitely had games where my mid-laner got auto-filled top lane and decided to just lock in a mid-lane mage anyways. In those games, my mid lane typically just locks in Tryndamere or something. Oh wait, that’s now going to happen regularly because, apparently, top laners in the mid lane is the new cool thing to do.
At the end of the day, I just want regular League of Legends back, with champions played in the roles where they are usually played. Then again, is any of this different from the Teemo junglers out there? Maybe I should just embrace this and trust my first-time Syndra top lane to carry. Maybe I actually just have Xiaohu the god on my team.
Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go queue up more ranked with my new main, Graves top.
