Welcome to Breakdown the Meta, your comprehensive 1.20 meta guide brought to you by Phoenix Reign. In this guide, the players of Phoenix Reign will go over the top heroes at each position, their counters, and some things to look out for at each position as well as a general meta breakdown.
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Adagio is the best laner in the early game, as he can provide rotations for his team that no other laner can do without sacrificing CS. Additionally, he is very good at managing waves and can clear extremely quickly with his
Agent of Wrath. He also has one of the highest damage outputs of any laner in team fights, making him a great all around laner
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Celeste is very strong this patch in the right draft scenarios. She is very good against immobile and squishy heroes which are relatively common in this meta. With a frostburn, she can be deadly in the late game against almost any composition.
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Ringo- Counters skye and other meta heroes. Strong last pick because he gets hard countered by a lot of heroes.
Skye’s lane phase poking is mainly auto attacks and
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Ringo is not played a ton, but is extremely strong as a last pick. He counters
Skye and other meta heroes like
Lyra with his high burst and sustained damage in the late game.
Ringo is best picked last on B side, but can be picked earlier if you are comfortable going double weapon with a
Glaive.
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Skye- As always,
Skye is still extremely strong in this meta.
Skye has a ton of utility in her kit, and is basically a sniper and mage combination. She is, hands down, the best hero at kiting but is relatively weak in the early game due to the nerf to her minion/objective damage. She makes up for this with her incredible late game strength at 3-4 items.
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Lyra- Easily the best late game mage hero,
Lyra can still be a strong laner in the current meta. She is extremely weak in the early game due to her lack of clear speed and overall damage, but completely ramps up when she completes multiple damage items.
To counter Adagio, use any composition that has a lot of lockdown potential. Specifically, both
Krul and jungle
Lance are both very good into
Adagio with their immense amounts of crowd control capability. Against
Skye, a
Ringo-
Taka-
Lance composition or something similar is very good into
Skye. All of those heroes individually also counter
Skye, and
Fortress is now returning as a very good counter to
Skye.
This patch, map awareness is mostly about managing rotations. Try to push the lane when the jungler is getting to the tri-bush so that you can either rotate down as three to the enemy side or come down your own side and shop/fight. Aditionally, knowing when to rotate to defend your own backs is very important to minimize the amount of XP the enemy can get. If someone from the other team is going to attempt to steal your backs while your team is in the enemy jungle, you should rotate to try and defend your backs. Once you rotate, your objective is to either scare the enemy away or to try and take some of the farm. Be careful not to die in the process, since the trade will often not be worth it.
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Taka-
Taka is the ultimate snowball hero, and that remains true this patch. With
Taka, you can take an early game lead and snowball the rest of the match.
Taka is pretty good against every other jungler, and oftentimes the support matchup will determine
Taka’s success. Given that he is a natural assassin, he has a lot of extra damage, especially from his perk, allowing him to build tons of extra defense while still dealing immense damage.
Jungle
Lance counters many meta junglers like
Kestrel and
Skye especially. It is possible for good taka players to beat a
Lance, but the amount of utility
Lance provides in terms of peel for the laner and damage is extremely hard to beat.
Lance is kind of like a
Krul that can easily snowball and is very good at stealing jungle camps.
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Skye- Both
Skye’s WP and CP paths are viable in jungle this patch, but weapon is preferred due to the ability to snowball against a
Taka and
Kestrel.
Taka is normally a counter to
Skye, but weapon skye and good flaring/peeling from the support can easily beat
Taka in jungle face-offs.
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Kestrel-
Kestrel has extremely good snowball potential. Like
Lance, she can easily steal jungle camps from the enemy with her
Glimmershot. In the late game once she has
Sorrowblade and
Breaking Point, she counters every melee hero due to her ability to use
Active Camo and create distance from her enemy and repeatedly stun them.
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Alpha-
Alpha is a good counter to
Lance and
Taka in the late game. If you can get past the early game,
Alpha can excel once she gets a lot of defense and some damage.
Against
Taka, strong early game supports like
Lance,
Ardan and sometimes
Phinn are very good. Additionally, Weapon Skye and
Alpha can both do really well into
Taka. Against a jungle lance, use
Alpha or
Taka. Expect to lose in the early game, but in the mid-late
Alpha and
Taka can both excel against a jungle
Lance and are pretty much the only counters to it. To counter a
Kestrel, use
Lance or
Skye for the most part in jungle, and
Catherine is easily the best support against her.
Taka can win against
Kestrel only if he snowballs from the beginning of the match.
Fortress is not commonly used, but is actually a really good counter to both
Skye and
Kestrel.
Never go into the enemy jungle on the first rotation unless you have a
Taka or a
Lance. Basically, jungling is now all about knowing when the enemy jungle camps are going to spawn, and timing your rotations to the spawning of those camps. You don’t want to be going into the jungle just after they have already taken it, you want to be there as they are taking it or slightly before.
By far,
Phinn and
Catherine are the strongest roam heroes this patch.
Lance is also strong, but is extremely reliant on landing the root. Additionally, when played right,
Lyra can be extremely strong in the roam position, but is unfortunately banned a majority of the time. AOE abilities are extremely strong this patch since they’re good at crumbling the squishy hero meta.
Phinn,
Lance and
Catherine excel with their massive AOE abilities that provide devastating area crowd control.
Against a
Catherine, it is imperative to crucible the silence during team fights.
Skye and heroes with high attack speed that don’t do a lot of damage with each hit like
Ringo and Saw do well into
Catherine due to their ability to burn through her shield without taking much return damage. Into
Phinn,
Skye is also extremely good with her high mobility and ability to dodge most of
Phinn’s abilities with
Suri Strike and her perk. Range heroes are good into
Phinn in general if you can kite well enough and block his
Quibble/
Forced Accord.
Mostly, I’m looking for the spawn times of jungle camps and trying to memorize either the exact time or a rough estimate of when they are going to spawn. Memorizing the spawn times and being able to call it out is extremely important to success in team play. Otherwise, calling out rotations and general team communication with the laner is extremely important in certain situations. For example, if you are getting collapsed on when taking middle healing minion, you can call for the laner to rotate if he is in the right positioning.
Key to winning at the Roam Position:
Winning team fights from the roam position generally comes down to how well you can use
Crucible as well as your other activatable items, but mostly
Crucible. Most of the top laners are generally pretty even mechanically in team fights, so if you can’t land your
Crucible against pulls or silences, you will likely lose the team fight.
What are some important things to focus on in general when playing as a team?
This patch, rotations and team communication are the biggest things. Calling out ability/activatable item cooldowns, rotations and enemy purchases are extremely important in competitive success. If your team is on the same page communication wise, you will make better decisions and perform better overall. Aditonally, rotating correctly to make maximize the amount of XP for your team and limiting that of the opponents can be the key to winning games.
What are some important things in the current meta to focus on that is different from the last patch?
- Experience wins games. With changes to experience distribution and health minion total experience, contesting middle camps for the experience alone is extremely important. Gaining a level advantage often leads to fight wins and eventually match victories.
- Junglers are no longer way more leveled than the laners at all time. Instead of being 3-4 levels ahead, they are usually only 1-2 levels ahead. Additionally, junglers and roamers usually have pretty much the same amount of gold, as evidenced by ambient gold alternating between the jungler and roamer when all 3 teammates are in the lane.
- Only contest the enemy back jungles alone if you know you can take them and escape alive. Otherwise, they will get gold/experience from killing you AND go take your own jungle. If the jungler does die taking the back minions, have the laner rotate to contest your back minions.
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Lyra lane is not unbeatable, especially if you can pressure her in the early game. She is outclassed by many laners in the early-mid stages, and can be prevented from ever hitting a major power spike if played right.
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