The Birth of the Funnel Strategy
Two years ago (specifically in patch 8.12), the Funnel Comp strategy was the most popular tactic. The root cause was that Riot buffed resources in the jungle too much at that time, initially aiming to make late-game junglers stronger earlier, but the unintended consequence was that players increasingly took champions like Xayah, Kai’Sa, and even Lucian and Irelia into the jungle.
The consequence of this strategy was a complete upheaval of the value of game positions, making the summer tournament of 2018 the most haunting season for junglers. Even the “prodigal son” Jankos, when recalling this period, could only sigh and say – “Please, Riot, I don’t want to play Braum anymore.”
Juggernaut Update – Worlds 2015
Juggernaut was the name of an update that revamped the playstyle of tanky champions like Darius, Garen, Skarner, and Mordekaiser. The power of these champions is undeniable, however, what is noteworthy is that Riot Games released this update during patch 5.16, while the Worlds 2015 was played on version 5.18.
With a major update like Juggernaut, the best time to release it would be at the start or mid-season, allowing both players and Riot to have at least one season (spring or summer) to experience and assess its impact. However, Riot Games released the Juggernaut update two patches before Worlds, completely disrupting the meta of the biggest tournament of the year.
Teams had no idea how to counter such juggernauts, not to mention other monsters like Gangplank or Fiora prior to that. The result was that they had to ban Mordekaiser in almost every match, allowing Fiora to solo against Darius in a separate realm and accepting that League of Legends was split into two separate games, 4v4 on one side of the map and 1v1 of the two overlords on the other.
Riftmaker Update – Worlds 2017
Worlds 2017 witnessed the downfall of “Demon King” Faker, which became the most iconic image of that tournament. However, we cannot forget the super boring meta of that year’s Worlds where buff-supports became incredibly strong. In fact, the champion that was banned 100% during that tournament, Kalista, was the ADC that benefited the most from the overly powerful Riftmaker buff.
This item not only buffed attack speed and damage on hit but also provided additional healing for ADCs. The dominance here was that it would scale with levels, perfectly matching the nature of ADCs who become stronger with more items and levels. The consequence of Riot Games’ “small buff” to the Riftmaker was that teams focused entirely on late-game, games dragged on unnecessarily, and ADCs became so powerful that they were uncontrollable.
