With Riot Games maintaining a 2-week update cycle, the meta in League of Legends is always changing, providing a fresh experience for players. Just a few small updates to champions or items from Riot can completely shift the meta. For instance, the buff to the Turbocharged Hexperiment item in patch 11.2 made Udyr a dominant jungle champion, despite previously being overlooked by players.
However, this is not entirely accurate for the mid lane position. A player who has been monitoring the mid lane meta on various statistical sites for 2 years has discovered that assassin champions consistently dominate this role. Champions like Zed, Fizz, Ekko, and Talon always appear at the top of the mid lane meta.
I have noticed some interesting things after a long time of following statistical analysis sites.
Over the past 2 years, I have continuously tracked the meta of various patches on Op.gg and other statistical sites. One thing I noticed is that compared to other positions, the mid lane meta has hardly changed in recent years. The top mid lane champions have always been assassins.
Basically, the mid lane meta consists of Zed, Ekko, Fizz, Talon, along with another champion depending on the patch. Occasionally, it includes Katarina, LeBlanc, or even Diana, Qiyana. There will be times when some mage or fighter champions rise in certain patches. However, the overall meta for this position in solo queue is still dominated by assassins.
I would like to add that assassins are also extremely popular and have good pick and win rates at high ranks. This shows that assassins are strong not only at low ranks. At ranks from Diamond to Challenger, players make fewer mistakes, but assassins can still shine.
One characteristic of solo queue is that the synergy in play and information among team players is relatively low. Naturally, each player will have a different mindset about the game. Therefore, the common situation in solo queue is that each person plays in their own style, and players often have to “fend for themselves”.
This environment is perfect for assassins to shine since their skill sets allow for strong independent play and quick target elimination. Moreover, items that provide lethality are extremely powerful in the early game, so physical assassins often have an overwhelming amount of damage with just one key item. For champions like Ekko or Fizz, items like Hextech Rocketbelt and Night Harvester also help them take down opponents quite easily.
These advantages will make assassins, especially in the mid lane, create tremendous pressure on their opponents. Other positions like top lane, ADC, or jungle often find themselves “living in fear” whenever your team’s assassin disappears from the map. While they may not directly kill opponents, assassins create enough pressure to force enemies to play defensively, thus providing a significant advantage for teammates.
It can be said that assassin champions are the most influential characters in the game during the first 20 minutes. If the assassin player can successfully snowball, your team can win incredibly easily, even forcing the opponents to surrender by the 15th minute. Therefore, if you are skilled at playing assassins like Zed, Talon, Fizz… climbing the ranks will become extremely easy.