Welcome to Gaia! ::

Honestly the only times I try unconventional/non-meta things are when I have a 5 premade or 4 premade (where we'll ask the solo if they're ok with whatever we're trying) in normals only.

At the end of the day, a lot of people play LoL to win and playing the meta is just the safest bet to winning. I don't want to ruin other people's experiences. And if your team isn't happy about you doing jungle Annie or double jungle or triple support or whatever kooky anti-meta strat, then you're just making other people enjoy the game less.

But it's a team game. If you're outvoted 1 to 4, then really their enjoyment comes first. Maybe it's a bit different if 3 people want to break the meta and the other 2 don't, but then it comes down to a case of who cares more.

And of course it's not the only way to play, but it's the most optimized way to play (that we know of currently) which means it's the safest way to maximise everyone's chances of winning. It's clearly not just a 'random' way of playing that stuck. Obviously the meta isn't completely set in stone and lots of pro teams experiment with different stuff, but the whole lanes/roles thing largely remains the same; the differences come in the utilization of champions.

On the other hand, CLG.na played a game with Nunu/Caitlyn mid and Nunu with promote running around and promoting cannon minions in all the lanes. They lost but it was quite a change. Azingy played 3 bot lane game and mid with smite (no jungler) and won.

But I don't really like people trying new stuff like that out, especially especially in ranked games. It's like dude, you're average elo, maybe pros can pull that s**t off but odds are, you're just going to feed or die to blue buff or something dumb, thus ruining everyone's game play experience.

Anyway I don't think it particularly matters and it's more team-dependent. If your whole team agrees to do a 5 man roam game all game then whatever, have fun. If your team likes the idea of jungle Annie, then cool beans. I just think they also have the right to say "no that sounds like a terrible ideas can we play normally?".

If you aren't playing ranked then do whatever the ******** you want. Normal matches always send 2 top and don't usually have a support so everyone ends up starved for money unless they get kills. The matches are usually stupid so do whatever you want.

Yeah normal matches have a hidden elo so that could explain why your normal games seem very different. I imagine if you have a lower elo, things like the meta matter a lot less.

I nearly always get a standard meta normal game. Solo top, jungler, mid, ad, support...
The only difference I see between normal and ranked is that sometimes in normals, people use less viable/popular champs, but the gameplay is pretty much on par and so is the meta.

For some reason, I thought quite a few of you were 30s already.

But theres nothing wrong with branching out. Sometimes, you'll catch your opponents so thrown off you'll stomp them.

One time I faced a team comprised of a bunch of beefy tanks like Gragas, Mundo, Chogath, and a couple other guys. They all ran revive and fortify. We barely managed to win, but we could barely do anything to their team and could never push, hardly ever. They had their fortifies spaced out so well that there was practically always one off of cooldown.

I found out last night after a few hours of drinking that my friends consider me to be the best league player of our group. We had a vote though because my boyfriend wouldn't believe it. Then I won. Suck on that Tom. xD In fairness I don't think I'm a good player, I'm just a consistent player, and I play every role proficiently which none of my friends can do. Like jack of all trades, master of none. sad