Riot’s “Meta Shift” and T1’s Potential for a Joyful Comeback
From the beginning of 2024 to the present moment, the evolving meta has fundamentally transformed the landscape of League of Legends, especially in professional tournaments. Even the top-tier teams have faced numerous challenges as seen with T1, which has successfully adapted to this new meta, aiming to reclaim the championship title at World Championship 2024. Recently, Riot has implemented significant changes aimed at completely redefining the current gameplay, and T1 may continue to benefit from these adjustments.
Specifically, in a recent update, Riot decided to increase the turret damage reduction by 95% (for both the Top Lane and Mid Lane) during the time frame from 1:30 to 4:00 minutes if there are two turrets that are not under attack. Additionally, the experience gain for junglers will decrease by 50% when attacking the turret.
Moreover, Riot has increased the turret’s damage output significantly. A turret in the bot lane can be hit four times by a champion (which can deal up to 250% damage to the turret). At the same time, the Top Lane turret can potentially one-shot a champion who is attacking it and reduce damage by 50% for any champion that is currently under siege. Furthermore, these changes will result in a 300% damage increase for junglers during gameplay.
However, there is one caveat that Riot advises: these buffs only apply when a jungler is involved in the turret defense after the meta adjustment. If there is no jungler in the area, the buffs will not activate.
Thus, it can be inferred that the turret meta is currently at risk of being entirely reworked in the upcoming updates. This is especially true since the turret damage reduction will not be beneficial if the jungler does not participate in ganks or apply pressure in the enemy’s jungle.
In the current meta, the jungler plays a pivotal role in assisting the team in creating pressure in the early stages of the game (from minute one to minute five).
However, if the turret meta is completely removed, T1 may find itself at a disadvantage. The strong laning of the bot duo Gumayusi – Keria (if T1 continues to utilize this strategy) is not to be underestimated. The current turret meta has dramatically altered the entire strength of this duo and has caused Gumayusi to have to “adapt” to play more conservatively compared to last year. Meanwhile, the synergy revolving around this bot duo helped T1 secure its Spring Split championship back in 2022.
Yet T1 Fans Remain Cautiously Optimistic
Despite this, T1 fans must still wait to see which roster the coaching staff will choose for the upcoming Regular Season. Moreover, this decision will also “unlock” a variety of strong champions on the global stage such as Ruler, Viper, Elk, and Aiming… These names will also be very strong if the meta returns to normal, and T1 will need to be cautious if they don’t want to repeat past mistakes in the LCK Cup 2025.
