With the release of the Wild Rift Open Beta, a meta has been slowly but surely forming. As a mobile port of League of Legends, Wild Rift’s accommodations for the platform create a unique environment for champions, allowing for a very stark contrast in top picks and low tier picks.
[Related: Review of Wild Rift]
The Most Broken Picks
Wild Rift’s most broken picks are Ezreal, Xin Zhao and Blitzcrank. These picks all need nerfs and will very likely show up in any given game.
Ezreal
Ezreal is the uncontested most broken champion in the game. The amount of damage on his skills scales way too hard into the mid and late game, and his E provides too much safety. There is little item optimization to counter Ezreal, if any at all, and thanks to the Wild Rift’s smaller interface, champions are more clumped together to help Ezreal players hit their skill shots.
Ezreal’s ultimate takes up about half the lane and the damage on the skill is absurd. When tanks build items such as thornmail, Ezreal can simply use his abilities to damage rather than his auto-attacks.
The additional damage from his W leaves enemies baffled, procing with any easy to hit skill or auto-attack.
Not only is Ezreal’s damage absurd, but the game’s auto-targeting systems help him immensely. As a skill shot reliant champion, Ezreal can often just click the skill and the auto-targeting will do most of the job for the player.
In ranked games, Ezreal is almost always picked. With no counterplay to a fed Ezreal, Wild Rift needs to nerf him immediately.
Xin Zhao
Xin Zhao prospers in the open beta thanks to his base abilities, arguably the best jungle in the game. At early levels, dueling potential is essential to success. An early lead often means victory. As a champion with a gap closer, a knock up and great damage, Xin Zhao overwhelms games with his incredibly fast and powerful ganks.
His early level ganks snowball the team and his scaling into the mid to late game does not fall off whatsoever.
Once the enemy team starts to group, Xin Zhao’s ultimate demolishes. In Wild Rift, success in team fights comes from grouping close together, maximizing damage as a unit. Xin Zhao pushes everyone away and says “nope” to that tactic, destroying the enemy’s positioning while dealing immense damage.
Thanks to his gap close, Xin Zhao targets any squishy on the enemy team and simply knocks away everyone else. The shield that his ultimate provides denies any attempt to take him down. Once the ultimate fades away, chances are Xin Zhao’s target is already dead.
With his safety from his ultimate, Xin Zhao can stack damage without needing any tank items. In a meta where damage wins over all else, Xin Zhao stands as an overwhelming pick.
Blitzcrank
Blitzcrank is the least broken out of these three picks but is representative of the unbalanced support role.
Support’s only income is through the shared gold from dying minions or takedowns. This makes the role very snowbally as supports that fall behind struggle to deal damage to get a takedown.
The support items do not provide significant enough buffs and therefore minimally impact the game.
With so much damage in the game, the enchanter supports are pushed out of the viable meta. As of now, it is kill or be killed. The healing support items do not provide enough utility to outmatch simple damage, and the supports cannot even build the items fast enough.
Therefore, Blitzcrank prospers. He can hook anyone, and if it lands during laning phase, nine out of ten times the fight is already won. His base damage is ridiculously high, making him a threat to both the enemy support and ADC. And as Wild Rift’s map is smaller in scale, Blitzcrank’s grab hitbox is ridiculously big.
Blitzcrank also does not require much gold – he just has to hit hooks. Supports such as Janna, Sona and Soraka require gold to do more healing. But Blitzcrank can have no items, and just hook Janna, Sona or Soraka, and they will die to the ADC or have to flash out.
In Conclusion
Riot, without a doubt, has to nerf these three champions if they want any form of balance in Wild Rift. Granted, the game is still in beta, but that does not excuse the need for patches and updates to make the game more playable.
Stay tuned for more meta-analysis, covering overall meta to specific lanes and the problems that reside in them, comparing the weak and strong picks and why such pick priorities exist.
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Special thanks to the r/wildrift community for helping make this article series happen.