Every year, there are established metas that go into the Worlds tournaments. All the biggest teams from TSM to SKT bring the champions and compositions that make the most sense with their regions, but something else happens as well. As the tournament pushes on, a Worlds meta begins to establish itself. Right now, the prevailing opinion is that everything will be about Ardent Censer, but some of the recent matches have hinted at something more.

the rise of the tank busters

Right now the top lane is dominated by Cho’Gaths, Shens, and Maokais. But the entire Worlds tournament, fans and analysts alike have been yelling at their screens for the teams to choose better picks into these matchups, and it looks like we are finally seeing that. Last week we saw three separate games of Trundle top, and each game went in the favor of the team with Trundle.

Misfits were the first to draft Trundle followed only moments later by G2, and both teams went on to absolutely smash their opponents without giving up a single kill. SSG was the final team to choose Trundle in a matchup that was much closer, but ultimately went in their favor. It should also be mentioned though Longzhu didn’t choose a Trundle in their last match, they did choose Nasus

What that means for the meta is Tank Busters. Both Nasus and Trundle are perfectly designed to not only win lane against the current meta, but to scale up to be able to take over the game. Right now, both champs aggressively challenge the current top lane meta, and more than that, both champions challenge the Ardent Censer meta. With Trundle’s ability to lay down slows and sap AD and Nasus’s whither, both of these champions are nightmares against single-damage team comps.

assassin mids still challenge teams at every turn

By no means is the mid-lane meta set in stone either. Players are currently jumping around lots of choices from typical favorites like Orianna and Syndra to Ryze and Corki. What this mostly means is that teams are still feeling out what will work best against their enemies, but there seems to be a lot of potential in the assassins.

Three teams opted last week into the assassin mid-lane, Team WE with LeBlanc, SKT with Fizz, and 1907 Fenerbahçe with Ekko. To say that these choices were a success is a huge understatement. For Team WE, Xiye’s LeBlanc was a constant harassing presence that Misfits had absolutely no answer for. When Xiye wasn’t getting picks on the team, he was dashing in for damage and then back out, ensuring the team could not withstand any kind of frontal attack.

SKT saw similar success with Fizz. Though Faker lost lane against AHQ’s Chawy on Syndra, it wasn’t long before he was dashing around the team getting kill after kill. FB did much the same with Ekko, only for FB, this was the single most important champion of their draft. Frozen managed to take a losing game and swing it hugely in FB’s favor, and it was only by SSG getting a pick on him that they managed to win at all.

All of this is to say that Tank Busters and Assassins have risen to the ranks of roles teams should be heavily looking at. Though the Ardent Censer will more than likely stay the popular choice, if teams are unprepared for Tank Busters and Assassins, we can predict they will fall as hard as these teams did against these champions.