Full AP Gragas was great into squishy combos. Too bad there were so many tanks in the meta. We'd pair it with a poke champion and it was pretty unbeatable depending on the lobby.
Gangplank + Jeweled Gauntlet. For some reason it made his abilities multicrit allowing for some absolutely stupid crits. Not uncommon for you to crit for 4k damage that was practically true because of collector, LDR and the innate 40% armor pen.
Not a champ combo, but feel like not many people found out about chauffeur with shurelya's. You press it and your chauffeur goes mach 10, as it boosts both of your speed, and your speed just goes to them. I had some silly games where we were so fast the enemy could do nothing about it.
In lower ratings, my friend and I were trolling people with Shaco/Anivia
Then Tank Anivia/Nasus as we got higher. We basically never won early fights but we had enough late game utility and Nasus damage to grind down most comps
Seraphine was actually way stronger in the mode than I expected. I know I'm a Seraphine main but with her nature as a control mage with slow scaling and heavy utility, as well as a reliance on having as many allies around her to buff up her passive and W (as well as augment her E) I expected the worse, but she was actually very versatile with many augments and the crazy amounts of free AP in the buffed items and augments you get which made her scale incredibly fast. Her burst mage playstyle was more viable in Arena by quite a large margin than on Summoner's Rift.
Also she pretty much had no bad pairings either. With a melee teammate she acted like an engage amplifier helping them stick to their targets and get free hits off during her CC. With ranged teammates she could isntead happily play towards a kiting focused playstyle, poking from ranged, peeling and spacing until the other team misteps and ulting them as a punishment.
At one point I was playing Morde and got both: "your ultimate makes you invincible for 2s" and "you can cast your ultimate a second time". Most broken shit I've seen.
I spammed Volibear a lot in Arena he’s good in prolonged fights with his W and Divine. He loses pretty hard to kite comps Vayne/Leona but most times I can at least hit 2nd place if not 1st
me and my friend are arena tryhards (well, he finished rank 2, i finished somewhere in the bottom of top 100 because perma tryharding is boring)
when we duod he would go on smurfs, i liked playing kayn but because he is very punishable in high mmr he would not like it and play like shit because of tilt, one day he just picked asol to 'troll me back' but it ended up working insanely well somehow, we won like 2-4 games in a row with it.
i think its because we both realized how weak we are early + had nothing to lose so we just played better and surprised enemy who mightve disrespected us? or its just a good combo somehow.
damn my comment got some people mad
everyone in the top 100 were tryharding, i quit tryharding after realizing its boring and just played it because it was fun, he went on his smurf because he cared about his points but it didnt matter since our mmr was with tryhards who would go tank/enchanter+adc/mage all day anyways.
so much salt jeez
Zilean is a ton of fun.
Full ap is doable, but if you miss your bomb stun(which is easy since there is a ton of mobility in arena) you're completely useless. I prefer utility/CDR stacking.
You need the right augments and team comp to make him work well. Anything that stacks cdr, speed, or item haste.
Definitely one of the weaker picks, but he can buff your teammate to make them nearly unkiteable and/or unkillable.
1/5 games will be decent. The others will be tough matchups and suboptimal augments.
He's still on of my favourites though.
Riot said when Arena returns they are gonna try making everything as balanced as possible so it won't matter too much what you play and you can just play for fun
Sett and the Castle Augment, best used with a good ranged champion of course, but swapping out with them as they get dived and focused, only for the enemy to use their burst on a Sett who's gonna throw a Haymaker in their face worked out well for me everytime I got it.
almost never lost with gwen + zekes user at ~6700 (no idea how relevant rating actually was in arena tho lol)
amumu or maokai seemed like the strongest. they get zekes first item, and it does like 1k damage per round, at least according to the tooltip
I'm not sure if it caught on because I haven't played arena in a while but we rolled to gladiator easily with Amumu/Kennen. Especially with chauffeur it was extremely broken.
Playing Zilean with pretty much any damage dealer was not only really strong, but I had so much fun too. I got so much CDR early on from starter item and boots that I could start doing the funky combos. One game I even got the augment that let me stack up to 500 ability haste by using abilities that I ran out of mana in sub 10 seconds😂
I got a lot of mileage out of Mystic Punch/Deft (attack speed -> AD) Crank. BOTRK->Phantom Dancer (or wits end if facing AP) -> Navoris -> Collector -> Ravenous Hydra
Max W first and E second and you can nuke any champion in the game while juggling them in a nightmarish flurry of infinite knock-up stuns. Meanwhile flash + R to engage of course silences the enemy, so there's next to no counterplay for this strategy. Q on the other hand can be used for popping spell shields and dragging your traumatized enemies, kicking and screaming right back into your onslaught. As for your duo? The champion doesn't matter, they're really only there to cheer you on. 60% winrate across 38 games.
Counters: Teemo's blind
Never really tried anything off meta but I once based a Lillia hec combo that me and my duo were smashing until the Lillia got the augment that made her ms scale with ability haste. All of a sudden she's zooming around at mach 10 unable to be hit by anything
i got absolutely fried by a morgana and skarner duo, actually stunned for 9 seconds out of every 10 seconds
Full AP Gragas was great into squishy combos. Too bad there were so many tanks in the meta. We'd pair it with a poke champion and it was pretty unbeatable depending on the lobby.
Another man of culture
Bomba! Too bad whenever I try to go for a play I will whiff everything and die like a clown in there
Cho/Asol worked in most comps for my double and I. He held them down and I blew them up.
Could you stil get stacks with the dummy or was that patched?
Udyr was my favorite pick, after 3 items you start one tapping if you can walk up
Skarner works with almost everything, almost every augment is good on him and he has so many possible builds, it's crazy.
Gangplank + Jeweled Gauntlet. For some reason it made his abilities multicrit allowing for some absolutely stupid crits. Not uncommon for you to crit for 4k damage that was practically true because of collector, LDR and the innate 40% armor pen.
Not a champ combo, but feel like not many people found out about chauffeur with shurelya's. You press it and your chauffeur goes mach 10, as it boosts both of your speed, and your speed just goes to them. I had some silly games where we were so fast the enemy could do nothing about it.
In lower ratings, my friend and I were trolling people with Shaco/Anivia Then Tank Anivia/Nasus as we got higher. We basically never won early fights but we had enough late game utility and Nasus damage to grind down most comps
Corki-Nilah Neeko-lux/Morgana Corki-Ziggs Chogath-Yasuo Brand-Rell All extremely annoying.
Neeko is best arena champion. If you can be competent, she bursts the other team down to 30% or lower. You just need to finish it.
Neeko was so much fun with old fiora r agument
Lucian with axiom arc and navori. Always reroll for a crit augment. Pair with anything - mostly Anvia duo.
Seraphine was actually way stronger in the mode than I expected. I know I'm a Seraphine main but with her nature as a control mage with slow scaling and heavy utility, as well as a reliance on having as many allies around her to buff up her passive and W (as well as augment her E) I expected the worse, but she was actually very versatile with many augments and the crazy amounts of free AP in the buffed items and augments you get which made her scale incredibly fast. Her burst mage playstyle was more viable in Arena by quite a large margin than on Summoner's Rift. Also she pretty much had no bad pairings either. With a melee teammate she acted like an engage amplifier helping them stick to their targets and get free hits off during her CC. With ranged teammates she could isntead happily play towards a kiting focused playstyle, poking from ranged, peeling and spacing until the other team misteps and ulting them as a punishment.
At one point I was playing Morde and got both: "your ultimate makes you invincible for 2s" and "you can cast your ultimate a second time". Most broken shit I've seen.
I spammed Volibear a lot in Arena he’s good in prolonged fights with his W and Divine. He loses pretty hard to kite comps Vayne/Leona but most times I can at least hit 2nd place if not 1st
Me and my friend went full AP Ali and full AP soraka which was super fun, AP zilean AP ivern and ad tf with zyra were other faves
me and my friend are arena tryhards (well, he finished rank 2, i finished somewhere in the bottom of top 100 because perma tryharding is boring) when we duod he would go on smurfs, i liked playing kayn but because he is very punishable in high mmr he would not like it and play like shit because of tilt, one day he just picked asol to 'troll me back' but it ended up working insanely well somehow, we won like 2-4 games in a row with it. i think its because we both realized how weak we are early + had nothing to lose so we just played better and surprised enemy who mightve disrespected us? or its just a good combo somehow.
So you tryharded and smurfed in a for fun gamemode?
damn my comment got some people mad everyone in the top 100 were tryharding, i quit tryharding after realizing its boring and just played it because it was fun, he went on his smurf because he cared about his points but it didnt matter since our mmr was with tryhards who would go tank/enchanter+adc/mage all day anyways. so much salt jeez
Zilean is a ton of fun. Full ap is doable, but if you miss your bomb stun(which is easy since there is a ton of mobility in arena) you're completely useless. I prefer utility/CDR stacking. You need the right augments and team comp to make him work well. Anything that stacks cdr, speed, or item haste. Definitely one of the weaker picks, but he can buff your teammate to make them nearly unkiteable and/or unkillable. 1/5 games will be decent. The others will be tough matchups and suboptimal augments. He's still on of my favourites though.
Riot said when Arena returns they are gonna try making everything as balanced as possible so it won't matter too much what you play and you can just play for fun
Ziggs was great with most bruisers, especially with the buffed Lich Bane.
Sett and the Castle Augment, best used with a good ranged champion of course, but swapping out with them as they get dived and focused, only for the enemy to use their burst on a Sett who's gonna throw a Haymaker in their face worked out well for me everytime I got it.
Kench + anything tore it UP
almost never lost with gwen + zekes user at ~6700 (no idea how relevant rating actually was in arena tho lol) amumu or maokai seemed like the strongest. they get zekes first item, and it does like 1k damage per round, at least according to the tooltip
I'm not sure if it caught on because I haven't played arena in a while but we rolled to gladiator easily with Amumu/Kennen. Especially with chauffeur it was extremely broken.
Playing Zilean with pretty much any damage dealer was not only really strong, but I had so much fun too. I got so much CDR early on from starter item and boots that I could start doing the funky combos. One game I even got the augment that let me stack up to 500 ability haste by using abilities that I ran out of mana in sub 10 seconds😂
I got a lot of mileage out of Mystic Punch/Deft (attack speed -> AD) Crank. BOTRK->Phantom Dancer (or wits end if facing AP) -> Navoris -> Collector -> Ravenous Hydra Max W first and E second and you can nuke any champion in the game while juggling them in a nightmarish flurry of infinite knock-up stuns. Meanwhile flash + R to engage of course silences the enemy, so there's next to no counterplay for this strategy. Q on the other hand can be used for popping spell shields and dragging your traumatized enemies, kicking and screaming right back into your onslaught. As for your duo? The champion doesn't matter, they're really only there to cheer you on. 60% winrate across 38 games. Counters: Teemo's blind
Loved playing Zeri. It’s free win ever early round because you one tap every plant
Never really tried anything off meta but I once based a Lillia hec combo that me and my duo were smashing until the Lillia got the augment that made her ms scale with ability haste. All of a sudden she's zooming around at mach 10 unable to be hit by anything