Every setup on this list got somebody flamed in champion select first and proved itself second.
We've been writing build guides for picks nobody drafts since 2015. These ten are the ones that stuck around, and each has a full guide on the site if you want the runes and the item path.
Off-Meta Builds
10 Weird Setups That Actually Work
Every setup on this list got somebody flamed in champion select first and proved itself second.
We've been writing build guides for picks nobody drafts since 2015. These ten are the ones that stuck around, and each has a full guide on the site if you want the runes and the item path.
An off-meta build isn't a joke pick. It's a bet that the champion's numbers do something the role they were designed for doesn't ask them to do, and that nobody on the other team has practiced against it. Counting down.
#10: Tank Yone, Who Stops Being Killable
Yone gets drafted as a squishy carry and then dies to the first person who walks at him. Build him to survive instead and the lane stops making sense for the other side: he keeps every piece of his damage, because so much of it comes off his own passive rather than off raw stat purchases, and he stops folding to a gank.
The trade is patience. You will not one shot anyone, and the game has to go long enough for you to be the person diving their back line and living through it. Our Tank Yone top guide has the full setup.
#9: Support Kog'Maw, and the Lane Nobody Can Stand In
A marksman in the support slot usually starves. Kog'Maw doesn't, because his poke costs mana and nothing else, and a bot lane that gets chipped every wave has to back before it wants to. Then he's still the thing on your team that melts a tank at twenty five minutes.
He's also completely defenseless, so this needs a marksman who can fight for themselves. The Support Kog'Maw guide covers what to buy when you have no support income to spend.
#8: Jungle Taliyah, the Fastest Map in the Game
This one barely counts as off-meta anymore, which is the highest praise an off-meta build gets. Taliyah crosses the map faster than any jungler alive, so she arrives at fights on the far side of the river that a normal jungler simply doesn't get to. Ganks that look impossible on the minimap happen anyway.
Her clear hurts early and she's fragile until she has items, which is the whole reason she never became a default. Read the Taliyah jungle guide before you first-clear into a counter jungle.
#7: Jungle Leona, Ganking at Level Three
Take the most reliable lockdown in the game out of a lane where it needs a marksman to cooperate, and give it to the one role that gets to choose its fights. Leona shows up at a lane, chains a stun into a stun, and the enemy laner is dead before their support finishes typing.
She farms terribly, so the whole plan collapses if the ganks don't land. That's a real risk and the Jungle Leona guide is honest about it.
#6: AP Kai'Sa, the Marksman Who Isn't One
Kai'Sa's kit reads magic damage everywhere you look, and building for it turns her into something the enemy team drafted no answer for. They bought armor for a marksman. She's a burst mage who happens to be standing in the bot lane, or in the mid lane, which is where this build usually ends up.
It's the least stable pick on the list, since it lives and dies on hitting a skill shot from range, and a missed one is a wasted rotation. The full AP Kai'Sa guide walks through the evolution order that makes it work.
#5: Rek'Sai Top, Who Never Actually Leaves
A jungler in the top lane sounds like griefing until you remember what Rek'Sai does with a tunnel. She wins the short trades, she's unkillable to gank because she can hear you coming from underground, and when the lane gets boring she goes and takes somebody else's camps.
She scales into nothing, so this is a build that has to close the game while it's still ahead. Our Rek'Sai top guide lays out the first fifteen minutes.
#4: Kalista Support, Because of One Button
Almost nothing about Kalista says support. Fate's Call [R] does, though, and it's the reason this keeps coming back: she bolts herself to whoever she's protecting and can fire them into the enemy team from safety, which is a fight starter no real support has.
Everything else about her in that role is a downgrade, and that's the honest deal. See the Kalista support guide.
#3: Jungle Irelia, and the Duel Nobody Wants
Junglers spend the early game bumping into each other in the dark, and Irelia beats almost all of them at that. She heals through a clear, she dashes through the camp she's killing to reach the next one, and the moment an enemy jungler contests an objective she's happy about it.
What she can't do is force a gank onto a lane that's pushed the wrong way, so this build needs teammates who understand wave control. The Jungle Irelia guide covers the pathing.
#2: Jungle Singed, the Camp That Chases You Home
Nothing about a Singed gank is dodgeable in the way a skill shot is. He walks at you, you take damage for walking near him, and if you run in a straight line he throws you backward into your own tower. Junglers who rely on landing something have a bad time against a champion who lands nothing and wins anyway.
He also never has to go home, which means he's still on the map while the enemy jungler is shopping. It falls apart against a real early invade, since he can't fight before he has items. Full details in the Jungle Singed guide.
#1: AP Ezreal, the Original Weird Build
Some off-meta builds are clever. This one is old. Players have been building Ezreal for ability power since long before anyone called it a weird pick, and the reason has never changed: his whole kit already scales with it, so the build isn't fighting the champion, it's just picking the other number.
What you get is an artillery mid laner with two escapes, wave clear from off screen, and a poke pattern that grinds a lane down without ever standing in it. What you give up is the safe, boring, reliable marksman scaling that makes Ezreal a comfort pick in the first place, which is why plenty of people try this once and go back.
They shouldn't. It's the most fun anyone has in a mid lane all week. The AP Ezreal build guide has the runes.
Conclusions
Read the list back and one thing runs through all ten. None of these builds invent anything. Every one of them takes a number the champion already has and puts it somewhere the other team didn't prepare for, which is why they keep working through patch after patch while genuinely broken things get deleted.
That's also the limit. An off-meta build wins the games where the enemy has to improvise and loses the ones where they simply play well, so pick the one that answers what you're actually staring at in champion select rather than the one that sounds funniest. And warn your team first.
Every ranking we've argued about is collected on the Top Ten Thursdays hub.
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