LoR: July Rotation - Patch 5.7 Review

Today, let's review each champion that rotated in and out of Standard this month.

We'll discuss each champion individually according to their region, and briefly comment on how this rotation will impact their region and the Standard meta next season.

This article was based on my 4-year experience casting and playing LoR professionally.

Bandle City lost its main control champion, Norra, alongside her entire portal package and a few disruption tools as well. This means it is an entirely new region now, unlike before, when it was mostly a secondary region for Elder Dragon control lists.

As Poppy and Ziggs rotated in, Bandle City should become an aggressive region again, probably focused on swarm Yordle archetypes, or play with Noxus again and revive the classic burn lists that included precisely Poppy and Ziggs.

Heimerdinger isn't really a Bandle City champion because his entire kit is made of Piltover & Zaun cards, so we'll discuss him later on.

That being said, Bandle City has a promising future in Standard, and Poppy Ziggs can be one of the best lists in this format again, considering there won't be other aggressive lists to compete with it. Example: Annie Jhin, which has almost entirely rotated out.

How strong Poppy Ziggs is this season will depend on how strong control decks are in Standard right now.

Deep also rotated out completely (Maokai rotated out), and created a gap in Bilgewater, as this deck always returns to regulate the meta when control lists are too strong. Without Deep (and because Anivia also rotated into Standard), we don't have many clear options to deal with these types of lists when and if they become too strong.

In any case, Nami is back in Standard, and is one of the few spellslinger champions in this format now that Janna is out of Standard, alongside her card draw and value. So, we only have Bilgewater and Nami as options now if we want to play a spell-focused deck.

Tahm Kench returned to Standard with his partner, Soraka, and could be a bit problematic because this archetype tends to spice up the meta a bit too much. This list forces enemy players to play landmark removal or play more aggressively, with Fearsome units particularly. Other than that, stopping this deck is extremely difficult. Considering other strong cards rotated out as well, this list's power level, which is considered low, is not that low in Standard. That's what could make it playable, and probably meta.

Let's see how the first week with this list goes, and how Star Spring evolves in the competitive ecosystem, but I, personally, believe it will be a strong deck, and very annoying to deal with.

Demacia will struggle a bit with this rotation, and most likely be forgotten.

The main reasons behind this are that Lux: Illuminated isn't that strong, and Dragons and Formidables rotated out, alongside Garen, who is one of the most versatile champions in Demacia. Jarvan IV didn't return to Standard after all - instead, we got Lucian, who is one of the worst Demacian champions, and has one of the worst packages as well. Poppy is also not exactly a Demacian champion as well, considering her kit mostly includes Bandle City cards.

I'd say Demacia won't be strong this season, and was affected quite negatively by this rotation. Keep in mind that Silences are still available in Standard, and are also stopping the Spirit archetype from being truly strong.

Freljord only lost Lissandra and Ornn, which are secondary champions. We could miss Ornn's package, as, without it, Jax will have to see play in Standard with cards that most players aren't familiar with and don't know how to play.

Udyr will be one of the strongest champions next season, and most players have waited for this moment anxiously since the last rotation. He was treated extremely unfairly then, and now can shine again because some cards in the last expansion complement his archetype really well.

Freljord's biggest issue will probably be Anivia (who has a relatively problematic history in LoR) because, as we discussed, we won't have many options to counter control decks like hers in this format. We'll have to play different strategies than we're used to, or play fast decks to escape these Anivia lists.

Freljord is still strong, and will certainly remain one of the best secondary regions. It will definitely be one of the main protagonists in this season as well.

Kennen and Master Yi were doing absolutely nothing in Standard, so we won't really miss these champions at all. Maybe Master Yi could see some play with Nami, but, unfortunately, we won't get to see it this time.

Irelia is probably one of the worst champions in the game returning to Standard right now, as Azir rotated out of the format. This means half of her archetype is out of Standard, and we'll have to pair her with Miss Fortune or another entirely new champion - which we'll have to find, test, and build.

She'll possibly be forgotten and quite weak.

As for Lee Sin, he may be great with Nami, Aphelios, or even Vi this season. I'm very excited, but a bit worried about his return as well, considering he tends to be a bit toxic or too dominant when the meta is favorable to him. If not, he is often forgotten - this means he is quite polarizing: he is either too strong or too weak for the meta.

Let's see how he performs next season.

Noxus lost Annie and Jhin, which is unfortunate for aggro players, but two very aggressive champions returned to Standard as well: Darius and LeBlanc.

So, Ashe LeBlanc is in Standard again, and Darius could be great to complement some aggressive decks, and maybe even revive Overwhelm archetypes.

Noxus is currently one of the weakest regions in the game after the several nerfs it got and the last rotation, which hit many of its aggressive decks. We still have some great options if we want to play Noxus control lists, and they'll probably be strong against the many midrange decks available in Standard right now, like Soraka Tahm Kench, and Udyr lists.

This region was completely destroyed by this rotation, and lost much of its card draw, besides important removals. Considering we used Piltover & Zaun to basically remove enemy cards and draw cards ever since LoR was released, we might not have many reasons to play this region in this rotation anymore.

Heimerdinger is a great champion, but it probably won't be that easy to build a coherent deck with him, as Jayce rotated out. Senna could be his new partner.

In any case, Piltover & Zaun is still a mystery this season. It will most likely be one of the weakest regions in the game.

Even though Shadow Isles lost its strongest champion last season, it is still incredibly powerful, and is probably the best region for control lists. For instance, we still have Mordekaiser, and Senna returned to Standard without her partner, Veigar.

Keep in mind that Thresh is also in Standard, and is also a great control/value champion. Shadow Isles is now even more control than it was.

Nocturne also returned to Standard with Diana, and thus revived Nightfall lists. However, the best you'll ever get out of this archetype right now are a few of its cards that also go in control lists.

That is because Nightfall lists are incredibly difficult to pilot, and usually the data collected and displayed on LoR websites doesn't truly represent the strength of this archetype. Nightfall will probably hoover around 50% win rate, and thus, won't stand out to players.

Nonetheless, if Soraka Tahm Kench turns out to be too strong, Nightfall is an incredible counter for it.

The Ascended all rotated out.

Shurima will once again focus on landmarks, and Taliyah Ziggs decks will be meta again.

Zilean works really well with these strategies, but he is a bit unpredictable (ha) because he fits many other decks as well. He can see play with Nami or Vi, for instance, so who knows. I won't try to predict (ha) which archetype he'll be a part of; he might not even show up in the first few weeks, considering he often forces you to think outside the box when you try to cook up some lists with him.

Shurima is set to become a dominant region again - Ziggs Taliyah has historically been quite strong and independent, that is, it doesn't usually have bad matchups and often defines the meta in which it sees play.

Targon lost Leona and Aurelion Sol, which weren't doing much in Standard, even though Leona showed up a bit at the end of last season.

We've already discussed Diana and Soraka, so, we'll focus on the other champions left in this region, like Aphelios, Malphite, Morgana, and Taric. They all may become extremely strong.

Malphite Yasuo is still a tier 1 deck, despite not being that popular, and Morgana is still one of the best champions in the entire game.

As a result, Targon will probably be quite popular next season. We even have a few meta decks with this region already, so the closed archetypes introduced by this rotation will most likely make it even more relevant as a region.

Soraka Tahm Kench will be quite powerful, and Morgana can be a great second or third champion for this deck, considering how often it targets units.

As we all knew already, the Elder Dragon is out of Standard, as well as Jhin and Evelynn.

This means we won't see a wide variety of regions and cards in a single deck anymore because these champions' Origins are no longer available in this format. The meta will focus a lot more on closed archetypes, and we won't abuse the same package of Elder Dragon cards we brought in every single deck with it. That also applies to Jhin.

We won't have a meta deck whose single counter is its exact archetype but with 10 different cards, as we had in the past Elder Dragon meta.

Furthermore, Bard returned to Standard, and might catch many of us off-guard. He works really well with swarm strategies (which might return with Bandle City), and is also great with the other champions left in Targon. Not to mention, he might even carry Demacia on his back this season because Demacia lost all of its best champions.

I can't really predict which Bard list could make it in the meta, but we'll most likely see a popular list with him in the next few days.

If you read this far, thank you! I hope you had fun, and enjoyed reading this article.

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See you next time!