Agilio Macabasco
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7 Min read Duels of Runeterra is a biweekly tournament series, with tournaments for NA and EU. You can find out about their next tournament by visiting https://www.start.gg/tournament/road-to-shurima-part-1-open-qualifier/events or by visiting their Discord server.
With Legends of Runeterra still in Open Beta, the LoR competitive scene has been growing from the grassroots of the community.
We’re excited to share the decks of the top 8’s from NA and EU of Duels of Runeterra 5, a 164 player tournament organized by Monokuma Esports. If you missed our previous dive, check out our analysis of Duels of Runterra 3.
Note that since the entire tournament wasn’t streamed, this article will be focusing more on the deckbuilding choices rather than in-game decisions that the players made.
In the future when tournaments are more streamlined and fully broadcasted, we’ll cover mind games and other nuances from players.
Let’s dive in!
Duels of Runeterra 5 had players building and bringing three decks with no region overlap between them.
These three decks were to be played in a best of three where each player would ban one deck.
The submitted decklists were transparent and openly available to see 15 minutes before each pool within a wave.
Here are all the decklists from the EU and NA top 8’s if you’d like to explore on your own!
1st Annie Desu
2nd freshlobster
3rd (tied) GumaBoy
3rd (tied) Protonkogen
5th (tied) potpie
5th (tied) Presto@0785
5th (tied) ErorSvemoguce
5th (tied) Kaythal
1st shouix
2nd NT Casanova
3rd (tied) hyped
3rd (tied) STAN#EU004
5th (tied) Todin
5th (tied) JPie
5th (tied) Atianta
5th (tied) FLY PowerOfEvil
Since the format reguired three decks with no region overlaps, all six LoR regions naturally saw a decent amount of representation.
Noxus + Piltover/Zaun, lead the way with 9 decks due to an abundance of Ezreal + Draven along with some Draven + Jinx and a Teemo + Jinx deck by the 1st place finisher of EU.
The second most common region combination was FR + SI, which was the go-to pairing for control players.
One of the most interesting developments from this tournament was that the third most common region combination was actually mono Demacia due to the strength of midrange Bannerman decks.
Due to the format, we saw a good amount of champions represented in DoR 5.
18 of the 24 champions found a place in at least one of the final 48 decks.
The 6 champs that didn’t make the cut in either regions top 8 were: Braum, Kalista, Katarina, Shen, Yasuo, and Vladimir.
Fiora + Garen have become the most popular champions at 11 decks (often played together).
Hecarim has fallen off hard due to his recent nerfs, only appearing in 2 decks in the top 48 decks. Meanwhile, his Shadow Isles peer, Elise, is still doing well showing up in 8 decks.
Ezreal is still doing well (10 decks) as players have adapted since the Elnuk nerfs, opting to often pair Ezreal with Draven and Noxus.
Karma and Zed also saw a solid amount of play with 7 decks each.
All other champs were seen in 5 decks or less.
Midrange Demacia using Bannerman has become the new replacement for Rally Hecarim decks.
The archetype has the deadly combination of being very strong while being very straightforward to play.
Players could keep mono Demacia in mind to give flexibility in building their other two decks.
We saw some players splash the remaining region that was leftover (such as teching in Denys) or choose to just stay with mono since it’s already a tight decklist.
By having the ability to ban a single deck in a best of three, players were better able to shape their lineups to counter particular archetypes.
For example, a player could build their lineup with the expectation of facing Bannerman decks and ban out unfavorable decks to force the matchup.
We can see an example of this as Midrange Ashe decks were a staple answer to Bannerman, especially in the EU bracket.
When formats don’t have bans, the decklists tend to be more general, so it was interesting seeing how players adapted accordingly.
In this format, Ezreal proved to be a solid choice being able to be play with Noxus, Ionia, and Freljord.
Although Nox Ezreal has become the most popular variant, the flexibility of having multiple region combinations made him enticing for many players.
Despite Kinkou Elusives still showing great stats for the meta’s ladder, it wasn’t really a common choice for this tournament. Players may have anticipated counter matchups or chose to prioritize other Ionian builds due to the region limits.
The few players who ran it were PowerOfEvil who ran the standard version and Casanova who ran a variant that swapped Omen Hawk and Iron Elixer for Precious Pet and Brother’s Bond.
Thanks for reading, it’s been great seeing the Legends of Runeterra tournament scene grow and evolve.
Send your support to @MonokumaEsports and other grassroot tournament organizers by following or even joining tournaments to compete.
See you next time!
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