Best Decks for LoR Ladder: 10/26/21 Power Rankings

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Hello everyone and welcome to Meta Monday!

Patch 2.18 dropped last week and brought a new season with it, which means rank reset and new rank grind!

Today we’re going to go over the top 8 best-performing decks in Platinum-Masters rank. We’ll see which decks got an early headstart in dominating the meta, and I’ll give you a deck that I personally think could do really well on the ladder right now.

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• 65% winrate*

The decklist with the highest win rate straight out the gates is the good ole Poppy Zed Elusive Rally.

To nobody’s surprise, an aggro deck is (once again) performing best during the first week of a new season. Aggro decks are extremely good at punishing lower-tier decks, and misplays from high-tier decks, making aggro the perfect choice to beat all of the players trying to have fun and experiment with the new patch.

And no aggro deck punishes harder than Elusives. Elusive has been a difficult keyword to deal with since the beginning of LoR’s existence, and it’s still haunting the ladder and tournaments to this day.

But what makes this elusive deck so special is Poppy. Poppy is an insane card that helps cover the downside that most Elusive cards struggle with: low HP. Every Elusive in this list (with the exception of Young Witch) only has 1HP, meaning the cost to playing these unblockable units is that they’re meant to be easily killed.

However, when you pair these small Elusive units with cards that help keep them alive – like Ranger’s Resolve, Sharpsight, Twin Disciplines, and Poppy – all of a sudden you have a very scary deck that can be hard to deal with.

*All data used in the article is from Mobalytics, Plat+ rank

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• 62% winrate

The boogeyman is still here. Even after getting double-nerfed (Draven going to 2HP and Twinblade Revenant losing Challenger) Draven Sion is still one of the most dominant decks in the meta.

And the best performing current decklist for Draven Sion still runs both three Dravens and three Lost Souls.

With Lost Soul‘s Twinblade Revenant losing Challenger, the card became a hot topic for many top competitive players: is Lost Soul even playable? Do we still run three of them in every Draven Sion deck? Was giving Fearsome to Revenant a buff?

While we don’t know the answers to all of these questions quite yet, what we do know is, as of right now, Draven Sion doesn’t give a damn about nerfs.

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• 62% winrate

The number three slot goes to Ping City (Twisted Fate Gangplank Bandle City) – another powerhouse deck that remains consistent.

Ping City was a popular deck for ladder last season with its main weakness being the Zoe Nami matchup.

However, it appears that the nerfs to Sparklefly were enough to make Zoe Nami disappear for now, giving Ping City the time of its life on the ladder! With very few counters, an aggressive version of Ping City can now wreak havoc in this meta.

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• 59% winrate

As I mentioned earlier, aggro decks tend to do well early in the seasons, so of course, there’s no doubt that the king of aggro from last season is going to be included.

Ziggs Poppy Burn also got hit with a double nerf like Draven Sion, and just like that deck, Ziggs Poppy Burn is still chugging along absolutely crushing the ladder.

Ziggs Poppy Burn is a close relation to the old Miss Fortune Gangplank Pirate deck, meaning their gameplans are the same: swarm the board early, then end the game with over-the-top burn damage.

Tenor of Terror used to be an important part of this gameplan. But, since it got nerfed, decklists have moved to a full set of three Lecturing Yordles, which, let’s be honest, is a broken unit.

With the addition of Lecturing Yordle, Ziggs Poppy Burn is still doing amazing work and is stomping on every player trying to have fun.

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• 58% winrate

A gambler’s favorite deck. Lurk has been on my personal radar for a few weeks now – even before the new patch and season started. I believed Lurk was a good enough deck to risk my Seasonal run with it in my lineup.

The catch is the word “risk” because that’s what you do with your LP every time you play lurk. On average, you will have more games with Lurk that feel great than games that feel completely lost due to bad RNG.

The fact that Lurk consistently beats Dragons made the deck climb quickly since many people were testing out the new Dragon decks.

At the end of the day, Lurk is a deck for very specific people. The people that love the adrenaline rush of not knowing whether or not they’re going to have a 1-mana 3/1 on turn 1 or a 1-mana 1/1 on turn 3. There’s only one rule when you play Lurk that you have to accept before loading up the deck for ladder: You live by the Lurk. You die by the Lurk.

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• 57.5% winrate

Out of all of the decks I expected to do well on opening week, Nox Tree was not one I was imagining to see on this list.

Nox Tree is probably going to be strong in a midrange meta against decks like Draven Sion and Dragons. But, due to Nox Tree’s weakness against aggro decks (like Poppy Zed Elusives, Ping City, and Ziggs Poppy Burn), I assumed Nox Tree was going to lose more games than it won.

But stats don’t lie, and the deck is kicking ass and taking LP. If you enjoy Nox Tree, this might just be the meta for you. (Call to Action?)

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• 56% winrate

Finally, we get to the new deck on the block! Dragons got handed a bunch of buffs this patch and were therefore destined to be played and to do well.

If Dragons can’t perform well after being handed all of these buffs on a silver platter, the whole archetype might not be worth your shards and wildcards. But lucky for all of you Dragon lovers and roleplayers, the deck is amazing!

It’s the most played deck on ladder, and it’s refreshing to see an old archetype be revitalized and re-amped so it can be viable in a new meta. I’m really glad Riot showed some love to an old deck type and didn’t just let it die out in a corner.

I hope to see more love shared with other old deck archetypes that have become obsolete with LOR’s power creep or that have just fallen off in popularity.

If the unrefined Dragon lists having a 56% winrate is an indication of anything, it’s that once these lists start to get refined and players start to figure out how to play all of the new matchups with Dragons, the deck will easily be Tier 1.

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• 56% winrate

To end the list for the new season’s opening week, we have the anti-midrange midrange deck: Plunder.

The Plunder archetype makes perfect sense in this list of best decks. It excels at beating other midrange decks with the help of cards like Sejuani, being able to Frostbite all of your enemy units, and Monster Harpoon, being an insane 3-mana-deal-5 removal spell.

With Dragons on the rise and Draven Sion not going anywhere, Plunder will definitely have a spot in this meta as a solid Tier-2 anti-meta deck.

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Closing Words

Those are the top 8 performing decks on ladder for the first week of Patch 2.18. But, before I end this Meta Monday, I like to recommend a deck that I personally think will do well in this current meta: Viego Thresh Ionia.

Viego is a champion that will single-handedly beat decks like Dragons, Plunder, and Draven Sion with his ability to steal large followers and kill large champions. Paired with tools from Ionia like Concussive Palm, Nopeify!, and Spirit’s Refuge, Viego Thresh has the tools to beat any deck in the game.

Against aggro, it can win with cards like Vile Feast and the Darkwater Scourge + Death Mark combo. Against control, the deck can out-grind with Invasive Hydravine and Deny. Against midrange, it has all sorts of tools at its disposal, like combat tricks, infinite Ephemeral blockers, and Viego level-up, which is just game-ending.

That wraps up this week’s Meta Monday with Moe. Leave a reply with what deck you’ve had success with or a deck you’ve had a lot of fun with so far this season and make sure to check back next Monday to stay updated with what’s happening in the meta.