Best Decks for LoR Ladder: Patch 2.21 Post-Hotfix Power Rankings by eMOEtional

---

Last week Riot threw everyone for a loop and sent out an emergency patch nerfing Poppy and Kennen Ezreal.

With that, devs managed to do two things: 1) restore the faith of the community in the balance team; 2) create one of the best (if not THE best) metas we’ve ever had.

We’ve seen multiple new decks pop up and take Rank 1 on ladder over the last week, and in this article, I’m going to give you the top 8 decks to climb with and get the rank you’re aiming for!

---

TF Nami was created by Drisoth, as a deck that tries to just “play good cards”. After quickly using the deck to hit Rank 1, Drisoth posted his list to Twitter, and all hell broke loose.

This TF Nami deck has taken over ladder, becoming the most played archetype in the meta while holding an amazing 60% win rate. At first, this list might feel a tad difficult to pilot, but the idea of it is to be flexible and play out whatever gameplan you’re given by your cards.

At the start, try to level up Nami – but if you have a Curious Shellfolk and multiple Pranks or Trinket Trades, try to be more flexible and shift towards a value-oriented long-game strategy.

If you’re given a hand with multiple Fleet Admiral Shelly and some other Elusives, try to pivot into a quick “buff my entire board a couple times and win with Elusive units” plan.

TF Nami has many different win cons and play patterns, and with a little bit of practice, this deck will absolutely farm LP for you.

---

Mono Pantheon is currently the highest win rate deck on Masters ladder sitting at a 62% win rate.

While it is still not the most played deck, it’s certainly been picking up steam over the last couple of days since RubinZoo posted a screenshot of himself hitting Rank 1 on NA ladder with an insane 75.5% win rate over a 50 game run.

Mono Pantheon is a much more “all-in” style of deck as compared to other Pantheon variants. This list plays only 3 units that you want to buff: Saga Seeker, Wounded Whiteflame, and, of course, Pantheon.

In an agressive meta where we’re seeing a lot less Minimorphs, these “all-in” style decks where the goal is to just give all of your focus to one main win condition can become quite dominating and extremely polarizing.

I say – spam this deck while you can, before the fun police start busting out the Minimorphs again.

---

While we’re on the topic of decks that want to go all-in on a single unit for their win condition, here’s Lee Sin, whom I’m putting on the list this week at #3.

Since Lee Sin gets to beat most aggro decks thanks to playing 6 effective copies of Eye of the Dragon in the deck, and because there is very little-to-no Minimorph in the meta, Lee Sin is in a great spot for ladder.

There isn’t too much to say about Lee since the deck has been around for over a year now, but yeah, just play Lee, give Lee Overwhelm, collect your 15-25 LP and go again. Do this for a few games and you’ll be climbing ladder in no time.

---

Halfway through the list and I’m putting the deck with the 2nd highest win rate in the game right now – Kennen Ahri Demacia.

This version of Kennen Ahri, splashing 1 Golden Aegis, was popularized by Gamebreak0r, who is showing off a 73% win rate with this deck to hit Rank 1 on the EU ladder a couple days ago.

With the meta slowing down a bit thanks to Poppy and Kennen Ez letting you do things past turn 5, the midrangey style decks get to finally flourish, and nothing says midrange more than Sai’nen Thousand-Tailed.

Thousand-Tailed is a great way to constantly refill your hand while buffing your Elusive units over and over until you eventually kill your opponent with them, or simply outgrind them through card advantage.

Even with the Kinkou Wayfinder nerf, this Kennen Ahri list still uses it as a solid value drop to pull out Kennen (to start Mark of the Storm chain) and Dancing Droplet (to start drawing cards).

Once you get your Elusive units in play, you just slam down a Thousand-Tailed or a Golden Aegis, and the game will be over in no time.

---

With Poppy nerfed into the ground and Yordle Explorer going down with her, a lot of players just assume Yordle Aggro is out of the picture and the meta started featuring some super-greedy decks.

Fizz Lulu Yordle in Arms is the perfect answer to punish all of the greedy players and proves that aggro is still a force to be reckoned with.

This deck’s plan is to close out the game out with a full buffed board – and it never runs out of units thanks to the value cards like Boom Baboon, Loping Telescope, and Bandle City Mayor.

Your goal is to use your units to aggressively trade with your opponent’s units, removing as many of your opponent’s blockers as possible. Then you just constantly refill the board because you’re in Bandle City and you can do broken things like that. After you’ve finally run your opponent out of blockers, or you have enough Elusive units in play, slam down a Yordle in Arms and rake in your LP.

---

Bandle Tree is by no means a new archetype, but the deck definitely powered up with the latest card expansion.

Grumbleslug and Kennen were exactly what Bandle Tree decks needed in order to now main-deck good cards from all 10 regions, without having to rely on Manifesting.

On top of that, Bandle Tree remains as really the only deck that can still play Poppy and make her seem pretty good. Every single unit in Bandle Tree has 2 or less power except for Bomber Twins. Poppy is still really good in this specific deck and a “kill on sight” threat – because we all know what happens when you let a Poppy attack.

This is also one of the few decks in the meta that actually wants to play Minimorph, so it has a pretty good matchup into the “all-in” style decks mentioned above.

---

Another week where I put Scouts on my list because of how well-positioned the deck is. I actually used Scouts to hit Diamond with an 80% win rate a few days ago just to prove that.

Look at all of the decks that people are playing: TF Nami, Lee Sin, Mono Pantheon, Kennen Ahri. All of these have something in common. They all rely on playing a bunch of spells.

The amount of games Stony Suppressor will single-handedly win you is way more than you would think.

Another thing all of those decks I just listed have in common is that they run little-to-no removal spells. So once you play a Stony Suppressor, it’s staying in play until the game is over.

I’ll keep putting Scouts on this list until the meta shifts away from all of these spell-based decks.

---

To finish out this week’s list, my wild card deck of the week is Mistwraith Fearsomes.

Fearsome is a really strong keyword in the meta right now since a majority of the popular decks actually play few-to-sometimes-literally-zero Fearsome blockers in their deck.

Some of the popular decks also just like to pass on the first few turns of the game, and that can allow this aggro Fearsome deck to have too much of a headstart and run away with the game.

There are a couple of different regions you can splash for your 2nd region. I’m going with Noxus because I love having a turn 1 play in Precious Pet, and I love having the 2 Noxian Fervors for that extra bit of over-the-top burn.

Some other region splash possibilities are Ionia (for Recall cards like God-Willow Seedling), Demacia (for Rallies and Sharpsight), and PnZ (for Iterative improvement and burn spells like either Mystic Shot or Get Excited!).

---

Closing Words

Overall with the emergency patch from Riot, we are currently in the most healthy meta we’ve had in a very long time. This week’s question is how do you guys feel about the emergency patch Riot did?

Should Riot do emergency patches more often, or should there just be more scheduled patches? Let me know in the comments below! 

With multiple decks reaching Rank 1 and with 7 of the top 8 decks on NA ladder being different decks, the meta is ever changing and adapting, and if you want to make sure you’re up to date on what I believe is going to be powerful on ladder for the upcoming week, make sure to come back next week and read my fresh LoR Ladder Power Rankings!