MOBAholic: The Whats, Hows, and Whys of the Metagame

These days, it seems like everyone's trying to get in on the multiplayer online battle arena (or MOBA) action. Originally popularized by the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (and StarCraft's Aeon of Strife map before that), this team-versus-team real-time strategy subgenre is quite the hot item in PC gaming. In this regular column, GameSpy writer and MOBA junkie Ryan Scott offers up his insight into this ever-growing field of competitive (and largely free-to-play!) multiplayer PC gaming.



If you're getting into MOBAs, you've probably heard a lot about the metagame. Some players hew to it religiously; others roll their eyes at the very mention of the term, as though it's some sort of magical, make-believe leprechaun that others invoke to stifle their creativity or unorthodox play styles. Here's why you should probably be keeping an eye on it.

Wikipedia describes metagaming as "a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action, or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game." That's about right -- in a MOBA, the metagame is why we have things like team compositions, tier lists, and sharply defined roles for each champion. To make a real-world analogy (and I say this without condemning or condoning anyone or anything), it's kinda like the theory of evolution: The evidence is there, but not everybody buys into it.


In the most reductive terms, the metagame is a sort of critical-mass acknowledgement that says "this is the most effective possible method of playing -- and winning -- the game." And while some stubborn players love to futilely ram their heads against brick walls in an effort to "beat" the meta, the time that the real shakeups happen is during world-class competitions. (That goes for any serious competitive game, from StarCraft to Street Fighter).

Now, I'm not out to start some sort of flame war with anti-meta players here -- far from it. What I'd like to do, instead, is discuss what the current meta is, why it's the way it is, and why that works well. And since League of Legends is my MOBA of choice, I'll use that as my example.

I've Got to Admit It's Getting Meta

Let's define the scope here: When I say "meta," what I'm really saying is "team composition and positioning." It gets way, way more granular than that, though; I could probably get into specific champion bans, picks, counterpicks, item synergy, jungle routes, and nitty-gritty team-fight tactics, but that'd take forever and might well shift pretty substantially with the next patch. What I want to talk about are the reasons why it's important to seek specific role synergy and lane division, and why this particular meta has persisted for so long.


The basic, fundamental team composition goes like this: a mage in the mid lane, a tank in the top lane, a roaming jungler, and an attack-damage-carry (henceforth ADC) and a support mage sharing the bottom lane. The reason you rarely see teams deviate from this composition is that everything else has historically proven less effective and less efficient. You have three solo champions who don't have to share experience points (which splits between all nearby allies for every minion kill), and a bottom lane ADC that leeches all available gold. It's an easy split for maximum resources -- and that's the difference between winning and losing. Furthermore, certain champion types are optimal fits for very specific lanes.

Mages in the Middle

Take the good ol' solo mid lane. Mages are the best picks here because they scale better with levels (as opposed to ADCs, who scale better with gold and items), and because it's much harder to gank mid due to the brush configuration. It's not unusual to see two dueling mid-lane mages racing to kill as many minions as possible, without doing much in the way of substantial damage to one another. ADCs are far more vulnerable to early game burst attacks (since their scaling will often flatly lose to a mage in a straight race), and swapping a tank in just means you're likely to wind up in a mid-lane stalemate (at best, since tanks generally don't have competitive damage output that early), while putting an unnecessary burden on your jungler.


The top lane tends to be a bit more of a bloodbath, as tanks are more durable -- and, hence, easier to take risks with during the laning phase. The tradeoff is that it is perhaps the most dangerous lane, thanks to the enemy's roaming jungler. Side lane ganks are much easier (again, due to the brush positioning, relative to the towers), and a top lane solo doesn't have as much backup to bail him out of a sticky situation. Sticking a solo mage or ADC in this lane gives junglers an easy target... and doubling up in the top lane means less XP to go around (and more freedom for the enemy roamer to run unchecked through your own jungle).

Spotting a Jungle-Tunity

And so, the jungler sticks to his route and gets his gold and XP from neutral creeps. This is arguably the trickiest position to play: You need to know the respawn timers, you need to stick to an efficient route (otherwise you'll fall behind in XP), and you need to be a savvy counter-jungler, so that your enemy counterpart stays away from your spawns. The difference between a good jungler and a bad one is how opportunistic they are; spotting and capitalizing on good gank situations (when an enemy has pushed out too far in one of the lanes) has a serious impact on the game. Without someone in the jungle, you forego a whole slew of tactical advantages.


The primary reason for a dual bottom lane (as opposed to doubling up elsewhere) is to control the dragon spawn. It's easier to capitalize on -- or defend, if needed -- with two champions (plus your jungler). The ADC's job is to last-hit every minion he possibly can (this is one of the primary skill differentiators for this position), and the support's job is to sustain the lane and harass enemies, so that the ADC can rack up last-hits (and, hence, gold for those sweet items that he depends on).

Tag Team

This can be a pretty brutal kill lane, depending on the combo -- an aggressive support champion like Blitzcrank can earn the duo a lot of early kills, and a tanky combo like Jarvan IV and Leona synergizes ruthlessly well. The support position is probably the one that demands the most pre-game coordination; you want to pick a support champion that synergizes with your ADC, and make sure to coordinate with your jungler in terms of who buys what aura items (a lot of junglers like to pick up Aegis of the Legion fairly early, for instance). Support doesn't pair as well with tanks (who are plenty durable on their own) or mages (since they don't need the guaranteed gold nearly as much as the ADC), so this is the natural two-man lane. Just prepare to stay poor... and take gold-fueling masteries, runes, and items to compensate.

In a way, this meta is a light form of nuclear deterrence: Everybody does it, so if you aren't countering it with equivalent, "proper" play, you're putting your team at risk. The lanes and positions break down in the way they do because that's the most effective known way to play; if you scoff at that (and the logic I've put forth), I've got a killer solo mid Taric strategy to sell you on.


Ryan Scott managed GameSpy's day-to-day editorial operations, until a bout of temporary insanity took him away. Nowadays -- when he's not yelling at someone for forgetting to call mid lane MIA, that is -- you can listen to his weekly ramblings on various podcasts over at Geekbox.net. And if you've never given these MOBA thingamajiggers a try, he thinks League of Legends is an excellent place to start.