A Brief and Arguable Summary of the ARAM Meta

General Discussion
1

Been playing this game for years, highest rank diamond 3, absent for a long time, recently returned, only play ARAM because dead game. Just want to share some thoughts on the ARAM meta, if there is even one, see if yall agree. Comment if you do disagree.

I saw a post complaining Azmo. He is overrated. Don’t get me wrong, he is good, great even. Unless someone dropped out or trolled, me playing Azmo basically means I have all stats on top. But Azmo is beatable, one good frontline can make that fatso virtually worthless.

The actual op heroes I think are Valla and Naz, I practically have one hundred percent win rates with them. Valla’s W build in ARAM is practically unbeatable late game, and good ARAM games get into the late game quite often. Just wait for the enemy team’s easy cc, press lv20 Strafe, win fight.

Unless the enemy team is full backline mages, which admittedly will happen from time to time in ARAM, Naz’s frog build will bulldoze its way to victory. Just spam frogs on buildings and heroes, literally win before lv20 just because of how fast you push buildings. Pick blood ritual on lv4 though, the other two talents are wrong, not worse, but wrong.

Zuljin is a menace, but from my experience, the enemy team will always get offered a blind if we get a zuljin. I don’t know if this is actually the case, might just be bad luck for me, but I just run into zuljin vs lili or cassia or artanis way too often for my liking, to a point where I think Zuljin is kinda bad… hot take.

If you want infinite dmg… Artanis. This hero is borderline a bug in ARAM, his level one talents single-handledly win games. Late game with five hundred stacks, one twin blade hit drains more than half your health pool, regardless if you are a support or a tank.

Stukov is not as much as he is op but more like he stomps the noobs and is annoying to play against. He is top healer, for sure, but not op op.

Some underrated heroes are:
Deathwing, extraordinarily insane in ARAM, just do the range mode and spam every area dmg skills. Heros countering DW are often awful in ARAM.
Whitemane, hard to play, but insane power; still just a worse anduin though, lol.
Nova, people flame you immediately after you pick Nova, but the gal absolutely demolishes the good heroes in ARAM like kael and liming, just pick the heavy auto attack talent, pick off the mages. Don’t pick triple tap though, unless the map is like real open. The other ult can nuke tower globally, close out many games for me
Zeratul, the cleave is kinda disgusting if your team has to clump up.
Lili, no kidding, Lili is great in ARAM, cloud serpents talents, fun to play as well

Some overrated stuff
Double healers are often bad in Aram. I don’t even know why, I just know the team who picked double healers loses more often than they win; unless their comp is like insane.
Kaelthas, he is situationally insane, but against a comp with a longer-range cannon like Liming, Kael is miserable to play
Hanzo, he is just bad. Ten Hanzo players, maybe three of them are even halfway decent.
Chromie, still good, just not as good as her pick rate.
Medivh, stop picking him unless you know how to play Medivh, pls, even a mediocre Medivh is as useless as a carrot.
DJ, because every lucio player plays like they are leoric. Stop going in front of the team! Pushing someone towards us is not worth you dying!

That is it. Gonna keep playing ARAM until this game croaks.

2

That is hard to believe, not because I doubt your skill, but because knowing how ARAM system works. Practically 100% wr, so at least 85+% winrate? Doubt one can achieve that in ARAM unless they play 5-stack everytime (or with few sample size).

IMO, S tier heroes in ARAM are, Mephisto, Azmo, and Zagara. Valla, Naz, Liming, etc, A tier but not S. Well, Jojo, Thrall could be S as well.

Context required. If Vile Infection is the goal, they have to go Blood Ritual. One practically can’t reach 175 stacks in reasonable time without it in ARAM.

He’s good, but not that good.

I still go proper heal build even after the nerf. I break the meter in ARAM with him. My highest was 400k healing, lost game, but I practically was holding the line, delaying the lost by that much. How can one not go Reactive Ballistospores?

I used to think she sucks as other low end heroes. But she’s surprisingly better than one may think. Still not higher level though, mid or slightly above mid tier at best. TT is bad though, worse in ARAM.

Eh…no. Zeratul sucks in ARAM. Late game heroes, heroes whose strength lies in macro (Illidan, Samuro, etc.) are bad in ARAM. Single target backline dropper heroes as well (like Tracer). Genji is still ok.

Not as bad, but still, compare to top healers, no where near as good. As sub healer/front line, quite good.

It’s quite good enough. If some players pick no proper damage just to go double healers, it’s their end.

Not that I would pick him over other better range, but considering the nature of ARAM, he’s still good with Living Bomb poke. Liming skillshot is not hard to dodge so.

3

I’d say there’s 2 leading meta for aram: volley fire and not

The majority of players/games are inexperienced with the heroes (sub lvl 5) and they’re operating on easy heroes based on hearsay. Players are either mindlessly skirmishing, or lobbing cooldowns and then backing off for the next minion wave. This sort of play favors longer cooldowns and quests; games tend to be longer unless one side gives up because the other has more heroes ‘guaranteed to win’

On the other side, players will more experience may select different compositions or at least different builds and will do unusual stuff than just rotate volley fire.

Azmo stands out since he works in both fields: q can get stacked for long games, or players can go demon/lazer and rush down structures without caring about stacks.

Similar tack with zeebo; zeebo spiders can wreck a player trying to flank, or he can solo push the structures and almost bypass needing healers or tanks cuz summons + self sustain

Zul’jin is excellent at the mode as he has poke/burst, sustain damage, self-sustain and burst mitigation. However, because players expect him to do well, they can fall intro trap builds/play and die too many times trying to force quests and stacks that he ends up not paying off.

Heroes that do well in aram (meta) tend to also do well by having more than one of that hero. multiple azmo provide summons to bypass minion waves; multiple jaina trigger chill for eachother; multiple deckard for cc chains.

Sustain typically determines games, and it’s unfortunate that a lot of players either bypass all sustain options, or everyone focuses so much on it, that they don’t vary their options well enough (eg. stacking healers, but then everyone all build to ‘main heal’ instead of taking damaging and utility builds)

Double healer should work more often than not in aram as poke and skirmishes are constant, so surviving a battle is better than trading. However, most players don’t play as healers enough to know the hero and builds, and they don’t communicate their build so any other picked healer can compensate with talent picks. Had a morales + li li game, and both went ‘main healer’ builds that ended up putting out less healing than the other side due to a lack of damage to push the enemy team back in fights.

4

Hanzo bad in ARAM? LOL… I have disgusting damage with him in every aram game I play and I single handedly win games. His dragonstrike ult is one of the most broken ults in ARAM especially after 20

You have to be really really terrible with Hanzo to have a hard time in aram

5

I think the most OP heroes in the ARAM lategame are Zuljin and Azmodan.

Of course others are good as well, but nobody deals such a high AOE damage than a stacked Zuljin and nobody has such a well mix of damage and waveclear than Azmodan.

It’s even boring to have those heroes dominating ARAM for so long already.

6

I don’t know man. I play at least two ARAM per day, usually more, and I pick Naz or Valla whenever they are offered. Disregarding one or two games where teammates disconnect as soon as the game starts and everybody gives up, I think an 80 percent win rate is definitely not exaggerated. And this is not me boasting about my skills either, I don’t even play Valla in normal game mode, Naz and Valla are just that good in ARAM, in my experience

No context is required. Hot take, even if you go spider build you should go blood ritual, it made your baseline quest finishable with little to no opportunity cost. Unless the game has no healer and regen is just that dire, blood ritual is always correct. It even has a lower skill requirement since you don’t even have to land a skill to regen. In a mirror match, the Naz picking blood ritual wins most if not all of the time, simply because of that late game swing.

Maybe I did overhype him a little… he is not unplayable is what I was trying to get at.

7

have you tried… TWO Zuljins?

8

I’ve played nothing but ARAM for like 4 years now, almost daily. Yea I have no life, but it’s an easy and fast game to get into and out of.

The thing about ARAM is that every hero is viable, some are just very comp dependent (in a team game? wow?).

Illidan can carry, Butcher can carry if he gets his quest, but they both require massive hand holding and coordination in a game mode where you play with random people using random heroes. There’s good picks and then there’s 50/50 picks: Illidan, Whitemane, Butcher, Kerrigan – these all require a comp (both enemy and your own) that can play to their strengths to excel. E.g. you can’t really heal as Whitemane if the whole enemy comp is backline mages.

Nova wrecks hard, but the poke she offers is useless if the rest of the team can’t capitalize on it. nOvA baD??? report nova???

You just have bad luck on Zuljin. He’s an S tier hero, but of course gets countered by multiple blinds easily.

Azmo is tough, but yeah a good dive can take him out easily. Again, if you have the comp for it, he’s not that much of an issue.

Ming is top tier, but if her comp lacks wave clear she has to resort to crappy flank tactics, and usually gets flak for having low hero damage due to the fact that she can’t really clear and do hero damage at the same time.

You’re wrong about Hanzo IMO. Constant long range poke can bring many heroes and comps to their knees. Requires technical skill to hit his skillshots, which might affect him a lot.

I think Double Heal is meta, especially vs single heal comps. Of course if you’re running double heal-double tank-one Tracer, you’re bound to have a bad time.

2 Likes
9

Depends… if the healers in this scenario are uther and Lucio or uther and Kharazhim I pit the fools who have to fight that, add in a decent tank with decent output like say Tyrael with the damage spec and you’ve got a recipe for disaster

10

Yeah kind of weird a guy who is claiming to destroy in ARAM makes a tier list and fails to mention Mephisto. Mephisto is easily one of the best if not the best hero in aram. He melts.

11

Of course it depends, like every single match depends on the matched comps.

12

all I’m saying is the only thing you need to make that work is an enemy comp that dosen’t hard counter tracer just by existing and healers (of which there are many) who have DPS spec’s
Since the major drawback that’s really stopping double support is the PVE element that’s lost an issue that is subdued a great deal in ARAM

13

Didn’t claim to destroy in ARAM, only with two heroes, didn’t make a tier list, and most people suck at meph so I don’t count him.

Technically every hero is viable, but the number of things that need to go right for these two to be useful in ARAM is… startling.

14

while i agree in everythign u said here op, but i have to say mephisto most of the time is even more stronger than azmo, the only problem with meph is cromie or stitches, but besides that consuming souls can lead a 4-5 kills at once, azmodan can wear down the opponent terribly, but can’t do 5 kills in one go (unless the team clump up at low life in one spot)

15

Not sure what game you are playing. Majority of the time someone picks meph they do mega damage If the team gets double meph good luck.

16

Have you tried 3 Garrosh ? They will throw you back to base before you know it.

17

I love a diablo and garrosh wombo. Diablo engage to kick someone into garrosh range who then throws them further.