What makes Senna fail in the meta that relies on picking shooters in a support role?
The beginning of the current League of Legends season has been quite eventful, especially when it comes to the professional scene. There have been a lot of innovative picks in e-sports, especially when it comes to the support role. It’s all about picking shooters who replace the traditional support.
The trend of experimenting with support started some time ago, and it is said that its originator was Beryl, a player from the DRX team that won the 2022 World Championship. The Korean took a risk and chose Heimerdinger in the support role. Over time, players slowly began to understand what was behind such an unconventional pick. They began to experiment with other heroes, and as a result, well-known ADCs became supports – first it was Ashe, and then Caitlyn and Kalista in LCK.
In League of Legends, there is one character who from the very beginning was designed and released as a shooter who is also a support. The character in question, of course, is Senna. Despite this, few people include her in the new meta. Why?
Senna’s situation in League of Legends
Senna is a well-liked heroine who has had many fans since the day she was released. Despite the fact that she is a shooter in her own right, who can effectively support the rest of the team, she is not counted in the current uncommon meta.
Many players note that her poor lane phase is to blame when comparing her to Caitlyn or Ashe. The current meta of double ADCs on the professional scene has two main directions: choosing a scaling ADC with an enchanter at her side or picking two shooters who are very strong (and also annoying) in the early game. All of this is done in order to crush enemies early in the game. An example of this is Varus and Ashe, who provide plowing enemies at very long range.
Despite the fact that Senna is a distance hero, she does not meet the aforementioned requirements in the first minutes of the match. What follows is that the team is not assured of dominance on the line, hence the players opt for other tactics.
Another reason is that the heroine doesn’t benefit as much from her attack speed as other champions do. Senna was designed to scale in the late game thanks to her passive, which provides her with extra damage, increased critical hit chance, and attack range. However, for this to make sense, the character needs to collect a lot of fog, which is impossible in the first few minutes of the game.
When you look through the meta for ADCs on supports, you’ll notice that a lot of e-sports players rely on attack speed to be able to damage their opponent faster and fit in more auto attacks during exchanges. The Hail of Blades rune comes in handy here, which simply doesn’t work in Senna’s case.
As mentioned above, the meta for the two ADCs offers a lot of damage and the ability to heavily attack enemies but also gives you control over the minion wave. Enemies may not be able to keep up with creature clearing and thus respond to pushback. ADCs such as Ashe or Caitlyn can easily kill a whole group of minions. Unfortunately, Senna doesn’t have such power and it takes her longer to clean the line.
All these reasons make Senna not very popular in an experimental meta with two shooters in the lower lane.