User blog comment:MrPervSan/The 'Not-So' Followed Meta/@comment-79.175.118.252-20130219203752/@comment-4928005-20130220052200

It's not that meta is the only thing people understand, it's just the only thing *everybody* understands. You can have some kind of extravagant "all-invis, 5-minute afk" strategy, but when you go into a normal or ranked game trying to run this strategy, randoms don't understand your strategy enough to make the picks or plays it's meant to work with. The standard top - mid - jungle - duo bot comp is a universally understood strategy, and people understand how it works.

There are reasons for each of those roles being that way, in particular. AD carries go with a support to bot lane because they need gold first and foremost, and the support can keep them safe while they farm in a long lane. AP carries take mid because the short lane lets them unload a burst while being safe from other laner's sustained damage and jungle ganks. Top laners solo a long lane because they're tanky and escapable enough to do so. Junglers need early damage and sustain to survive the jungle and gap closing or cc to gank. Champions don't go to a particular lane just because pros say so. They go to their particular role because that's where they excel, and sending them somewhere else makes it more difficult for them to do their job.

People rage about the meta being so common. You don't have to play "by the meta," but it's simply not as strong as meta picks because they don't have the qualities those roles need. On the other hand, "non-meta" may be strong counterpicks. Running two junglers gives you complete control of the enemy jungle, so you can shut down farm-dependent and early game junglers like Lee Sin and Shaco. Double bruiser bot lane follows the same principle, shutting down a potentially threatening ADC. I've personally grown like Leona mid, building Triforce and other tanky AD items - You have a ton of damage and lockdown with your ability rotation and you're tanky enough to survive most mid's combos (Poor, poor Veigars). I only use it in premade 5 games, though, because randoms won't understand what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, or how to play with it.

tl;dr: Stop raging about "META sheep." Meta simply refers to common picks, which are common because they're strong. There's nothing wrong with unusual picks, they may even be better than typical ones, but they do not make you cool or unique.