Gut feelings are good. I find they're a good start, at the very least for finding out what doesn't work.
I tested poppy as a possible jungle or top for the tanky meta because of her low cd aa reseting % max health dealing q and infinite dive potential, turns out her early is too weak. But it gave me a working knowledge that applied to ranked 5s, which resulted in running jungle poppy twice because we used a high mobility early game team to compensate for her need to snowball and weak early game. We won both easily.
You get ahead by testing the fringe, not the center. Everyone will dissect and explain the current meta for you, spend your mental efforts on exploring the future.