LTL Adv Team Comps

1 | Learn the League

Team Compositions & Coordinated Strategy Let’s talk about team comps and coordinated team strategies, taking all of the principles we’ve talked about up to this point into consideration (I’d recommend you familiarize yourself with the “Playing to Win” section if you haven’t already). There’s a lot of crossover in the following team comps, meaning you can build to take in aspects of multiple comps and use their strengths to your advantage while potentially covering some of their weaknesses.

Effective Team Compositions The following are known, effective team compositions. There’s a companion video for this which provides specific examples (several from major tournaments), so make sure you don’t miss out on that. Following this section I’ll break down some of the elements that you can use to help create an effective team.

Strategic, Flexible Early Laning The most common playstyle in solo and duo queue involves running a heavy fighter at top lane, an ability power mage at mid lane, and a support and physical damage carry at bottom lane. As we’ve covered in this book, the idea behind this weighting is it gives teams more dragon control while giving the ability power mage a safety and power advantage.

However, in coordinated team games this is becoming much rarer to see, because this is not always the best way to take early objectives. I mention early lane swapping earlier in the Playing to Win section, so if you missed it, go back and read it for a bullet point list of when and why it’s a good idea (and when it’s not).

One thing to keep in mind is how well your lanes will allow you to control your own jungle buffs and help deny your opponents. There are two attributes to this:

1. Can your champion physically block the enemy mid lane from using the most direct path to defend their own jungler? (This implies positioning strength as well as the ability to bully them off the path)

2. Can your champion provide a major benefit to quickly invading a major buff in the enemy jungle?

A champion like Blitzcrank fits both of these roles fairly well, and works well as a duo lane partner. But plenty of other champions performing other roles may work well for this as well.


Dragon control is a very real thing. Even at the pro tournament level, pushing an early top can backfire if the enemy team immediately uses your positioning to take out Dragon. Usually taking a tower out soon enough, and while the enemy team is still attempting to defend it, can negate this risk. However, map mobility in the form of teleport and champion abilities may also be helpful for this. Another thing to keep in mind is that a 2v1 top lane may necessitate the jungler camping the lane for the team with only one defender, which can actually help control the flow of engagements throughout the map.

In most situations, a tower takedown in your lane offers a good opportunity to fall back, recall, and purchase new items. From there, you can go to wherever you’re pushing or defending next. However, think about when it may be a good idea to simply run across the map to quickly get to another objective and help take it. In the second week of Season 3 Summer Split, Counter Logic Gaming managed to break Cloud 9’s unbroken winning streak in part by taking Dragon early on; this maneuver happened when Cloud 9 had just taken top tower and began recalling to base, while Janna and Elise instead moved across the map for Dragon.

Some very survivable champions, such as Singed, Shen, Renekton, and Nasus, are able to do well in a 2v1 lane by playing defensively at their tower. However, a jungler can help stop aggression by visibly camping in the lane similar to an additional laner. If you simply need to buy time while your duo pair takes another tower, this can be an effective way to tipping that balance towards your team.

Speaking of champions who can survive solo lanes, another team composition designed around flexible laning includes multiple support champions (such as Janna and Sona). The idea behind these picks is not so much that they can hold the tower (though ideally they can delay a takedown), but that they can support other players on the team who enter the lane to help quickly push objectives. This setup allows and requires strong damage dealers to move fluidly around the map, and allows for some interesting team comps (such as jungle Ezreal).

AOE Disables/Damage

When a team has at least one very strong AOE disabler, such as Galio, Amumu, or Morgana, they can line up devastating combos for additional AOE damage from other teammates. Watch out for a team that contains one of these disables, along with any other damaging ultimate (such as Miss Fortune's Bullet Time), as they can very quickly knock out an enemy team even if they're behind.

AOE teams only work if a team is grouped up tightly enough that multiple important targets can be hit at once. To counter these teams, make every effort to keep your most important teammates away from each other and from other teammates, but close enough that they can immediately engage after the AOE team has initiated a fight. The jungle is a death trap when going against AOE teams, as the tighter corridors can sometimes make it virtually impossible to avoid a strong ability combo.


If you have teammates who can survive an initial round of burst from the AOE champions, having them stay near each other can draw attention to them, allowing for effective counterplay once the initial volley of abilities have been used. Another good counter is the use of champions such as Janna, Alistar, and other disablers to lock down these champions as they try to initiate fights.

Finally, using split pushing (covered later) and other multi-faceted approaches that require their team to split apart to deal with your team can very effectively counter teams that require their ability combo to win fights.

Keep cooldowns in mind! Many of the more powerful ultimates have very long cooldowns, and it can buy you at least a couple minutes to engage without fear of them. If you see an ultimate mis-used, or if you recover from a bad fight quickly enough, take advantage of it by taking an objective or forcing them into an unfavorable fight.

Getting a good balance of AOE in your team to pick up at least some of the benefits of this team comp is a good idea in most match-ups.

Early Victory (Bruisers and/or Assassins) When a team is disproportionately comprised of either assassins (including casters like LeBlanc) or bruisers (tanky DPS with disables), this usually points to a strategy of winning the game early on. These champions excel in the early game, potentially netting several early kills in each lane and gaining early towers. In Season 3, Bruiser/Assassin teams have shown themselves to be very strong at early tower dives, allowing virtually unavoidable ganks in each lane unless the lane has considerable advance warning.

However, this is a strategy that relies on snowballing an unusually strong advantage over the other team early, ideally leading to a team that will either surrender or stop trying as hard to win.

Countering these teams relies on playing it unusually safe and farming gold. You want a strong marksman and/or mage coming out of the early and mid game -- damage in League of Legends is designed so that it will always outpace survivability, given time and smart gold investments. Non-carry champions should focus on surviving the initial burst from these champions to protect the carries.

Balanced team compositions will usually win over heavy assassin or bruiser team compositions once the game reaches late game.

Double Assassins Double assassin teams pose a unique threat due to their ability to snowball through a teamfight, especially when at least one of them can reset some or all of their abilities with a kill or assast (Katarina,


Kha’zix, Akali). For what it’s worth, this also goes for Master Yi and Tristana if they’re doing extremely well.

Double Assassin comps rely entirely on singling out a single vulnerable player and destroying them, then either falling back or moving on to the next target. This is especially brutal against teams who have multiple squishy champions, and is capable of turning around games even when the other team is doing fantastically well. If you’re playing a double assassin team, it’s worth bringing in players with strong long-range harassment (poke) to get people low enoughto be easily burst down by the assassins. On top of this, at least one hard crowd control is helpful for easily knocking out the first victim.

How do you counter this? At champion select, picking champions who are very bulky or who can survive through death (Anivia, Zac, Zilean, etc.) work provided they mesh with your team comp. In game, vulnerable members should absolutely strive to build a Guardian Angel as their fourth item. Nothing kills an assassin’s ability to teamfight like having to wait in the middle of a team for a core target to revive. And if they’re relying on ability resets, they won’t get them until the target is actually dead, not simply put into a state of revival.

Beyond this, you need to worry about the individual survivability of your team. If you’re playing as a team, your goal should be to build enough effective health to survive the burst long enough for crowd controls or disengage to come into effect.

When you’re playing without a full team, it may not be possible to convince players that they need more survivability. That’s where group survivability items such as Aegis of the Legion and Locket of the Iron Solari come in.

And when all else fails, do everything you can to keep more vulnerable players out of the fight until the assassins have already engaged.

Pushers Teams with very strong pushers such as Master Yi, Sivir, or Tristana, may look for opportunities to break away from their team to push lanes and structures around the map.

Ideally at least someone on your team has teleport or can otherwise immediately respond when a structure is being pushed. In normal circumstances, this will usually cause the pushing player to burn important cooldowns to escape, and may potentially net a kill for your team.

It may seem contradictory, but one of the best ways to counter pushers is to push down a lane hard as a team while your own lane is getting pushed. Unless the other team's pushers are significantly ahead of your own, this should eventually force them to back off the lane in order to defend.


If you do this, you may be met with a team fight. To take advantage of their teammate’s absence and keep the pressure on them, you will most likely need to engage in a fight with their team immediately (while they're down a player).

Over-The-Wall Mobility Teams which have mobility that allows them to go over walls as a group are very effective at surprise engagements and escapes. Additionally, these teams are capable of entering both the Dragon and Baron pits without being seen in the river. In two recent tournament games, teams with this make-up have been able to unexpectedly take Baron Nashor without the enemy team even knowing they were present.

One of the best additions for this team type is Thresh, due to his ability to pull himself over a wall, then drop a lantern that can pull an ally in with him. With Thresh, at least one pick can be taken that doesn’t have strong mobility. On top of this, extremely mobile champions such as Lee Sin are ideal picks. Less-than-ideal picks are champions whose mobility relies on ultimates, such as Ahri and Malphite.

The strength of these teams is overlooked, and in my opinion, they are one of the most powerful team compositions available today. Notably, Korean teams are extraordinarily good at using this type of team to their advantage and they were able to dominate the Chinese All Star team with this approach.

The analogy I used when watching the Korean team swarm over the Chinese team at the Shanghai All Star match was this: The all-mobility Korean team was akin to modern drone warfare, whereas many other strategies are akin to battleship warfare. Mobility teams expose themselves to very little risk and don’t rely on massive teamfights to pull out a victory – by slowly breaking down their opponents and split pushing, they can completely overwhelm their opponents.

How do you counter this team comp?

First, you can’t afford to lose the early game, at least not by much, as mobile champions in the hands of good players can quickly destroy vulnerable players. This is more difficult than it sounds, since the kind of mobility that can put you over a wall also gives you huge gank potential in avoiding wards.

Second, the more targeted crowd controls you have, the better, as you will need to lock down your opponents to kill them. Finally, you can counter it directly with your own mobility.

Third, you can use a “Protect the Kog’maw” comp, which we’re covering next.

Protect the Kog’maw “Protect the Kog’maw” is a strategy that relies on building an entire team around a single champion. The name was popularized with a Dignitas strategy that involved taking four supports to survive Counter


Logic Gaming’s burst damage and prevent Kog’maw from being killed. Because of Kog’maw’s extreme ranged damage, this comp wound up working well.

More broadly, the strategy does not require Kog’maw, nor does it require four healers. The best protection comps will have one champion who is potentially devastating at a long range, both to champions and to towers, which generally means Kog’maw, Tristana, and to a lesser degree, Caitlyn, will work well. Other champions can fit this role fine, though the emphasis on tower takedowns is what enables this kind of team to beat out high mobility teams.

There are two things this team comp should accomplish. First, to the degree possible, they need to enable the damage dealing champion(s) to get as much gold as possible in the early game. This happens to be when these champions are most vulnerable to harassment and ganks. Second, they need to create the equivalent of a turtle shell around the champion when teamfights are occurring.

Again looking to Counter Logic Gaming’s victory over the previously-undefeated Cloud 9, CLG ran a Tristana who soaked up an enormous amount of gold by farming and split pushing. Cloud 9 was running Lee Sin, who wound up being completely incapable of initiating any fights effectively due to CLG’s crowd controls and Tristana’s ability to jump away. Because of Tristana’s range and the team’s focus on letting her gain as much gold as possible, CLG was virtually unstoppable as they pushed towers.

Global & Long Range Map Mobility Abilities that allow a champion to travel across the map (Shen) or large areas of the map (Twisted Fate, Nocturne, Pantheon) have a very real impact on how each lane must play. Other champions with strong map mobility (ex. Kassadin) or extreme-range dashes (ex. Zac, Lissandra) can also fall into this category without very strong ward vision and map awareness.

The idea of global presence is that you can react quickly to teamfights, initiate unexpectedly, push nearby lanes while still being ready to help teammates, and in some cases, escape otherwise-unavoidable deaths. If you’ve played League even a bit at this point, this is almost certainly something you’ve already come across.

Aside from playing safely and making sure you don’t overextend unless you can handle a full teamfight, there are three more direct ways to handle this kind of mobility:

1. Focus early and mid game pressure on the champions with the long range mobility. Shen may be able to move across the entire map to add himself to any teamfight, but it doesn’t do him any good if he’s the one being ganked.

2. Stay grouped as a team and force objectives to prevent split pushing. This is best done if you have a strong pushing team.

3. Global ultimates have fairly long cooldowns. As soon as one has been used, immediately apply pressure where they aren’t (ex. pushing mid tower after Twisted Fate has just used his ultimate to gank bottom).


There’s another great way to counter global ultimates – picking a champion that hard counters them and taking the Teleport summoner spell. Either kill them in lane or in the jungle, or follow them to whatever fight they go to with Teleport. Here are some quick examples, though it’s certainly not an exhaustive list:

• Twisted Fate is countered by Fizz, Diana, and Ahri. Because Fizz can become untargetable and completely avoid a gold card, he is one of the strongest counters.

• Nocturne is countered in the jungle by strong duelists such as Olaf, Udyr, and Shyvana, or in lane by beefy champions such as Nasus.

• Shen is countered by generally strong solo laners such as Jayce, Teemo, Kayle, and Elise. In addition to this, high sustain champions such as Yorick, Warwick, and Vladimir also do well.

• Pantheon is weak to very bulky champions, particularly those with sustain, innate damage reduction or survivability, or easy interrupts. Yorick, Udyr, Malphite, Cho’gath, and coincidentally, Shen, all work for this.

One more thing to keep in mind: Shen is particularly vulnerable to being interrupted while channeling his ultimate. Several tournament teamfights have turned because Shen was interrupted, preventing him from joining his team when his allies were relying on him. A near-instant crowd control that can be used from a range, such as Malphite’s ultimate, works for this.

Poking vs. Initiating Teams with strong, long-range poke abilities, such as Kogmaw's Living Artillery or Xerath's Arcanopulse, excel at saturating an enemy team with damage prior to an engagement. Teams with strong initiation abilities, such as Hecarim's Onslaught of Shadows, excel at getting full fights started.

Poke and initiation both counter each other. If a team can very effectively poke another team, initiating a fight becomes increasingly less desirable as the fight is more likely to lose. However, if a team can very effectively initiate an enemy team that is trying to poke, the entire advantage of poking is removed.

The effectiveness of poke is based on the range of the poke abilities and the effectiveness of team crowd controls and escapes that can be used to limit incoming initiates (Janna and Lulu are excellent at providing all three to their teams). As a rule, League of Legends has longer distance initiation abilities than poke abilities. For example, Nocturne and Pantheon can jump into fights over large areas of the map, and Gangplank can drop down a Cannon Barrage to slow opponents while allies move in. Additionally, some champions have very strong gap closers that allow them to quickly break into fights against opponents at a distance.

While there tends to be better initiation potential than poke potential in the League, this is no guarantee that your team actually has a strong initiator against enemy poke, particular in Blind Pick matches. In these cases you will need to look at effective counterwarding and flanking to get in position and force fights.


As a related note, some poke is fairly easy to heal through. Unless an Ezreal is particularly fed, for instance, his sustained poke isn’t terribly effective if the enemy team has a Sona healing everyone back some or all of the missing health. The same goes for champions with shields, such as Malphite, who can brush off extended poke. Though not necessary, it helps for poke comps to carry some burst (such as Jayce’s Shock Blast).

On the flip side, poke becomes brutally dangerous with a level and kills lead. The siege potential for a poke team that is ahead is enormous; for example, if a Nidalee spear is knocking out 60% of an opponent’s health and forcing them back to the summoner platform, that spear alone has knocked one player out of any potential engagement. This is particularly brutal if front line champions responsible for initiating or peeling are the ones being knocked out.

In these situations you may lose the game if you constantly let yourself get harassed, and you may not win a teamfight, but engaging in a teamfight or baiting one under your tower (or theirs) is often your strongest chance for a comeback.

Double Hooks Like double assassin teams, double hook teams are rare and specialized at control and initiates. Specifically, double hook teams contain at least two of the three champions that can hook onto a player and pull them towards their team, meaning Blitzcrank, Nautilus, or Thresh. I’m not including Darius or Diana as their pull-in abilities are not limited to a single target (counter this by keeping your distance, as they have short ranges).

These teams are very strong at pulling an opponent out and locking them down (often with a follow-up hook), but they are fairly easily stopped in teamfights by using bulky champions (such as Amumu, Sejuani, or Alistar) as a front line. Having a survivable champion physically block the path of possible incoming hooks can sometimes not only cause them to hook a player who can survive their burst, but can also allow the hooked champion to open up with their own crowd controls more easily.

Of course, you aren’t limited to blocking with tanks. Simply picking champions who excel at a close range, such as Karthus and Diana, limits the good options for who they can pull in during a teamfight. Highly mobile champions such as Ezreal also tend to be fine around hook teams as they can more easily dodge the hooks and, even if they’re caught, they may have a great chance of still slipping back out.

Still, these are strong team comps when you’re able to catch people out, and there’s a good deal of strategy to flanking out of vision for clean shots.

Disengagement Initiation stops poke. Even without initiation, the effects of poke can be mitigated by high sustain teams that can heal or shield incoming damage.


So what stops initiation? In other words, if that Malphite, Amumu, or Galio get into your team, how do you get them back out? There are a few champions who excel at allowing their teams to disengage even after an initiation.

Janna is arguably the strongest disengage champion in the League due to her ultimate. When timed well, she can knock opponents completely out of a fight while causing them to waste their initiation abilities. On top of this, her entire kit is fairly strong for a poke team, so she’s an ideal all-around pick.

Zyra is another strong disengage champion, again largely due to her ultimate (though, like Janna, she has a line-skillshot crowd control that also helps). When your team is falling back, dropping this ultimate can prevent opponents from being able to travel over a very large area without being delayed by the knockup.

As far as top tier disengagement, Gragas and Nami also fall into this category for their own ultimates.

Other champions do well in this role, though they tend to be less capable of stopping full team pushes. Jayce can double as strong poke and decent disengage with his knockback and his acceleration gate. Leona, Ashe, and Varus can potentially stop incoming players. There’s also a large group of champions with very strong slows or area crowd controls (Karthus, Anivia, Karthus, etc.) that can control fights as a team falls back.

How do you counter disengagement? There are a few specific options that work well:

• Against Janna or other displacement champions, Zed offers a very strong counter due to his ultimate placing a shadow clone he can port right back to after the disengage occurs.

• Against strong slows, Evelynn’s high speed and her ability to remove slows allows her to get back onto a target quickly. Both Master Yi and Olaf fall in this category as well, though the lack of stealth makes it a little easier to quickly land hard crowd controls.

• Against high movement speed and mobility (and most of the other disengage options), Nocturne’s ultimate and spell shield allow him to quickly get onto a target. This can be coupled with Shen’s ultimate allowing for a follow-up taunt, which can allow slower team members time to move in and engage as well.

• Morgana’s Black Shield allows at least one player to remain unaffected by crowd controls. She’s a situational champion but it’s definitely worth keeping in the back of your head.

Items such as Banshee’s Veil and Quicksilver Sash (as well as similar crowd control removal options) work, but they are situational to the match you’re in.

Chasing

Many champions excel at chasing down fleeing opponents, and ideally buying time for their team to catch up. This can be due to movement speed, slows or other crowd controls, and mobility. There’s a


long list of these, but some of them are Hecarim, Trundle, Kassadin, Vayne, Nunu, Kennen, Evelynn, Rammus, and Volibear.

Teams with a lot of strong chasers can cause problems for disengage and poke-reliant teams, especially if they’re in the lead. But to the degree that they aggressively chase after any opportunity they see, they can be countered by AOE disable/damage teams that lure them into the jungle.

While it may sound silly that a team would chase right into a trap, tournament-level games sometimes turn on exactly these kinds of plays.


How I Analyze Tournament Team Comps (Example) When watching tournaments and high level games, I look for the team compositions and traits discussed here to get an idea how the game will play out. At the Season 3 World Finals I gave predictions before each match on how the match would play out (and correctly predicted SKT1 would likely win each match). This was the first match-up:

China ran Sona, Malphite, Elise, Orianna, and Vayne. This is a pure teamfighting composition. Korea, on the other hand, ran Corki, Gragas, Jarvan, Jax, and Thresh, which is a pure mobility composition. Here’s what I wrote prior to the first match-up:

China has a full teamfight build, Korea has a super-mobility comp. These are both extreme strengths, and Korea has repeatedly proven their strengths w/ this. Look for Korea to do just about anything they want, so long as their reaction times are fast enough to avoid getting caught out. … China is a battleship. Korea is drone warfare. Korea picks and chooses its battles but may have problems with teamfights if they're not super-surgical.

On paper, China could go toe-to-toe with Korea. After all, in a teamfight, they had a Sona, Malphite, and Orianna ultimate combination, and Vayne’s close range damage coupled with Elise’s ability to break towards critical targets, meant a head-on fight would likely break in their favor (at least so long as the teams were roughly equal in gear and gold).

In practice, Korea never needed to engage in a fight they didn’t want to. Time after time, China’s attempts to initiate fights on their terms were completely shut down as Korea simply backed away (sometimes in epic fashion, such as with Gragas’ multiple escapes). And because China was running a shorter-range Vayne as opposed to, say, Caitlyn (another champion they were very strong with), it was much more difficult for them to run a “Protect the Kog’maw” strategy that allowed them to push objectives.


Earlier in this section, I mentioned one awesome little trick these mobile team comps can pull off: secret Baron and Dragon takedowns. This was added to the e-book earlier in Season 3, and it was on show once again at the world finals, as they took a completely uncontested Baron.

Now keep in mind, none of this means one champion is better than another or that there’s a 100% correct way to play. League of Legends is largely a game of countering.

Highly mobile compositions have huge advantages, especially for teams that understand how to fork their opponents (covered in “The Impossible Decision,” the next section of this e-book). But these can be countered, both with mobile chasing teams, and with “Protect the Kog’maw” team compositions.

When I look at tournaments, the single biggest thing I look at is mobility, both in terms of map movement (Teleport, Shen, Twisted Fate, etc.), and in terms of champions (Kassadin, Lissandra, Thresh, etc.). This broader strategic look is often a better indication on the outcome of many top games than individual champion or lane match-ups, though these certainly do matter.


Creating Effective Teams Whether or not you’re playing with an organized team, keeping the concepts of effective team types and strategies in mind can help you make the most out of your champion picks. Your goal should be to either cover the weaknesses in your team composition, augment the strengths of it, or both.

Let me use the example of an extreme mobility team. If you’re looking for the most mobility, a champion like Ezreal, for example, seems like an obvious choice – after all, he is one of the most mobile champions in the game, and he fills the role of a marksman. But the weakness for a mobility team is handling structures, both in defending and destroying them, and a much stronger choice may be a champion like Tristana, who has excellent long-range tower takedown potential with the perk of also having some mobility with her jump. In one of the tournament clips in the companion video you may have noticed Korea took a Ryze – he lacks mobility, but he offered a massive localized threat that helped cover the teamfight deficiency that all-mobility teams can have.

I mention this example in the jungling section as well, but another example is choosing an assassin or limited crowd control champion, such as Kha’zix, on a team where the lanes also don’t bring much crowd control. This kind of mismatch can work early on but can fall apart as the game goes on, and it’s the reason a lot of top teams take survivable crowd control junglers such as Jarvan, Zac, or Nautilus.

There are a lot of examples of ways you can augment your team:

• If someone has picked Twisted Fate, Nocturne, Pantheon, or another globally mobile champion, consider Shen.

• If your team has a lot of crowd controls and heals/shields, either take a similar champion and power through for an early game victory, or take a glass cannon champion with extreme damage such as Kog’maw.

• If your team lacks wave clear and your opponents may be able to easily push, consider a champion like Lux or Orianna. On the flip side, take strong wave clear if your opponents are choosing champions that lack the ability to clear waves quickly (Ezreal’s ability to push side lanes with his ultimate can really come in handy here).

• If you have a lot of close in damage but no effective way of initiating, especially against fast opponents, pick a champion like Hecarim, Malphite, Leona, Ashe, or Varus, who can initiate at a range.

• Have an assassin? Pick a second, provided your team has the crowd control and ranged harassment to engage while both of you wait in the wings for a takedown.

When possible, don’t let your team go too heavily on glass cannon, all-in champions such as Master Yi and Fiora (as well as most assassins). While it is technically possible to win these matches, not taking strong crowd controls or other survivability options, as well as a decent ranged component, means many teams with even moderate survivability will have no problem winning teamfights in the late game.

Documents

LTL Adv Team Comps