As it would turn out, when you get to the pro level, it isn't enough to just tick the boxes of tank, carries, jungler, and support. No, there's much more nuance involved if you want to win. Earlier this week, we laid out the bare basics of Champion Select. Today, we're talking team compositions.
Wombo!
When ROCCAT combined the ultimate abilities of Malphite and Pantheon to do a ridiculous amount of damage to Supa Hot Crew on the first day of the 2014 EU LCS spring split, it was clear that one thing hadn’t changed about League of Legends: The “wombo combo” team composition was still a very real deal.
“Wait, wombo combo?” you may be asking. “What’s a wombo combo?” If you aren’t intimately familiar with the ever-changing lexicon in the world of esports, there’s a very good chance that you’d have missed this particular bit of the vernacular.
Well, ROCCAT’s play is exactly what we’re talking about. When a pair (or, preferably, more) of big abilities combine to completely wipe out the opposing teams’ life bars, that’s a wombo combo. In this case, it was Malphite’s Unstoppable Force holding the opposing team in place long enough for Pantheon to land his Grand Skyfall, but it could be any number of other combinations. Jarvan IV’s Cataclysm and Orianna’s Command: Shockwave. Lulu’s Giant Growth and Yasuo’s Last Breath. The combinations are endless, but it needs to achieve one thing: a total decimation of the opposing side.
Going for the wombo combo may be the flashiest style of putting together a team composition, but it’s definitely not the only one.
Go hard
For the more bold of heart, there’s initiate comps. When you see a team that sprints face first at the other team, only to jump directly on them and start wailing away, that’s an initiate team composition.
Take a look at Jarvan IV, Lee Sin, or even Maokai. They all share one thing: The ability to dive directly onto whoever they choose, starting fights and gaining a quick advantage for the rest of their team to follow up and clean up the opponents.
Typically, to back up those heavy divers, teams will fill out the rest of the team with champions able to follow them up. Dashes, teleports, and speed buffs are popular ways to get in. Lucian’s Relentless Pursuit, Fizz’s Urchin Strike, or LeBlanc’s Distortion are all good ways to quickly get to the target and blow them up.
More often than not, initiate-oriented teams look to catch their opponents off guard and killing them so fast they don’t have a chance to respond.
Back off
For every initiate team composition, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Well, at least a counter-initiation.
In Champion Select, if a team sniffs out their opponents going for an initiate comp, they’ll often try to stop them by using counter-initiation. Essentially, they’ll pick champions that are either hard to chase down, or excel at holding people off. Basically, they want to punish enemies for daring to try and engage with them
Often, that role falls on the support’s shoulders. Whether it be Nami’s Tidal Wave to bounce up anyone running at her team, Braum’s Glacial Fissure to slow them down, or Morgana’s Dark Binding to, well, bind a high-priority target in place, support champions tend to have the best ways of keeping dangerous opponents from their teams.
Alternatively, champions that keep themselves safe can be effective. Ezreal can teleport away from threats, Lucian can dash, Corki can fly away. Anivia can Crystalize a wall to split the initiator from their teammates, making it difficult to follow them. Trundle can do much the same with his Pillar of Ice.
The hokey pokey
If a team decides they’d just rather stay away from the opponent and snipe them down, there’s always the poke comp.
Excelling at doing damage from as far away as possible, poke compositions are filled with ranged champions that can chunk down enemies before they even get into the fight. Think Ziggs and his Bouncing Bombs, Xerath and his Arcanopulse, or Kog’Maw and his Bioarcane Barrage. They can all do huge amounts of damage without ever getting close enough to take any themselves.
Ideally, poke compositions will use their range advantage to push their opponents away from objectives. If those weakened champions don’t leave immediately, they’ll often just get finished off by repeated shots to the face.
However, unlike counter-initiation teams, poke comps can have trouble with initiate-heavy teams. If they get jumped on, they have few ways to escape, and will typically get blown up if anyone gets near to them.
Exterminate
Finally, there’s the pick comp. Focused on finding single champions that have strayed too far from their team, pick comps have champions that can lock one person down and then do a buttload of damage faster than they can react.
From there, they use their man advantage to push objectives and take victories. Why fight five-on-five when you can have the upper hand in a four-on-five?
Typically, for a pick comp, teams want champions with either a lot of lockdown (think Thresh) or a ton of single-target damage (Fizz is a great example).
The problem for pick comps typically come when teamfights start happening. Because they focus so heavily on taking down just one champion, they rarely do well when confronted by a full team. It’s a high risk, high reward strategy.
So there you have it, five of the most popular team compositions. Got any more that you’d like to see from the pros?
Next time: What are the roles?
Last time:
How pros approach Champion Select
