Let's Get Sophisticated (team comps)
Categories are important. A lot of people think of their champion as a gear "doing their job," instead of a piece of an intricate system. That helps a lot when trying to judge your own skill and improve, but it seems like a bad idea when trying to figure out how to improve. So since categorizing stuff helps in simplifying decision making, here is my model for how team comps work; feel free to make judgments and criticism on its applicability or validity (which how to improve it!)
There are four main team comps:
- Hard engage
- Teamfight
- Siege
- Bodyguard
Hard engage i) Hard engage comps in two main subcategories: aoe and single target and each of those cover two flavors: wombo and cc. Aoe wombo is the Orianna ult with the Sion ulti packed in with Graves. You all blow your aoe at once, hitting as many people as possible. Aoe wombo is primarily used with aoe ults, but it can just as easily be used with basic abilities like Ashe W or Caitlyn Q. The upside is that you can very easily score an ace when ahead, allowing you to score objectives without any real contest. If the aoe fails to kill anyone, rounding yourself out with a cleanup champion like Fiora or Kat (who also can contribute to the initial wombo) can pick off people and still do the above. The downside comes from when enough champions have done too poorly and your team is highly skewed to burst damage. As any assassin will tell you, going through your burst rotation but failing to kill someone is a worst case scenario as you are now extremely vulnerable.
Instead, aoe cc is extremely useful for the rounding out. Most aoe skills are skillshots. That means they have an extremely high chance of losing uptime through being outplayed. Aoe cc like Amumu and Lulu! ults increase uptime and thus damage. Thus, aoe cc is extremely valuable for rounding out a team and making sure the uptime is as close to 100% as possible. There is even a bonus in that if the engage does mess up, you can use the cc to disengage as well without sacrificing much. The main downside comes from the fact that there is more pressure to do well with the one or two wombo champions instead of being able to miss and still hit with 3 wombos. The other downside is that the extra cc might not be necessary; Amumu is nice but he doesn't exactly help Viktor nearly as much as Vlad or Vel'koz or Graves. So even if you execute the wombo perfectly, there is still a decent chance that it's just not enough depending on level of fedness. Thus, it is imperative that most aoe comps possess a cleanup champion or more aoe instead of a primarily single target champion like Leblanc.
Single target wombo on the other hand is a hole different monster. Even if you do poorly, focusing one a single target, especially with resets can lead to the above situation albeit at a slower pace. Even if Zed does poorly, if he, Ahri, and Jinx! focus on an off-tank like Pantheon, they can start a chain for Jinx! which snowballs. Even without an explicit snowball mechanic, removing someone from the fight can have drastic implications. However, pure damage does little when peeling happens. As the damage is not aoe, peeling is much easier and more detrimental. This is why diving should be done with a diving buddy. Even if one person gets peeled, the other is still doing damage. The main synergy with single target burst is actually aoe cc, not single target cc. This primarily means that the entire enemy team has a harder time peeling AND the target has a hard time escaping. Even in the case of multiple single target cc, the inherent game of who to cc instead of just ccing everything makes a huge difference.
Teamfight ii) Teamfight comps, while flexible in participants, all follow the same formula: have a backline, a mid line, and a frontline. The frontline are champions who are essentially football linemen who are trying to push the other team back and into an unfavorable position by decreasing the distance between the frontline and the backline. The midline is meant to be a counter for divers while also augmenting the frontline's capability and finally being a last line of defense. The backline is strictly for ranged carries. Melee carries do not fit in Teamfight comps very well and neither do cleanup-champions. The main difference between Teamfight comps and hard engage comps is that hard engage has long cooldowns on their crowd control while teamfight comps have short cooldowns. Udyr is a particularly good frontliner as is Trundle but so does Leona. Midliners would be the squishier supports or just supports in general. Thresh falls into this category mostly because supports generally do not have the income to purchase high tier defensive items. However, a Thresh with Locket and Randuin's most certainly can be a frontliner. Supprots like Nami, Lulu! and Sona will be midliners as they are the last line of defense but can also kite. Backline is Karthus and Cait.
For those who have played WoW, ideal teamfights between two comps of this kind end up being nothing more than a gearcheck/Patchwerk fight. The two carries are going to dps the enemy frontline until they are dead at then the friendly frontliners will move on to the midline until they are no longer a threat and then rush the backline. This is exactly what happens when a teamfight comp is ahead in power. When behind in power, this is the worst strategy. Thus, the main safety to this kind of comp is kiting. By stringing the enemy frontline out, especially if they are inherently faster than the backline, the strategy is to make the enemy frontline overextend just enough to lower the uptime from enemy dps onto your frontline while maintaining uptime on the enemy's. Even if the uptime is reduced by 15%, that is essentially a 20% increase to nominal dps or the effect of buying another legendary tier item on an ADC. So even if the enemy frontline notices the tactic and retreats, a difference of one or two seconds can swing the tide of the teamfight. These teamfights are won by dps and not burst. Unlike Wombo comps, these comps have a lot more variation; they are easier to mess up when ahead but also easier to recover from when behind. For this reason, Teamfight comps tend to work worse in soloqueue than wombo comps.
Siege iii) Siege comps come in three flavors: poke, sustain, and pressure. Poke comps are comps designed to damage enemies enough so that they must back off of objectives. The goal is not to start a fight but instead to simply make the threat of a fight that they can win. nid, Jayce, and Lux fit into this paradigm very well when together. They can easily force even the hardiest teams to back off of a tower or outright kill them if they try baron or Dragon and get low. The main weakness of the poke is that they lack structure unlike Teamfight and Hard engage comps. It is crucial that poke comps have a disengage in the form of the queen of Cockblocks: Janna, or Movereally fast Karma. Alternatives are kiters like Lulu! but ones who can kite and disengage like Nami and Janna are preferable.
Sustain comps are essentially the opposite of a poke comp in that they simply play a game of attrition with the enemy team. Examples of these kinds of champions would be Soraka, Sona, Vlad, and Bard. It is important that sustain comps have a form of efficient waveclear as they don't have a way to beat off enemies from objectives but instead force the enemy to deal with the wave coming in.
Pressure comps are split-push comps but they are not necessarily dedicated splitpush comps. Someone with waveclear but not escape can push a lane and juggle between the two. Examples of a dedicated splitpusher would be Shen and Nasus. Examples of jugglers would be Wukong, Trynd, and Fizz. Their role is to speed up the process by forcing the enemy to make a decision sooner as opposed to trying to play attrition. Splitpushing is extremely effective with a poke comp but sustain comps will generally want a splitpusher to bleed the enemy faster. It is important to note that splitpushing can be detrimental to a team trying the hard engage approach or the teamfight comp as being down 1 person is devastating even if the other team sends a person to deal with the splipusher. It is more devastating in a hard engage comp because of the fact that even though the enemy is less numerous, your aoe will not take out more survival time on an individual basis. Teamfight comps are less affected by this change due to the single target nature of focus.
Bodyguard iv) Bodyguard comps are a super version of teamfight comps. These comps are more niche but focus around protecting a single carry and having what amounts to four frontliners and midliners. The main advantage to this comp is the raw durability of the team as having to shred through four frontliners one by one is time consuming and trying to aoe the frontline down can either work or fail miserably depending on fedness. The main downside is that all damage is now in the hands of a single carry and ultimately, if the enemy carries can break your 4 frontliners in the time it takes for a single carry to kill 2, then the bodyguard comp has lost. However, this means that the carry must be inherently highly damaging like Vayne, Kog, or Tristana. Bodyguard comps with graves just aren't going to work. Thus, if the high damage carry can rip through two frontliners and the midline before the enemy carries can blowup the 4 frontliners, then even in a 2v2 situation, the bodyguard carry should win against 2 carries so long as the last frontliner does their job.
And that's it. If you have comments or suggestions, please leave them!
