How team comps work

The title. In this post, I will attempt to explain to you how comps work and why they work

Disclaimer. Now I realise that in low elo Solo q, you will never get a perfect team, unless u are premade. However, you can still do your best to fill for your team, or in other words: pick what the team needs to actually be a working team.

What every single team comp needs, regardless of anythin else, is a win condition. Now, diffrent teams can have vastly diffrent win conditions, but they still need one. What having a win condition is essentially: Can this team actually win? Every team can win, by winning a 5v5 at baron or something, but that is unreliable. What I mean with win condition is, do we have a way to win even if they turtle into their base?

A few of the ways to have a win condition is the following. Poke, hard and tanky engage and splitpush. These are the base 3 comps, and all other comps are pretty much variations of these. Poke comp is the early game comp. They want to group early and they want to poke you off your towers and dragons and win by essantially never fighting and just constantly poking and retreating from engage, but they also fall off when tanks get really tanky, and adc's get lifesteal.

Tanky engage is the classic teamfight comp. A hard engage tank like Malphite with strong late game backline, a protective support and one lsat player that is kinda fill. This is the most common, but also the most effective comp, not because its the strongest but because it is the easiet. The idea is that through your high dmg carries and reliable engage you can just force a fight whenever you want and win with your superior teamfight.

Splitpush is where you split up and push. Pretty self explanatory. I wrote a short guide on it, which I will link here. http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/OE3A7ygP-a-few-tips-about-splitpushing

Now, every single comp in the game NEEDS at least one of these things. Either poke, either a strong engage and teamfiht, or a good splitpusher.

With that said, I will not get into explaining a few diffrent comps. You prob wont ever be able to use them in solo q, but maybe you can get with your friends in a ranked team or something.

Protect the adc comp. This is exactly what it sounds like. You have a hyper carry, like , or which scales insanely well, and then you fill the rest of your team with pretty much nothing bodygaurds, and the entire point of hte team is to keep your adc alive at all costs. Champions like and a few others go very well with this comp, since they are just so good at peeling. The positive is that your adc is as safe as their ever going to be, and it allows them to deal fuck tons of dmg with all that peel and buffs. THe negative is that without your adc, your team falls apart. Typically, teams like these give up a mid lane or top lane carry for someone more supportive for the adc, so if the adc falls, they are often without a carry.

Kiteback comp. This is a variation on the poke comp. Essentially, what this comp tries to do is, well, kite back. They stay back and poke, and when they get engaged on, their main strategy will be to back off, while also throwing out their dmg. Champions that go wiht this comp are . THere is a pretty big similiarity to the poke comp, but the main diffrence is that a kiteback comp is not as bad as the poke comp at teamfighting, they just have an odd style of it. Their form of teamfighting is that they use their dmg and cc while kiting back, but if the enemy team tries to run away u reengage on them, and immidietly retreat if they turn. Its essentially the hit-and-run comp.

1 3 1 and 4 1 comp. These two comps are diffrent variations on the splitpush comp, and the numbers essentially just say where your team goes. either 1 bot, 1 top, and 3 mid, or 4 mid and 1 top, for example. A proper splitpush comp include more than just a splitpusher. An example of a team comp is . Yi goes bot, jax goes top and hte remaining 3 stays mid to siege with poke, and use their disengage if they would get engaged on. The 4 1 just removes one splitpusher for an extra poke mid, for example. where you have an extra poke or utlity champ mid, but one less splitpusher. This allows for a stronger siege, but your team does lose pressure.

KIll the backline comp. THis one is self explanatory. Champs like and many more are all good in this comp, because the idea is very basic. KIll their backline before they can do anything. Divers like the ones i mentioned just now are great at locking down and/or killing squishy backliners. These teams also gain alot from flanking, to more easily get around the enemy teams frontline. The negative is that your adc is often left without any support themselves, aside from their support of course and it is a very all or nothing comp. Either your guys manage to kill their backline quickly and u win, or you dont and you're left in the middle of the enemy team up shit creak without a paddle. This, together with the hard engage comp is the most reliable and common comp because they are so easy to exectute.

Melt the frontline. THis one is very rare to see, but it really is great vs any comp with alot of tanks. The idea is essentially to have a bunch of high SUSTAINED dmg that can easily melt through tanks and frontline, while keeping your team safe. are all very good at this. They not only all ahve very high sustained dmg, they all also have % hp dmg, which completly fucks tanks over. This comp does great with a bit of support, like as well as building a bit tankier than you might usually do, with items like , and. The reason for this is the idea that as long as you can survive burst from the enemy team, your team will win through their sheer sustained damage. Essentially, as long as you survive the first wave of dmg, you can counter and melt through their backline. This team does great against a low dmg, high defense and utility team, however against teams that have a high amount of dmg, particuarly in form of poke or burst, its not so great.