It does matter....

Radiant Wukong·Dec 18, 2016·2 votes·268 views

Counter-picking and team composition matters. Every time I tell a teammate in champion select, "Don't pick Blah because you'll be countering yourself," I get the same, "It doesn't matter at this elo," response.

That's very illogical. Let me explain something to you.

If you get 2 players that have never played a video game in their life, put them in a 1v1 match with and , the Darius is going to win every time.

If you take 2 B5 players, the Darius wins.

If you take 2 challengers, the Darius wins.

Any 2 players of equal skill, the Darius will win.

On the other hand, if the Darius is new to LoL and the J4 is a challenger, I'm 100% sure the J4 will win.

So in the case of normal/ranked draft matches, which uses mmr to create equal matchups, team composition and counter-picking is relevant. That is all.

7 Comments

ÇhåryzårdDec 18, 20163 votes

I've found that Silver is really really bad with actually picking team comps

I'm a support main, I main Sona and Nami but Nami is my best. I can play Nautilus if needed but I'm not the best with him

We'll be picking, and I already locked in my choice, and I'll notice the enemy team has a front line for their damage, so I'll say in chat

"Hey, we don't really have much tankiness, we could use someone who is tanky and has some engage"

Nobody wants to do that, everyone locks in squishy champions that don't synergize as well together in teamfights

We get to the teamfighting phase, we start losing

Everyone wonders why we are losing

And I'm just sitting there like

[zombie-nunu-bummed]

Nameless VoiceDec 18, 20161 votes

It's the same in Gold.

Radiant WukongDec 18, 20161 votes

Same in Gold and low plat.

Every game my team is like, "hahahaha gg ez, we're pwning you guys so hard, don't worry, you can surrender soon muhahahahaha" Then the enemy team groups up and wins every team fight and my team is all, "WTF! How are we throwing? everybody start pointing fingers."

So I'm like, "This is what I trying to tell you in champ select." To which they respont with, "Shut up you boosted B5 noob, I thought you said you could carry?"

These is one of the sole reasons MonkeyKing is my main. I can build tanky with a item 3071 item 3035 and spin to win if my team fails at picking a good comp.

LostFr0stDec 18, 20161 votes

I'd very much rather that player play their comfort J4 pick into Darius than try out Quinn/Riven/Kayle into Darius because 'counters.'

Radiant WukongDec 18, 20161 votes

You'd prefer your teammate absolute feed the crap out of Darius so you can cry about how fed he is when he pentakills your team, then flame the J4 like we all know you would for "being bad."

I don't believe, you'd much rather him pick a champion like Malphite Jayce Illaoi Teemo Nautilus and have a chance of at least holding turret.

LostFr0stDec 18, 20161 votes

I've never flamed anyone for their champ picks. I've asked them how the lane goes before for information purposes, and I don't assume they don't know what they're doing. That just causes fights within the team.

I wouldn't rather him pick any of those champs if he isn't comfortable on them.

All the ones that you listed are situational counterpicks into Darius (with three only being so during teamfights), with Jayce being on-par to J4 in the matchup if you've played the lane before. Teemo is the most reliable, but only if he uses his range and blinds Darius at the right time during Darius' combo if Teemo gets caught. Nautilus, Illaoi, and Malphite all typically get abused in lane vs Darius unless they know to rush armor, and even then it's on Darius to mess up.

Mysticman89Dec 18, 20161 votes

The flaw in this reasoning that is especially the case at low elos, is people don't play every champion at the same level. Just because two people are at the same rank doesn't mean they play every champion at the level expected of that rank. So while a B1 darius might beat a B1 J4 fairly consistently, a B1 player who plays J4 at a S3 level might consistently beat the B1 Darius played at a B1 level. Meanwhile if they turned around and tried to play <insert darius counter here>, they might only do so at a B4 level, and get utterly destroyed anyway.

Plenty of people more or less main champs if not outright one trick them, and are hence familiar with their counter match ups too. They won't win lane, but they known how to play safe and won't feed their 'counter', and then use their familiarity with their champ to contribute late game when it's less of a 1v1 (or 2v2 bot lane) so specific match ups don't matter as much as overall comps. On that note, sometimes people will willingly counterpick themselves for the sake of the overall team comp, so be sure not to tunnel on the specific match ups.

At challenger, then sure, people are probably capable of playing most champs in their role to their full potential, and so knowing counter picks can be important, but in bronze people won't necessarily even know how/why things 'counter' one another. I'm pretty sure theres even some champion match ups where at one elo X is a counter to Y, and at a different elo Y is a counter to X, because of the mechanics required to actually do the countering.