There are hundreds of League of Legends champions out there that people can utilize when it comes to playing the game. However, when it comes to competitive play, only a few are compatible to the level that provides good return.
Furthermore, with each role having their own significant champions, there’s a wide variety of champions that can fit into the competitive spectrum. A viable and a non-viable champion can be the difference between winning and losing on the competitive stage.
That’s why teams like Griffin in the LCK, G2 Esports in the EU LCS, and Team Liquid in the NA LCS are able to succeed and dominate the competition: because they know which champions are good and which aren’t.
From a betting standard, knowing the top League of Legends champions gives you an edge because you’ll know which team has a higher chance of winning. Of course, factors such as the team itself and raw talent also affect the game but this can be the one indicator as to who wins and who loses.
Top lane is interesting in the fact that this role is mostly about farming and building your arsenal up slowly. You’re meant to be a frontline tank nine times out of ten and while you can still have the ability to carry, you’re meant to brawl out consistent damage, crowd-control, and utility rather than be a pure damage source.
This means that top lane can make or break team fights when it comes to the front line. A great top laner can incorporate all of these things and ensure that top lane is the lane that takes over the team fights.
Sion may not seem like it at first glance but the undead juggernaut can pack a clean punch when it comes to variety. Not only is he strong in almost every field that a top lane needs, a great Sion player can turn the game around no matter the scenario.
Sion’s abilities give him both damage, crowd-control, and tank-like abilities that make him super useful in skirmishes and team fights. His passive allows him to fight for a little longer after he dies and his Decimating Smash (Q) and Unstoppable Onslaught (R) give him the heavy crowd control he needs to zone and keep squishy players from getting too close.
Furthermore, with his Soul Furnace (W), an ability which passively stacks extra health and provides a shield that deals percentage damage, Sion can basically absorb a large percentage of any AD Carry or mage’s damage before falling to them.
Finally, his Roar of the Slayer (E) gives him the ability to poke down enemies from a long-range all while farming out waves during the laning phase. This is what makes Sion unique. It’s what gives him an edge over the other tanks since most tanks are built for team fighting and not laning phase as well.
Furthermore, with high damage on his primary abilities and ultimate as well as maximum health percentage damage, Sion can basically take on the whole scale of champions. He can fight anyone from a full armor Malphite to a long-ranged Caitlyn.
This has given players the opportunity to capitalize around Sion and use him both as an initiation and also as a full-on shield that the AD Carry and mid lane can depend on when it comes to peeling. Therefore, Sion is one of the best in the game and a champion highly used by some of the best teams around the world.
Aatrox is an interesting character to say the least. He doesn’t really have a defined role in the League of Legends competitive scene. He can play in the top lane but he can also play in the mid lane thanks to his high damage output.
Heck, he can even play in the jungle thanks to his mobility and high-clearing rate. Aatrox’s playstyle essentially works around diving into the backline and causing as much mayhem as possible so that his team can come in and clean up.
Most top laners can’t do this as their primary playstyle and sometimes have to alternate between kiting and diving. But for Aatrox, his entire kit is revolved around diving in and that’s because he has huge damage and high burst as well as an ultimate that gives him a second chance.
His main ability is The Darkin Blade (Q) which has three charges when cast initially. Each cast swings Aatrox’s blade down with the range decreasing with each cast but the damage increasing to compensate.
Furthermore, if Aatrox can hit the enemy with a specific part of the blade area, then he deals bonus damage and this applies to each swing. This is his bread and butter. It’s what gives him so much damage and also so much trade potential in lane.
From the early to late game, if you’re not careful, Aatrox can easily one hundred to zero you if all three casts land on the critical damage areas. Furthermore, to add to his crowd-control, if Aatrox hits an enemy in this target area, he can knock them up briefly and this also applies to every single cast he puts out.
Aatrox is literally meant to dash in, expose the weaknesses of the squishy champions, and get out. If he can’t, then he always has his ultimate to back up on. And while he may seem to be all damage, he has his fair share of sustain and crowd control to back himself up.
This gives him the ability to fight on all spectrums and also gives him the ability to scale up and fight when it comes to the mid to late game. Therefore, Aatrox isn’t the champion you would think he is. Not only does he provide as much damage as an AD Carry, but he also provides necessary crowd-control that makes him a go-to pick for every top laner looking to snowball their leads.
One of the hardest pieces of League of Legends when it comes to the top lane is securing kills. If you have the mobility to secure kills, then you’re probably compensating with little to no tank stats. But if you have the tank stats to survive in battle, you’re probably lacking in mobility.
Urgot isn’t one of these players. Like Sion, he has a wide range of damage that he can depend on, giving him the ability to consistently deal damage to opponents who dare face him at the front line while also being able to execute enemies if they get too close.
His main focus is around playing on the front line and shredding down the tanks but if he gets the ability to, he can also grab ahold of their squishy champions and easily burst them down despite the tank-like stats.
His main damage comes from three sources, two of them being quite primary. The first one is his passive, Echoing Flames. It provides six shotguns, one on each of his legs so that whenever he auto-attacks in a direction, one of the shotguns goes off and goes on cooldown.
These shotguns deal a percentage of a target’s maximum health which also scales with attack damage. His second primary source of damage is his Corrosive Charge (Q). He shoots a canister at a location and after 0.6 seconds, explodes to slow the enemy and deal damage.
To bulk up his shotguns and auto-attacks, his ability Purge shields him for a percentage of his bonus health and gives him 3.0 attack speed so that he can consistently trade in lane or use this as a tank ability to soak up some extra damage while shredding down the frontline.
To add some crowd-control as well as some mobility, his Disdain (E) allows him to dash forward and stun the first enemy champion hit and fling them over himself. This provides for good picks if Urgot can time it well with his other abilities.
To some everything up afterwards, his final ability and his ultimate is Fear Beyond Death. Urgot shoots out a chain that slows down the first enemy hit. If that enemy falls below a certain health point, Urgot can instantly execute them and the only thing stopping Urgot from going through it is by killing Urgot. Basically, no crowd-control can stop this.
Thus, Urgot can switch from being a tank to being a bruiser and even sometimes being an assassin. Furthermore, with a decently strong laning phase and just as good of a team fighting phase, Urgot is a champion no League of Legends competitive team has passed up.
Jungle is the role that makes or breaks the early to mid game for most teams. The best junglers need to have three big things: clear potential, crowd-control, and mobility. When utilized, the best of the best can easily take over a game and end it in the sub twenty-minute mark.
Camille used to be a prominent top laner due to her high damage and utility but soon, teams began to realize that her powers could be used for the jungle better than the top lane. Her high early-game damage could be taken advantage of better in the early game and combine that with her strong gap-closing and Camille is all-around an extremely viable pick.
If you take a look at the stats, you’ll see that Camille has been banned more than she has been picked and this is thanks to the value she brings to each team. She can build tank and still have a skillset that revolves around one-shotting the carries.
Her main source of damage is her Precision Protocol (Q), an ability which has two procs to it. The first proc gives her an empowered auto-attack. She is then granted an additional auto-attack and if she waits long enough, a portion of that damage can be converted into true damage.
With such a low cooldown and such high damage, Camille literally lives and depends on this ability for most of her damage. Meanwhile, her other abilities are meant to gap-close and provide utility but they still provide a decent source of damage.
Her Tactical Sweep (W) allows her to close in on opponents if they try to run since she can sweep an area and severely slow them all the while healing her if she hits the opponents with the outer area of the cone.
This gives Camille the utility she needs to keep opponents from running away and if they do, then her Hookshot (E) can help her gap-close since its probably the one ability to gives her an advantage over other bruisers.
Her Hookshot essentially gives her the mobility to dash across large chunks of the map by using a two-proc system in which the first proc lets her shoot to the closest wall and drag her there. The second-proc lets her shoot outwards and if she hits a champion, she stuns them.
Basically, she can shred tanks and carries with her Precision Protocol because of the high true damage it can bring. She can also approach fights in different ways thanks to both her Hookshot and her Tactical Sweep.
And to sum it all up, if the fight is looking bad, she can activate her ultimate, Hextech Ultimatum, to give her a winning edge since it gives her invulnerability for a brief moment and then traps her opponents in an area all while giving Camille bonus damage.
Her passive also grants her an adaptive shield based on whether or not the champion she attacks deals primarily magic or physical damage.
Thus, she can survive early game duels and provide high burst in the mid to late game. Her ganking potential is insanely high since she can dive off of walls and cover area that most junglers can’t all while being able to depend on a wide variety of damage.
What she lacks in tank stats, she makes up for in bruiser abilities and high mobility. Thus, she’s a hybrid mix between high damage and high utility, giving the player all the tools they’ll need to make Camille into a high-level threat.
There have been several tank junglers that have come through the meta at times. We’ve seen Nautilus jungle. We’ve seen Gragas jungle and we’ve even seen a Maokai jungle. But no tank jungler can match the level that Sejuani is at.
Like Camille, she has mobility but she has the ability to lock down any champion she faces thanks to the two areas she’s strongest at: crowd-control and jungle clearing.
What separates Sejuani from the other champions on this list is that three of Sejuani’s abilities allows her to stun an enemy while all four contribute to some form of crowd-control that this extremely deadly jungler yields.
Her three main crowd-control abilities are Artic Assault, Permafrost, and her ultimate, Glacial Prison. Each of these abilities stun the enemy in some way and help her lock down the enemy before they can run.
Her Artic Assault is a dash that stuns and knocks back the first enemy hit. Permafrost is a four-stack proc. After damaging an enemy with spells or auto-attacks for four times, she can use Permafrost. It instantly stuns the enemy. Finally, her Glacial Prison is a skillshot which she shoots out and if it hits someone, it instantly stuns them, creating a storm around them that explodes and deals AOE damage.
With so much crowd-control, it’s hard to see where her clear can come from. Her passive and Permafrost give her the ability to easily clear through large monsters while her Winter’s Wrath (W) gives her area-of-effect damage that easily clear through the smaller higher-number camps.
Therefore, Sejuani can easily clear through camps early game and then look for ganks. Combine this with her high crowd-control and you can see why Sejuani is such a powerful champion as the game progresses.
She is basically the one player that can pick out any player on the team and hold them down long enough for the main damage dealers on her team to single that enemy out. No matter how many escapes on might have, Sejuani will always have something up her sleeve to slow them down.
Her team fighting presence is huge. Her crowd-control is diverse. Her tank stats are off-the-charts and her clearing is immaculate. There’s very little else one could want in order to create an even better champion than Sejuani.
Take the precision and damage of Camille along with the pressure of Sejuani and you have Xin Zhao, an unbeatable auto-attack duelist that is extremely tough to counter-gank let alone escape thanks to his many slows and knock-ups.
With all four of his abilities holding some type of crowd-control, whether it’s a slow or a knock up, Xin Zhao is deadly at all stages of the game. However, thankfully, Xin Zhao doesn’t have to depend on his abilities as much as a player playing Sejuani or Camille would.
His passive gives him extra damage every third auto-attack while his Three Talon Strike also add extra damage along with a knock-up on the third auto-attack. This means that his auto-attacks are deadlier than his other abilities.
Most of his other abilities are built around exposing and finding the AD Carry or mage, making him the perfect person to give his team a small time gap in which they can take over the team fight.
The three abilities I’m talking about are Wind Becomes Lightning, Audacious Charge, and Crescent Guard. Audacious charge basically allows Xin Zhao to lock onto his target via a dash which damages and slows all nearby enemies.
Then, to keep them escaping, Xin Zhao can use his Wind Becomes Lightning where Xin sweeps twice, with the second significantly slowing the enemy so that Xin Zhao can either get that extra auto-attack proc or give his allies time to catch up to the enemy.
It’s his ultimate, though, that really separates Xin Zhao form the rest of the horde. Whenever Xin attacks a champion, they become Challenged and his Crescent Guard allows Xin Zhao to sweep all around him, dealing high damage and knocking back anyone who isn’t deemed Challenged.
Then, Xin Zhao is invulnerable to any attack within 450 units for a brief period of time. This ultimate is what ties everything together and makes Xin such a powerful mid to late game team fighter.
He has an easy kit and it’s quite easy to understand what you have to do. You need to dash onto their main damage dealer, use your Wind Becomes Lightning while weaving in auto-attacks and then use your Crescent Guard to knock back any potential aid that the damage dealer might receive while also giving your teammates a window of opportunity to kill your target.
With so much damage coming from his auto-attacks and a great number of combo options coming from his abilities, it’s extremely easy to play Xin Zhao and with the right teammates backing him, any team can capitalize off this champion extremely well.
Mid lane has seen a variety of champions used over the past from tanks to assassins to mages to even bruisers. However, its one goal has always been made clear: to roam and get ahead so that your team can be better prepared for the mid game.
Lissandra’s kit overall used to be extremely weak when teams were almost full damage and Lissandra couldn’t do anything since runes weren’t even in play. This meant that the Ice Queen had to play back and try to kite out potential killers but with such short range on her main damage spells, Lissandra was almost ineffective.
But now, with better runes and an even better passive, Lissandra is now deemed one of the go-to champions for teams looking to create a team composition that is nearly impenetrable when it comes to team fights.
Sure, she may have the same abilities as before but the Aftershock rune gives her much more survivability in team fights since it coincides perfectly with the high amount of crowd-control that she’s given.
Furthermore, the addition of a passive which grants her bonus champion minions for every enemy that dies within her vicinity, she’s even more of a threat in team fights thanks to the addition of high KDA.
The three main abilities you want to know on her are Ring Frost, Glacial Frost, and Frozen Tomb. Ring Frost is an AOE ability which roots everyone within range.
Her ultimate, Glacial Frost, is a point-click ability which she can either use on herself or on an opponent. If she uses it on an opponent, that champion is instantly locked down and stunned, dealing AOE damage to everyone around the champion.
If she uses the ultimate on herself, then she is rooted in place but deals the same AOE damage while also healing herself during that portion of time.
Her entire kit is built around getting to the backline and trying to disrupt their positioning thanks to the roots and stuns she’s given but being so squishy, it’s hard for Lissandra to do that effectively. But now, with the Aftershock rune, she’s stronger than ever.
Essentially, whenever she can proc Aftershock, she becomes a tank and thus is extremely hard to kill, making her someone that you want to have since she provides high damage and crowd-control and, despite being a mage, can still absorb quite a bit of damage before dying.
Most mages are meant to be squishy as a downside to their high damage but with Lissandra, she’s the exact opposite. Any player who can capitalize on this pro of Lissandra can easily be the converting factor into a strong team.
Aatrox, despite being made for top lane, is also an extremely strong mid laner. This is due to the fact that he has high-enough damage costs that it’s extremely hard to counter him especially in the early game.
And like Lissandra, his ability to revive after being taken down grants him extra tank stats that allow him to stay in the fight as long as possible.
Simply put, there aren’t many champions that can out-damage or out-kite Aatrox and this makes him both an asset to his team and a threat to the enemy’s. Therefore, Aatrox can easily take over the early to mid game, making him someone you don’t want to get in the way of.
Like Lissandra, Galio takes full control of the Aftershock rune and can use it extremely well, considering that he has a high crowd-control kit along with global mobility, something that only a handful of champions have.
The thing behind Galio is that he was meant to be a tank but due to his high AP scaling and magic damage, Galio can also be a mage that one-shots enemies or shreds the front line and he can do it all while absorbing damage himself.
His main damaging ability is an AOE ability called Winds of War which allows him to shoot out two bolts that collide, dealing a high percentage of magic damage to the enemies and the longer they stay in it, the more damage they take.
However, it’s his next three abilities that really make Galio something special. His Shield of Durand is a two-cast ability which allows him first to reduce the amount of magic damage he takes and second, taunts everyone in the vicinity, dealing magic damage to everyone taunted.
His Justice Punch lets him dash forward, knocking up the first enemy hit and his ultimate, Hero’s Entrance lets him travel across the map and land on an allied champion’s location, dealing a large chunk of magic damage to anyone who gets hit and knocking them up.
Three of his abilities can cast Aftershock and with each of his abilities—and his passive—dealing damage, Galio has several combos he can rely on to kill his enemies. He has the ability to drastically turn around a team fight with his Shield of Durand and he can get easy pickings with his Heroe’s Entrance and Justice Punch.
He’s viable in almost every situation you put him in and he’s the ultimate counter to mages since he himself can take absorb magic damage better. With all-around a great kit and an even better counter to magic damage champions, Galio is perfectly situated for the mid lane.
The AD Carry is responsible for dealing the most amount of damage in a team fight and with that much responsibility on a player’s back, it’s important that one finds the perfect AD Carry to depend on when it comes down to this.
Kai’sa is the newest AD Carry on the scene and there’s a reason why she’s feared by many. As of now, her ban rate is higher than her pick rate, showing that whenever people get a chance, they get rid of this champion.
This is due to the fact that Kai’sa doesn’t really have a counter in terms of building tank. Her attack damage deals both magic damage as well as physical damage and because of this, she can makes both your armor and your magic resistance useless.
Furthermore, with an ultimate that lets her dash across the map and shield her in the process, Kai’sa is better than most AD Carries at gap-closing. What she lacks in ability damage, she makes up for with her passive.
Every four auto-attacks, Kai’sa ruptures stacked Plasma which deals a percentage of the target’s missing health. Simply put, the longer Kai’sa attacks a target, the more damage she starts to do.
Furthermore, with an ability that allows her to become invisible, she’s almost impossible to kill unless you focus her down from the very start. This is a champion that has only just recently come out but her utility and high consistency in team fights has made her a go-to pick for AD Carries all around the world.
At first glance, players might not want to pick Lucian due to his low range but he makes up for it with high mobility and damage. Three out of his four abilities deal a significant amount of damage and synchronize perfectly with his passive.
His passive, Lightslinger, allows him to auto-attack twice after using an ability. And with relatively short cast times on his Piercing Light, Ardent Blaze, and Relentless Pursuit, Lucian can easily pull off a combo that takes an AD Carry from one hundred to zero percent health.
And if they look like they’re about to get away, Lucian’s Culling ultimate allows him to shoot up to thirty shots in a direction. This is perfect for closing out kills or shredding a tank or bruiser that gets too close to him.
Because Lucian doesn’t have to kite and is instead extremely good at shredding down his opponents whether they’re an AD Carry or a tank, Lucian can go anywhere from building critical damage to building an armor shred build.
The high viability of Lucian makes him a high-risk high-reward champion. You need to be able to use your abilities to their maximum effect in order to compensate for his lack of range. But, whenever you can maximize his playstyle—like Doublelift does—then you’ll find why Lucian is such a high pick.
Like Lucian, Ezreal is high-risk high-reward but not in the way of Lucian where he has low range and has to compensate with extremely immaculate combos. Ezreal’s attack damage is extremely low and most of his damage depends on one ability.
Mystic Shot is what Ezreal uses ninety percent of the time in team fights. At max effect, it has a low cooldown and high damage but in order to use it effectively, one has to have good aim and even better knowledge over the positioning the enemy might have.
His other abilities are centered around Mystic Shot. Essence Flux allows him to deal extra damage on Mystic Shot while Arcane Shift gives him the ability to blink to another location so as to get away from a potential enemy or get a better shot at killing the enemy.
And if his Mystic Shots can’t kill the enemy, his ultimate Trueshot Barrage can get the deal done as it fires off a global projectile that can cut through multiple enemies hit.
Ezreal is built for sniping and if you can pull this off, you’ll have high range and almost impossible dive potential from enemy assassins, making you a relatively safe choice for team fights. If you look at players like Cloud9’s Sneaky, you’ll see the power of what a good Ezreal can do.
But a bad Ezreal can easily take down the team. Since AD Carries are responsible for more than fifty percent of the damage output, a bad Ezreal can easily take down the team as he won’t be able to land skillshots and provide the damage needed.
The support may seem like the weakest part of the team composition but they’re in fact the most critical piece during the early game. They’re responsible for keeping the AD Carry alive while presenting them opportunities to grab kills.
Rakan is a highly-mobile and high-utility support mage whose job is to crowd-control the enemies till his allied AD Carry can get in range. Most supports are built around engaging but Rakan is just as good at disengaging.
His Grand Entrance lets him dash to an area and knock anyone within the area upwards. If he needs to disengage, he can easily use his Battle Dance to dash back to an ally champion while shielding them in the process.
To cap it all off, his Quickness ultimate grants him bonus movement speed while charming anyone who he goes through. The more items he gets, the lower the cooldowns he receives and because of this, in the mid to late game, he can easily dash to and from enemy champions while disengaging back to his allies in the case of an emergency.
A professional Rakan player can easily turn the tables around by creating a perfect engage using his Grand Entrance and Quickness synchronized perfectly. Right now, he’s the best player when it comes to engaging and because of this, he’s perfectly suited for almost every team composition.
Braum is one of the best defensive supports since he’s built entirely around protecting his AD Carry but if played right, Braum can also be a great offensive player since he works well at stunning enemies and keeping them from running away.
Braum’s passive, Concussive Blows, is a four stack system where attacking an enemy champion with Braum stacks onto the enemy champion. At four stacks, the enemy champion is stunned, making it perfect for long team fights as well as ganking potential.
His Stand Behind Me and Unbreakable make for perfect life-saving opportunities since he can dash to his ally through his Stand Behind Me ability and then use Unbreakable to shield them from oncoming damage for a brief period of time.
The Unbreakable is arguably what makes Braum so powerful. He becomes a human shield that can take on a large chunk of damage since it acts like a Wind Wall and does not allow projectiles to pass through while also giving him reduced damage in that duration.
But his ultimate is equally as powerful since it gives Braum the ability to change the team fight around or start it as Glacial Fissure lets Braum slam his shield into the ground, creating a line that knocks up every enemy champion there.
With so much crowd-control and a kit revolving around keeping the squishy champions alive, professional players have been using Braum for quite a while. He’s the perfect support for letting his AD Carries work the field while also providing a decent amount of crowd-control himself.
With hundreds of champions on the line and even more professional players on the competitive field, it’s important to choose the best of the best when it comes to the champions. Each champion provides something unique to the team but only the best can create a winning chance, especially whenever the stakes are so high.
The best champions have a wide range of utility, crowd-control, and damage and throughout this article, I’ve mentioned the best in each role. Whenever you’re betting, watch out for these champions. The team that has more of these high-stake champions tends to have a higher chance of winning big.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
