Champion Select is a crucial part of your League of Legends experience, as an imbalanced team will have a much harder time winning over a balanced team. The term ‘balanced’ and ‘imbalanced’ are directed towards certain roles being filled in your group – you want to make sure your team is evenly spread between different types of damage and specialties to allow for maximum output in team fights.

Essentially, champions are lumped in to these categories: tanks, attack damage (melee), attack damage (ranged), ability power and support. There are other tangibles such as ‘assassins’ and ‘pushers’ that Riot has labeled some champions, but for the most part all of the champions can be classified under the labels I have shown. We are going to break down these roles and how they best suit their team with examples from some of the more simple champions you’re bound to start out with.

Role A: Tanking – Tanks are a crucial and somewhat neglected role in League of Legends. Most tanks are under appreciated because they don’t rack up as many kills as a damage-dealing champion, but they aren’t supposed to; a tank’s job is to initiate fights, catch the opposing team members off guard if they extend away from their group and ultimately soak up all the damage/distract the enemy team as much as possible.

For this example, we’ll use Rammus: an ‘armordillo’ with basic tanking abilities that make him for an ideal starting champion for newcomers to the game. Rammus’ passive naturally increases his damage by a quarter of his total armor, which makes him a nuisance to outright ignore by the other team considering he starts hitting pretty hard as he gets better items in his inventory. His three abilities are Powerball – which allows for him to gradually increase his speed over time for a short duration to get in a fight or catch an enemy quickly, Defensive Ball Curl – which allows for him to reflect damage taken back to an opponent and reduces the amount of damage he takes for a duration, Puncturing Taunt – which allows for him to grab the attention of a nearby enemy for a duration and possibly turn them away from attacking one of your damage dealers, and Tremors – which is an area-of-effect ability that lasts for a short while, dealing damage to anyone standing near Rammus.

With all of these abilities combined together, Rammus is a formidable tank with much to offer to his team. A perfect example of a true initiation with this champion would be to use Powerball to get in to a fight initially (ideally when one of the squishier champions extends just a bit too far!), and taunt a non-tanky or support champion immediately. Right after the target is taunted, you want to hit your Defensive Ball Curl ability so while they’re attacking you can reflect damage back to them, and if the entire team is near you want to pop your Tremors ability so you can add extra damage in to the mix while your team is supporting you. Rammus excels at interrupting and disrupting opponents due to his short cooldowns on abilities and overall nuisance of a presence for the opposing team.

Role B: Support – Support is another under-appreciated role that can greatly impact a victory for yourself and your team. The support champion is meant to do just what its labeled – to support your team by means of healing, interrupting the opposing team, and/or buffing them in some ways. A good support champion stays behind the front lines of the battle and knows that over-extending away from their party usually ends in an untimely death for them.

In this guide we’ll be using Soraka as our example, who is one of the more simplistic champions in the support role. Soraka’s passive ability is called Consecration – this ability grants bonus magic resistance to nearby teammates. Her active abilities are Starcall – which does damage to any units within range of Soraka as well as reduces their magic resistance. This ability actually stacks up to ten times, which means that you could ultimately shred apart any magic resistance an opponent or monster has over a short period of time. Given that this ability actually does magic damage, it can end up really hurting an opponent if they fight against Soraka for too long. Her next ability is Astral Blessing – this ability heals herself or a friendly target and grants them additional armor for a short duration. Her third ability is Infuse, which has two effects: if used on a friendly target or herself, it will grant them mana. If this ability is used on an enemy target, it will deal significant damage to them and silence them for a duration. Lastly, her ultimate ability is called Wish – this ability does a group-wide heal that will heal Soraka and all of her allies regardless of where they are on the map.

As you can see, Soraka is the true definition of support with these abilities at her disposal. Being able to disrupt the enemy by taking down their magic resistance as well as give her team a boost to their own magic resistance is a crucial benefactor to team fights, and she’s great at rescuing people from near-death experiences with quick heals. Her Infuse ability is probably her crutch, as the ability to silence an enemy can change the course of a fight quickly (or the ability to give just a little more mana to your heavy-hitting DPS can change things, too).

Role C: Damage Dealers – Attack damage and ability power damage dealers are lumped together in this section, as they both serve the same purpose ultimately – which is to completely melt the face of the other team as quickly and effeciently as possible. Playing a damage dealer requires quick thinking and understanding of your opponents. You don’t want to blow all of your abilities on a Rammus, for example, if he’s got a lot of armor and/or magic resist. You’d do better damage against a squishy champion like Soraka or the other team’s damage dealers, who are more itemized towards increasing their damage output and/or supporting their team rather than focusing on total survivability.

The difference between ability power and attack damage is a matter of balancing out the type of damage being inflicted for your team as a whole; stacking all of your damage dealers as attack damage makes it easy for the opposing team to get items with armor on it, making it extremely tough for your team to kill them. On the other hand, if you have all ability power champions on your team you’re gonna find that if the opposing team gets magic resist you are going to be in the same rut. With that in mind, finding a fair balance is the key to making a great team.

For this example we’re going to use Master Yi, who is a great champ to utilize as both attack damage OR ability power. Master Yi’s passive is Double Strike, which essentially grants him a free attack after his 7th attack has been made at any time. This ability is not consecutive – ie. you don’t need to attack someone seven times in a row to get the proc, as it will add up over time regardless of how long it takes for you to reach your seventh strike. His first active ability is Alpha Strike, which does damage to Yi’s target as well as up to 3 other nearby enemies for significant damage (especially playing ability power Yi), and has a chance to do bonus damage to minions also. His next ability is Meditate, which allows for Yi to heal himself for a short duration. His third ability is Wuju Style, which will passively increase Yi’s base damage but can be turned on for a short time to double its effects. When the ability ends, the passive is lost until the cooldown ends on the ability. Lastly, Yi’s ultimate is Highlander – which dramatically increases his movement speed, attack speed and makes him immune to all slowing effects. Additionally, if Yi kills a champion with this ability it will automatically refresh the cooldowns of all his abilities. If he gets an assist kill with this ability, it cuts cooldowns in half for his abilities.
Playing as attack damage Yi relies primarily on attack speed for his passive ability to proc as much as possible, as well as his Wuju Style ability. Attack damage Yi excels at rapidly tearing down a pesky support champion, and proper use of Highlander can mean the difference for your team. If you manage to consistently kill an enemy champion with Highlander bear in mind it will reset its cooldown, allowing for you to essentially always have it on during a team fight in a sort’ve chain reaction effect.

Playing as ability power Yi relies on patience and timing. The two abilities that scale with ability power Yi is Alpha Strike and Meditate, which have a significant boost by ability power items in Yi’s inventory. Meditate is a great way to regain all of your lost health within seconds, but the real fun is being able to use Alpha Strike on the opposing team and cutting away as much as half of their health in mere moments. The key is to wait until the team is relatively close together before using it, as you want Alpha Strike to hit its maximum amount of 4 targets as often as possible to get the most bang for your buck. While Yi’s auto attacks can still be a nuisance, its nowhere near as effective as an attack damage Yi’s.

Conclusion – In the end, the ideal balance of your team is a matter of victory or defeat in most cases. You’ll come to find that as you progress in summoner levels, more and more people are worried about team balance more than anything else and its crucial that you fit in to the roles needed if you’re looking to win games. Be it a tank, support or one of the types of damage dealers you should always be aware of who’s playing what champion and how you can best serve your team by filling in any roles that need to be filled. Understanding multiple champions rather than just focusing on one is the key to success in this game, and you should at least know one or two champions per archetype to be better prepared for the high-level matches you’ll be playing in the future.