Understanding Your Champion

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

So you’ve heard casters and other people talk about what a champion is good at, what certain team comps are good at, and finally, champion power curves. This is some complex stuff that I find a lot of people grasp, but do not truly understand. Everyone knows that Tristana has a strange power curve, and it has to do with her passive, but do you know what specifically about her kit makes this true?

This kind of logic applies to all champs and teams, and I feel a huge part of trying to climb the ladder comes from understanding what you and the rest of your team are good at. Now, many people try and memorize things like match-ups or where a champion's strengths lie, but that takes a lot of time. Time that could be better spent putting a plan together for the game. The better thing to do is apply logic and draw conclusions from that.

First of all, this requires understanding champions. I’m not saying you need to memorize every skill and every cooldown, although the more you do, the easier it is and more precise you can be. It’s important to look at what the basic champs skills are. Let’s take an example, since that’s the best way to get a handle on these types of things.

We’ll take Caitlyn as a first example. Caitlyn’s known as a lane bully ADC that dominates in lane and falls off in comparison to other ADCs as the game continues. I’ve seen a lot of people take this to mean she doesn't do damage late game, and that’s not true. First, what makes her strong in lane?

·         Her 650 range is the highest base range in the game.

·         She has a very easy time pushing the lane at level 1 with her Q

·         Her Q also is a great way to farm and poke at the same time because it passes through targets

·         Her E lets her escape ganks on the off chance she gets her range closed in on.

·         She can self ward with W

·         Her Ult is guaranteed damage and can be impactful in non-sustain lanes

Some of this is pretty obvious stuff, some of it not as much. The more you’re able to piece together from experience, the more you can strategize. Now, since we know what her strengths are; what are her weaknesses?

·         Ultimate can be blocked, and forces her to stand still and cast

·         Only one basic skill does meaningful damage

·         She has no built-in steroids

·         Her only self peel is slow and has a long CD

           

            So how do these points lead to Cait having a lackluster late game? First, her ultimate can be intercepted by other champs. The cast time is long and the target is obvious. Using this in a teamfight can not only mean death if used at the wrong time, but lowers your DPS because you’re no longer attacking the enemy. It’s best used in between fights, but once late game comes around, ADCs are known for constant DPS in teamfights which means her Ult has little to no use in that aspect. Add in the fact that the long and obvious cast time means someone else has a long time to jump in front of the bullet and tank the shot. Late in the game people are almost always moving in groups, which means the tankiest person can usually take the shot and you’ll get the least out of your skill.

            Next, her W and E come into account. When you compare Caitlyn to other ADCs, most other ADCs have more damaging skills. Kog has his W Q and ult(which I’m counting because it can be used multiple times in a fight), Draven has everything except his E, etc. Caitlyn has one basic skill that can be used in a teamfight outside of her auto attacks. Not only that, but it loses damage as it passes through targets and forces her to stay still to cast it. Her W and E are of no use to her in teamfights outside of trying to get away from people.

Finally, and in relation to the last point, she has nothing in her kit that boosts her damage output. Think of every ADC that is known for late game power: Kog Maw, Twitch, Vayne, Tristana. What do all of these champs has in common? They all have something in their kit that inherently boosts their damage output. Whether it’s percentage health damage, attack speed boosts, or a range increase. Caitlyn has nothing of the sort that can give her more damage other than building items, which means her possible damage is inherently lower.

Now I went into a lot of detail, but as long as you can understand the bullet points, you can apply this to any champ. Look at where they are strong and where they aren’t strong and you can piece together what you as a player and team need to avoid and what you need to exploit.

The common things you need to look at are:

·         Range

·         CD length

·         What Abilities do

·         How well they scale (do they do % damage/have high ratios or fall flat)

·         Where does power spike and where does it die

            You don’t have to know specifics, but have a general idea. I’ll use Shaco this time to demonstrate my point since he’s a champ I don’t know as well.

Strengths:

·         Mobile from Q which is a flash with invis

·         Great at setting traps and bursting with surprise while feared

·         Very slippery

·         Passive and E give a lot of damage

·         Ult creates clone for confusion and procs all on-hit and can attack on its own

            Weaknesses:

·         No immediate CC on command

·         Dangerous/Slow early clear

·         Very squishy and revealing in wrong location means death

·         Usually needs to gank because he will not clear well until he gets items

·         Teamfight potential is weak because invis time is low and W needs to be pre-set to be of much use.

·         All single target damage

These are the reasons why Shaco is known for devastating early ganks, but can’t teamfight well unless he gets far enough ahead to burst people. His dueling potential is also great especially if he puts a trap down in advance when the game is still running as planned. As you can see even though I’ve never played Shaco, my experience and understanding of the fundamentals of his kit let me know what he does and what I should do in response.

Now if you’re trying to find what a team as a whole is built upon, you apply the same process times 5. You’ll look at the positives and weaknesses of each champ on your team and the other team. Compare the similarities and you’ll see what both teams compositions are built for and are weak against. You can look and see where each player gets their power spike in terms of levels and items once you get really good at it.

This is a massive part of becoming a successful jungler more than any other role. It lets you know who’s weak and when, and that’s huge when you’re affecting every lane and contemplating invading the other jungler.

So let’s take it all full circle and look back at Trist and how her power curve works. She’s got a good early game, poor mid game, and a disgustingly strong late game. Her good early game comes from the fact that her base damage on her E skill is pretty good, and it’s magic damage on top of that, which most bot lanes don’t itemize for early. Her E also gives grievous wounds, meaning that she should regen from the trade better. Once you get to mid game, the damage from that falls off because it scales off AP which you won’t build. In fact, all of her skills have AP scaling, which is why she falls off very hard past early game. Her saving grace, actually, has nothing to do with her early game power and is why she has a strange curve. It’s actually a combo of her passive and Q. Her passive gives her range per level and her range gets to be higher than anyone in the game late besides an ulting Twitch. Throw in a whopping 90% attack speed boost on her Q and you've got a lot of damage hitting from very far away. The Q attack speed means she can build more AD and hit harder. The final part of her kit that makes her unstoppable late game is the safety she gets. Her ultimate is low cooldown and blows people away from her as well as having a long range jump that resets on a kill or assist.

Analyzing champions is a huge skill of League of Legends that takes some time to fully understand on its own. However, you don’t have to start memorizing everything about every champ. With 119 champions in the game that is nearly impossible. The important thing is to understand the basic idea of what each champ does and plan around everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. If you apply this to your own games, you can look past the idea of just trying to CS and following a similar pattern every game, and start strategizing on how to pull an advantage through logically understanding strengths and weaknesses.