Imagine, for a second, that you've sit down to get a few good games of solid ranked queue in. You select ranked draft, lock in your positions, and start queue. After a few minutes of waiting, you're in champion select. You're later in pick priority, and you notice that everyone on your team is picking a squishy damage dealer for their role. Your gut is telling you that this is a bad idea since the composition lacks a front line and any beefy sort of engage. You wish you could do something about it, but you don't have a tank that you can competently play. 20 minutes later, your team is getting pounced on by the enemy's front line, you're getting cc'd in to oblivion, and your team as a whole can only team fight for three seconds before getting vaporized. All of this could be prevented if you had a more varied champion pool.

Flexibility is a character trait that is vital to success in League of Legends. Having a colorful champion pool can be a life saver, especially in a low elo landscape where dynamic queue pre-mades are a common occurrence. As more and more people are playing together, and the game becomes increasingly team and macro focused, solo hard carrying is getting harder and harder to pull off. And while being a one trick can work (I'm pretty much a Zed/Diana one trick...) I've gotten new found success by picking just a handful of champs in each role I play. Doing so allows me to able to play what's best for my team. Let me be clear, however, that having a diverse champion pool is not the same as having a large champion pool. I like to stay on the side of having a few champions that I can play incredibly well, versus playing everything to a mediocre level. In each lane there are usually a few different types of sub roles that lane fulfills. Choose one from each sub role, master them, and feel secure knowing that you'll always have a good champ for every situation.

Top

The main sub roles for top lane are tanky frontline/initiators, fighter/bruisers, and utility mages. In my experience, having a pocket pick in each sub role top lane, comes in handy when your team needs a front line. It's not uncommon at all for teams to lose games because they lack the wall necessary to keep their squishies from getting dived. It's even more common in solo queue where the primary play mentality is to hard carry every game. But, it's important to dispel the myth that getting kills and snowballing is the only way to hard carry. Tanks can carry by making plays, giving your team access to the enemy backline, and using heavy crow control to initiate and ultimately spoon feed your team. Conversely, in the top lane, if the rest of your team picks utility champions, your team may lack the damage necessary to close out a game. This is where it would be beneficial to have a bruiser or fighter in your champ pool. Here are examples of what small but strong and diverse top lane pools would look like.

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Mid

Mid is an interesting place because the mid lane meta changes often, and there are a number of champs that can be placed mid just by building full damage. But for the sake of ease and clarity, I'll divide mid lane into the two umbrella sub roles it has. In mid, there are usually either long-range siege casters, or assassins. When choosing what kind of sub role to fill in the mid lane, I like to first identify what my team's road to victory will look like. For teams that want to poke, kite, play the map, and rotate to objectives, long range casters are the way to go. They can safely provide high damage output without engaging the enemy team. For comps that want to team fight, and hard engage, look to the assassin role. With assassins, you'll be able dive the enemy back line, eliminate the carries, thus neutering the enemy's source of DPS. There are of course exceptions to the rule. If there are no good targets to assassinate, an assassin may not be the best choice. Certain champions can also fill both sub roles. For example, champs like Ahri and Twisted Fate have good long range poke and have the ability to kite, but also have gap closers and burst potential. Here are examples of what small but strong and diverse mid lane pools would look like.

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Jungle

The way I like to think of jungle sub roles is by 3 varying levels of damage output. Assassins have the highest damage output and should be picked into comps where the entire enemy team is squishy/damage focused, or where the sole source of damage on the enemy team is 1-2 champs. Next up is bruisers, who will be able to churn out decent damage while not being blown up immediately. The beauty of bruisers is that they're so flexible. Champions like Xin Zhao, Vi, and Ekko can have extra damage piled on top of their build and become hyper carries in the right situations. And conversely, they can be built into invincible tanks if the situation calls for it. Rounding out the group is tanks with the least amount of up front damage. Tanks however usually come with a large amount of sustained AOE damage and a lot of crowd control. Pick tanks when your team is lacking a front line, or if your team has no good catch or engage potential. Here are examples of what small but strong and diverse jungle pools would look like.

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ADC

There are multiple ways to classify ADCs. We can either subdivide by either long-range sustained damage ADCs or duelist mid-range ADCs. Long-range ADCs obviously excel in siege and poke comps. Mid-range skirmishers excel in team fights and at 1 v 1s. If we don't classify ADCs by their range and the limitations of their kits, we can clearly classify them by how strong they are throughout the game. There are much clearer distinctions when it comes to ADCs in terms of whether they are strong in the early, mid, or late game. Also categorizing them as such makes it much easier to determine which champ you should pick. Identify what point in the game your team will have surges in power and pick around that. Here are examples of what small but strong and diverse ADC pools would look like.

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Support

Support meta is very malleable and often changes due to a number of factors such as when a support item gets buffed, if tanks are meta, or if hyper carries are meta. The support meta is also heavily dependent on what ADCs are doing well at the time. I would argue that picking a good support is the most nuanced decision of all roles. This is simply because a support often times offers so much in terms of utility for a team, and helps enable a teams win con at all stages of the game. When thinking of supports, 3 main sub-roles come to mind. There are tanky melee engagers, enchanter and utility mages, and CC bots. There are multiple ways to integrate each type of a support into a team comp. Most obviously being, if your team needs a front line with some engage, pick a tanky melee engager. If your team wants to catch people out and skirmish pick a CC bot. However, I believe the most common and thoughtful way of picking a support role is to go off of what your ADC pick is. If you have an aggressive lane bully, pick someone who can engage or someone with heavy CC to turn your lane into a kill lane. Likewise, if your ADC lacks escapes or mobility, and you know the enemy team will try to all in your carry often, pick someone with some disengage and who can heal or shield through burst initiation. Here are examples of what small but strong and diverse support pools would look like.

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When it comes to picking a champion to fill your role, flexibility is key. However, I cannot stress it enough that flexibility within your champ pool does not mean having a wide range of champions to play. Having pocket picks means that you always have the right champ for the right situation. You can avoid counter match ups and dodge being useless if your champ's win con doesn't align with your team's win con. As an added bonus, learning to play champs that are outside your natural comfort zone gives you an edge in lane phase. Because you've learned other playstyles, you'll have a better understanding of how all the sub roles work in your lane. No matter what the enemy picks, you'll have an idea of what their strategy is and play around it accordingly. Being a one trick is fun, but adding one or two pocket picks to your pool for certain circumstances can be a huge boost to your LP. Diversify your champ pool, keep your pool tight, and climb the ranked ladder!

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