An age old saying in League of Legends is that the fastest way to climb is to only play one champion. By only playing one champion, you’ll be able to thoroughly understand the champion’s mechanics, damage outputs, combos etc. giving you an immediate advantage to your opponent who might not understand their champion as well as you understand yours.

It’s important when deciding which champion to main to pick a champion that suits your own playstyle and strengths as a player. At the same time, it can be difficult to decide which champion to main because a champion’s strength and meta adaptability can change over time. The champions on this list are ones I personally believe will always remain very strong in the meta and are very rewarding for those that put the time and effort into learning them.

Top Lane: Fiora

Fiora has been consistently one of the best top laners throughout League’s history—especially in solo queue. Fiora’s unmatched 1v1 potential, high skill ceiling, as well as her immense scaling have made her a very versatile and popular pick in almost all metas.

Depending on the patch, Fiora sometimes has very few or zero counters. Contrarily, Fiora can oftentimes hard counter many champions and win or at least go even in most matchups. In many cases, Fiora can be a direct counter to many of the strongest champions within a certain patch. A few examples of this in recent days are Gwen, Sion and Irelia-centric metas—Fiora being a direct counter to all of these picks. While Fiora has countless strengths, she also does have a few weaknesses. One of the downsides of a champion that is dominant in so many specific matchups is that the champion will tend to be banned out a lot. Fiora is definitely no stranger to this and sometimes will hold the highest ban rate out of any top laner in a patch. On top of this, Fiora, like many melee bruiser top laners, will struggle into many ranged matchups such as Quinn or Akshan.

Lastly, Fiora tends to struggle in teamfights. She has very minimal crowd control in her kit (only her Parry), making it extremely difficult to peel for her carries should she need to. While she completely counters most tanks, Fiora isn’t very tanky on her own. If Fiora is played alongside things such as assassin junglers and enchanter supports, the team comp may have little to no front line. In most cases, Fiora lacks engagement for her team and generally acts as a secondary or counter-engage tool (similar to champions such as Viego or Akali).

The reason Fiora isn’t picked that often in pro play is that, unlike solo queue, professional teams tend to favor champions with strong team cohesion and Fiora as a champion is generally not thematic with many team comps. But while she does falter in some areas, there is a reason Fiora is such a popular and consistently strong pick in solo queue: she is a versatile champion who can dominate most matchups and can absolutely 1v9 a game. While the champion kit is pretty basic and is fairly easy to learn, her skill ceiling is extremely high making her a fantastic champion to one-trick or main.

Jungle: Kayn (Rhaast)

Kayn is one of the most versatile and consistently strong solo queue junglers. A trait that is unique to Kayn is his ability to transform into Rhaast or Shadow Assassin form. Rhaast is better in most cases but there will definitely be fringe games where Shadow Assassin is favorable. In this guide, we will be specifically discussing Rhaast as it is by far and away the stronger and more favorable option of the two.

Rhaast has a relatively basic kit and is easy to learn but is also very rewarding for those who do decide to invest time into Rhaast. Rhaast has an extremely fast clear speed as well as high mobility, team fight attrition and solid damage. Rhaast struggles in the early game, but unlike many other late-game jungle champions, it is a necessity to fight on Rhaast to get his form.

One of the most difficult parts of Rhaast is piloting his early game and balancing his quick clear with ganks and invades– not necessarily always for a kill but in many cases to look to build up his passive. Rhaast excels at invading the enemy jungle because of his high mobility and very fast clear speed; however, Rhaast doesn’t win early game skirmishes against many jungle champions and because of this, you’ll generally want to be able to track the enemy jungler and steal camps while avoiding the enemy jungle. Rhaast mainly spikes in the mid-late game and relative to the team comps, can also be an individual late-game win condition if the enemy doesn’t have any answers to the champion.

While some matchups are more difficult, Rhaast, in a vacuum, doesn’t have many bad matchups. There won’t be many instances where Rhaast ever feels unplayable or dominated by his jungle matchup. Rhaast does however suffer against poke or ranged team comps and is also vulnerable to being invaded in the early game. Contrarily, Rhaast thrives against engage comps that are forced to all-in into Rhaast.

Rhaast’s kit isn’t very complicated, but part of being able to excel at him, like all other junglers, is being able to track the enemy jungler and have decisive and effective decision making. Being able to learn the champion's limits is a quality that is very critical to maining Rhaast and is something that will come with practice. Rhaast is a champion that, if you do decide to main it, will show results very quickly.

A bonus to mastering Rhaast is that he is situationally a very strong pick in the top lane as well. In a role with so many duelists and bruisers, Rhaast is often able to play to go even in the laning phase and then win lane once he reaches form. He will reach his final form a lot faster because there is a lane opponent he will be constantly poking/fighting with.

Mid: Anivia

There are very few, if any, patches where Anivia is a weak champion. Anivia is iconic for being a one-trick champion as her playstyle is very unique. She is a DPS control mage, Though her kit is quite simple, the difficult part of Anivia lies in her laning phase, her terrain utilization, and having good positioning. If you have ever played against a really good Anivia, you know firsthand how quickly a good Anivia can take over and completely 1v9 a game.

Anivia is a champion who is intrinsically very annoying to play against, and the rarity of the pick means most people don’t know how to shut down or play against it properly. An Anivia who is even or ahead is very annoying and difficult to play against, but on the other hand, an Anivia that is behind often feels useless and irrelevant.

Anivia is a champion—like Gangplank or Irelia—where the player base is extremely polarized. Those that play and understand the champion can single-handedly win the game for their team. Alternatively, those who don’t play the champion will find it extremely difficult to do well and can individually lose games for their team. Anivia takes a lot of practice and has a very high skill floor. Her farming (especially pre-6) and, in turn, her laning are all very difficult. This is due to her weak, slow, ranged auto attacks which take a lot of training to get used to.

Aside from her laning, Anivia players need to constantly position well in team fights and make especially good use of her team-fight defining W ability. Anivia’s W ability, Crystallize, is one of the key defining aspects of her kit and using it effectively can make or break a team fight. Building terrain, especially to the magnitude that Anivia can, is very uncommon and most players tend to misposition as a result of this.

Anivia as a champion won’t deal upfront as much damage as some other AP Mid lane mages, but her utility is unparalleled. While her W is her most prominent utility, her R and even her Q are fantastic zoning tools as well. Because she has one of the best terrain control kits in the game, she thrives especially in Jungle teamfights where she is able to control the fight and play to her kit’s strengths.

Ultimately, while Anivia is a very difficult champion to learn, she is a fantastic champion to put time into and the reward will be well worth it.

ADC: Jhin

Jhin for a long time has consistently been an S-tier ADC. He constantly tops the ADC tier lists and makes his way back into professional play time and time again. Jhin’s playstyle differs from many ADCs because he doesn’t rely on a high attack speed to deal consistent damage. Instead, his auto attacks are based on a 4 shot reload mechanic that allows him to deal strong burst damage. Because of his lack of damage per second, Jhin struggles against tankier champions, which is a major weakness. Conversely, Jhin excels against squishy champions, bursting them with his insane amounts of burst damage.

With a decent laning phase and an above average early game, Jhin snowballs extremely well. When ahead, he is able to reach his lethal threshold very quickly and delete enemy champions. While his late game isn’t bad by any means, he does tend to get outscaled by a lot of ADCs. Because of this, he plays to win early, snowball, and close out the game quickly before any champions can contest him. With his W, Deadly Flourish, being a long-ranged CC, and his E, Captive Audience, providing vision and a slow, Jhin supplies his team with solid utility.

Understanding Jhin’s mechanics and understanding his limits, especially the very punishable reload mechanic, is what differentiates a decent Jhin player from a great Jhin player. Because of this, when Jhin players must utilize the high execution ability of his 4th shot. Jhin’s ability to execute enemies is unmatched, and, as a result, it is very critical to understand Jhin’s damage capability and output to be able to utilize Jhin to his fullest potential.

Support: Soraka

Soraka has been heavily overlooked and underrated for a long time. Even though she is generally not as popular in pro-play, she has been showing up more and more recently (for example, MSF Mersa and 100T Huhi utilizing the picks in the LEC and LCS summer playoffs respectively).

Soraka has gone unchanged for a while and continues to be an S tier pick in not only support, but also Top Mid and ADC. Personally, I’d say Soraka’s best role isn’t support and is actually ADC or Top— but naturally these options are not as feasible in solo queue. Soraka doesn’t have many hard counter lanes and has ridiculous stats overall. As an enchanter, Soraka benefits from longer and more drawn out games, and will struggle more in faster paced volatile games.

In solo queue, players tend to make more mistakes and are less coordinated in comparison to pro-play where plays are better executed and mistakes are minimized. Because of this, Soraka thrives even more in a solo queue environment where she is given the time to scale and won’t be punished in the early game very often. Learning Soraka is relatively easy as her kit is quite simple.

The difficulty of Soraka lies in the need to position well on her, being able to utilize her CC and heals to the maximum while still being able to avoid dying. By playing Soraka, in many cases, you might be strong enough to prevent your carries from dying on any engage which will in turn make you the initial target of the enemy team. It is very crucial to be cognizant of the enemy team’s ability to kill you. For example, understanding whether they will be attempting to assassinate, isolate or flank you. Soraka flourishes in front to back fights where she is able to keep her team healthy while being protected from potential flanks. Soraka has fantastic disengage and team fighting, but poor positioning can be very detrimental and easily punished.

Due to her ridiculous stats especially with Moonstone Renewer, the enemy team is forced to purchase grievous wounds items somewhat early, which is often very gold inefficient, but they risk being completely run over in fights if they neglect to purchase it. Even with a simple kit, being able to properly and effectively make use of all her utility in both CC and heals takes a lot of game knowledge, time and practice.

These champions will always be strong solo queue picks and will almost never fall out of the meta. Given the proper time, practice and dedication mastering these champions will show results and be undoubtedly rewarding.