For many newcomers to League of Legends, much of the terminology can seem obscure and unclear. From lanes to monsters, so many aspects of this game have names that often do not outwardly provide much detail into the meaning behind their name. Perhaps one of the biggest offenders of this is how champion classes and subclasses are named. What makes a diver different from an assassin? How are burst mages, battlemages, and artillery mages different from one another? The goal of this guide is to help explain the terminology behind champion classes and subclasses in simple terms so that newer players can better understand what each champion does just by knowing what champion class they belong to.

Controllers: Saving Allies and Catching Enemies

Controllers are champions whose primary job is to assist allies in securing kills and objectives. As a result, many of the champions in this category are typically played in the support role, occasionally flexing into the middle lane when needed. They typically have a mix of healing, shielding, and crowd control within their set of abilities, and often buy items oriented towards helping their teammates rather than increasing their own strengths. They are divided into two subclasses: catchers and enchanters

Catchers

Among controllers, catchers tend to be oriented towards applying crowd control to enemies rather than healing or shielding. They often have long-range disabling effects which are useful for locking down enemies, and their main goal is to allow allies to capitalize on said crowd control.

Example: A good example of a catcher is Morgana. Her most notable ability is a projectile which roots enemies for a sizable amount of time, ensuring that her allies can kill the target easily by hitting their abilities and attacks more reliably. Like other controllers, she does have a shield amongst her abilities, meaning that she can also support allies directly.

Enchanters

Unlike controllers, who assist their allies indirectly through locking enemies down and enabling kills, enchanters provide a more direct form of support. Oftentimes they have several different means of healing, shielding, and otherwise empowering their allies in order to ensure that they survive long enough to win fights. While they often have less crowd control within their kit than catchers, they frequently still have some way to disable enemies and disengage fights as well.

Example: Janna is a great example of an enchanter because she has everything that was laid out above. She is able to shield her allies with her E and heal them with her ultimate, along with slowing enemies by using her W and knocking them up with her Q. Combine that with the movement speed that she grants allies with her passive, and Janna is clearly a prime example of an enchanter who directly aids her allies.

Fighters: Diving In and Taking Hits

Otherwise known as bruisers, fighters excel in close-combat, being able to deal tons of damage and take their fair share of it as well. Their key strength is that they are able to secure kills easily on enemies that are within their range but can often struggle to achieve their goal once disabled by any meaningful crowd control. Regardless, their mix of damage potency and durability can often make them massive threats in prolonged teamfights. Fighters fall into two subclasses: divers and juggernauts.

Divers

Prioritizing damage over survivability, divers attempt to overcome the main weakness of being a fighter by having increased mobility and damage potency within their kits. While still able to survive for a moderately long time, divers are nowhere near as durable as juggernauts. However, they are able to access key targets much easier and are often greater threats because of that.

Example: Wukong embodies everything that it means to be a diver. While his passive does grant him some survivability via providing bonus defenses, the rest of his kit prioritizes damage and target access over anything else. Being able to dash to targets with his E, reduce their armor with his W, and then whittle them down with his R, Wukong’s core combo does exactly what you would expect from a diver.

Juggernauts

Juggernauts are almost the exact opposite of divers while still following the core tenets of the fighter class. Unlike divers, they lack pretty much any form of target access, instead focusing on small bursts of movement speed and tanking hits. Over time, they can deal massive amounts of damage by the virtue of surviving long enough to deal it, but they are incredibly susceptible to crowd control.

Example: Perhaps the most well-known example of a juggernaut is Garen. Outside of his Q, which grants him a small burst of movement speed, he lacks any abilities which would help him access his targets. However, his W supplements his defenses and allows him to tank his way through anything, and his passive gives him the healing to shrug it off. Once he arrives at his destination, his spinning E and executing R give him no lack of damage. However, like with all juggernauts, that assumes that no crowd control has stopped him from getting there in the first place.

Mages: Cast, Blast, and Outlast

The most noteworthy trait of a mage is that they cast spells, often requiring large mana pools in order to do so effectively over the course of a fight. Very rarely do they rely on their basic attack, instead using spells to deal damage, lock enemies down, and secure objectives. However, aside from this one commonality, mages are very different. Some thrive in long fights, whereas others want to be in-and-out; some want to cast from afar, and others want to be right in the fray. As a result, they come in three variants: artillery mage, battlemage, and burst mage.

Artillery Mages

Artillery mages, as the name might suggest, have the highest functional range of any type of mage. They are able to deal the bulk of their damage without putting themselves at risk, something that is counterbalanced by their limited defensive options and low mobility. Their biggest strength is their ability to continually harass enemies into needing to retreat, granting themselves and their teams increased flexibility.

Example: Xerath is a prime example of both the strengths and limitations of an artillery mage. At best, Xerath can land his Q and W well outside of an enemy’s effective range, and can secure kills from across the map using his R. However, his defensive options are virtually nonexistent, only being able to stun targets momentarily with his E when used at close range. Xerath, for better and for worse, captures the fantasy of playing an artillery mage perfectly.

Battlemages

Almost inverting everything about artillery mages, battlemages are most effective at close range, relying on strong and consistent area-of-effect damage to punish grouped-up opponents. They are also the most defensively capable of all mages, often boasting self-healing and self-shielding capabilities which allow them to stand toe-to-toe with enemies at close range. The fact that battlemages often fight at a short but non-negligible range means that they can often punish both melee and ranged fighters when played effectively.

Example: A good example of a battlemage is Vladimir, as he excels in everything that was suggested above. Between his Q and R, he is able to defensively heal and sustain his way through difficult lanes and long teamfights. His E and R also offer huge amounts of area-of-effect damage, meaning he can tear through teams that stick close together. His W and passive also offer defensive options in the form of untargetability and health, respectively, increasing his survivability to an even greater extent.

Burst Mages

What makes burst mages unique is their ability to secure kills. Amongst the three types of mages, they are best at locking targets down and unloading damage into them, almost certainly securing a kill against frailer targets. Unlike artillery mages who strike exclusively at long-range, or battlemages who typically find themselves at mid-range, burst mages vary from melee fighters to mages who blur the line between artillery and burst. What they have in common is their ability to quickly eliminate key targets once they’ve got them stuck in place.

Example: Referring back to the idea that some mages blend artillery and burst components, Lux is perhaps the best example of such. Boasting the effective range of an artillery mage yet the skills of a burst mage, Lux is able to root and slow targets from afar using her Q and E, then kill them seamlessly with her R. As the subclass name implies, once Lux has you stuck in her crowd control, she bursts you down with the sheer amount of damage in her kit.

Marksmen: Shooting to Kill

The signature trait of a marksman is their ability to deal damage primarily through basic attacks, with abilities often existing solely to enable such. They boast the best consistent damage of any class during the teamfighting stage of the game, something that they sacrifice durability and mobility in order to achieve. Since this task is both effective and straightforward, there are no subclasses to marksmen.

Example: Caitlyn is a great example of the strengths and weaknesses of the marksman class. Caitlyn primarily relies on basic attacking in order to do damage, something that is empowered periodically by her passive. Her W provides her with limited crowd control so that she can occasionally basic attack rooted targets, and her E provides her with limited mobility so that she can stay at her desired range. Her Q and R supplement this effectively, offering long range damage at the cost of not being able to basic attack for a small amount of time.

Slayers: Quick Kills and High Thrills

Slayers are, by and afar, the class with the highest damage potency and mobility in the game. They excel at accessing priority targets and killing them efficiently, along with often getting themselves out of harms’ way in the process. However, these tricks typically only work against frail targets, and many bulkier foes can just shrug off the damage from a slayer. Similar to fighters, since most Slayers are melee champions, they struggle against crowd control. Slayers come in two varieties: Assassins and Skirmishers.

Assassins

Assassins do exactly what you would expect: go into fights, assassinate high priority targets, and escape using their excellent mobility. While they are often quite frail, something that is made apparent when they are caught in the middle of the enemy team with crowd control, their burst damage is almost unsurpassed.

Example: Talon is an excellent example of the ways in which assassins can sneak into fights, secure a kill, then sneak out. His E grants him the ability to hop over walls, increasing his target access immensely when combined with his Q, which allows him to jump to a target and deal damage. Between his W and his passive, which only compound upon this, he is able to quickly kill a frail target without much issue. The invisibility he gains from his R grants him flexibility, allowing him to engage or disengage with an increased amount of stealth, enabling everything that has been said.

Skirmishers

Commonly referred to as duelists, skirmishers thrive in a one-on-one situation, being able to stick to an enemy and deal immense amounts of single-target damage. They sacrifice some of the mobility that assassins have for increased survivability and crowd control, often being able to dive right into the enemy team rather than looking for an isolated target.

Example: Jax embodies what it means to be a skirmisher. With a Q that lets him jump to a selected target, an E which allows him to dodge all incoming attacks and then stun enemies around him, and a R that increases his defensives, Jax has plenty of mobility and survivability. When combined with his passive and W, both of which allow him to kill off a single target quickly, it is apparent how Jax fits into this archetype cleanly.

Tanks: Surviving and Thriving

Tanks, while often lacking on the offensive front, are able to take plenty of hits and apply huge amounts of disabling crowd control effects. They excel at surviving burst damage, but often fall victim to onslaughts of consistent damage. In teamfights, tanks tend to either have one of two goals: defending frail allies by creating space and applying crowd control to enemies that come nearby, or disrupting the enemy team by getting right into the fray, blocking hits, and disabling their damage-dealers. Tanks are divided into two subclasses: vanguards and wardens.

Vanguards

As far as tanks go, vanguards are the distinctly more offensive variant, boasting relatively high mobility which allows them to access priority targets in order to disrupt their ability to effectively carry fights. They tend to enable their teammates by pinning enemies down and helping secure kills, although they often have no way out of a fight once they’re in.

Example: Malphite does everything that has been listed above, making him a good example of a vanguard. While he isn’t incredibly mobile, his Q grants him a noticeable amount of movement speed and his R provides a one-way ticket to the enemy backline, knocking up anyone near the impact zone. His W and E provide small amounts of damage while increasing his survivability and disabling capabilities, compounding upon what has already been noted to make him an incredibly effective tank.

Wardens

Wardens, as their name suggests, defend teammates instead of infiltrating the enemy team. Similarly, they use crowd control to disrupt anyone who would try to attack their frailer teammates, often securing kills in the process through locking incoming enemies down. In short, they are the more defensive counterpart to the relatively offensive vanguards.

Example: A great example of a warden is Shen, who employs all of the tenets of being a warden that have already been mentioned. Using his E, he is able to taunt foes who are trying to attack his teammates, redirecting their damage towards him. With his W, he is able to create a circular zone in which all basic attacks are nullified, and his R allows him to shield an ally from anywhere on the map, teleporting to them in the process. All of this is to say nothing of his passive, which grants him shields to maintain his bulkiness throughout everything listed.

Concluding Thoughts

From what has been said, it should be clear that while champion classes might seem simple at first glance, they can provide a decent amount of information about what a champion is capable of. With these classifications, you can immediately get a sense of what a champion’s plan might be, regardless of if you know exactly what their abilities do. As such, if there is one important takeaway from this guide, it is that knowing even the slightest bit of information about your opponent can mean being able to win games more consistently. If you can’t remember exactly what an enemy champion is capable, or if you simply don’t have the time to learn, just remember the basics of what these classes do and you’ll have the start of a strong game plan.