Disclaimer: This article represents the opinion of the writer but not necessarily that of Team Dignitas.

Methodology of Tier Ranking

The methodology of ranking these champions for ARAM stems from their usefulness to be plugged in play in any composition. A team composition, assume all things are equal, will determine how likely you are to be victorious. Yes, gaps in skill are very important as you can always outplay a worse player and come out ahead. Yes, there are bits and pieces of macro strategy involved when navigating through the Howling Abyss. But this is a tier list of champions focused on their ability to outshine their peers. What it comes down to is this: How does X champion enhance a team composition?

In ARAM, team compositions tend to be wacky as they are decided by the roll of virtual dice. Planning a team composition ahead of starting your queue is rather pointless because there is no definite guarantee you will roll the champions you want. The nature of a veteran ARAM player is described as said player’s ability to understand the strengths and weaknesses of his or her unique composition. Furthermore, to comprehend and execute a play style dictated by the strong traits presented in the champions his or her team has rolled. A better player will also recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy composition and will play accordingly. But, let’s back up a bit - what are strong traits to look for in champions when playing ARAM?

Strong Traits

- Long-range Poke

Otherwise known as spells that have long ranges, typically skill shots. Champions with long-range poke can use this advantage to whittle down enemy health bars at a safe distance; meaning, you can hurt them and they can't hurt you back.

- Healing/Sustain

Being able to restore HP innately, or more importantly, to teammates is incredibly useful in ARAM. Since there is no healing in fountain, all fighting in ARAM is done with "limited" health and mana resources. Health packs can be picked up, but only by one teammate. Replenishing HP means you will live longer in fights and can end games quicker. Needing to base means dying, which prolongs the overall game.

- Area of Effect

You might hear its acronym AoE from time to time, but it basically means spells that affect an area (the opposite of a single-target spell). AoE spells are fantastic in ARAM because Howling Abyss is a map that comprises of a single narrow corridor. Less space around means AoE spells are hard to avoid, dodge, etc... Keep in mind, any strong trait also considered AoE makes it even stronger. In the example below, Gangplank casted his ultimate in a way that zones our team out of the fight. We cannot help our teammates that are being focused by the enemy.

The yellow outline represents an AOE zone where our teammates cannot enter or else they will take damage and be slowed. The two players in the zone are crippled and cannot contribute much to the fight. Nasus' E is displayed by a zone highlighted in red. This is completely ineffective as the enemy's goal is to focus our frontline. They do not want to walk into our AOE - they don't need to. The green arrow represents the most optimal path Trundle and Shaco can enter the fight. It is too long and funnels them into a choke point. Red team won this teamfight.

- Initiation

Also known as hard crowd-control or by another synonym, "engage." Abilities that let you close in on enemies and lock them down help you win teamfights with huge combination ultimates or focus fire - quickly deleting a single target.

- Disengage

As the name suggests, champions with spells that repel enemy initiations have disengage. This allows you to negate an enemy strength if they over rely on one form of initiation.

- 'Stat' Steroids

This trait means a champion has, within its kit, the choice to empower a certain stat making the champion more tankier, having faster auto attack speed, take reduced damage, etc... However, just because a champion has a stat steriod doesn't make it top tier. A stat steroid has to be either game-changing or very finely tuned to make a champion noticeably stronger, tankier, faster, etc...

- Terrain Modifiers

Very few champions have terrain modifying spells, so this makes them that much more valuable to have. As discussed earlier, Howling Abyss has an infamously small area to maneuver. Henceforth, adding elements that take up additional space will, nearly all the time, create choke-points. Forcing the enemy in a choke-point can give you the upper hand almost by itself (remember area of effect spells). Let's look at the example below.

Do you notice Anivia W? The ice wall has decreased the movable space by approximately a third. Shaco and Nasus' path of exit is now a predictable one illustrated by the yellow ark. That space is the fastest way to escape the enemy's chase, and Red Team knows this. By modifying the terrain, Anivia has made it easier for her team to intitiate onto Blue Team.

- Mobility

And finally, the most intuitive trait in the entire list: mobility. Just like Summoner's Rift, ultra-mobile champions have more playmaking abilities, more escape options, etc... It opens up a more diverse playbook that say a champion with low mobility who really is at the mercy of enemy crowd control. Below is a clip of Kalista trying to avoid damage thanks to her unique movement.

The Kalista dances around Urgot and Gangplank as they try to finish the teamfight. Aware of Anivia's deadly burst, Kalista kites back into Shaco's box defense. She positions herself behind minions to block Urgot Q's. With Shaco, Kalista is able to live long enough to moderately win a two versus three skirmish.

Types of Compositions

You typically want a balance of roles to succeed. An ideal composition includes two tanks, one AD carry, one AP carry, and a support style champion or maybe a bruiser, hybrid champion. Having at least one ranged ADC is nice due to your fast turret taking ability. High burst AP champions can run away with games. Heavy initiation and crowd control is also optimal. Invulnerability spells have high skill ceilings and can be super clutch (e.g. Fizz “Trickster”). Tanks and Marksman are always useful as they make up core parts to a good teamfighting composition. However, since there are thousands of different unique compositions, you should be prepared to play with anything. As such, spice up your build if your composition requires it. Let’s say you’re roll Ezreal and your team lacks a source of AP. Time to bust out the old AP Ezreal to make sure you don’t get hard counter with armor stacking. But of course, let’s talk about the unusual team compositions we come across that aren't as ideally balanced.

- The Squishy Poke Comp

The squishy poke comp can be considered a good roll, maybe you rolled three or more poke champs and think to yourself, “easy game.” It’s not all dandy though, the enemy might be full of tanks all looking to scale into the late game and completely devastate you. This is why the squishy poke comp wants to play a high-tempo play style. The poke comp wants to continuously chunk health bars and take towers as fast possible. They want to balloon their gold lead to quickly end the game before the twentieth minute. The reason for this is waiting too long runs the risk of getting out-scaled and losing a major team fight in the late game resulting in DEFEAT.

- The Tank Comp

This composition has a majority of it being tanks or bruisers. A common strategy that sees moderate success is having every tank champion purchase Targon’s Embrace and sustaining till they get their ultimates which is usually a swing of power. With this certain composition, you want to just hold out the early to mid-game. You want to scale into the late game where you should be building more bruiser oriented and designate the best suited champion to be a true tank (only resistance and HP items). Once you have three core items, your tank comp will evolve to a bulldozer comp; unstoppable, hard to kill, and crazy amounts of sustained damage. However, you always run the risk of getting focused if the enemy manages to kite you. To avoid this, use your engage tools wisely. The biggest tip for this type of composition is to take Mark, the summoner spell that is a snowball, the one that lets everyone do a Lee Sin Q.

- All ADC Comp

Like the title suggests, this is a composition where your team had the misfortune of rolling three or more ADCs. Similar to the Squishy Poke Comp, you ideally want to play a high-tempo game unless your marksmen are not lane bullies whatsoever. If however, your marksmen are lane bullies, you should be abusing their dominance to the full extent. Since you’re all ADCs you’ll have no problem taking structures. Make sure you build at least a couple of Black Cleavers and Last Whispers to shred armor. The All ADC Comp is rather difficult to navigate towards the late game because the enemy team will easily pick one of you off and might win the fight off of that. Try purchasing Banshee Veils or Edge of Night to increase your survivability.

- Killing Yourself (Shopping)

Relax, I’m talking about making your champion's health pool drop to zero. A mechanic present in Summoner’s Rift is actually nonexistent in Howling Abyss: returning to base to heal and purchase new items. In Howling Abyss, you neither heal or are allowed to shop once you leave the spawning platform. This makes ARAM a mode where you have long periods of fighting never interrupted by “backing.”

The most experienced ARAM players know the most efficient way to purchase items is to look for an opportunity where you can execute. Ideally, you want to execute to a tower that has no enemies near so they can’t try to snipe you as you die at 1 HP. You also want to execute at a time when there won’t be immediate consequences due to the lack of pressure.

This way, if you manage to execute with a large sum of gold. You may spawn with better, completed items and rush down the corridor to join your team and continue fighting the enemy team. You’ll have a gold advantage as well since the enemy could not cash in on your death.

It’s imperative you remind your team to recognize the numbers disadvantage when allies execute themselves to shop. Ping your teammates to stay back until you regroup. You don’t know how many games I’ve lost because allies are oblivious to the fact they are at a number disadvantage and took a bad fight. And then we lose. And then I facepalm. This applies to you readers as well, if you see your allies execute to shop quicker, please stay back and wait for them.

Don’t try and two versus five and cost your team a tower, and an inhibitor, the gold lead, and possibly the game.

Health Relics

At the 3:00 minute mark, Health Relics spawn on designated spots located on the right-side wall of Howling Abyss. Once they are taken, they re-spawn every minute. Try to craft an early game strategy that lets you push in the wave into the enemy turret around the end of minute two. This way, when the wave crashes at their tower, the enemy is left with clearing the wave and cannot defend their health relic.

You can keep tabs on the relic respawn so you know exactly when to position yourself closer to the spawn location and get a cheeky boost in health. It may not look like much, but capturing all the health relics as they spawn is what separates the good ARAM players from the best ARAM players.

Class Function

- Assassin

The Assassin wants to either multikill when enemies are at low HP or assassinate a priority target before or during a big fight. The 5 star assassins excel at doing this. Lower tier assassins can also do the job equally as well but struggle with outputting enough damage or having adequate escape options. Resist the urge to jump in a fight too early. You must be patient and look to punish a squishy target that has over committed to a play. By killing an enemy that put themselves in danger, you can win a teamfight without the need to frontline as Master Yi or Katarina.

- Fighter

The fighter really is in a peculiar situation. They get kited easily, cannot normally duel other champions, and usually offer little utility. That is why the best fighters are the ones that can close gaps, deal significant damage in teamfights, have good single target burst, and offer some level of utility. As a fighter, you really want to embrace the bruiser class and mix some tanky stats with damage stats. You want to enable your backline to DPS (damage per second) while you provide some upfront damage or utility. You should be looking to act as a frontline for your team if it lacks a significant tank. I almost always recommend taking the summoner spell Mark, as it will help you close distances.

- Mage

The mage is the quintessential component to any standard composition. Due to the ridiculous amount of mages in the game, it’s hard to generalize what they all do. But this is a guide after all, so let’s try:

Artillery Mage

The AP powerhouse, the punisher, the most broken thing in ARAM some might say, yes, this is the artillery mage. The likes of Ziggs, Xerath, and Lux. These champions stay perfectly safe in the back while they spam their long range missiles and bombs. They hardly ever full on engage, they can wave clear like monsters, and they’ll have the fewest deaths by the end of the game if they’re worth their money. To abuse the absolute absurdity of an artillery mage, I suggest choosing the summoner spell Clarity. This will allow you to spam even more long range poke. Items that grant cooldown reduction is paramount to your success. Remember to abuse the range disparity as much as you can without putting yourself in a dangerous position.

Burst Mage

The burst mage is an opportunistic type of mage. This mage wants to layer his or her load in wombo combo fashion to quickly delete as many targets as possible. Think of Annie, Veigar, or Kennen. These types of mages offer minimal DPS in a sustained fight but when the time is right, they want to unload their damage to swiftly dominate and end a skirmish. Watch out for their level six power spike as they will eagerly look for opportunities to open up on you. I recommend communicating the wombo combo playstyle with your teammates to make sure everyone is on the same page. A burst mage must precisely unleash their burst in sync with the team to maximize damage output and thus, win a teamfight.

Control Mage

The control mages may possess some qualities of the previous archetypes but never the less, their playstyle is pretty unique. Control mages want to set up zones of control and dictate the tempo and flow of a teamfight with their wide array of utility and damaging spells. Control Mages, I'd say, have the most diverse of kits which really boils down to the players familiarity with said control mage (Swain, Azir, and Orianna come to mind). If you bestowed with the misfortune of playing a control mage you are unfamiliar with, I suggest adopting a supportive playstyle. This means focusing on utility plays that protect and enhance your other damage threats.

- Marksman

Similar to Summoner’s Rift, you want to deal consistent damage despite having a giant bullseye on top of your head. As a Marksman, you’ll be staying behind your tankier teammates and dealing auto attacks. More mobile marksmen will be able to weave in and out, casting their damage abilities, and auto attacks. The 5 star Marksman offer ridiculous utility as well as damage throughout the game, putting them a notch above other inferior Marksman. Realize you are the easiest target for the enemy. Play like everyone wants to focus fire you.

- Support

If you opt to go for a true support, instead of playing AP Sona or AD Taric, then it really comes down to your positioning and itemization. For true supports, your main task is to enable your teammates to fight faster, better, and stronger. This means; spamming heals on them, giving them movement speed buffs, shielding nonstop, cleansing them when necessary, and providing peel for them. The works.

Except since you will most likely have a bigger economy than your Summoner’s Rift counterpart, you are going to be expected to pick up utility items and other types of active items like Mikael’s Crucible and Locket of the Iron Solari. Also, when playing against a composition that uses stealth mechanics, it's presumably your responsibility to be buying Oracle's Extract. Everybody has to do their part, so lead by example.

- Tank

One of the most vital roles in ARAM compositions are the beefy frontliners. These champions are the building blocks which teamfights are decided by (sometimes). A good team composition will most likely have a designated tank that will be in charge of defending the ally squishies and soaking as many cooldowns as possible. Without the tank, the team fight becomes scattered and chaotic, usually resulting in your team arguing over who should be the sacrificial lamb. A tank will define the line of scrimmage if you will. They determine if your team controls an area and where you may exert pressure. Without a tank to boast their resilience, you cannot walk up to the enemy without expecting heavy fire.

Tier-list

5 Star Champions, the S tier picks. These champions are consistently strong and have an impactful presence throughout the game. These champions aren’t necessarily mechanically intensive, but their skill ceiling is usually high. Nevertheless, the root of some of these champions strength could be explained by their straightforward and “simple” kit. These Champions, to put it in my own words, are always a treat to play.

4 and a half Star Champions are generally good in ARAM. They are strong in most situations, but fall short in niche scenarios. Furthermore, most of these picks are overshadowed by superior picks in the 5 Star category. However, a decent player familiar with a 4 and a half star champion can easily defeat a someone using a 5 star champion. So don’t lose hope and focus on playing well. 4 and a half star champions require the player to have a certain degree of skill and familiarity to make outstanding plays.

4 Star Champions are situationally strong. However, when against higher ranked champions, the four star champs might feel completely useless. Some creativity will be needed to shine on these picks. A good amount of skill is required to operate them efficiently. Nevertheless, 4 star champions are considerably stronger than the unfortunate picks ranked below them.

Anything lower than 4 stars is unnecessary to rank as it can best be described as: detrimental to your composition to moderately impactful, but very inconsistent. It is possible to use cheese strats with these champions and be victorious.

Good luck out there.

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