Offense versus Defense is a tale as old as time itself. From warfare, to sports, to the video games we play today, philosophies, cultures, and lifestyles have been dictated by mindsets that push things to the brink, or by ones that play it safe to see what happens. But, you’re not here to see a deep introspective into worldwide mindsets, you’re here to learn about League of Legends. So, I’m going to endeavor to teach you what the rewards are for both offensive and defensive playstyles in League.

What Defines an Offensive Playstyle?

Power-creep has been one of League’s biggest issues over the years, so it’s not hard to point towards what can be defined as an offensive playstyle. And while offensive playstyles can range at various points in the game, I believe the general consensus to be that aggressive Champions, or Champions that play an offensive style, are more active through the early phases of the game. So, the lane phase, levels 1 to 6, or before turret plates/the first turret falls.

But here’s a short list as to what we’re using for our ‘Offensive Champion’ paradigm:

• Spike early in the ranges of levels 1 to 6.
• Most active around the map early/great at dueling for early objectives.
• Have a huge spike at their first or Mythic item buy.
• Possess higher base damage while having relatively weaker scalings.
• Kit designed around early & aggressive trading/fishing for damage.
• Generally above average mobility to get into fights or trades.
• Concerned about farm and kill gold over macro objectives, typically.

What Defines a Defensive Playstyle?

Oftentimes, defensive playstyles boil down to, “How obnoxious can I be for everyone else to deal with?” These approaches have less pop-off potential themselves but are heavily rewarded for understanding the common mistakes of your ELO range, or taking your defensive Champion selection into a situation where they can be an aggressive offensive presence due to a good matchup. Many defensive Champions also scale comparatively better versus offensive ones, so there’s often a higher emphasis on Mid/Late-Game performance from these selections.

Here’s our short list for our ‘Defensive Champion’ paradigm

• Less active early game, unless taken as a counter-pick.
• Spikes at two or three items/big windows like levels 6 & 11.
• Possess far more disruption, cc, or utility than offensive Champions.
• Kits designed to make offensive Champions weigh risks vs. rewards / generally be a nuisance to everyone.
• Below average mobility in exchange for their disruptive playstyles.
• Values teamfighting over lane phase dominance.
• Typically more resource/macro-focused.

Champion Classes Defined Around Offense vs. Defense

One of the best things about League’s Champion design philosophy is that most every Champion can be shifted into an archetype that already has a defined offensive or defensive intention behind it.

Take for example our primary class of Tanks. Tanks can be broken down into two subclass archetypes that are known as Vanguards and Wardens. Vanguards are offensively minded tanks and are given more access to engage tools and have more simply executed disruption, which leads to them being favored as engage pieces for their team. Wardens are the defensively molded Tank, and while they can operate as engage pieces in a pinch, their kits are more designed around the philosophies of protection / zoning, rather than engaging and aggression.

The primary example I like to use for this is Leona versus Braum. Leona’s kit rewards her CC-combing a particular target down for her team to follow up on. While Braum’s kit rewards him for standing in front of his primary carry and soaking damage with his shield and stunning divers with his passive.

You can learn more about Champion classes with our Classifying Classes piece here on the DIG website! For our Offensive versus Defensive discussion, we’ll quickly categorize the classes and what defines their archetype/subclass into these categories.

Offensive League Classes:

• Slayer, Assassins - High damage, high mobility, weak defenses/weak to CC
• Tank, Vanguards - Aggressively inclined CC abilities, tools to survive once in a fight, low mobility
• Mage, Burst Mage - High single target burst potential, plays excellently around vision control, weak to CC/damage absorption effects.
• Fighters, Divers - Above average mobility and damage in exchange for less defensive tools & stats. Can easily get into fights but cannot easily get out.
• Controllers, Catchers - Great single target pick potential, unique/situational mobility to increase their pick pressure, generally low damage, sustain, and utility if primary pick ability is on cooldown

Defensive League Classes:

• Tank, Wardens - Defensively molded Tanks with CC abilities that promote peeling and damage/mobility mitigation
• Controllers, Enchanters - The premiere healing, shielding, and peeling Support archetype
• Slayers, Skirmishers - While offensively capable, they possess unique defensive tools that make them difficult to deal
• Mages, Battlemages - Mages that possess like poke or burst damage than the other archetypes, but make up for it in unique zoning capabilities, defensive utility, or DPS

‘Balanced’ / Unique Champion Classes:

• Fighters, Juggernauts - Low mobility, but high damage. Rely on targets being in their very specific engage/damage range to be effective
• Marksmen - The perennial DPS class defined by high damage and traditionally low mobility. Marksmen can vary in focus from Early, to Mid, to Late Game dominance depending on their Champion.
• Mages, Artillery - The poke paradigm of League, Artillery Mages are categorized by their ability to lay down oppressive levels of poke damage onto their enemies but possess low mobility and CC to compensate.
• Specialists - Specialists are Champions that are difficult to define into any other class. They could have situationally powerful modes during the game based off of a meter, like Gnar. unique minigame-esque play-patterns around something like Gangplank’s barrels or have a playstyle that’s entirely unique from literally every other Champion in the game like Singed.

So, Which Style Should I Play to Climb?

That’s the fun part. It’s entirely subjective. The League Meta is constantly in flux. One set of weeks defensively molded picks like Enchanters might be the most popular class to focus when looking to climb with their natural Counters, Catchers being the next best thing. The next week Assassins might be running amok and deleting Marksmen left and right, leading to a rise in easy to execute Mages like Malzahar to CC them down.

My encouragement is to consider the ability of your personal mental stack. Or, how many decisions do you feel that you can confidently make from a moment to moment time frame? If you feel that you can make a ton of micro-based/matchup decisions, then you might favor an offensively designed Champion like Irelia or Katarina.

If your ability to manage your stack is a bit shorter or you value resource-based gameplay, then Champions like Anivia or Poppy might fit your hands more. Typically speaking, Defensively molded Champions have ‘less difficult’ kits to execute on, so there’s far less for you to have to manage in moment to moment situations.

Compare a Champion like Irelia to a Champion like Poppy. Irelia wants to trade around her stacked passive and all-in off the back of her E or ultimate. So, you’ll spend time in lane setting up waves through pulling/manipulation, last hitting with Q to stack up, situationally setting up your all in with W, fishing for your E and then waiting for your opponent to whiff on a major ability so you have advantage… Whereas on Poppy, you farm safely, poke with your passive+Grasp proc and Q, and generally wait for your opponent to engage on you so you can press W and watch them go, ‘thunk’ and be sad.

Of course, this is just me generally speaking. From matchup to matchup, there are far more that both sides would have to consider, but since Irelia’s kit is designed around mobility and damage, she typically has to work harder to achieve what she wants. Whereas Poppy can react or trade rather simply by comparison since she doesn’t have as much reward for going for aggressive play.

Closing Out

So, where does that leave us? Well, we’ve covered the typical design paradigms behind offensive and defensive Champions and categorized our Champion classes into those molds. Additionally, we’ve discussed which of the two approaches you should take to climb. So, overall I think we’ve got a generally good understanding of the design space, and now all that’s left is to put it to action. Good luck on the Rift!