We’re getting close to the mid-way point of Season 12 ine League of Legends, and I’ve been surprised to see tons of players out there have been struggling with finding consistent picks for themselves in Solo-Queue. Naturally, the meta is always in flux and picks can change drastically from patch to patch, but I’m here today to sit down with you and display the most consistent picks for you to climb with through the Low ELO brackets.

But first, let me define our ELO range. When I talk about Low ELO in this piece, I’m referring to the range of Iron to roughly Diamond 4. And let me preface, that isn’t smack talk. It’s just becoming increasingly more common to refer to these ranges of play as ‘low elo’ amongst various professionals, analysts, and other content creation channels, so I’m using this as my catch all for this piece. So, with that out of the way, let’s jump right into it.

Top Lane - Fiora & Shen

I bet you thought I was going to mention Darius, right? Well, I was sorely tempted but when looking back between patches 12.7 to 12.4, I was surprised to see both Fiora and Shen ranking so highly in both win rate and presence across the board.

Starting first with Fiora, she fits the mold of annoying split-pusher that has become a meta mode of play in Top Lane this season. She sustains decently through her passive, can shred turrets with ease, has flexible secondary rune selections for her matchups, has a tricky rng-esque kit for enemies to think around, and she can be an absolute terror regardless of whether she wins lane or not. Fiora is just a really quintessential Top Lane pick for Solo Queue.

When you master Fiora, you can really become a 1v9 split-push monster if you get yourself ahead in lane. Her ability to weave around enemy poke, outplay enemy CC with her Riposte, and her surprising amount of burst damage can catch a lot of players through lower brackets by surprise. Fiora, when ahead, can feel like one of those champions that crosses class design becoming closer to the likes of a fed Illaoi with her ability to sustain and just dominate multiple opponents at once.

Her biggest hang-up as a Champion rests in that split-pushing identity however. If you go neutral or fall behind in lane, you’re 100% committed to the split-push pathway until you have item power spikes behind you. This means you’re not applying your gold towards the game’s more impactful objectives like Baron or Dragon, and you are almost always going to be in a sidelane far away from these objectives, not even looking to bring what you do have to a fight. Why? Well, Fiora is a notoriously horrible teamfight presence. And if you can’t come ahead of your 1v1, you’re going to be nothing more than fodder in a 5v5 setting since you bring no utility to a team other than damage.

Looking at Shen now, this not-so-sneaky-ninja has thrived in the TP changed meta and has even adapted Ignite as his summoner spell of choice through these goings of the season. Which isn’t a surprise. Shen, while an excellent Tank, plays very much like a Bruiser through the early goings. He’s very much capable of taunting and whooping down his opponents through the lane phase with his surprising base damage values. Throwing the use of Ignite on top of that just makes him even more deadly. And while you won’t be a 1v9 god like Fiora as a fed Shen, items and Ability Haste allow him to make his presence known across the map with his ultimate becoming progressive tool that his opponents have to play around through the game.

Where Shen suffers is his lack of comparatively split-power against the likes of other Top Laners, and his more support-focused kit. Shen thrives when his teammates are ahead, while he can be an influence if the game is even. If everyone down below you is suffering, you’ll likely not be accomplishing much more than evening out bad situations for your team. While this can prevent games from getting out of control and keep you in them for longer, today’s League of Legends is not like the past and the mental and patience through the low ELO brackets drops quickly when things start to fall apart. So, being aggressive and dictating the tempo of games becomes far more important than mitigating losses.

Jungle - Kha’Zix & Diana

A set of true Solo Queue Junglers coming right in, both have different styles of approaching the game, but their early game focus is surprisingly similar.

Kha’Zix has been a Solo Queue terror for multiple patches now. Stealth, resets, isolation damage, and favorable matchups against even the most meta of Junglers has really made him a stifling pick when mastered. Putting time in him for your climb is only going to teach you how to get a lead and really push it to its limit when you’ve mastered Kha’Zix, and he’s a great Champion to truly learn the Assassin mindset on. Target selection, playing around vision, timing your aggression, all these things are naturally taught by Kha’Zix’s playstyle and kit.

His downsides? Well, Kha’Zix is a true Assassin. Meaning he doesn’t offer anything beyond damage to a team. So, if you encounter a well-coordinated duo, or encounter a team that’s truly map aware enough to stop your bullying of the enemy Jungler, well, you’re in for a rough time. Playing an Assassin behind boils down to a mixture of luck and aggression. Your enemy has to misplay, and you have to be in the right place at the right time to capitalize on it, otherwise you’re in for a slow road until you can climb your way into item relevancy. Being a Jungler Assassin makes this a little bit worse since your role is, at some point, going to play with the team. And even if you’re present, a behind Assassin walking into a teamfight is usually a quick target to get popped without accomplishing much.

Looking at Diana, she’s a bit of a combo package between Assassin and Bruiser that I find to be an ideal style of Jungler. Through the early phases, she really pushes to reach that level 6 power spike, as she’s got that super impactful ultimate going for her that helps make her ganks extremely deadly. So, laners need to keep this in mind. Unless the gank is completely free on a farm focused Jungler, you’re likely not going to get any pressure alleviated off of you if you scuff yourself early.

But, once this ultimate is online, she’s extremely prone to snowballing. Her ganks become sure-fire Flash-blowers or kills, and her teamfight game amps up to 11. With her ultimate in hand, Diana is capable of being both an engage piece in a front to back-esque comp, or off the side or flank as an Assassin-like piece. She’s even got rune choices and build paths to support both play styles with Conqueror, First Strike, and Electrocute all being viable options for her, alongside Tank, Bruiser, and Assassin build paths for various situations.

What’s her downside? Well, again, Diana is a primarily damage-focused pick. So, without snowballing she really becomes ultimate reliant which can be easier to play around as you climb. But she’s also very CC prone. Picks like Leona, Volibear, and Veigar can really stuff what Diana brings to the teamfight table, and if she can’t get those Q-E resets to get on top of the targets she prioritizes, she really just dives and becomes instant gold for the enemy team.

Mid Lane - Ahri & Vex

Looking at the Mid Lane now, we’ve got a classic Champion to League and one of its newer contenders. Ahri has always been a stable and popular pick in Mid Lane. From patch to patch throughout her life she might rise up or fall down just a smidge, but her kit is simply designed to succeed in the environment. This season, Riot sought to bring their mascot Mid Laner up a notch and by giving her a minor rework that certainly upped her up a notch through the early stage. So much so that she had to be smacked down with a newspaper to keep her from being -too- dominant.

As mentioned, Ahri’s playstyle is quintessential Solo Queue. Her passive offers her a way to sustain herself in lane, her Charm makes her a solid pick-setter, and her dashes allow her to get into situations that allow her Charm to be utilized to its full combo potential. Not to mention it also serves as an excellent tool for her to evade enemy ganks through lane phase and allows her to reposition in a pinch come teamfight time.

Ahri’s biggest weakness is the fact that she’s a jack-of-all-trades pick, she’s a middle point between Mage and Assassin playstyles. So much so that her direction either way can suffer. She doesn’t supply the same scaling that a Mage can and doesn’t have the same damage that a true Assassin can output. While a great Ahri player can apply a ton of pressure on the map and control the pacing of a game, if she falls out of tempo, then she has to play very risk-forward to retake that which doesn’t exactly favor her lower base stats.

Meanwhile, since entering the League, Vex has been a staple anti-mobility pick herself. Her passive certainly gives dashing Mid Laners like Yasuo and Yone something to think twice about, and her relatively ease of mastery has brought many Mage Mid Laners to adopt her as their go-to pick against these and other troublesome high mobility picks. Vex has seen some light adjustments here and there, but overall, she’s maintained a solid presence through season 12 and looks to continue to do so.

Vex makes strides when playing alongside picks that have great set-up CC, where she can come in off the back of a solid engage with her own ARAM Snowball like ultimate and really disrupt a fight. Once she’s in the fray she has a battlemage like presence by being able to stall the mobility of her opponents as her passive stacks quickly and effectively in the mix of things. And with her two mythic options, Luden’s and Everfrost, she can take different roles in a fight to be either a control mage style disruptor or a pure burst style pick.

Vex’s downside comes from her very one-dimensional playstyle. She almost requires a partner to be able to go-in with, and if she doesn’t have that, then she’s playing back and into a counter-engage pattern that doesn’t suit her kit at all. In these situations, her overall lack of mobility and sustain is made clear as she can be easily locked down or poked out against picks like Lux or Veigar, who can really disrupt her natural play.

Bot Lane - Ziggs & Twitch

I’m giving you a little AD and AP in this category. Which is fitting since more and more Mages are making themselves known in the Bot Lane as the days go on.

Starting first with Ziggs, ole Ziggs has moved from below average Mid Laner to above average Bot Laner with his ability wave clear, scale-up, and most importantly, still take turrets while applying AP damage. Ziggs also synergizes well with some of the biggest names in the Support game (Leona, Nautilus, Alistar) in Solo Queue, and with easy CC to follow-up off of, his entirely skillshot focused kit becomes home run hitting each and every Q.

Picking Ziggs does really boil down to if your team needs AP though. Ziggs can take down turrets effectively, but he certainly doesn’t fill the Baron or Dragon damage department like an ADC would. While he can zone effectively around these, Bot Laners are typically leaned on to be the source of DPS for their team. So, if you’re rocking Ziggs, do your best to direct your team away from these objectives and more towards turrets to play around the strengths of your kit. Additionally, Ziggs tends to struggle with Enchanters as lane partners, and against lanes like Kalista, Tristana, or Draven who are very all-in focused. Lined up with or against these picks, it’s better to opt for a traditional marksmen, even in all-AD lineups, or even take another mage like Veigar or Cassiopeia over Ziggs if you’re absolutely desperate for AP.

Twitch has been skittering about and rather under the radar all season. This cheese loving Yordle, Rat, Whump?.. Whatever he is, really has a place in Solo-Queue right now. His tricky stealth-oriented kit allows him to start sudden gank-like engagements on his opponents in lane. Against some of his better matchups these are guaranteed kills or flashes. Against some of his even or weaker ones, you can still expect some solid trading in your favor. To top it all off as well, his stealth has a reset mechanic to it. So, as kills fall his way, his move-speed, attack-speed, and sneakiness ramp up allowing him to reposition and DPS with ease.

Beyond his ability to trade outside of regular convention, Twitch has a ton of synergies with the top supports in the game right now. Alongside the likes of Naut or Leona, he can abuse his surprisingly early burst from his Contaminate to really chunk away at enemies and give his side priority. If paired with an Enchanter like Lulu or Sona, he can sit back, farm, and scale up like a monster since he’s one of the best Crit-scaling/building ADCs in the game right now. He’s really a versatile pick capable of blending into the entirety of a teamcomp’s functions.

His glaring weaknesses are his extreme lack of mobility and relatively short range. Twitch thrives off the range advantage that his ultimate gives him. Prior to that or when it’s on cooldown, he does have to play a bit risk forward when going into combat. Against comps that feature multiple divers, Twitch tends to struggle since his only mobility tool is Flash or potentially Galeforce, and even combined both aren’t enough to save him from the likes of popular picks like Talon or Ahri.

But practice makes perfect on Twitch. Committed players will find ways to play around his weaknesses, and even more committed players will take him into the Jungle for cheesy success when auto-filled. Overall, Twitch is a solid, yet stinky, addition to have in your climbing pool.

Supports - Nautilus & Karma

I’m cheating here and pulling two of the S-tier Supports from our recent piece with Biofrost where we tier-listed out all the viable Support options in the meta right now. At the tippy top, Nautilus and Karma were two of his well-mentioned S-tier choices for climbing, so I’m dropping them here too.

Nautilus starts us off by being the easier of our Support duo to execute on, but also being extremely flexible in the same vein. Nautilus, as we mentioned in our tier list, is perhaps the best engage Support that you can play right now. His hook is wide, he’s got CC in multiple aspects of his kit and his ultimate is a simple point and click ability to boot. And in regard to early base values, his damage is a little on the high-side for a Tank Support, making his early hooks all the more deadly. And if you’ve found yourself in a situation where you can’t take advantage of his amazing ability to engage, Naut flips the script easily and can be a great warden style support with his ability to lockdown any diving opponents away from the ADC.

Karma is a bit higher on the execution side, but her kit is one of those that’s easy to learn, tough to truly master. Karma plays a lot like a Mage through the early lane phase, with her extremely high base value on her Q. Combined with her ultimate, and it's not surprising to see a Karma chunk fourths of the enemy health bar down every 30 seconds or so. Karma can focus on this damage-oriented build path if she’s going literally insane in the income, or she can go for her more traditional enchantress route that promotes her shielding, self-healing, and movement speed abilities.

Between this flexibility in pathway and skillful application of her mantra abilities, Karma can quite literally take over the Bot Lane in match ups where there’s an overall lack of sustain or the favor is towards scaling. Take some time and get the feel for when you need to Mantra E, and Mantra W, because nailing the situations down for these abilities saves not only your teammates but you as well and can truly turn bad situations into good ones for your team.

Closing Out

So, there you have it. Some of the best and most reliable picks that you can play in Solo Queue right now! These picks thrive in the Solo Queue environment and can definitely lead to you LP gains when practiced and perfected! Remind to check out all of our other guides here on the Dignitas website to up your League of Legends gains. We’ve got guides for macro play, micro play, Champions, and pieces that cover our Pro Players’ insights on the game itself.