Playing competitively with a team of five is one of the most exciting and fulfilling experiences League has to offer. However, playing with a coordinated team of five against another coordinated team of five is much different than your average, everyday solo queue. Because of this, team compositions are much more important and can be a major contributor towards victory. Because of this, I’ve outlined three team compositions that have had success and will net you some wins. In this guide, I’ll show you three team comps you can run, the advantages and disadvantages of these comps, and how to actually play the composition to reach your win condition!

Composition 1: The Dive Composition

The Team:

Top: Camille
Jungle: Jarvan IV
Mid: Galio
Marksman: Xayah
Support: Rakan

Overview of the Composition

This composition is focused on getting into the enemy backline and catching people off-guard with your massive amount of engage. With this composition, every champion excluding Xayah has an excellent form of engage! Camille has her Hookshot ability, coupled with her ultimate that keeps enemies trapped in an arena. Jarvan does something similar, and this allows Galio to use his ultimate ability on top of one of these champions to create another knock up and get another champion into the backline. This composition also features the Xayah/Rakan package, which are champions that are extremely powerful when coupled together. With this composition, you’ll be able to dive into the backline effectively!

Advantages of the Composition

• Insane amount of engage
• Xayah/Rakan package
• Strong laners with an early game Jungler in Jarvan

Disadvantages of the Composition

• Very little amount of disengage: once the team is in, they are in.
• Hard to come back if the composition falls behind
• If the enemy successfully disengages, the composition has a hard time doing anything.

Replacements & Bans

For some replacement champions, you’re going to want to find champions that still have the ability to dive. The composition is focused on diving into the backline effectively, and too many replacements for champions that do not do that ruin the effectiveness of the composition. For Jungle, Zac is an excellent replacement because of his long-range engage and tankiness. Additionally, in the bottom lane, Kalista and Alistar are an effective replacement if Xayah and Rakan are not available as they gives access to neutral objective control thanks to Kalista’s Rend ability, and Kalista’s ultimate allows Alistar to get even more engage potential!

For Bans, you want to focus on champions that ruin the effectiveness of the composition. The most direct counter to this composition is disengage, which will ruin your engage onto the backline and make your composition effectively useless. The main culprit of this would be Janna, who offers some of the best disengage in the game. Another effective ban would be Azir, who is a very good mid laner who also has self-peel and disengage with his ultimate and E ability. The final ban I would use is Tristana, who is like Azir, a strong late game champion who has tons of innate mobility with her W ability and offers self-peel with her ultimate ability.

Summary of the Dive Composition

This composition is very aggressive and thus can catch enemies off-guard. However, this aggression can backfire easily if the opponent has access to disengage. This composition is risky and can be hard to execute if your engages are not crisp. Run this composition at your own risk, but this composition can be very useful in destroying those immobile carries like Kog’Maw, Varus, Zoe, and Malzahar that have been popping up.

Composition 2: The Late Game Composition

The Team

Top: Ornn
Jungle: Nunu
Mid: Azir
Marksman: Tristana
Support: Lulu

Overview of the Composition

The goal of this composition is in the name: play for the late game! Azir and Tristana are two of the best hypercarries in the late stages of the game and can easily carry a game by demolishing the enemy team with their damage. This is accentuated by Nunu and Lulu who are able to buff, speed up, shield, and protect these carries so they are able to survive, and deal even more damage! The final piece of this puzzle is Ornn, who provides the team composition with much-needed tankiness, engage and CC (crowd control), and his passive grants even more late-game stats by allowing his teammates to upgrade one of their items! If this composition is able to make it where Tristana and Azir can both reach 6 items, they will almost always win the game.

Advantages of the Composition

• Unmatched late game
• Lots of safety with escapes on Tristana & Azir, and protection with Nunu & Lulu
• Able to take down and siege towers effectively with Azir and Tristana

Disadvantages of the Composition

• Weak early game
• Low amount of engage
• Easy for the enemy to disengage fights and not engage

Replacements & Bans

For replacements, you’re looking either for a support staff for the late game carries, or a late game carry to replace Azir or Tristana if they are banned or picked. For a lane support, Nami is an effective support that acts similarly like Lulu to help support her carries. For an ADC replacement, Twitch is a monster late game ADC who is able to dish out massive amounts of damage with his ultimate ability Spray and Pray! Another good replacement for the Jungle would be Ivern, who is another supportive Jungler like Nunu who can support and protect the carries.

For bans, you are going to want to ban early game champions that can hinder you from getting to your late game fantasy. Champions like Jarvan IV, Jayce, and Kha’Zix are all early/mid game champions that can absolutely demolish your carries and make it difficult to actually get to the late game. Any champion that looks to pressure in the early game are champions that this composition is looking to avoid.

Summary of the Late Game Composition

If you are able to avoid the early game and make it to the late game with your carries and support crew, you’ll usually be able to find success if you avoid making major mistakes. Early game champions can and will shut down your composition, so be on the lookout for early ganks and pressure that can set this composition behind. Lastly, do NOT give up on the game! Even if you are thousands of gold behind, that is OK! As long as you survive and are able to make it to the late game, you’ll be able to mount a comeback. Never give up on a game with this composition, because more often than not, you’ll be able to negate their advantage and secure a victory in the late game.

Composition 3: The Neutral Objective Composition

The Team

Top: Cho’Gath
Jungle: Zac
Mid: Ryze
Marksman: Kalista
Support: Braum

Overview of the Composition

This team composition is looking to secure neutral objectives and win the game through baron and dragon control. This team has two main methods that make securing a neutral objective easy and safe. First, Cho’Gath’s ultimate ability Feast deals 1000 true damage to a neutral objective, which is usually higher damage than Smite is able to do. Additionally, Kalista’s E ability Rend can secure baron at around 2k hp when she uses it if she has enough spears into her target. The team composition offers tankiness and engages with Braum and Zac which can get the fights started around the objective. The final touch to the composition is Ryze, who offers disengage with his ultimate ability which can get the team out of a sticky situation after the neutral objective is taken.

Advantages of the Composition

• Supreme neutral objective taking
• Offers a little bit of everything that a team composition wants
• Tanky composition makes it easy to tank neutral objectives and the enemy

Disadvantages of the Composition

• Susceptible to poke champions
• Low range makes it difficult to siege
• Without neutral objectives this team composition has a hard time winning

Replacements & Bans

For replacements, there are a lot of options available for this team composition as long as you keep your core pieces together: which are Cho’Gath and Kalista. Those champions are pretty irreplaceable because the composition revolves around their abilities. For mid lane, a good alternative would be Azir, who is a safe, strong pick who offers disengage and scaling. For Jungle, any tank such as Sejuani will also work effectively. And for support, another tanky champion that synergizes with Kalista like Thresh or Alistar can work in this composition.

For bans, you want to make sure that you cannot be poked out easily from the neutral objectives, and that you can safely secure them. Champions like Xerath and Ezreal makes it very hard to take the neutral objectives without being at serious risk of dying and losing the buff. Another strong ban would be Zoe, who is both insanely powerful and offers both poke and one-shot potential damage.

Summary of the Neutral Objective Composition

This composition has been run before and will be run again because it is very powerful. As long as Cho’Gath and Kalista are meta, this composition will be viable. You’re going to need to play to your win condition, which is taking those neutral objectives. Don’t focus too much on pushing down towers or looking for teamfights if there is a neutral objective that you can take. As long as you play to your win condition, this composition is very powerful and can easily net you some wins.

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