What can you take from the best players in the world? Well, their Champion choices, of course! Here we discuss which Champions successful on the World’s stage are equally successful in solo queue!
Whether you’re a Meta Player, or someone just looking to freshen up your Champion Pool, there’s a lot to be gained from copying Champion choices from high-tier players in the Pro Scene. Today we’re going to be going lane-by-lane and talking about which Champions you should pick up to impact your end of season push for Solo Queue, and we’re going to be pulling our Champions from the World’s Meta. Naturally, if they’re a World’s pick, they must be strong right? Let’s dive in.
Aatrox is the most obvious choice to pick for Top Lane. Currently the Champ is the most picked and most banned across all series at the tournament. But, that doesn’t mean that he’s without flaw. In fact, Fiora is just the Champion to pick into the Aatrox matchup, turning what would typically be a feasting stomp for Aatrox into more of a skill matchup. But why are both of these Champions so good?
Starting first with Aatrox, Aatrox comes packed with the one thing that every Top Laner loves, sustain. Couple this with his lack of resource management beyond cooldowns, and you can pretty much poke, sustain, and scrap your way through good and bad starts up top. Aatrox’s early lane is downright oppressive against most Meta Top Lane picks right now, in both Pro-Play and Solo Queue, suffering only negative matchups in solo queue against Champions that we would define more as ‘One-Trick’ picks. Champions like Quinn, Rengar, Singed, and Kled come to mind. Naturally, Aatrox’s competition in Top is far more feastable for him, since common Pro Top Picks are beefy Tanks like Ornn or Maokai, or Skirmishers like Camille and Jax. In both cases, Aatrox can make the matchups quite brutal for the opposing tanks who have few tools to interact with him, or he can poke and disengage his way through the Skirmisher's all-ins in the secondary matchup. Overall, Aatrox is a solid pick to master and pick up for your end of season push with all this considered.
However, Aatrox does not stand alone. Fiora has stepped into the ring to contest his domination in Top. Capable of countering Aatrox’s primary damage dealing ability, his Q, with her Riposte, Fiora is quite adept at turning would be harass in any other matchup into lethal scenarios that might not always twist into Aatorx’s favor. Further, with her ability to keep up with Aatrox’s higher than average mobility in the long lane, Fiora can stack Conqueror and run down Aatrox should he play too carelessly, since his primary damaging tool can be utilized to her advantage. Fiora has a rougher time into common Top Solo Queue matchups like Darius and Malphite, but deals well into other common picks like Tryndamere or Mordekaiser. She’s much more counter-pick focused than Aatrox is, but Fiora is definitely worth having in the pocket as players spend their time mimicking what is displayed on the World’s stage.
While Graves sits at the tippy-top of World’s presence in Pick-Ban, I’m opting to suggest the numbers two and three presence Champions for the sake of ease of access and reliability. Now, don’t get me wrong, Graves can be oppressive. But for players trying to quickly climb up before the end of the season, picking up a Champion that you can learn quickly vs. one that might need 30+ games of investment is going to serve you better. Graves Mains, keep chugging along, though.
Anyway, starting with Viego. The Ruined King comes packaged with plenty of excellent tools to clear his way through the Jungle quickly. His shroud boosts his attack speed, his Q hits multiple camps, and he comes equipped with a stun to help maintain and sustain his way through his clear. Whenever he hits level six though, that’s when things get spicy since he comes equipped with solo queue’s bane, a resetting ultimate. Viego’s, for the uninitiated, allows him to suck-up and become any Champion he gets a kill or assist on. This nets him their stats and abilities for a short duration. This mid-fight mixup comes packaged with invulnerability too, so if Viego gets off on a squishy he can extend a skirmish before consuming an enemy’s soul extending a fight as if it were a pseudo-Zhonya effect. And all the while, he still has his ult to drop down and apply a solid amount of burst damage onto his target. Viego suffers a bit though in solo queue thanks to the prominence of Junglers like Rammus and Fiddlesticks which can CC him out of his burst and DPS, with this being arguably Viego’s biggest weakness. But, the Ruined King pairs extremely well with current meta Mids and Tops like Vex, Swain, and Diana who can help set up Viego to enter into fights quite effectively.
Sejuani follows him up being the most prominent Tank Jungler in the Meta right now. Sejuani comes packaged with high impact ganks and teamfighting ability thanks to her passive and ultimate. When propped up on multiple melee-featured compositions, she can really and truly 100-0 someone with a CC chain in many situations. Additionally, she’s not too shabby in the early fight department since her base damages are decently high to assist in her Jungle clearing. I would encourage anyone looking to take up Sejuani focus on mastering dives and knowing when to trade objectives effectively since she’s dictated heavily by her tankiness and teamfight ability. If a dive is there, Sejuani should be setting it up. If a teamfight isn’t, Sejuani should be looking elsewhere for advantages especially since she’s often the ‘go’ button for her team. Sejuani has some off matchups against the likes of Udyr, Volibear, and Trundle, Bruisers that can bypass, sustain, or break free of her CC chain, but when it comes to Sejuani, when you get the first jump, you often take the edge in most situations.
While my heart screams to include Akali (my main Mid Lane Champion), I’m going to bypass her and Azir on the suggestion list much as I did before with Graves. Unless you’re already an established main of these picks, opting for Azir and Akali at this point in the season is more of a risk towards your LP than it is a boost. So, we’re instead picking up Sylas to focus.
While Sylas has a decently high skill level to meet, he does play out easy in execution on paper. But it’s not about the way his kit folds out in-lane that draws us to him, it’s all about that ult-stealing ultimate that he comes rocking with. Sylas has been an under the radar solo queue pick for much of the season despite having strong performances from patch to patch. Naturally, one can point towards his most negative matchups being more one-trick focused Champions to thank for this, but outside of the most extreme of cases, Sylas’ skill expression can allow him to out play those even.
But, again, it’s all about that ult for us. In solo queue, especially throughout low ELOs, games are often decided by who can out ult who. And when you’re utilizing the enemy’s best ultimate against them, things can get hariy since it puts another requirement of awareness onto the enemy team. If you had a solid teamfight comp that featured something like Volibear-Seraphine going, well, when Sylas steals that Seraphine ult, you have to be doubly aware of how you approach your fights since he can just flip the stage on you quickly. Sylas’ ability to increase the mental stack of games is unmatched, and his natural scrappiness and sustain in lane are his keys to being a successful pick to steal from the World’s roster and add to your solo queue stable.
We’re going to go for a doubleheader here with a Bot-Support duo. Kalista and Aphelios sit right next to Lucian as the prominent ADCs of Pro Play through Worlds, but considering how more coordinated play promotes the strengths of the Champions and the chaos of solo queue saps those away, we can’t recommend Aphelios or Kalista for your climb, especially factoring in their skill requirements for success.
Lucian, however, we can whole-heartedly suggest, especially when paired with his quintessential partner Nami. The Lucian-Nami duo claims its strength in Nami’s ability to buff the dueling and all-in potential of Lucian. With her Tidecaller’s Blessing and Ebb and Flow, Nami can supply Lucian the necessary damage and healing to sustain and cleave through the stickiest of duels. Tidecaller’s Blessing not only serves as an amp to Lucian’s output, but also gives him a bit of needed stick thanks to its slowing capability allowing him to slam out a full rotation of his abilities plus auto attacks with ease. This duo is naturally more lane-focused than our other combination due to the fact that Lucian doesn’t scale as hard as Kai’sa and his damage is far more one-dimensional by comparison, but as we’ve mentioned in our Biofrost Support piece, winning lane is the most important thing you can do to promote your immediate solo queue success.
Now, for Kai’sa-Renata, we’re bringing it a bit more scaling and damage flexibility thanks to Kai’sa split scalings. Additionally, while Renata is a strong laning Support, she’s far more flexible in the utility department with her shielding and disengage capabilities. And naturally, her ult is a teamfight breaker against compositions that feature heavy auto-attack focus. In Pro Play, she’s seen far more success since the games roll out slower and a lot comes down on whose ADC is more fed. Her ability to both cover the weaknesses of her partner while disabling the strengths of the opposing ADCs ever so briefly has made her quite the feature pick. But, again, this duo is a bit more focused on scaling in comparison to our other duo, so temper your expectations just a bit if you’re looking to roll face and win games easily.
We hope these Champion choices serve you well for your end of season push! Ultimately though, consider these switch picks if all else fails. If you’re truly looking to climb at season’s end, you should be spamming what you know best from both mind and muscle memory!
