Regardless of it being a new year and a new season, there are plenty of reasons to reconsider your goals for your solo queue adventures and how you want to achieve them. First and foremost, you should always consider your main Champion. No matter what skill level you are, how long you have been playing the game, or how many Champions you have unlocked, you should always know your go-to Champion. This Champion doesn’t have to be the only Champion you play, but there should certainly be one Champion that you know you will always be able to perform with even in the worst of matchups!

If you don’t have a Champion that comes to mind right away, or you think that the Champion that comes to mind shouldn’t be your go-to Champion, you’re in luck as we will dive into the best Champions to main for each role!

Top Lane

Starting with the top lane, before we highlight the ideal contenders, it’s important to understand how diverse the role can be as the meta ebbs and flows from one patch to another. WIth that out of the way, the main types of Champions you will encounter in solo queue are carry top laners (Fiora, Riven, Camille, etc.), tank top laners (Sion, Ornn, Dr. Mundo, etc)., and bruiser laners which are somewhere in the middle (Darius, Wukong, Urgot, etc.). Picking a single Champion to play into all of these types is difficult, so we suggest considering a Champion that is a great choice into whatever type of top laner you struggle with.

Jax

Starting off with the top lane carries, if you want to counter them in the side lanes and have just as much carry potential as they do, consider Jax! Jax’s split-pushing strength is virtually unparalleled. Jax’s Leap provides him with a short cooldown gap-closing ability that can also be used to escape! His W provides bonus damage and a basic attack reset that will help him out damage most carry top laners. Finally, the most broken non-ultimate ability in these matchups is his Counter Strike. Counter Strike provides immunity to basic attacks which are usually a significant factor of the top lane carries damage output, while also providing him with an area-of-effect stun!

Jax’s power doesn’t even stop there as his ultimate, Grandmaster’s Might provides Jax with a stat ‘steroid’ where he gains armor and magic resistance that scale with his armor and ability power respectively! The last thing about Jax’s kit to remember is his passive ability provides him with growing attack speed the longer he is attacking while in combat! This means that he can dominate against carry Champions that attempt to fight him even when behind because his ability-based steroids can make up for the difference in gold!

Trundle

Now, considering the top lane tanks that exist, the most consistent and capable of carrying in solo queue is Trundle. Trundle’s Chomp not only provides a basic attack reset with added damage, but it also takes away stats from the opponent. While this isn’t as meaningful against tanks as it is against carry Champions, it helps make a difference when their base stats are usually quite high! Additionally, Trundle’s Frozen Domain provides more stat ‘steroids’ such as bonus movement speed, attack speed, and increased healing while in the area-of-effect. Trundle’s Pillar of Ice is perhaps his most rewarding skill to master for a few reasons.When used correctly, it knocks up targets which synergizes with Yasuo, but it also provides a structure that cannot be bypassed aside from a few Champions unique interactions.

To top it off, this ability also has a small radius with a slowing effect around it! The most well-versed Trundle players are aware of the hundreds, if not thousands of interactions that the Pillar of Ice can be used in to make or break a situation! The more common uses are to place it slightly away from a wall to make it incredibly difficult to escape past, but it can also be used to cancel dashes and ability channels, and even to stop an enemy from escaping with the blast cone when timed correctly! Finally, the most impactful ability for his tank matchups is his ultimate, Subjugate. Subjugate deals percent of enemy health as magic damage over time and steals a portion of their armor and magic resistance as well. Against tankier opponents, using Subjugate can not only take away thousands of gold in value from them for the duration, but also add it to Trundle in the meantime!

Akshan

The last top laner to consider is for the bruiser-type matchups. The most ideal Champion to abuse the variety of Champions that fit into this category is a ranged carry Champion like Akshan. Of course, his range advantage applies a significant amount of pressure on his opposition, however, that is not the only reason that he is on this list. Because of his range advantage though, his passive is incredibly strong for taking advantage of canceling the basic attack animation to chase down enemies, kite away from them, or, by not canceling, dealing even more damage.

To top off the power of his passive, for every three times he deals damage to enemies he is granted a shield! His Avengerang is his primary poking ability that travels further with each enemy hit and grants him more movement speed when hitting a Champion. The combination of his Avengerang and his passive makes his threat in ranged vs. melee matchups incredibly high. Adding to his ability to chase down threats and pick up kill after kill, Akshan has an ability that resets with kills, Heroic Swing. Heroic Swing allows Akshan to grapple and maneuver around terrain in an arch while firing at the nearest enemy.

Additionally, his ultimate ability Comeuppance deals insane damage to anything in line with the targeted Champion after the cast. Finally, the most important part of Akshan’s kit is his Going Rogue ability. The active camouflages him indefinitely around terrain and bushes, but the best feature of this ability is the passive. When an ally is killed by an enemy, that enemy is marked as a scoundrel. If Akshan gets a takedown on a scoundrel, he revives all allies killed by that enemy immediately. Especially in late game scenarios where Akshan can literally swoop in and clean up a fight, his revival can bring back multiple members of his team to take complete control over the map! This combination of features makes him perfect for dealing with the majority of top laners in the laning phase while still providing some utility to his team when behind or late to rotate.

Jungle

Nunu & Willump

Moving onto the jungle, let’s review the best Champions to main for each style of jungling that you may use or want to use in solo queue! First, is the control jungler. The control jungler is perhaps the most underwhelming style of solo queue jungling for the purpose of carrying games, but it is also the most underrated! Control junglers have much more impact on the state of the game than they are given credit for, and the best example of this is with Nunu & Willump. Nunu has great utility that he provides for his team and can take control over neutral objectives with ease because of his Consume! It’s also worth mentioning that his Snowball allows him to maneuver around the map to counter gank and rotate as needed to make plays! On top of his utility and control-oriented playstyle, he has insane area-of-effect crowd control that makes him incredibly sticky and frustrating for enemies to deal with! If this playstyle interests you, or if you struggle against gank heavy junglers, the counter ganking and control heavy playstyle of Nunu is exactly what you need to climb in solo queue!

Fiddlesticks

The most common example of a carry jungler is in the farming and scaling oriented jungle Champions that put the enemies on a timer to make plays! Just picking this type of Champion puts pressure on the enemies to be proactive and try to snowball victories. The best Champion to main in this category is Fiddlesticks. Fiddlesticks has tremendous carry potential as the game progresses to the later stages and can fit most team compositions! Bountiful Harvest makes his clear incredibly easy and risk-free, making it quite easy to stay out and farm heavily at any time of the match.Fiddlesticks also has multiple sources of crowd control that make his few ganks incredibly impactful and worthwhile.

Ideally, Fiddlesticks will constantly farm his jungle and only attempt to gank in near guaranteed situations to maximize his gold income. The farming and scaling junglers like Fiddlesticks are great for players that want to be that late-game carry threat and sit back and relax in the early game. This type of Champion is also great if you struggle against control-oriented junglers that often counter your ganks or invade when you gank. These junglers often spend so much time running around the map that they don’t farm incredibly well and leave plenty of camps available for farming junglers like Fiddlesticks to pick up for themselves.

Xin Zhao

The last type of jungler is the ganking jungler. These junglers are incredibly proactive and have the most impact in the early game. Usually, they are incredibly potent skirmishers and always want to pick fights with junglers and laners. The best Champion to fit this category is Xin Zhao. Xin Zhao’s early game ganking power and damage is insane! When piloted well and with a proactive mindset, it’s very common to see Xin Zhaos with killing sprees after only a few minutes! If you enjoy constantly applying pressure with ganks and needing to mechanically outplay opponents in skirmishes, the ganking jungler is your ideal role, and Xin Zhao is the perfect fit for you. Additionally, if you struggle against farming junglers, Xin Zhao is great for snowballing advantages to insurmountable leads!

Mid

Veigar

In the mid lane, there are certainly multiple ways to approach deciding which Champion is the best for you to main. Ultimately, the most likely option that will result in you climbing in solo queue, is an easy Champion to pilot, with simple combos, infinite scaling, but the utility to help a team even when behind. The perfect Champion to fit this mold is Veigar. Veigar’s ability power stacking makes him scale infinitely with time, and an incredible late game threat. Fundamentally, he still has tons of early and mid game strength because of his area-of-effect zoning tools in his non-ultimate abilities! Veigar is great for newer mid laners to learn, and even better for macro geniuses to master! Your goal on Veigar should be to stack as much as possible in the early game without sacrificing lane priority to your opponent. If you can manage that, your matchup is essentially rendered useless as you’ll likely be more impactful in the mid and late game!

Qiyana

If you’re a mid laner that loves playing high skill-cap assassins, Qiyana is perfect. Qiyana requires an immense time investment to understand and master her multiple combos and damage thresholds at each stage of the game. Her peak is practically unstoppable, but her low is laughable. Getting to the point where you can pick which terrain you need with Terrashape in every situation is critical and will make Qiyana’s impact that much greater. Any newer players to League of Legends should tread carefully when considering this Champion because of how difficult she is to play. However, if you love her style and are willing to commit to learning her in less important games like normals, then it’s certainly worth trying out! You just need to remember not to give up because you’ll likely need dozens of games to become familiar with the Champion to even consider trying her in a ranked game!

Vex

Despite being a new Champion, Vex is a mid laner that’s here to stay and will surely be a large part of the mid lane meta for the foreseeable future! Vex’s abilities provide extensive waveclear to easily gain priority over the lane. The added benefit is that she can use the minions to quickly stack up her passive after using it. Her ability to easily land crowd control on enemies makes her a potent Champion when within range, and her ultimate allows her to gap close from lengthy distances where the crowd controlling ability is nearly guaranteed to land. As such, Vex can easily clear waves and roam at nearly every stage in the game. Even in the worst matchups, she can follow her matchup’s roam and use her ultimate to counter engage. Overall, her kit is easy to learn, and complex enough to add value when you invest the time to learn the intricacies and can be a great Champion to play in all metas and matchups.

Marksmen

Vayne

Moving down to the bot lane, there are several Marksmen that can fit the ideal candidate for maining. Of course, this list wouldn’t make sense without Vayne, so let’s start with her. Vayne is your ideal solo queue monster and late game insurance policy. There are very few scenarios that a good Vayne player cannot carry a game in. It’s to the point where after a hundred games or so, a Vayne main’s win rate is indicative of not how often they win and lose, but how often they make enough mistakes to lose! Basically, her kit is designed perfectly for the solo queue environment where any game a Vayne main is playing has the most influence over the outcome of the game than any other player. This is because of a few things, but first and foremost, her ability to melt any Champion regardless of their defensive stats in just a few seconds. Additionally, her ability to chase down, kite, reposition, and dodge key abilities makes her nearly untouchable when piloted correctly!

Jinx

Jinx is basically the next best option for her better early game, and longer range, but weaker survivability. Jinx scales into the late game incredibly well, however she relies much more on her teammates to keep her alive as her only source of self-peel comes from her Flame Chompers, and the movement speed she temporarily gets for getting a takedown. The added benefit of using Jinx as a main Champion is that she is quite simple to learn. The biggest learning curve for Jinx’s kit is surrounding the balancing between the minigun and rocket launcher. However, once the player gets a feel for the situations to use each, the rest of her mechanical challenges surround positioning just like any other Marksmen!

Caitlyn

The final Marksmen on the list is Caitlyn. Caitlyn’s been around in the game for a long time and has always been notorious for one thing, her range! Having such a long basic attack range is an incredible advantage that players must not take lightly. Caitlyn should nearly always win her lane which makes her a reliable option for newer players to main in the bot lane. Some of Caitlyn’s mechanics are quite difficult to pull off, so the added benefit is that the time players invest into mastering Caitlyn will prove worthwhile.

Caitlyn’s playstyle is unique in the sense that players can actually make it as easy or as complex as they’d like, and it won’t feel like the Champion is not used to her full potential! In the simplest form, Caitlyn should be used as a long range basic attacking machine that just needs to basic attack enemies as much as possible while simultaneously staying as far away from them as possible! This is what makes Caitlyn the ideal Champion for players to choose when they are filled to the Marksmen role because the principles are easy to follow. Of course, if that’s all you’re doing, you can be taken advantage of by more experienced opponents, but it serves as a fantastic introduction to the role of Marksmen.

Support

Lulu

Finally, there are the supports. There are generally three types of support playstyles that players should consider. The first is the supportive support. For lack of a better term, these supports are the peeling, healing, shielding, and ally boosting supports! Typically considered enchantresses, but there are more that fill that role too. The ideal support to main in this category is Lulu. Lulu provides extensive peeling and shielding for her teammates.The unique benefit to her abilities when compared with other enchantress supports is that her abilities can also be used for different effects on her opponents! Instead of shielding an ally with Help, Pix! she can deal damage and apply True Sight to them for a short duration. Also, instead of speeding up an ally with Whimsy, she can use it on any enemy to Polymorph them!

Just like many Champions on this list, it’s incredibly valuable to choose a main Champion that is not only a playstyle that meshes with your own, but also one that has a significant learning curve. This way, the more time you invest in the Champion, the better you’ll be and the more you’ll be able to do.

Leona

The next type of support is the engaging support. These supports are very one-dimensional and easy to operate. The more important feature of the player is to know when a fight is winnable and to have the confidence to pull the trigger. The best Champion to main in this group of support Champions is Leona. Leona has incredible abilities for chaining someone with crowd-control for several seconds with no counterplay. In the solo queue environment this is perfect for taking advantage of enemies that mis-position or get caught out! Leona’s Eclipse ability also provides her with a huge addition of armor and magic resistance to tank tons of damage! Not only will it help her tank tons of damage, but she will also deal significant damage in a radius around her.

Her Shield of Daybreak is an empowered basic attack that stuns the enemy for a second and deals bonus damage. Her last non-ultimate ability is Zenith Blade which is a skillshot gap-closing ability that will pull her to the last enemy Champion hit and rooting them for a short duration. The most underrated perk of Leona’s kit is her passive which applies Sunlight to all enemies hit with her abilities for a short duration, which when attacked with follow up damage from allies, will detonate the Sunlight dealing bonus damage! The combination of her abilities makes her an incredible support for all-in potential in lane and can snowball in nearly every matchup!

Thresh

Of course, who is probably the most favored support Champion since release, is a Champion that not only has great play making and catch potential, but also a lot of utility for his teammates. That Champion is Thresh! Thresh’s catch potential with Death Sentence is renowned across metas and levels of play. His ability to also combine this with his Flay can pull-in a target just like Blitzcrank’s Rocket Grab, but the difference is Thresh’s Death Sentence and Flay ability provide options for the player. Blitzcrank’s kit on the other hand is very one-dimensional and often punishable when he pulls an enemy tank!

Finally, the most utility-focused ability Thresh has is his Dark Passage. Dark Passage has Thresh toss out a lantern that any ally can click to then dash to Thresh. There are hundreds of interactions around this ability that make dedicating the time to learning Thresh that much more rewarding and valuable to your journey in solo queue!

Conclusion

Overall, there are many Champions that are worth maining in each lane, but it’s important to assess what your strengths are as a player and how you can use that knowledge to make the right choice to climb the ranks in League of Legends!