Having difficulties learning a high-skill Champion? Wanting to make flashy outplays and unlock the full potential of some of League’s most notorious names? Well, step right up as we unpack League’s most difficult Champions and lay out what you should master to unlock their potential.
In League of Legend’s roster of endlessly growing Champions, there are some Champs who are a bit more difficult than others. These Champions often require deeper understanding of game mechanics, particular mastery over more nuanced concepts, or even just simply require endless hours of time-played to even scratch the surface of what they are capable of.
But, what do all these picks have in common? Well, they pay off if you can master them. Often, when Riot introduces a Champion they define as ‘high-skill,’ they gear the pick towards the most mechanically gifted players, which often leads the Champion to possessing so many different layers of expression to them that they can function in many different ways beyond their simple class paradigms. While this can be a balancing nightmare, it can also be an encouraging bit of design, especially if you fall in love with the other aspects of a Champion such as their character design.
So, what if you’ve fallen in love with a Champion that has a high skill requirement but you’re having difficulties mastering them? Well, today we’re here to help as we’re going to unpack some of League’s most notorious high-skill Champions and tell you what about their kits you should focus on to really unlock their full potential.
One common theme you’ll find with high-skill Champions is they often have one simply designed ability that can really make or break how the rest of their kit plays out. This ‘simple’ aspect may not be much to the occasional player, but established mains know that there’s much more to it and that to really unlock their Champions power they need to fully master the nuances of what appears to be an otherwise basic.
Akali, our first Champion on the high-skill/worth it to master chopping block, has her entire kit centered around her W - Twilight Shroud. Akali’s shroud is her key defensive ability which, at a glance, is mainly focused on obscuring her from opponents with Invisibility. However, Twilight Shroud isn’t just utilized for this defensive purpose. An often-overlooked layer of the ability is that when inside her shroud, Akali’s base energy level is increased by 100 - effectively giving her a burst of energy if she’s ‘OOM’. This energy burst can be utilized aggressively to increase Akali’s ability to trade against her opponents too, allowing her to weave in more Q+Auto combos, or entirely reposition for her E - Shuriken Flip. Speaking of Shuriken Flip, Akali can throw her E into her Twlight Shroud too, where it acts as a sort of beacon allowing Akali to all-in the spot in the shroud. This technique is great if you want to suddenly surprise your opponents with a quick reposition or follow up with another layer of her kit.
So, obviously, we encourage you to take time and learn Akali’s shroud in and out. Learn how her abilities interact with the shroud, how much energy she has access to from moment to moment when utilizing it aggressively, put yourself in ‘limit testing’ situation and see how you can utilize the shroud to dodge enemy attacks, reposition yourself towards primary targets, or simply come to understand how the shroud warps and wraps itself around walls and structures. When you master your understanding of Twilight Shroud, you master your understanding of Akali.
Yasuo is perhaps the most notorious high skill Champion in League of Legends in large part thanks to his massive design appeal. Who doesn’t want to live out the fantasy of a handsome samurai with a dark past, after all? Yasuo’s kit, like Akali's, can be centered down to one ability. And while you might jump to think that it’s his most obvious ability, his W - Wind Wall, I’m taking a cue from some established Yasuo Mains here and saying it’s actually his E - Sweeping Blade.
Sweeping Blade allows Yasuo to slice through enemy targets and reposition himself to be where he can easily guarantee his autos and Q on his opponents, but it’s far more nuanced than just a simple approach tool. In fact, to fully take advantage of Yasuo’s E, you’re practically required to understand the precise wave states and how to manipulate them to your advantage. When mastered, a great Yasuo player can weave themselves through the wave without altering its position, damage their opponent, and then utilize the Minions to dash their way back out to safety. However, if your understanding is poor, you can often find yourself dashing through the wave and maybe unintentionally clearing the minions and thus leaving yourself without a way out. So, understanding wave manipulation allows you to pull and set up clusters of your wave to give yourself more aggressive ins and more secure out.
Next you can start utilizing Sweeping Blades in conjunction with Wind Wall to avoid reciprocating damage or CC abilities that would punish your aggressive movements through the lane. And of course, you can forget about Yasuo’s self-knock that he possesses when combining his enhanced Q + E to secure his ultimate, Last Breath.
So, take time to limit-test Yasuo’s E, study what Yasuo mains do to set up their waves, and learn what wave states they play aggressively in and you’ll be well on your way to mastering League’s windy-samurai-boy.
Gnar’s an oft-overlooked Champion when one considers League’s hardest picks to master as, genuinely his kit reads pretty easy. Both in Mini and Mega form, the execution of his abilities is simple, and their text boxes are bloated with a lot of unnecessary information. But, it’s that balance of Mini and Mega that really defines Gnar as a difficult Champion.
Gnar’s Rage bar is the nuance you need to master if you want to become an effective Gnar player, as without proper control of your Rage, you walk into teamfights with very little to provide. Gnar, thanks to his two forms, exists in that sphere of heightened resource economy, meaning, that as you approach a skirmish or fight in Mini Form, you can lay out your kit in its entirety, and then as you all-in and shift to Mega, you have a complete refresh on your abilities to take advantage of your opponents with. This gives you double the resources to work with if you can master the timing of your transitioning from Mini to Mega. Not to mention the combos and repositioning shenanigans you can pull off with his jump E - Hop/Crunch in conjunction with his Ult - Gnar!
Additionally, the thing that makes Gnar such a polarizing pick for Top Lane is the fact that he’s damn near useless if he doesn’t create an advantage for himself. Thankfully this is easier for him since his Mini Gnar form nets him a range advantage in a typically melee focused Top Lane, but if Gnar can’t transition from lane into teamfights with a lead, his teamfighting potential is extremely weak in comparison to other more simply designed Champions like Malphite or Sett for example, and he packs even less scaling than other high skill picks so there’s less for him to fall back on if he loses lane.
Ezreal, like Gnar, gets overlooked in terms of difficulty thanks to his readability being simple. His Q - Mystic Shot is a skillshot that fires in a line and does damage to the first enemy it hits. Easy to understand. His W - Essence Flux gives his Q and autos a bit of extra pop, bonus points that it works on structures. His E - Arcane Shift is an extra Flash that also does a bit of damage when blinking towards an opponent. And his Ultimate - Trueshot Barrage is just a bigger version of his Q that does more damage and goes cross map.
All of this is really easy to understand. However, in execution, it’s much more difficult as Ezreal’s entire kit is skillshot reliant. If you can’t hit your skillshots on Ezreal, there’s no need to play the Champion. So, there’s your aspect to focus on with Ezreal. Learn to hit your skillshots. How do you go about that though?
Well, the first thing would be to come to an understanding of how your opponents want to position against you as Ezreal. Naturally they’ll be behind their waves to avoid your Q as its your primary damage source, but since your W travels through waves you can utilize your W-Aut’o procs to whittle away progressively at them which can force them to retreat from the wave creating space. Additionally, if you can get your opponent to play near a wall, you limit their space to get creative with their movements thus making their positions easier to predict, allowing you to more easily land your Q, W, or Ultimate if need be. So, keep these concepts in mind as you play Ez and really focus on getting as much value from your W as you can through the lane phase. Otherwise, stick to traditional ADCs that only have to right click to do damage.
Often lauded as the most perfect Support ever created, Thresh is one of those Champions that comes with a simple design, but the way all the simple pieces layer over each other creates an infinitely versatile and complex Champion. And there are many ways you can take to mastering Thresh which can make his mastery curve a bit more difficult than others to get the feel of.
But we’ll encourage you to focus on the proper utilization of Thresh E - Flay. Flay is Thresh’s primary moment-to-moment disruption ability. This ability can be utilized as a tool to keep your targets within your ADC’s range after a successful all-in. It can be utilized as a key peeling tool whenever your opponents are looking to all-in you or your carry as it disrupts most dashes in the game which can fizzle abilities like Leon’s Zentih Blade or Jarvan’s Flag and Drag combo. And the often overlooked aspect of his kit is that it gives Thresh a little extra oomph of damage as the ability enhances Thresh’s auto-attacks to deal bonus damage. So, a common tactic you’ll see is to start Flay at level one since it not only gives you the sticking power of the CC+Slow, but it also gives you the extra damage needed to help secure kills or claim Summoners from your opponent. And this all goes without mentioning Thresh’ ability to knock people into his Box as this Flay reaches to the perfect range of his ultimate’s radius.
So, take the time to make sure you have Thresh’s flay mastered in and out as it's his primary disruption tool and perhaps is the most make-it or break-it aspect of his kit.
So, there you have it. A few Champions that are worth mastering and what aspects of their kit you should focus on to truly learn and master them. Of course, this list could be longer with picks like Irelia, Sylas, Kalista and more existing out there, so if you didn’t see your high skill main on the list, don’t worry. If we revisit this topic, we might include them next time! Anyway, good luck on your Champion mastery efforts and good luck with the remainder of our first ranked split!
