On both Summoner’s Rift and Howling Abyss, teams must destroy the opponent’s Nexus to win the game. Despite this shared win condition, the two game modes require relatively different strategies to ultimately achieve victory. In this guide we highlight some important, ARAM-specific tips and tricks that will immediately get you winning more of your ARAM games.

#1: Pick the Right Champions!

In ARAM, not all champions are created equal. Despite the attempts to balance the game mode in recent years, some champions are still just way stronger than others. If you want to know which champions you should pick, check out my other article titled, “Ranking Every Champion in League of Legends ARAM.” In that article I rank every single champion based on how strong they are in ARAM.

I will mention two big caveats to remember. For starters, be sure to consider your team composition. A team of five S+ tier Marksmen will still falter against a well-rounded team composition. You want to ensure that your team has consistent damage, a beefy frontline, and ideally a supportive member who can heal, shield, or buff up your team. Also, you should always prioritize choosing champions that you are comfortable with. There is no point in playing the S+ tier Yasuo if you have never played the champion before. My tier list assumes equal skill level across all champions. Playing your F-tier main will almost always be a better choice than playing an S+ tier champion that you’ve never touched before.

#2: Use Your Rerolls

ARAM’s randomized champion select is a massive part of what makes the mode so much fun. Sometimes you’ll get your main, but most of the time you’ll get a champion you’re inexperienced with or that you’ve never played before. To ensure that you and your teammates pilot champions that give you the best chance to win, you should make sure to utilize your Rerolls.

Rerolls give you another chance to get a random champion whilst throwing the champion you originally had into the pool for other players to pick from. If you own enough champions in League of Legends, 122 to be exact, you will always earn enough “ARAM credit” after games to ensure that you always have a reroll in champion select. Regardless, you should usually use your reroll if you have one. Based on complicated calculations done by the ARAM enthusiasts over at ARAM Academy, data shows that a team’s expected win rate goes up the more rerolls they use.

On average, rerolls increase the odds that your team gets champions that have a higher win rate in ARAM. Also, you increase the odds that you get a champion that either you or a teammate perform well on. Each reroll after the first has a diminishing value, meaning it is most important that your team uses at least a couple rerolls to improve your odds. Once you have used 5 collective rerolls as a team, the average win rate increase is largely negligible. Therefore, you can definitely save your rerolls if you are happy with your champion and your team has already used many rerolls.

#3: Guardian’s Items are Overpowered

Items are relatively unchanged in ARAM. Apart from a handful of omissions like Dark Seal and Support items, the only significant change to the item system is the addition of exclusive ARAM-only items. These unique items are called the Guardian items, and they function similarly to the Doran’s items on Summoner’s Rift. They are highly gold efficient items intended to be purchased at the very beginning of the game.

Guardian Items are amazing. They are the most gold-efficient items in ARAM and some of the most gold-efficient items across League of Legends. Gold efficiency is a percentage that rates item efficiency based on its stats vs gold cost. To put it simply, items that are very gold efficient give your champion more stats than they are worth in gold.

Gold Efficiency by Item:

Guardian’s Blade: 195%. Highest in the game mode. Only beat by Support items on Summoner’s Rift.

Guardian’s Hammer: 184%. Right behind Guardian’s Blade.

Guardian’s Orb: 134%. Only beaten by a fully stacked Seraph’s Embrace.

Guardian’s Horn: 118%. Though the lowest, this percentage is skewed because it cannot take the item’s damage mitigation effect into its calculation because that stat does not have a gold value in-game. In reality, this item is worth much more than its efficiency number.

Guardian items also have more benefits beyond just raw power. Each item is considered a “Legendary Item,” meaning they count toward your Mythic Item’s passive bonus. If you decide to start the game with a Guardian item, you gain your Mythic item’s Mythic passive immediately upon completion. With all of these strengths, Guardian items cannot be ignored. Nearly every tank in the game should be building Guardian’s Horn and Tear to start so they can spam abilities and tank enemy poke damage. Hammer and Blade work extremely well on Marksmen and Assassins respectively. Orb is perhaps the only item you can usually skip due to Lost Chapter performing a similar role, yet it still can be great on certain champions.

There is undeniably a trade-off when purchasing these items since they delay your other completed items, but their unmatched early game potential is hard to give up. They can also be simply sold off later into the game as you finish your builds. Guardian items are not universally necessary for every single champion, yet they should be at least considered for most.

#4: Feed Your Poro!

Guardian items are technically not the only ARAM-specific items. Due to the cute addition of Poros to Howling Abyss, Riot decided to give players some Poro-Snax!

All champions in the game (apart from Braum) start with one Poro-Snax in their trinket slot. After their team destroys their first turret, each player gains another of these treats. Poro-Snax are used to feed the various Poros around on the map. Each time a Poro is fed, it grows slightly larger in size. If fed enough times, the Poro explodes and creates a bunch of mini Poros. Braum is the only champion that starts the game with two Poro Snax. Feeding a Poro as Braum grants the Poro a hilariously thick mustache along with making them larger.

Though it is mainly just a fun little addition by the developers, feeding Poros can actually have an effect on your ability to win the game. If you have a Poro-Snax in your inventory, Poros will follow you around until you feed them. This means that the opponent can see if you are hiding in a bush because they can see the Poro waiting by your feet. Because of this, you should never forget to feed your Poro buddies! Credit the YouTuber DongHuaP for first making me aware of this little quirk of Howling Abyss!

#5: Don’t Die in Vain

You will almost never, ever finish a game of ARAM with 0 deaths. In my 2000+ games in the mode, I cannot remember going a full game without dying. Dying is a core aspect of ARAM gameplay and one of the biggest differences between it and Summoner’s Rift. Dying in Solo Queue is practically never a good thing, whilst a well-timed death in ARAM can be very beneficial for your team. This is because dying is the only way to buy items and fully recuperate your Health and Mana (Apart from game mechanics like buying Life Steal, using healing items, etc.).

It is important to note that dying in ARAM isn’t always good, of course. It can lead to the opposing team taking turrets, your inhibitor, and eventually your Nexus. So, how do you make sure you die at the right time? Well, certain champions just tend to die naturally in teamfights. Tanks and Bruisers will typically find themselves vulnerable to absorbing lots of damage and can die even if they do well for their team in a fight. If you dive into the enemy team as one of these champions and find yourself falling low on Health, it is not worth it to Flash out to safety when you have no way of gaining back your Health. It is better to die, buy your items, and respawn with full Health and Mana.

Outside of these instances, you typically want to die when you really need to buy items and are falling behind your opponent’s strength level. After winning a teamfight, it can be very useful to die to the opponent’s turrets after your team pushes as much as possible. Even if you are unable to execute, this death allows you to heal back up after the fight and buy items with the gold you gained from your kills/assists. The opponent will just have bought all new items in the shop while they were dead, so it is good for you to also buy items to keep up. Since you are dying after winning a fight, you will have more gold than the other team.

You also want to avoid dying without doing some damage or taking the opponent with you. If you just killed randomly without hurting the enemy team, you leave your team vulnerable to getting aced in a mismatched teamfight. As a last piece of advice, make sure to avoid dying when you are all alone. You may be the only thing stopping the enemy team from killing your turrets or ending the game.

#6: Objectives are Everything

Just like on Summoner’s Rift, kills aren’t everything in ARAM. Though it may seem as if Howling Abyss doesn’t have traditional objectives like the Dragons or Baron Nashors of Summoner’s Rift, you’d be mistaken. In ARAM, turrets, inhibitors, and minions are the main objectives. Winning in ARAM depends on your team’s ability to deal damage to turrets and push your advantage down the lane. Getting kills is useless if you cannot convert those kills into turret damage.

ARAM is all about momentum. The team that destroys the first turret and the first inhibitor has a massive advantage because they put all the pressure on the enemy team. It is incredibly difficult for the enemy team to push down the lane when they are shoved back toward their base or under the duress of Super Minions. You should always pay attention to the minion wave and provide wave clear when needed to keep pressure off of your team. You must pump damage into the opponent’s turrets whenever possible if you want the best chance of winning. Having more kills than your opponent means nothing if you can’t touch the Nexus.

Conclusion

If you’ve read all the way to the end of this article, it’s safe to say you’re a serious ARAM enthusiast. You care about dominating your opponents in what others may consider a for-fun game mode. Keep these 6 tips in mind and you’ll be certain to improve your ARAM win count!