Team Composition 101

Hello everyone, Fox here and today I'm going to be talking about Team Composition. I'm going to cover a little bit about the mentality of each team comp, name a few (of the many, many possible) champions that work well in the team comp, and name some of it's strengths and weaknesses.

Globals

This team composition is built around having champions that can impact a team fight from a distance, and catching your enemies off guard. This composition became very popular a few months back after the Shen buffs.

Synergies: Shen, Karthus, Soraka, Nocturne, Pantheon, Ezreal, Twisted Fate.
Teleport can also increase the global pressure you can give greatly.

Strengths:
• The element of surprise
• Having presence of all 5 people together (that top laner may be afk farming all day, but he is playing Shen and he'll make it for the team fight when it counts)
• Can quickly take advantage of mistakes.

Weaknesses:
• Most champions that were big picks for this composition have had nerfs recently, making it less strong than it was a few patches ago.
• Highly ultimate dependent.

Split Push

This is a strategy recently made popular by a few professional teams, and Counter Logic Gaming North America has made a pretty big splash by displaying their crazy tactics with the split push recently.
This composition is focusing around having high mobility, good minion wave clear, and a strong disengage. Your goal is to apply as much pressure around the map as possible, and when you see an opening to take a tower, you strike hard and fast, and kill it before the enemy has the chance to react.

Synergies: Nidalee, Sivir, Janna, Twisted Fate
• Strong wave clear, high mobility.
• Teleport and Promote have been used to allow a team to pressure every lane at once (at the cost of teamfighting ability)

Strengths:

• Difficult to deal with (Most people will have trouble out pushing you, and if you play it right you will be hard to kill).
• Push and take towers with ease, giving you a lot of map control.
• With strong wave clear, you should be able to turtle in your base for long periods of time (preferably while one member of your team is split pushing).

Weaknesses:
• Weak team fighting ability.
• You have difficulty contesting Baron/Dragon
• Getting caught by a hard engage team can be disastrous if played poorly

Video (2:40)

This clip is from the S2 Championships, CLG(NA) vs SK, and shows the power of teleport.

 

Poke

This team composition focuses on throwing a barrage of damage from afar, and disengaging from any fight that you don't have the advantage in. 

Synergies:

• Ezreal, Jayce, Morgana.
• Anyone who can kite and damage the enemy from a safe position.

Strengths:
• If you've ever seen an AP Nidalee land a max range spear you know the damage of poke.
• Very difficult to deal with
• Can kite until you have the advantage in a team fight

Weaknesses:

• Skill shot reliant

• A tanky front line from the enemy team can prevent you from doing damage to anyone important

• Sub-optimal team fighting team. 

Video (22:25)

This video is from CLGeu vs Azubu Frost, game 1 of the Season 2 Championships. 

This one is fairly lengthy, but it's worth it.

 

Protect the Carry

This is a team comp I really enjoy running, it's pretty easy to run with an organized team, or just a group in get matched with in solo queue. It's strengths usually rely in having a few members of the team to do damage, and a few members on the team having a ton of cc to keep them safe.

Synergies: Kog'maw, Nautilus, Karthus, Vayne, Alistar
• CC
• People who do a ton of damage

Strengths:
• Strong Team fight
• Good Initiate
• Carries will be doing a lot of damage in team fights

Weaknesses:
• Team is reliant on other members (the tanks and the carries need each other) so split push team compositions can give you trouble if they gain an advantage on you. 
• Assassins: if an assassin on the enemy team can kill your carries quickly, your strongest teamfighting asset is lost.

 

To wrap up

So this is just a run down of a few of the recently popular team compositions that have been showing up, I hope you learned something and consider trying them out!