Comfort vs. Counter vs Composition: A Question of Picks

We're back in the Adobe Air client again this week, and this week's topic comes from a suggestion someone gave me after reading this article. His suggestion was that I talk about when it is appropriate to pick for comfort over your team's composition. Basically, is it worth putting yourself in a theoretically worse situation to play a champion that you are confident and comfortable with.

I figured that there was something else missing from this discussion, which was the existence of a counter pick. So this week's question becomes: When is it worth it to focus on the teams composition, the enemy's counter, or my comfort when making a pick? I figure we should start by explaining...

What Exactly Makes a Counter Pick?

A counter pick is pick that is made to specifically combat an opponents pick. However, normally these are split into two camps: hard counters and soft counters. A hard counter is a character pick that is supposed to give you an insurmountable advantage. The character you selected has a kit that is just hateful to the other character's pick.

One of the best examples of a "hard counter" in LoL is Fizz against Karthus. He's able to quickly burst down the inherently squishy Karthus, avoid Wall of Pain and Requiem with Playful/Trickster, and has the ability to close in on Karthus on the very edge of Lay Waste range. When a player plays a "hard counter" and is competent with the character, it is going to make the countered player's life hell. 

This should pretty much just explain why Karthus players hate Fizz

However, Riot attempts to avoid hard counters for two reasons. First, they encourage binary play, so whenever a player picks Y, the opposing player picks X and immediately wins the lane. Secondly, since player Y has no chance in lane, the entire situation is the definition of "anti-fun", which is something that Riot has stated it attempts to avoid. So instead, League has quite a number of soft counters, where one player has a significant advantage, but is not completely shut out of the game.

The soft counter leads to situations such as Garen over Akali, where Garen has a definite advantage in the lane, but with intelligent play and patience, the Akali player can stay in lane or even beat the Garen player. Soft counters usually have abilities that counteract parts of their enemy's kit or have build paths that are strong against them. With these counters existing has been a growing movement in champ select to always pick the "counter" of their lane opponent. 

 

Why Is This A Bad Thing?

Well, this movement has come with the growth of websites that enumerate these counters. However there are two major problems with players just blindly following these lists of counters. The first is that counters only work if the player understands why the character counters the other one. Let's take the previously mentioned Garen vs. Akali scenario, and a player picks Garen into the match-up. If he doesn't understand what he's supposed to do in each scenario, he's going to get shredded by Akali's range and burst. However, if he knows to Courage as soon as Akali uses Shadow Dance, to Judgement as she uses Twilight Shroud, and to Decisive Strike as she closes in, along with the standard bullying to zone her, he's going to do better. However, many of these websites don't really give a solid explanation of how to play the match-up and oftentimes have the users bickering about it. 

As I said, not the most helpful conversation to know why Teemo is good against Darius. These are some of the more tame comments from the Teemo vs Darius thread on championselect.net.

The second is that other players might know how to... well, counter the counter. When a player plays a single character quite a bit, he will often have to face his so-called "counters" quite often. For example, two days ago, I played against a Darius as Teemo. Now, normally Teemo just peppers and harasses Darius to death with Toxic Shot and shuts him down early. However, this Darius knew the extent of Apprehends range, and knew that if he caught me, he would have the ability to 100-0 me. Along with this, he went an abnormal Hexdrinker/Mercury Treads/Negatron start to completely negate my Malady and Toxic Shot, and he was able to just endure my harassment all game. If a player has enough experience with a character, these counters become an inconvience, not a death sentence. 

There are also some other reasons such as, simply put, that player might have no idea how to play a counter. Just because Fizz is a hard counter to Karthus does not mean you should instantly lock Fizz as soon as a Karthus appears. Same with Cassiopeia against Ryze. Cass and Fizz are relatively difficult characters to play, so your first game should not be against characters that can punish you in Ranked. Also, these counters do not assure victory in lane, as there are a number of things that can interfere with the 1v1 match-up, most notably the Jungler.

 

The Advantage of Comfort

First, let me say that I'm not saying swear off all counter picking, as it can be a great way to gain an advantage in lane. However, by allowing counter picks to have an undue influence on your picking, you can find yourself worse off. The reason is that you can be denying yourself access to a comfortable champion. There is a saying that practice makes perfect for a reason, and characters that you play repeatedly become comfortable over time. This comfort level comes with you knowing your champions stregnths and limitations and a growing competency with the character. This proficiency doesn't necessarily have a limit, even on the most basic of characters. Just because a character like Ryze is just point and click or Singed is simply running around teamfights doesn't mean there is a low limit to knowledge, and that one can simply pick them up instantaneously. 

Characters with higher skill caps, however, can make more of an impact with this increased proficiency and comfort level. Orianna, Syndra, Cassiopeia, Lee Sin, Draven, Zed... in the hands of a master, these characters can be absolutely terrifying. Also, the more comfortable you are with a character, the easier it is for you to deal with falling behind. Whenever I personally fall behind as Zed, I begin to flail around chaoticly and blind, looking for any way to hold on. When I fall behind as Orianna, I am able to take a deep breath, stabilize, and get back into the game.

 

Balancing Comfort and Composition

While comfort is important, your team's success should be more important to you. So the question becomes how to balance comfort and team composition. Well first, consider that any character that is anathema towards your team's strategy should probably be eliminated from the champion pool, even if you are highly proficient with that champion. For example, while you may be an expert with Janna, she should not be picked into your Amumu, Morgana, and Darius team comp.

However, you shouldn't pick a character you are uncomfortable with, even if they fit perfectly in the strategy your team is going to run. With me, I should not touch Zed, even if we're going with a full dive composition, as I am awful... just awful with him. (In fact, I was so awful with Zed that I decided to refund Zed and buy a different champion instead.) 

However, if you have a character that you are comfortable with in that composition's style, think about playing that champion, even if they're not your best pick. What I'm stressing here is not to pick a character only upon the merits of composition or counterability. Picking champions you are comfortable with are far more important to your play than gaining the advantages that composition or lane advantage.

Composition vs. Counters

However, when it comes down to balancing composition with lane counters, there needs to be some discussion. Team compositions are incredibly malleable things, and their goal is often to give your team a clear strategy during teamfights and the late game. Counters give your team an advantage during 2-on-2 skirmishes and the early game. So, the argument between composition and counters comes down to an argument over early game vs late game. Some counters, such as Fizz, rely on gaining this early game advantage to snowball into a one-shot kill champion in the late game. At this point, it comes down to looking at the other team's composition.

Two comps heavily punish early-game oriented builds, and therefore punish teams that rely on countering every single lane. The first of these are dive compositions, which rely on the entire team collapsing on the target, which is often the player that built up a substantial advantage in the early game. Unless your character can become invunerable/untargetable, these dive comps will disrupt your whole "snowball down the mountain and kill everyone" plan. Protect-the-Kog compositions, which revolve around the protection of a hyper-carry, instead rely on just surviving until the late game, when their Kog'Maw/Vayne will shred you in two seconds.

However, the advantage here is that you can oftentimes meld that counter-pick into your team composition. If you want to pick Fizz against Karthus in your team's poke composition, you can tell your top/jungler to pick good pokers and use Churn the Waters and Playful//Trickster as a disengage tool for your team, while Urchin Striking in to kill targets your team whittled down. What happens here is changing your playstyle during the late game to fit your teams composition. If you're Olaf, your job in the late-game is usually to just Ragnorok and rush into the enemy back line.

However, if your team chose to go with a Protect-the-Kog composition, instead of diving mindlessly into the back line and slaughtering the carry, you might consider using Undertow and Reckless Swing to deter those people from doing the same to yours, and Ragnorok becomes a means for you to avoid AoE disables and continue protecting your carry. There are certainly still characters that will have difficulty melding into certain compositions, but it doesn't make it impossible for you to change the playstyle of that character.

Conclusion: The Balancing Act

So, when should you focus on each of these factors, and should one take precedence over all the others? First, always pick for comfort. It's never worth it for your team not to have you playing at your best, and if you are picking a character you don't have a level of comfort with just to fit into the team's comp or negate an opponents pick, you're not going to be playing at your best. Note, I'm not saying that you should always play your "main" character, as that isn't always possible, and its quite possible for you to be countered out by your lane opponent. But don't put yourself in uncomfortable positions, such as me playing Zed, just for your team's "benefit", because in the long run it is going to hurt your team. 

In the case of counter vs. composition, always take into account the synergy of your pick with your team's plan. Don't be afraid to pick Teemo against Darius, but be willing to change your character's play style if your team needs you too. If you need to build Tankmo for your teammates, with a Frozen Mallet ontop of that on-hit build you love, be willing to do it. If you are uncomfortable with changing your character's playstyle to fit into a team comp, try finding a champion that might fit the comp a bit easier. Try to balance your want for an easier early game with your team's need for synergy in those late game teamfights.