Working as a five man team: the basics, the setup and team comps to start with

Everyone will start off usually by playing alone. You have to be able to communicate friendly with complete strangers, which leads up to the point where you hit level 30 and start Ranked games. And as everyone knows, it is usually rough (especially in lower elos) to communicate with a team that is fighting constantly over little things.

But, there is the time when you probably get interest in either starting a five man team or joining a five man team. I am going to go through the basics, some teamcomps that work, stages of the games and what you need to do different than what you do in soloQ.

The start

If you are applying to a team, and it is your first time playing with four other people in a ranked team, there are few things that I suggest you.

1) Start off with a team that speaks the same language as you do. It is actually incredibly hard to speak a foreign language and focus to the game at the same time while giving information about what is happening.

2) Learn how to communicate by speaking. If you are unfamiliar with speaking as you are playing, I suggest you try it out with someone else who plays league first. You need to say to your teammates where you suspect the enemy is moving, when wards expire, when people have backed and so on. This needs some practice at first, but you get used to it in a while.

3)  If there is any chance, try to get in to a team where you actually know someone. It makes you more relaxed and you aren't constantly nervous about the others "juding" you.

4) When you get to the team, at first you should lurk out what kind of players are their. This is especially really important if you are going as support/marksman. Is your support aggressive? Does your jungler gank a lot, or does he prefer farming until teamfights? These are some very important things you should know.

Champion select

This is where you start gathering your team comps, and the tactics kick in. There are few things you should keep in mind.

1) The optimal situation is where you get to blue side, and you can make the enemy team "forcing" bans. You want to ban obvious champions, but if your mid laner is maining Zed, try to let him first pick it. Strong roaming assassins are great first picks usually.

2) When you are on the purple side, you should try to ban their optimal champions, but try to sneak some champions for yourselves. It is very important to try and get them force some picks too, this is possible too. For example, if you leave Zac open, and they happen to first pick him (or it, I am not quite sure), you can counter him pretty easily.

3) Try to form a team comp. I will show some examples after this, but try to form something that will work in late game.

4) If you are playing against people in equally low elo, I suggest you don't care about the counters that much. There are some counters you should keep in mind (meaning don't pick Vayne against Caitlyn, that is just you giving free advantages to the enemy), but you should go with the mindset of playing the champions you main, not the champions that counter their champions (Editor note: this is open for debate).

 

Team comps

Team comps are very important in the long run. Although these might not be as important in Silver/Gold, they start having meaning in higher Elo games. You should try to form a team comp that considers champions you are familiar with, and the champions that still fit to the objective the team comp has.

I will write down team comps that are useful, easy to play and team comps that will aren't that complicated like; Azubu's triple smite comp or the Split push comp.

1) The double AP comp

I personally like this team comp a lot as it gives advantages to jungler and ADC (or Marksman, however you like it). The basic idea of the team is to form a team that has AP top laner, like Diana for example, and AP mid laner, like Karthus and an AD jungler. Your bot lane is otherwise a free choice, although I suggest Caitlyn/Leona lane, as they are really good in the fights, bringing some CC and high damage.

The team comp makes it so that if your team has a really talented ADC, he/she can deal tons of more damage, when their top laner has to build Magic Resist against the AP carry. This is why you should prefer high burst AP champions to top, like Diana.

The mid lane (obviously) builds Magic resist too. You should try to prefer either hypercarries or late game carries to use in mid lane. This means you have one burst assassin and one hyper carry. This makes your teamfighting very powerful.

Your jungler, which should be built AD tank, is getting advatage of this too, making your ganks have more damage on the jungler's side too.

This is a good example of the best working double AP comp in my opinion:

Diana is an AP assassin that scales well to late game and can easily burst down a carry out of teamfight. She has AoE CC, high damage and a medium range teleport. She is capable of really aggressive and passive play style.

I personally like Wukong in the jungle for various reasons. First one being his teamfighting. He is meant for this team comp. He can just sneak behind your back and activate his ultimate which deals 200 base damage per second for four seconds. A well organized teamfight where Diana can get few people on caught can mean Wukong is able to dash out a minimum of 800 damage to three or four people (or even five but that would mean your Diana is a god).

Karthus is an extremely powerful champion. His kit works really well in to this kind of team comp if you prefer to play agressive, since he can still be a part of fight after he has died.

Vayne is one of the best AD carries for this team comp. She can wreck down tanks, squishy targets, Teemo's and has incredible kite potential. Vayne is safe with this team comp, as you have a four man front line pushing in to the team fight.

Thresh has huge CC, a modified Blitzcrank hook, 99% slow with an AoE ultimate and self built survivability and AP. What more do I have to say?

Objective:  The objective of double AP comp is to make the enemy laners build more Magic Resist. This way your Jungler and AD are benefitting hugely from this. Your teamfighting is agressive, with the idea of diving in with your AP frontliners

Pros:

+Your ADC deals more damage, making it much more difficult for the enemies to survive team fights without peeling hard, which is difficult with the heavy damage front line you have

+Your jungler deals more damage too, making your ganks more succesful

+Your teamfighting is usually very good, since you deal high damage to the enemy team

+Very easy to organize. You don't really have to have as specific timing than other team comps, the only hard part might be the dive in style the team has when fighting 

Cons:

- If your ADC gets wrecked in bot lane, you have to rely on your jungler dealing AD damage, which usually leads up to problems

- Your team is usually really squishy due to the fact that you have only one tank in the team comp, if you don't pick a mid laner that has high sustain in late game

- You need to also carry in top lane, since you need to be a high threat to the enemy top laner, because the only reason you actually are using AP top lane on this team comp, is to get the enemy top laner build as much Magic Resist as possible

 

2) The AoE comp

I have found this one to be really succesful too. The idea is to be able to have high AoE damage in the late game, and your biggest advatage over enemy team is teamfighting. You also usually have high sustain in this kind of team comp.

The champions you have should preferably have high sustain with an AoE ultimate, like Thresh, Nunu, Kennen, Ezreal etc.

This team comp is usually much weaker in early than in late game, but there are really many champions that are falling on late game, like Kennen. 

The team comp should have at least three high AoE damage dealers, that preferably have hard CC (Kennen, Thresh) and two Champions that have high damage, and in the best occasions, you should have one hyper carry to back up your damage.

An example of the best working AoE team comp in my opinion:

Kennen is a champion no one likes to play against. Laning against a Kennen is horrible. Teamfighting against Kennen is horrible. Defending towers against Kennen is horrible. Doing anything against an enemy Kennen is horrible. The main reason you should pick the yordle.

Kennen has an AoE ultimate that includes hard CC and if Kennen has Zhonya's he can dive in with low HP. Kennen also has an escape ability and an autoattack modifier that scales with AP and puts one mark to stun passive. This makes Kennen a versatile teamfighter.

I think Malphite is an incredibly good champion to this team comp. He has AS debuff, he has an AoE ultimate that has a knock up effect and he can easily peel their front line down on teamfights. Also if used well, Malphite is really good with Orianna, as Orianna can chain Command: Shockwave with Malphite's Unstoppable Force.

I think you knew this was coming. Orianna is one of the best AP carries in the game due to her high damage and her AoE ultimate that can melt down teams.

Caitlyn works really well with this team comp. She is able to dish out really high damage, and she is really annoying to defend against or push against because of her high range. Caitlyn's teamfighting is almost entirely based on her relying on autoattacks. She can tear down tanks and the enemy mid laner and ADC are both (or should be) afraid of Caitlyn in late game.

Leona is a good teamfighter and has one of the best laning in the game. She can dive in on to the enemy back line and she has an AoE ultimate that can stun and even if it doesn't stun, it has a ridiculously big slow (not Thresh level ridiculous, but still pretty high). She also is the best support combination with Caitlyn.

Objective: Trying to play early game quite safe, trying to make some advantages. The main idea is to build up for your late game and force team fights by baiting the enemy on fights they can not win.

Pros:

+When almost equal on kills in late game, you win teamfights much easier with AoE comp.

+You can initiate on five people at the same time in best occasions

+Your fights around the baron or dragon pit are ridiculously easy to initiate and win, since the enemy team is in a thight gap where you can just randomly put a Nunu using Flash and Absolute Zero

Cons:

-If you have only one people on your team that can deal tons of damage in late game, you have to pray really hard that he/she doesn't loose her/his lane. This is usually the biggest problem, since someone like Vayne is easily cut off with early shutdowns

-Your team will lack damage. This is sorry but true, champions with AoE damage, lack more damage than the people with low amounts of CC/AoE

 

3) The engage comp

This comp is stronlgy based on lane ganking, initiating teamfights and trying to get early advatages to beat the team later on.

The comp should consider a high CC jungler like Aatrox or Vi, a high sustained top laner like Jayce or Shen that can still initate well in to teamfights, and a mid laner with high AoE damage that preferably has high CC like Ahri or Orianna.

With the jungle pressure, the idea is to get your jungler to gank early on, and really many times. In current meta, Aatrox is one of the strongest jungler to the engage comp, since he has a ridiculous slow and a knockback which can be channeled behind a wall and his late game teamfight initiation is absolutely crazy because of your passive.

Your mid laner is an important part, since you would want a mid laner with a good initiation. Orianna and Galio, fit this role perfectly due to their high AoE damage linked with high CC. Although Ahri does not have that much CC, she has a really good initation with Spirit Rush

This is a great video on well excecuted initiation. The people are on a nice small pack when Cho'Gath om noms them away and Lux takes huge advantage on getting five people in the area of her ultimate's hitbox

An example team comp of an engage team comp:

Jayce is a great initiator because of his Acceleration Gate. He can combine a high damage poke to a five man speed boost. If your support has Shurelya's Reverie, you can combine this to a deadly combination that the enemy team can not run away from.

If Aatrox is able to get two or three early kills/assists, he snowballs extremely hard towards late game. He can be able to have high damage and be very tanky in late game. Aatrox's initiation is very good aswell. He has a slow that seems to be never ending, a knockback and a revive passive which lets you to all in in 1v5 just to be able to dish out high damage, revive and win the teamfight

Orianna is a champion that can fit many team comps. In engage team comp, your job is to use your Command: Shockwave with correct timing. If you can, you are able to win teamfights with your ultimate. If you don't, well, you are useless on your team then. I suggest that if you want to start playing Orianna in a ranked team, you should practice her a lot before doing that.

Varus comps really well with the engage team comp, since you can easily lock down atleast one high priority target. Your damage is really high in late game and you counter many of the most popular AD carries, for example Vayne.

This champion. He fits the definition off a perfect initiator. If you can hook down the enemy mid laner or ADC, you can with that one hook change outcomes of games and win fights.

Objective: Try to force early kills with high jungle pressure. In late game, the main objective is to engage fights with heavy CC, leading up to pushing turrets down until you hit the nexus.

Pros:

+High early damage team comp, easy to force kills early on

+Teamfighting is really good in late game, if you can get the enemies in one bunch

+Usually a high damage team comp in late game too

+The most succesful comp if played correctly

+The most succesful comp if played correctly

Cons:

-Your jungler is the keypoint here. If your jungler can't get you more than three kills in the first 15 minutes, your goal of taking an early advantage is pretty much gone

-Your top laner is pretty crucial in this process, because he/she should be able to be the tank of the team, while still dishing out damage. If your top laner gets screwed in lane, this might end up a problem in late game

-Your over all communication is crucial. If your team, for example, would have Vi, Shen and Orianna that are initiating, they need to time it perfectly to get Shen's Stand United, Orianna's Command: Shockwave and Vi's Assault and Battery.

 

On the next part I will be talking about communication while playing, about teamwork in nutshell and about the stages of the team's game from early to late.