Twisted Treeline Compositions and General Strategy

For most players, Twisted Treeline is a distant land where people play champions they want to learn or for players to take short breaks from Summoner's Rift. For other players, Twisted Treeline is a refreshing playground with different strategies and a lot of fight-oriented gameplay.

One of the most interesting parts about the Twisted Treeline meta is that there are two different metas which are both recognized by the community as equally viable. This aspect of Twisted Treeline excites me because it adds a whole nother element to the picks and bans phase.

The first meta is the most common one, which 90% of opponents will run. For this meta, you run a bruiser top lane, a jungler and then a mage bot lane. This is the preferred meta by most, because it's the easiest way to ensure every member on your team is keeping up in income and experience while still giving room for aggression. Like most players, this is the meta my teammates and I normally follow.

The second meta involves not running a jungler, but instead running a support to lane with the top lane bruiser. While my teammates and I have tried to dive into this meta a few times, we tend to gravitate towards having a jungler largely because it's less punishing for the 3rd player to get the farm from the jungle rather than rely on support gold income. While running a support might be a bit more risky, if played correctly, the 2v1 top can give you significant control over the enemy jungle and general control over the game.

Garen/Amumu/Lissandra

I really like this composition for a number of reasons. For starters, Garen and Lissandra are both really strong laners early in the game. In the event that the enemy doesn't have a jungler, Lissandra can also lane 2v1 better than most champions. Additionally, while Lissandra and Garen are both strong early, Amumu only gets scarier as the game goes on. When teamfights do happen, all 3 champions are fairly mobile and provide good aoe, and can burst down an entire enemy team efficiently. Lissandra's ult can also help lockdown a single target on the enemy team in case they have a hyper-carry composition.

Pros:
-All fairly mobile
-Strong aoe damage
-Good early lanes
-Strong late game Jungler

Cons:
-Easy to bully Amumu early if laners aren't wary
-Highly dependent on solo laners winning their lanes
-Hard to stick to champions with disengage

 

Quinn/Vi/Karma

To be perfectly honest, this composition largely came about because the 3 players that were on at the time happened to be putting in a lot of time individually into each of these 3 champions. That being said, win after win, we realized a few things that were helping us win. For starters, Karma and Quinn are both strong bullies in lane who are mobile. This means they should be able to trade out free harass without much worry of a gank in response. Additionally, while both Quinn and Karma are quite squishy, the shields from Karma, especially on top of Vi's shield from her passive, make Vi a surprisingly hearty tank that sits at the heart of this composition. I like this composition a lot because in reality, it's a twist to the traditional hyper-carry compostion: instead of a hyper-carry with two utility champions to support him, we have 2 damage dealers and a tank, with everyone having utility to help each other.

Pros:
-Extremely mobile
-Strong level 1
-Very strong level 6
-Surprisingly tanky

Cons:
-Dependent on early game dominance
-Can be countered by untargetable opponents or Morgana's blackshield
-Can't fight without full strength

 

Jax/Nunu/Lulu

This composition is a bit of a risk to run, as it depends heavily on the skills of your Jax player. If for whatever reason the Jax/Nunu lane can't shove and control the enemy jungle effectively, the Nunu pick is going to start falling off real quick. Luckily, Lulu is also there as kind of a safety cushion in this composition.

It's fairly reliable to think that Lulu will do well in lane, and can therefore have a decent amount of AP on her abilities to aid Jax in teamfights - which might make all the difference if Jax has started to struggle through the laning phase. As long as you manage to stay even with your opponent, however, Jax should singlehandedly outscale most opponents, especially with the strong favoritism towards early game champions that Twisted Treeline sees.

Pros:
-Jax hurts and becomes very hard to kill
-Nunu can counter-jungle very quickly
-Lots of poke and utility, so range isnt a big issue
-Strong lane and objective control

Cons:
-All is lost when Jax dies
-Supports are easy to burst quick in fights
-Blinds or chain cc are both very hard to deal with