Surviving Champion Select in Ranked

Ranked is a very intimidating place to throw yourself into especially if you are not prepared for it. One of the larger issues with ranked is before the game even starts is surviving champion select.

We can break champion select down into a five distinct sections: Ban phase, your pick, enemy picks, composition building and mind games.

BAN PHASE

While this part seems very straight forward there is much more to it than just a simple matter of “ban the op champions”. In the ban phase you have to bear in mind a couple of important factors: the first of which is that blue side only gets to take one champion on the first rotation of picks whereas purple side gets two. The second important factor to remember is that some champions, while strong, also require large amount of co-ordination or even mechanical skill to play and so may be more advantageous to risk someone on the other team playing the champion poorly.

What I mean by the second factor is for example a champion like Talon is very strong if played well in a good matchup but if played by an unskilled player cannot really accomplish much and will likely be more of a disadvantage for his team. Another great example is someone like Yasuo. At higher levels of play he is picked regardless of team composition but at lower levels tends to require champions with knockups to be picked in order to have success.

ENEMY PICKS

While you don’t really have much influence on this part of champion select it is very important to pay attention because this is basically like a recon mission where you need to gather as much info as possible in order to give your team the best chance you can to win the game.

Watch for easily countered picks or matchups you are specifically familiar with. Additionally, watch for picks that hint to a composition, for example: Malphite, Jarvan, Orianna, and Braum/Leona are all quite indicative of an area of effect team composition so make sure to take this into consideration as we get into the next main part of champion select.

YOUR PICK

This is your time to shine, your turn to pick what you want to use in the coming game. But don’t just rush headlong into a champion you are comfortable with, consider not only what the enemy team has picked but what your team has picked as well. For example if both teams have no crowd control and you are left with support consider picking something that has extra crowd control to make up for it.

Another important fact is comfort versus function. It is all fine and good if you are extremely proficient with Leona but if the other team has picked Thresh you may want to reconsider since Thresh can quite easily Flay (E) Leona out of her Zenith Blade (E). It is very easy to just play a champion that you feel comfortable on but you have to remember that a champion is like a box of tools, if you don’t have the correct tool in your kit it doesn’t matter how nice the tools are or even how well you can use them.

COMPOSITION BUILDING

This was lightly touched on in the previous sections but its importance cannot be understated. Building a composition that works well together is extremely important since most solo queue games tend to go late where team comp becomes more important than how you played the rest of the game.

For example if you leave lane and the game goes to fifty minutes where all players have six items it doesn’t really matter that you won early game because everyone gets placed on a level playing field.

When I say team composition I don’t necessarily mean that you always run tons of crowd control but more that you have a variety of roles and champions that have enough utility to make picks on out of position players as well as damage to actually secure kills off the picks.

MIND GAMES

This is the part that I can’t really teach anyone about, there is no way to know what other players are thinking and this is why it is important to consider the mentality of the other players in your game. I have seen plenty of games where someone asks to leave a certain champion open for them but the captain then bans it. In these cases the player will flame the team and not try simply because the captain wasn’t paying attention to the chat.

What I mean by mind games is just the overall mental state of all players (allied or enemy). You have to remember that sometimes people get mad about ranked, it can be frustrating to lose games and that is understandable so you should go out of your way to keep their mentality in check, even if it means taking your third best role instead of your best just to accommodate a player who is having a bad day.

 

CONCLUSIONS

Champion select can be very daunting but if you make sure to practice up on other champions and keep a level head you can give your team a massive advantage before the game even starts. Good luck on the fields of justice and I hope you found my mini-guide at least a bit helpful for ranked.