Conquering from Afar: The Poke Composition

At a competitive level, drafting an effective team composition and playing according to its strengths is crucial. This is especially true for a poke composition, which demands a unique playstyle oriented around whittling down targets from afar and avoiding direct confrontation. While this strategy can fall apart easily when played haphazardly, a coordinated poke team is incredibly oppressive.

The Premise

The poke composition is based around the idea of having a few champions employing long-range, high-damage abilities to weaken opponents. This will enable your team to secure objectives and siege towers with ease.

A poke team should aim to create advantages prior to taking objectives like towers or dragons. By creating advantages through damaging enemies from afar, you pressure weakened individuals to either fall back or teamfight unfavorably. This results in the opposing team having to surrender objectives, or being forced to fight with a notable champion or health disadvantage.

The Foundations/Basics

The three key defining traits of a poke team are poke, waveclear and disengage. The composition should have a strong balance of these attributes to ensure a successful draft.

There is a broad range of strong poke champions of both AD and AP varieties to choose from. A few prime examples include Varus, Corki, Ezreal, Lux and Xerath, who all have long-range spells to frequently harass opponents with. These champions are often immobile, relying on their allies to peel and disengage for them.

Waveclear is essential, as a poke composition will be looking to siege towers and maintain pressure by clearing through minion waves fast and effectively. Furthermore, killing minion waves will make way for collision-based poke spells such as Nidalee’s Spear Toss (Q) or Jayce’s Shock Blast (Q) for improved harass potential.

A poke composition requires disengage to subdue up-front initiation from the opposing team. Champions with the ability to kite and peel for their allies like Gragas, Poppy and Janna are popular examples of champions that can deny an engage via crowd control. Furthermore, area-of-effect mobility spells such as Karma’s Defiance (R+E) or the Talisman of Ascension’s Active are ideal for fleeing from impending flanks and engages.

Since a poke composition struggles in direct combat, knowing your opponent's location is key to avoiding unfavorable fights. Thoughtful use of sight and vision wards will help you avoid flanks and engages from the fog-of-war. Be sure to make use of Farsight Alteration wards and Frost Queen’s Claim’s active to trace your opponents’ movements, as they’re very powerful tools for acquiring medium/long-range vision.

Countering a Poke Composition

A proficient poke composition can be infuriating to play against. Poke teams with broad vision control and disengage spells leave very few windows of opportunity for their opponents to strike back. To win against this kind of team, you need to be able to initiate fights before your team is weakened too heavily.

Hard-engage spells and chain crowd control are superb against poke compositions when used effectively. Malphite’s Unstoppable Force (R) or Amumu’s Curse of the Sad Mummy (R) are both potent initiation abilities, ideal for locking down multiple targets. Furthermore, movement speed buffs like Sivir’s On the Hunt (R) are brilliant for closing the gap and starting fights against teams avoiding confrontation. 

Thoughtful ward placement can enable allies to flank with Teleport, creating favorable engages from surprise angles that a poke composition may struggle to withdraw from.

Adaptive itemization will help you endure barrages of damage. Defensive items that provide health regeneration and defensive stats such as Spirit Visage and Locket of the Iron Solari are excellent purchases against AP poke. Investing in lifesteal is effective for carries looking to recuperate from damage. While Banshee’s Veil may be useful against periodic poke, it’s a weaker purchase against champions with lighter, spammable poke such as Kog’Maw’s Living Artillery (R).

Poke Compositions in Action

(LCK) KT Rolster vs ROX Tigers, Game 3, Season 6 (Link) - A clean execution of a poke composition, with the Tigers systematically creating leads through strong poke, sieging towers and forcing favorable fights.

(EU LCS) Copenhagen Wolves vs Origen, Season 5 (Link) - A slow, methodical match where Origen maintains control of the map through exceptional poke and disengage.

(NA LCS) Team Dignitas vs Team Liquid, Season 5 (Link) - A failed poke composition ran by Team Dignitas during featuring Runeglaive Ezreal, an overwhelmingly strong poke champion at the time. Won by TL through a superior draft, vision denial and strong engages.

The poke composition is tricky to pull off, demanding a specific playstyle to achieve victory. When executed correctly, however, it has the potential to be one of the strongest, most oppressive compositions to face.

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