LoL Champion Select Basic Guide

LoL Champion Select Basic Guide by xSharper

1. Introduction

Hello guys! Today I’ve taken time to write an article about the subject of Championselect. It is a very basic guide, note that there is way more depth to the subject!

I’d like to start off with some information about me, so you know who the heck I actually am.

My IGN is Sharper, currently with the teamtag “BEV” which stands for Binary Evasion (a Swiss E-Sports clan). I’m ADC of their new team Hypnos and used to be ADC and Captain of Phoenix, which was a successful team in Switzerland. We’re a full Diamond+ team, and I am the primary shotcaller – so this is where my game knowledge comes into account. I’ve made a post about “Shotcalling” some time ago, which you can find here

Besides playing as semi-professional, I coach a French Master/Challenger team who will attend Dreamhack Summer in Paris.

2. Getting into it: Understanding the complexity of Champselect

As most of you probably already know, Champselect is a quite complex phase of the game. There are so many factors that influence it; is it the current meta, one trick ponies, priority picks for enemy players, priority picks for your team or needed bans and so on. Those factors may seem quite simple to you now, but when you are in Champselect and have a limited amount of time, mistakes may happen. This is why you should always prepare (especially in tournaments) to get a lead out of Champselect into the Rift!

2.1 Anticipation

The part of anticipation actually starts before you get into Champselect. You should discuss strategies with your mates and try to find out what your enemies play. Also, think about what they will do; that means, what are OUR strengths? Who are our favorite picks? What will their bans be? What will they think we do? Now, this gets quite clear fast; Champselect includes mind games. Obviously, it also leaves a vast majority of strategies open. For example, either you ban all “OP-Picks” or leave them all open.

However, those strategies should be made right before you join the Champselect. If you have your plan set up, it’s time to go in and execute it.

2.2 Prioritypicking versus Counterpicking

2.2.1 Prioritypicking

The definition of prioritypicking is quite simple: You want to get champions that are high priority for your team. Reasons for this could be different, either because of the meta or of your jungler being the best Rengar NA.

2.2.2 Counterpicking

By counterpicking we understand the act of choosing a champion, which excels damn good against his lane opponent and/or the whole enemy teamcomposition. An example for that could be picking Janna versus a full hard-engage comp.

2.2.3 When to use which strategy?

Since you rarely can combine those two strategies, you often have to make a decision for one of them. However, how do you choose the better one? To make the right decision, you need your research again. You need to know about the enemy team’s comfort picks and if they have characteristic picks. This could be for example Ziggs for Jesiz, Impaler’s Rengar or Alex Ich’s Kha’zix.

When you know about those, you can decide: Do we have a counter for their pick/strategy?

• If yes -> bait them to pick their champs and take your counters.
• If no -> Either “steal” their picks (in case you can play them yourselves better than their 2nd priority pick!) or ban them.

As for yourself, you always got to think the same about your team. Do we have such characteristic picks? Obviously yes, most teams do. And now you need to anticipate again, and try to predict what they will do. In the end, you want to come out ahead on champselect.

3. TL;DR, closing words

TL;DR: Using the techniques of anticipation, prioritypicking and counterpicking can give you advantages on the Rift! Click me!

If you came this far, thank you for reading my post! As mentioned at the start, this is quite a basic guide. There are other points and details that can be taken into account when talking about this subject, one of them being the side choice. In case people are interested, I could write a more in-depth Guide about this (or enlarge this one). For example, if you are interested in how to recognize a certain strategy of your opponents and how to react to it; say it.