League of Legends draft: how to pick your champion
In champion select, the best pick is usually a champion you play well, that holds up against your likely lane opponent and gives your team what it lacks. When those point to different champions, favour the one you know: a counter you have never played is not a counter. Here is how to weigh them in the few seconds you have.
· 4 min read · By Gankademy
Start with a small pool
Two or three champions per role are enough. One you can pick early without fear — a “blind pick” with no terrible matchup — and one or two for when you see the enemy first. Champions that play in a similar way let your habits carry over from one to the other.
A small pool means you know your power spikes, your matchups and your limits. That knowledge is worth more than any statistic, and it is the first thing a draft should protect.
Use the draft order
Picking early, you know little about the enemy: take a safe champion from your pool. Picking late, you can react: answer your lane opponent or fill what your team is missing. Plan a counter only against champions the enemy has locked in.
Also check who you will really face. The champion you expect in your lane can go to another role, so look at the whole enemy team, not only the obvious matchup.
Counters: useful, with care
A counter pick works when you know the matchup from your side. Win rates help, but read the sample behind them: a gap built on a few dozen games is mostly noise, and an average says nothing about you on that champion. When the matchup is close, your comfort pick is usually the better choice.
A good counter also fits your team. Winning your lane with a champion that leaves your team without a frontline, or with a single type of damage, can cost you the fights that come after.
Read your team composition
You don’t need a perfect composition, only to avoid the obvious holes:
- Damage. If every ally deals physical damage, a magic damage pick makes the enemy’s armour less useful — and the reverse.
- A frontline. Someone has to stand in front. With no tank, a sturdy pick protects your carries.
- Engage. Someone has to start the fights. Without it, the enemy decides when to fight.
- Waveclear and range. Think about how your team will take towers and hold its own.
Read the enemy draft too
Your team’s composition is only half the picture. Once the enemy’s picks are locked in, ask what they want to do — and pick something that makes it harder.
- They have a lot of engage. A champion that can disengage, peel or punish a bad dive is worth more than one more damage dealer.
- They want to fight late. If their champions scale better than yours, your team has to play early: a pick that is strong in the first minutes and can help around the map pays off.
- They rely on one carry. Champions that can reach the backline or lock down a single target make that carry’s life hard.
The same reading helps after champion select: the draft tells you which fights to look for and which to avoid. Put it in one sentence before the game starts — “we fight early around dragon, we never face-check their side of the map” — and you already have a game plan.
Ban with your pool in mind
Ban the champion you least want to face in your lane, or the one that beats most of your pool. Before you ban, look at the champions your teammates have declared: banning the one your jungler wants to play helps nobody.
A checklist for champion select
- What is my role, and who is likely in front of me?
- Which champions of my pool are safe here?
- What does my team lack: magic or physical damage, a frontline, an engage?
- Do I know this matchup from my side?
- If two picks are close, which one do I play best?
With Gankademy
Gankademy follows your champion select from the League client, read-only, and shows a strip under it with three or four options, each with its reasons: a comfort pick from your own ranked games in that role; the best win rate against your likely lane opponent, only from matchups with enough games, with a three-bar gauge of how far the sample can be trusted; the best in your draft, for example magic damage when no ally deals it; and your best pick overall.
It never picks for you, never reads other players’ names and never uses enemy hovers. Once you lock in, it shows your champion’s builds, runes and matchup notes, from a sample of more than 300,000 ranked games. What it reads in the client · The draft, in detail.
Questions
Should I always counter-pick?
No. A counter only helps if you play it well. When you don’t know the matchup, a champion from your pool that holds up is usually the better pick.
How many champions should my pool have?
Two or three per role cover most drafts: a safe early pick and one or two answers to the matchups you dislike. Beyond that, you stop learning each one deeply.
What if someone picks or bans my champion?
That is what the rest of your pool is for. Decide your second choice before champion select, so a lost champion doesn’t turn into a panic pick. Then play your habits, whatever you pick.