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Jun 24, 2013

Top Team Comps #30: Balanced Poke/Initiation Comp

1 comment
Nautilus
Sometimes solo queue monsters turn out to be monsters in an organized team composition too...as long as your team has a strong mix of tactics that promote safe play and can also capitalize on mistakes, you will go far.

SUGGESTED LINEUP
Top: Jayce
Mid: Kassadin
Jungle: Nautilus
AD Carry: Ezreal
Support: Janna
ADVANTAGES:
- Strong chasing power
- Good mix of damage types
- Strong Disruption
- Good initiation
- Strong poke
DISADVANTAGES:
- Prone to counterjungling
- Low AD carry burst
- Small radius AOE damage



NOTE:
A lot of the time, teams tend to stick to one specific strategy, like poke comp, or aoe initiation comp. However, having a balanced comp generally works even better since it covers the weaknesses of one strategy with the strengths of another.

Naturally, replacing Kassadin with Nidalee would make this a much better poke and kite composition, but then they would be more susceptible to a strong engagement.

STRATEGY:
Pokers: Jayce, Ezreal
Burst Damage: Kassadin, Nautilus
Crowd Control (Initiation/Counter-initiation): Janna, Nautilus

Safe Poke
In order to maximize this team's effectiveness, you should make full use of Jayce and Ezreal's poke damage prior to engaging. Both of them can also check bushes for enemies, which will prevent your team from needing to face-checking into a 1v5. If Kassadin can poke safely he should as well, but never use your ultimate to poke unless you have full vision of the enemy champions and none of them have any CC. (Unlikely.)

Counter Initiation
If your team gets engaged on prior to poking the enemy team down, Janna and Nautilus provide a strong back-bone to stop the enemy team in their tracks. Between the two of them, they can easily keep Ezreal alive from almost anything.

If Kassadin is fed enough, baiting out the enemy assassins with Ezreal isn't a bad idea, especially if he has barrier up. Between barrier and Janna's shield, he should be able to survive any solo assassin, or even two.

Initiation
After poking down the enemy team, a combination of Nautilus' ultimate and Ezreal's ultimates are an excellent way to start a teamfight, with Naut's ultimate running through the enemy lines and Ezreal starting the fight at full passive stacks. I recommend starting with either Nautilus' hook or ultimate, and leaving Kassadin off to the side until the enemy team drops a few of their CCs and gap closers towards Ezreal. Although this leaves Nautilus as the sole form of engagement, I think he does it well enough that you won't need a backup initiation.

While it might be tempting to use Kassadin's silence on something like a Nunu ultimate, between Janna and Nautilus there should never be a need for him to do so. Aim for the squishies instead.

Chasing
This team has some of, if not THE strongest chasers in the game. Catching up with the enemy to finish them off should not be difficult, especially if Kassadin or Ezreal are still alive.

COUNTER-STRATEGY
Countering this team is fairly difficult. I'd recommend a team with strong engagement and a champion that can wave-clear effectively against Kassadin. I'd also recommend a more AP based composition that builds armor, since Ezreal will likely be building a Frozen Gauntlet, which will make him fairly tanky against AD based champions.

In terms of targetting, your team should build armor and then target down Kassadin. The reason for this is that the enemy team has Jayce and Ezreal, which means that building armor will be more effective against their main damage dealers. Also, since magic resist is a relatively weak statistic right now, Kassadin will have some extremely strong damage presence if he's not contained.

Here's an example of a team composition that has a good chance of succeeding:

Top: Ryze - Strong late game hypercarry that builds armor as part of his core
Mid: Galio - Naturally has strong wave clear and bulwark contains Kassadin's damage
Jungle: Amumu - Can build abyssal scepter to aid AP based team and tank Kassadin.
AD Carry: Draven - Does well against Ezreal.
Support: Sona - Strong overall support with good damage boost, sustain, and AOE CC

An alternative would be to run with Nunu and a strong early game AP mid to counterjungle. However, if you choose this route I would change top to someone like Irelia or Jax to take full advantage of Nunu's bloodboil.

Got more ideas for team compositions? Ways to improve on this one? Post them below in the comment section!

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1 comment:

  1. KingdomOfDimensionsSeptember 24, 2013

    Brilliant guide. Its a very balanced team comp, as well as a good counter combination. Obviously this was made before the most recent patches, so a decent update you could make is to add Corki as an alternative to Ezreal. With the new Trinity he's become quite powerful. As a laner he's stronger than Ezreal, so he can come into mid-game stronger. His poke isn't quite as strong on single targets, and without blue he runs out of missiles and mana very quickly. However, just a few missiles combined with Jayce Q's should leave anyone without sustain at 2/3 or less hp, and his far superior burst damage would allow him to follow up Nautilus's engage better. Just a small strategy change for players with a faster paced game in mind.

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