Team Composition Building 101: Poke, Sustain, All-In and Disengage

Poke loses to Sustain. Sustain loses to All-In. All-In loses to Disengage. Disengage loses to Poke. Once you can see which of the four a draft is building toward, champion select stops being a guess.

League of Legends Guide

Team Composition Building

Updated August 2026

A good team composition isn't five strong champions. It's five champions whose strengths point in the same direction, picked against what the other team is trying to do. That sounds abstract until you have a framework for it, and this is the one that has held up for a decade.

The Cycle

Nearly every composition in League is built around one of four core strategies, and they beat each other in a loop.

Poke < Sustain < All-In < Disengage < Poke Read it as: Poke loses to Sustain, Sustain loses to All-In, and so on around

The loop works because each strategy answers the one before it. Sustain out-heals chip damage, so it beats Poke. All-In kills through the healing before it matters, so it beats Sustain. Disengage breaks up the commitment an All-In needs, so it beats All-In. And Poke wins a long ranged war against a team built to run away, so it beats Disengage.

The half of this that matters most: Poke and All-In are offensive strategies, Sustain and Disengage are defensive ones. That's why the best compositions aren't purely one of the four. They pair an offensive core with the defensive strategy that covers its weakness.

The Four Strategies

Poke

Long range abilities that chip health away before a fight starts, so the fight is decided before anyone commits. Usually paired with burst or crowd control.

Champions like Lux, Jayce and Morgana. This kind of team kites and doesn't necessarily need hard engage or a tank at all.

Beats Disengage · Loses to Sustain

Sustain

Healing, shielding and regeneration that makes chip damage pointless. You out-last rather than out-damage.

Enchanters and lifesteal-heavy carries. The whole plan is to still be standing when the other team runs out of resources.

Beats Poke · Loses to All-In

All-In

Jumping on someone and killing them faster than the enemy can respond with heals or escapes. Burst, dive and hard engage.

The counter to sustain, because healing does nothing if the target dies inside two seconds.

Beats Sustain · Loses to Disengage

Disengage

Knock-ups, walls, slows and displacement that break an engage apart mid-commitment. You don't win the fight, you cancel it.

An All-In needs everyone to land at once. Disengage makes that impossible, and the diving team arrives alone and dies.

Beats All-In · Loses to Poke

Pairing Them

Real teams are rarely one pure strategy. The strong combinations pair an offensive core with a defensive backup that covers what it's weak to.

Poke and Disengage

Chip them down continuously, and when they finally commit out of frustration, break the engage apart. This is the classic siege composition and it's miserable to play against.

All-In and Sustain

Keeps your divers healthy enough to keep diving. Sustain covers the recovery time that a pure all-in team doesn't have.

Poke and All-In

Whittle them down from range, then commit once they're too low to survive it. Works best with champions who do both, which is exactly why Jayce has been a professional staple for so long.

What to avoid

Five champions with the same strategy and no answer to its counter. Five all-in champions against a team with two knock-ups isn't a composition, it's a queue to die one at a time.

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Using This In Champion Select

You don't need to draft like a professional team to get value from this. Two questions are enough:

What is the enemy team trying to do? Look at their picks and name the strategy. If three of them are long range mages, that's poke, and the counter is sustain and a way to close distance.

What is my team trying to do? If nobody can start a fight, someone needs to be able to. If everyone can start a fight and nobody can stop one, you'll lose to the first good disengage you meet.

Getting that right at the last pick is worth more than any individual counterpick, and it's a decision you can make even in a lobby where nobody is talking.

For the drafting vocabulary used here, see the Terms Glossary. For compositions built and explained in full, our Team Comp series does one a week.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the four team composition types in League of Legends?

Poke, Sustain, All-In and Disengage. They counter each other in a loop: Poke loses to Sustain, Sustain loses to All-In, All-In loses to Disengage, and Disengage loses to Poke.

What beats a poke composition?

Sustain. Poke works by chipping health away before a fight, and healing or shielding makes that chip damage irrelevant. A team that can heal through the poke arrives at the fight at full health.

What beats an all-in composition?

Disengage. An all-in needs everyone to commit at the same moment, so knock-ups, walls and displacement break it apart mid-commitment and leave the divers arriving alone.

Should a team composition be all one strategy?

No. Poke and All-In are offensive, Sustain and Disengage are defensive, and the strongest compositions pair an offensive core with the defensive strategy that covers its weakness. Five champions doing the same thing lose badly to whatever counters it.

How do I use this in solo queue champion select?

Name what the enemy team is building toward, then pick something that answers it and that your team is missing. Deciding whether your team needs engage or disengage at last pick is usually worth more than counterpicking your individual lane.

Which composition do you dread seeing in champion select? Poke and disengage still ruins our week. Comments below.