Top 10 Champions With the Best Ultimates

Some ultimates just win the fight the moment they land. These ten do it more reliably than almost anything else in League.

Every role has a signature ultimate that can flip a game by itself (a global execute, a point and click stun, a rock that flies across the map to end someone's day). These ten are the ones that make opponents check the minimap every three seconds.

Top 10

Champions With the Best Ultimates

Most Impactful

Some ultimates just win the fight the moment they land. These ten do it more reliably than almost anything else in League.

We're counting down from the ultimate that just barely makes the cut to the one that has ended more team fights before they even started than any other ability in the game.

#10: Miss Fortune, Bullet Time

Miss Fortune plants her feet and opens fire in a cone. Then she just keeps shooting. Against a team that doesn't move or gets locked down first, Bullet Time [R] can erase every squishy on the enemy team in about the time it takes to say its name. It doesn't take much to stop, though. A single well timed silence or dash shuts it down.

#9: Gragas, Explosive Cask

Few ultimates change a fight's shape as fast as a barrel lobbed into the middle of a five person clump. Explosive Cask [R] can body someone into a wall for an easy follow up kill or scatter an enemy engage before it even starts. It can also save an ally by punting the diver off of them. It doesn't care about stats nearly as much as timing, and it still gets people every game.

#8: Taric, Cosmic Radiance

Cosmic Radiance [R] telegraphs itself (for two and a half seconds) and enemies still lose to it constantly. A team that commits to a fight right as the invulnerability window opens simply can't punch through it, and Taric gets to walk his whole team out of an all in that should have been a wipe.

#7: Fiddlesticks, Crowstorm

There's no worse feeling than watching a scarecrow appear out of nowhere and fear an entire team fight, then start channeling a storm of crows that shreds anyone still standing in it. Crowstorm [R] turns positioning mistakes into full team wipes, and the flash in range means you aren't ever fully safe from it (the backline hiding behind three other people included).

#6: Zed, Death Mark

Death Mark [R] marks a target and Zed dashes past them. A second later, a chunk of stored damage detonates. The kill is decided before the target even reacts. Against a squishy target with no peel, that's close to a guaranteed kill, and the shadow reset lets Zed walk away clean afterward. One correct read is usually all it needs.

#5: Shen, Stand United

Stand United [R] can save a teammate from anywhere on the map, and the shield alone can survive an all in that should have ended the game right there. A well timed taunt on top of it lets Shen body block for a carry who has no business surviving a dive. He's the one pick here who can single handedly bail out a losing fight from two lanes away.

#4: Ashe, Enchanted Crystal Arrow

An arrow that travels the length of the map and stuns everyone it clips is one of the oldest ultimates in League, and it's still among the most game deciding. A clean hit on a grouped enemy team hands the fight over before it even begins, and even a partial hit usually costs someone their flash. It hasn't stopped winning games since the earliest seasons, and it works exactly the same way today.

#3: Karthus, Requiem

Requiem [R] hits every enemy champion on the map at once and deals real damage (it still works after Karthus himself is dead). Stealing a kill from across the map is just a normal Tuesday for this ultimate. So is cleaning up a losing fight nobody could see coming, or executing a whole team that thought they were safe back at base. No other ability on this list keeps threatening the enemy team from beyond the grave.

#2: Amumu, Curse of the Sad Mummy

A point and click AoE stun with no skillshot component (and no way to dodge it once it lands) is about as terrifying as tools in this game get. Curse of the Sad Mummy [R] has ended more five person fights before they started than almost any other ability in League, and it only asks that Amumu walk into range and press one button. It's that simple, and that's why it works.

#1: Malphite, Unstoppable Force

"It's Malphite time" has become shorthand for an entire team getting knocked into the air and then deleted before they land, and there's a reason that phrase has stuck around for over a decade. Unstoppable Force [R] is unstoppable in the truest sense (it dashes through every form of crowd control on the way in), and a clean hit on a grouped enemy team turns a coin flip fight into a guaranteed win. No ultimate on this list has ended more games in a single cast.

Conclusions

What separates these ten from the rest of the roster is how directly each ultimate decides the fight it lands in. A stun that can't be dodged, a shield that arrives from across the map, an execute that works after death: none of them leave the other team much room to answer back.

Some of these champions aren't meta picks anymore due to their full kit. These old timers still came from an era where ultimates truly meant an ultimate.