Top 10 Champions Who Carry Without Dealing Damage

Some of the most game deciding champions in League finish with the worst damage number on the scoreboard. That isn't a failure. For these ten it's the job description.

There are two ways to win a game without out damaging anyone. You can make someone else's damage matter more than it should, or you can put your damage into towers while the enemy team looks for you. These ten do one or the other, and a couple manage both.

Top 10

Champions Who Carry Without Dealing Damage

Utility and Split Pushing

Some of the most game deciding champions in League finish with the worst damage number on the scoreboard. That isn't a failure. For these ten it's the job description.

Counting down from the map pressure specialists who at least still hit people to the champion who genuinely can't carry with his own damage and wins anyway.

#10: Twisted Fate, the Threat of Being Anywhere

Destiny [R] reveals the enemy team and lets Twisted Fate teleport into any fight on the map. The damage he brings when he arrives is fine. The reason he wins games is that the enemy team has to play the entire mid game as though he could arrive, which means they take fewer fights, group earlier than they want to, and give up objectives they would otherwise contest. A large portion of a good Twisted Fate's contribution never appears in a damage chart because it consists of things the enemy team decided not to do.

#9: Sion, Who Pushes After He Dies

Sion is the only champion on this list whose corpse is still a strategic asset. His passive lets him keep swinging after death, which means even a lost fight ends with a wave being shoved under a tower. Alive, he's a side lane inevitability who takes plates and structures while his team plays four versus five somewhere else. His champion damage number is usually unremarkable. The map at minute twenty isn't.

#8: Milio, the Range Increase Nobody Accounts For

Milio's passive adds range to an ally's attacks, his shield adds movement speed, and his ultimate cleanses crowd control while healing everyone caught in it. None of that shows up as damage from Milio. All of it shows up as damage from the marksman standing behind him, who's now hitting from further away, escaping the dive, and no longer stunned during the fight that decides the game. He's a genuinely strong champion who can go entire games barely landing an ability on an enemy.

#7: Yorick, Who Sends Someone Else to Push

The Maiden of the Mist is the closest thing League has to a second player on your account. Yorick can set her on a wave and walk away, and she will keep pushing it into a tower while he does something else entirely. That's the split pusher's dream taken to its logical end: pressure in a side lane that continues without you standing in it. The graveyard of ghouls does the fighting, and Yorick mostly supervises.

#6: Lulu, Who Makes Someone Else Unkillable

Wild Growth [R] knocks up everyone around an ally, grants them a large chunk of bonus health, and heals them. Polymorph removes a champion from a fight entirely without dealing meaningful damage to do it. Help, Pix! [E] shields and speeds. Lulu's whole kit is a set of tools for taking a carry who was about to die and making them a problem for another eight seconds, and eight seconds is usually the entire fight. Her own damage is an afterthought and always has been.

#5: Taric, Who Deletes Damage Instead of Dealing It

Cosmic Radiance [R] makes Taric and every nearby ally invulnerable. Not shielded, not healed, invulnerable. A team that commits everything into a fight the moment that window opens simply doesn't get to have any of it count, and the follow up is a five versus five where one side already spent their cooldowns. Preventing damage and dealing damage win games at the same rate, and Taric is the best in the game at the first one.

#4: Tryndamere, the Permanent Side Lane Problem

Undying Rage [R] means Tryndamere can't be killed for five seconds, which means one person is never enough to stop him from taking a tower and two people is a four versus five somewhere else on the map. Good Tryndamere games often involve very little team fighting at all. He takes structures, he forces rotations, and he wins by making the enemy team choose between losing an inhibitor and losing an objective. The damage he deals to champions is frequently the least interesting thing he did.

#3: Soraka, Who Wins the Attrition War

Wish heals every ally on the map regardless of where they are, and Astral Infusion [W] converts Soraka's own health into a teammate's. A Soraka doesn't out damage an enemy team, she out lasts them, and there's no defense against being healed to full three times during a siege. Her value is measured in fights the enemy team should have won and couldn't close out, which is a real statistic that no scoreboard has ever displayed.

#2: Shen, Who Splits and Saves at the Same Time

Shen is the rare champion who belongs to both halves of this list at once. Stand United [R] shields an ally anywhere on the map and puts Shen there with them, which means he can push a side lane all game and still arrive for the fight he was nowhere near. Most split pushers force their team to play a man down. Shen forces the enemy team to fight a man down instead, and does it while a tower is falling somewhere else. His champion damage is often the lowest on his team in a game he decided.

#1: Ivern, Who Can't Carry and Carries Anyway

Ivern is the purest version of this idea in League, because he isn't a damage dealer who chooses not to deal damage. He genuinely doesn't have the tools. What he has instead is a jungle he can hand to his teammates for free, a shield with a root attached, brush he can create anywhere on the map, and a bear who fights on his behalf. An Ivern game ends with a laner two levels and a full item ahead of where they should be, an enemy jungle that was farmed twice, and an Ivern sitting near the bottom of the damage chart having comprehensively decided the game.

Conclusions

The common thread here's that the post game scoreboard measures one specific thing and then everybody treats it as a measure of contribution. Damage dealt doesn't count a tower taken, a fight the enemy team declined, a carry who lived through a dive, or a lane that got two extra camps at level four. Half of this list wins by making a teammate's damage worth more and the other half wins by pointing their damage at buildings, and both halves finish a lot of won games looking like they did nothing at all.

Think we missed a champion who wins without a damage number? Let us know in the comments below.