Top 10 Champions Nobody Knows How to Play Against

You don't lose these matchups because the champion is strong. You lose them because you've played against them four times this year and none of it stuck.

League has a knowledge tax, and these ten champions collect it. Every one of them is beatable with a small amount of specific information, and almost nobody in your games has that information.

Top 10

Champions Nobody Knows How to Play Against

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You don't lose these matchups because the champion is strong. You lose them because you've played against them four times this year and none of it stuck.

Counting down from the champions people misread occasionally to the one where the correct response is the exact opposite of what everybody does.

#10: Quinn, Who Is Not Where You Left Her

Most players handle the lane fine and then lose the game anyway, because they treat Quinn like a top laner. She's a marksman with a global movement speed ultimate who isn't planning to stay in the matchup you prepared for. If she vanishes from your lane, she's already most of the way to somewhere else, and the correct response is to tell your team before the ping arrives rather than to enjoy the free minions.

#9: Trundle, Who Takes Your Tank Stats

Trundle looks like an ordinary bruiser right up until his ultimate takes a large share of a target's health, armor and magic resistance and gives it to him. Teams somehow work this out too late constantly. The tank walks in, gets drained, dies first, and everyone concludes that the front line was bad. The counterplay is that his ultimate is aimed at one champion, so the tank simply has to not be the closest one when he presses it, and almost nobody plays around that.

#8: Zilean, Whose Kill You Have to Do Twice

Chronoshift [R] revives an ally shortly after they die, so committing your entire team's cooldowns to killing a carry can be a total waste of a fight. The information that actually matters is whether Zilean's ultimate is available, and nobody tracks it, so teams keep spending everything on a target who gets back up. Playing against Zilean well means either killing him first or killing the revived target a second time, and both of those require a plan made before the fight starts.

#7: Rumble, Who Has No Mana Bar to Read

Every trade decision in League starts with a glance at the enemy resource bar, and Rumble's (heat, which builds up) doesn't work like anyone else's. The danger window is the moment it's high rather than the moment it's full. Players who haven't learned to read it walk into a trade against an overheating Rumble at the exact worst time and come away thinking the champion does too much damage. The bar was telling them. It just wasn't saying what they assumed.

#6: Yorick, Whose Real Damage Has a Health Bar

People fight Yorick as though he's the threat. He isn't, particularly. The ghouls are, and they can be killed, which is the single piece of information that decides the matchup. A player who clears the graves before engaging is fighting a mediocre melee champion, and a player who ignores them is fighting four things at once and losing to a champion who was never scary. The Maiden works the same way, and she also dies.

#5: Gnar, Whose Timer Nobody Watches

Gnar is two champions on a schedule, and the schedule is visible to everyone and read by almost nobody. Full rage means the ranged poke champion you've been comfortably trading with is about to become a melee bruiser with a wall slam. Play against Gnar without watching that bar and every fight you take will start at the moment he chose. The counterplay is looking at a bar and stepping back for eight seconds.

#4: Heimerdinger, Who Wins Because You Kept Walking Forward

Turrets don't chase. Heimerdinger's lane phase is built on the assumption that his opponent will keep standing in a zone he has already claimed, and most opponents oblige, because giving up minions feels worse than taking a bit of damage. The players who beat him aren't out trading him. They're killing the turrets from range or leaving the wave alone until it pushes back, and both of those feel like losing while you do them.

#3: Singed, Who Is Baiting You On Purpose

Chasing a Singed is the most reliable way to die in League and people do it every single game. He runs, you follow, the poison ticks, the fling turns you around, and you've now spent thirty seconds and a summoner spell on a champion who wanted exactly that. The proxy farming makes it worse, because a Singed behind your tower looks like a free kill and is instead a trap with a wave of minions attached. Everyone knows this about Singed and nearly everyone follows him anyway.

#2: Aurelion Sol, Whose Damage Arrives Later

Aurelion Sol's kit doesn't read as a threat while it's happening. The breath doesn't burst you, the black hole looks survivable, and the stacking that turns those abilities into a problem is invisible from the other side of the screen. Players disengage from him too late because nothing in the fight signalled that it was time to leave, and then they die to a champion they were comfortably beating a few seconds earlier. He's the clearest case on this list of a champion who punishes unfamiliarity rather than misplays.

#1: Illaoi, Where the Right Answer Feels Wrong

Every instinct a League player has is wrong against Illaoi. Her tentacles are the damage, so standing next to her is the mistake. Her ultimate is stronger the more champions are nearby, so helping your teammate is the mistake. Her spirit spell pulls a copy of you out and hitting that copy hurts the original, so running from a slow melee champion is correct, which almost nobody does because she looks like a tank and tanks are supposed to be safe to fight. The matchup is entirely solvable. It just asks you to spend an entire lane phase doing the opposite of what feels right, which is why Illaoi keeps a healthy win rate on a champion most players will meet a handful of times a season.

Conclusions

None of these ten are broken and none of them need a nerf. They're collecting on the same thing: League is a game with a hundred and seventy champions and no way to learn a matchup you see twice a year. Trundle, Zilean and Yorick all have one specific counterplay that solves most of the problem, and the reason they keep working is that nobody looks it up. If you want the cheapest rating you'll ever gain, pick the two champions on this list you lose to most and spend ten minutes (five on each) reading what their abilities actually do.

Every ranking we've argued about is collected on the Top Ten Thursdays hub.

Think we missed a champion nobody knows the matchup for? Let us know in the comments below.