Top Team Comps #143: The Three Second Rule (Aurora & Yunara)

Four of these five champions are only the champion you drafted for a few seconds at a time. This draft doesn't hide that. It builds the entire game around making those seconds happen all at once.

Top Team Comps

The Three Second Rule

Aurora · Naafiri · Qiyana · Yunara · Rell

Most drafts keep something in reserve. This one doesn't. Every fight it takes gets settled inside a window it opened on purpose, and if the enemy team is still standing when that window shuts, you didn't win the fight, you just haven't been told yet.

The thread is borrowed power. Rell gives up her mount for a knock-up and a shield with Ferromancy: Crash Down [W], Naafiri wakes her pack up with The Call of the Pack [W], Qiyana has to go pick up a wall or a piece of the river with Terrashape [W] before her damage means anything, and Aurora hands the team a stretch of ground to fight inside with Between Worlds [R]. None of it stays on. So the comp plays for the short fight it chose, and Yunara is what happens if the short one doesn't finish the job.

Team Composition Score Card

AOE DamageB

Crowd ControlA

Diving PowerS

Dueling PowerA

InitiationA

Poke PowerF

Pushing PowerB

SustainC

SynergyA

WaveclearB

Difficulty

Power Curve

Early GameB

Mid GameS

Late GameA

Super Late GameB

SAmazing AGood BAverage CBelow Average FBad

Check out how to play it below!

Champions

TOP

Top Lane – Aurora

Aurora picks the ground. Between Worlds [R] drops a piece of map that the enemy team has to either fight inside or walk all the way around, and since she can cross it herself, she's always on the side they'd rather she wasn't. Play her as the second wave of the fight rather than the first. The enemy backline usually turns to deal with Naafiri, and that's the moment Aurora is behind them with the wall already down.

JNG

Jungle – Naafiri

She removes the option to leave. Hounds' Pursuit [R] commits to one champion and follows them wherever they were planning to go, which turns a squishy player's escape button into a two second delay. Her jungle clear is fast and her ganks don't need the lane to set anything up, so she can be the reason the game is ahead before the comp's real fights start happening.

MID

Mid Lane – Qiyana

Qiyana is the highest ceiling on the roster and the easiest one to waste. Her damage depends on what she's holding, and Supreme Display of Talent [R] needs a wall behind the target to do the thing it's famous for, so where she stands matters more than what she builds. In practice that means she should be walking to the fight through terrain instead of down the middle of the lane. A Qiyana who arrives empty handed is a mid laner with a dash.

ADC

Bot Lane – Yunara

Everyone else here is a timer. Yunara isn't. She's the marksman who keeps working after the burst has come and gone, and Transcend One's Self [R] gives the team a second window when the first one wasn't enough. Draft her as the answer to the obvious question: what does this comp do when it doesn't kill anyone in the opening three seconds?

SUP

Support – Rell

Rell starts the clock. Magnet Storm [R] gathers up a team that had spread out correctly and puts them back inside the range of four champions who all wanted them closer, and Full Tilt [E] means one of those four gets there first. She's also the reason this comp can pick a fight without waiting for the enemy to make a mistake, which every other member of it quietly needs.

Key Concepts

• Everything turns on within the same second or it doesn't turn on at all. Rell goes first, the pack and the element come on with her, and Aurora arrives a bit late on purpose. A staggered version of this comp is five champions taking turns being outnumbered.
• There's no poke and no disengage anywhere on this roster. If the enemy team refuses the fight, you get nothing out of standing there, so the map has to do the asking. Take a dragon, take a tower, force a decision, and be ready when they come.
• Terrain is a resource. Qiyana needs it, Aurora reshapes it, and both of them are worth less on open ground. Fight near the river and the jungle walls rather than in the middle of a lane.
• Yunara is the insurance policy and should be played like one. When the burst finishes someone, she cleans up. When it doesn't, she's the only reason the fight is still winnable, so she should never be the first one committed.
• Watch the enemy's cleanse and stasis items more closely than their damage. A single well timed defensive item eats the entire opening, and against a comp with nothing held in reserve, that one button is the counterplay.

Countering

Survive the opening and you've already won. The counter is making the first three seconds cost more than they're worth, then fighting a team whose cooldowns are all gone at once. Bring healing that blunts a burst instead of shields that get shattered, a way to push divers back off a target, and at least one champion who can hold ground without needing to be somewhere specific to do it.

Here is an example team that may succeed:

TOP

Top – Ornn

Call of the Forge God [R] comes from further out than this comp can answer, and he makes his own walls when Qiyana was counting on the map's.

JNG

Jungle – Maokai

He roots the divers on the way in and he's still healthy afterward (exactly the shape of champion a three second comp hates most).

MID

Mid – Galio

Galio arrives at the bot lane the moment Rell starts something, knocks the whole dive off its target, and shrugs off the magic damage half of this roster deals.

ADC

Marksman – Ashe

Permanent slows punish a team that has to close distance to exist, and Enchanted Crystal Arrow [R] starts fights from a range that none of these five can contest.

SUP

Support – Janna

Monsoon [R] undoes the gather and the dive in one cast, and there's no plan B waiting behind it.

New to reading a draft? Our guide on the questions to ask before minions spawn covers how to spot a comp like this one in champion select.

Browse the full League of Legends team comps archive.