ARAM is one lane, no bushes to hide in and nowhere to go, which makes it the perfect place for the champions everyone else considers unfair.
These are the ten that turn a random game into twenty minutes of standing behind your own minions wondering why you queued. Rolling one is a gift. Playing against one is a chore.
Troll ARAM Picks
10 Champions That Ruin Everyone's Game
ARAM is one lane, no bushes to hide in and nowhere to go, which makes it the perfect place for the champions everyone else considers unfair.
These are the ten that turn a random game into twenty minutes of standing behind your own minions wondering why you queued. Rolling one is a gift. Playing against one is a chore.
We're counting down from the ones that are merely irritating, to the one that decides whether anybody on the other team gets to leave the fountain.
#10: Maokai, Who Owns the Only Choke Point
ARAM has exactly one path and Maokai's whole kit is about denying a path. He can wall the bridge off at the worst possible moment, and there's no flank route to walk around it because there's no flank route at all.
He's also almost impossible to kill in a mode where nobody buys much anti-tank damage. A team with no way to burst him down eventually gives up trying, which is when he starts walking forward and the game ends.
#9: Nidalee, and the Spear From Off Screen
Nidalee's spear travels far enough to reach you from a place you cannot see, and in a mode where everyone stands in a single line waiting for minions, she can't miss forever. One connects, and someone's game is over before the first fight happens.
What makes her a troll pick rather than just a strong one is how little counterplay there is. You can't dodge what you can't see coming, and standing further back means giving up the wave. She falls off if the game goes long, so her whole plan is to make sure it doesn't.
#8: Jayce, Who Never Has to Come Close
Jayce pokes from further away than almost anyone and does it on a short cooldown (the ARAM formula in its purest form). He can also switch to melee and fight, so the usual answer to a poke champion (walking at him) doesn't work either.
He's a menace at every stage of the game and he doesn't need items to start being one. If the enemy team has no engage, a Jayce alone can hold a bridge until his team's health bars have won the game for them.
#7: Swain, Who Gets Healthier the More People Fight Him
Every ARAM fight is five people standing on top of each other (the exact situation Swain was designed to profit from). He drains health off everyone at once, and the more the enemy team commits, the faster his bar refills.
Focusing him is the obvious answer and it usually fails, because he's tanky enough to survive the attempt and the healing outruns the damage. He's slow and he's easy to run from in a normal game, and ARAM takes away the running.
#6: Sona, the Reason Nobody Ever Dies
Sona heals her entire team constantly for no real cost, and in a mode with no way to shop for healing reduction unless someone remembers to, that alone can decide a game. Four health bars that keep topping themselves up will outlast four that don't.
She also pokes while she does it, so there's no window where she's harmless. The counter is a hard engage that catches her out of position (a real weakness, and also something a random team of five strangers manages roughly never).
#5: Seraphine, Who Does All of It at Once
Seraphine heals, shields, pokes and crowd controls from the back of a fight she never has to enter, and every one of those effects hits multiple people because everybody is standing in a line. There is no part of ARAM she isn't good at.
Her ultimate is what ruins games, because it gets wider as it passes through champions and there is nowhere on the bridge to spread out. A team that walks forward together and eats it has usually just lost the game in one button.
#4: Anivia, Who Closes the Bridge
A wall across a corridor with no way around it is the single most obnoxious thing you can do in this mode, and Anivia gets to do it every few seconds. She cuts the enemy team in half, she cuts off the retreat, and she does it from a safe distance.
Then there's the egg (the reward for finally catching her is usually nothing). Add permanent damage in a fixed area to a fight nobody can leave and you get a champion who wins games without ever needing to be good at the mode.
#3: Vel'Koz, Who Hits Everyone With Everything
Vel'Koz was built for a fight where the enemy team is packed into a narrow space, which describes every fight in this mode. His poke is long, it splits to cover more ground, and none of it can be dodged by moving sideways when there's no sideways.
His ultimate is the one that makes people close the client, because it damages the whole line for as long as he can keep channeling it. He's helpless if anyone reaches him (the same weakness every champion here has, and the same one nobody in a random game gets around to exploiting).
#2: Lux, and the Snare Nobody Can Sidestep
Lux is the champion everyone learns to dodge on the Rift by simply walking around her binding. ARAM removes that option, so the same skill shot that whiffs all game in a normal match lands constantly here, and each one is a free kill for whoever is nearby.
Her ultimate finishes anyone the poke has already worn down, from a range that means she never takes a risk to do it. She's fragile and she's easy to punish if the enemy has any way to reach her, and half the time nobody does.
#1: Xerath, Who Hits You From the Next Screen Over
Xerath outranges the entire game. He can stand behind his own tower and land damage on people standing behind theirs. In a single-lane mode that means he's attacking the enemy team for the entire twenty minutes and they aren't attacking him.
It's a fair complaint. There's no jungle to path around him through and no side lane to make him respect, so the only real answer is a champion who can jump the entire distance and land on him, and if your random team didn't roll one, you're just going to lose slowly. Nothing else on this list makes the game as one-sided as an unanswered Xerath does.
More troll picks by role
Conclusions
Every champion here exploits the same thing, which is that ARAM took away the two moves that solve most League problems: walking around the problem, and going somewhere else. What's left is a straight line, and a straight line rewards range, area damage and anything that stops people moving.
The counter is always the same, at least. Anything that closes the distance in one jump beats this entire list, and a team that has one and uses it turns a miserable poke game into a short one. If nobody on your side can reach them, though, the correct play is to accept it early and enjoy the free banter.
If off-meta is your thing on the Rift as well, we've written up the troll picks that actually work in mid lane, top lane, the jungle and support, plus the original list of 42 troll bot lane duos.
Every ranking we've argued about is collected on the Top Ten Thursdays hub.
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