This week's team composition features a strong set of damage over time champions. It's especially good if you're the type of person who gets easily frustrated when enemies escape with tiny shreds of health left. With the number of dots on this team, that's highly unlikely.
Team Composition Score Card
AOE Damage: S
Crowd Control: A
Difficulty (1-5, 5 is hardest): 3
Diving Power: A
Dueling Power: A
Initiation: S
Poke Power: A
Pushing Power: A
Sustain: B
Synergy: A
Waveclear: S
Early Game: B
Mid Game: S
Late Game: A
Crowd Control: A
Difficulty (1-5, 5 is hardest): 3
Diving Power: A
Dueling Power: A
Initiation: S
Poke Power: A
Pushing Power: A
Sustain: B
Synergy: A
Waveclear: S
Early Game: B
Mid Game: S
Late Game: A
S = Amazing!, A = Good, B = Average, C = Below Average, F = Bad
Theme
This week's team composition features a strong set of damage over time champions. It's especially good if you're the type of person who gets easily frustrated when enemies escape with tiny shreds of health left. With the number of dots on this team, that's highly unlikely.Champions
Twitch [Marksman] - The second week in a row Twitch has appeared, I'm going to justify this bby saying that after Graves nerf, Twitch is finding a little bit of new life in bot lane, as is every other ADC. He also synergizes with this team composition extremely well.
Malzahar [AP Mid] - With his strong dueling power combined with his insane damage ratios, Malzahar is very powerful in today's meta. He's also the first champion you think of when you think of a champion with a damage over time spell...at least he's the first one I thought of!
Brand [Support] - One of my personal favorite supports at the moment, Brand scales amazingly well throughout the game with very few items. This means that considering Twitch's lack of escape mechanisms, your bot lane will still provide an extremely amount of burst and sustained damage, even if the enemy team blows all their spells to kill Twitch. Meanwhile, as a burst champion, Brand's passive dot and possible liandry's will be ticking the whole time as long as he gets a few spells off before dying.
Nautilus [Jungler] - As far as damage over time junglers go, Nautilus likely wasn't your first guess. However, in the current meta he provides an amazing front line and some much needed predictable initiation for this team. Playing him also allows Swain a dive buddy to assist with front-lining..
Swain [Top Laner] - With the meta slowly shifting back towards melee top laners, Swain is starting to perform very well top lane once again. As a strong lane bully, his ability to abuse pre and especially post 6 is very key for victory. Additionally, he provides a strong source of CC and front line sustain for this team composition that's mostly damage based.
Key Concepts
- This team should aim to build tanky mages. This includes Rod of Ages for Malzahar and Swain, and Rylai for Brand.
- Against the current tank meta, this team absolutely shreds through it once they pick up liandries and even before with Malzahar's insane pool.
- As the team has tons of damage but relatively little in the way of peel, or assaassination, it may be beneficial for Nautilus to concentrate on keeping his back line alive.
Countering
To counter this team, a well balanced team with strong laning power keeps them from snowballing too hard.
Here's an example team that may succeed:
Here's an example team that may succeed:
- Kog'Maw [Mid] - Great poke and waveclear, matches up to Malzahar as long as he doesn't get too close.
- Maokai [Jungle] - Against this much AOE damage, Maokai's ult is insanely good.
- Riven [Top] - An extremely strong pick in general at the moment and a natural Swain counter via her shield and early level 1-3 all-in power, it's relatively simple for Riven to outplay Swain and keep him from farming. One of the few melee that Swain does very poor against.
- Janna [Support] - Key to your victory will be keeping Malzahar from landing too long of an ultimate and forcing Swain away from your key champions until it's favorable to do so. For this kind of control, Janna absolutely excels.
- Jinx [ADC] - As an extremely powerful ADC in her own right (despite the "nerfs"), Jinx also does very well against this team composition simply because of her superior range and kiting abilities.
What do you think about this team composition? Got ways to improve on it? Better ways to beat it? Comment below!
Click here for more team comps!