League of Legends (LoL) Question: How to First Pick?

It depends on what you pick. While every champion has counterpicks, some have really hard counters and if one or more of those is meta you'll lose a lot of games when firstpicking. Riven is a quite bad firstpick in a tank meta, for example. I'm not sure about mid lane counterpicks unfortunately, but you might have more luck saying which are your favourite picks.

I doubt many people in silver actually take counterpicking in account though, and those who do mostly pick champions they suck at just for the sake of counterpicking. You will still get a disadvantage if they're not forcing themselves into a pick.

On jungle the counterpicking is slightly weaker, but maybe you have good team awareness when picking your jungler, or maybe you like situational junglers like Udyr (he sucks against some comps).

That said, you should learn how to properly play against bad matchups anyways. You won't always be able to stay in comfort matchups.

*Edited for better paragraph clarity*

Whenever I receive a first pick I like to look at my my team's late picks and try to act out a different role, but it would need to be someone you are comfortable with. For example is if I'm first pick mid I play Pantheon, mainly so I don't look like a mid laner. Helpful tip is communication with your team too

Jungle is usually safe for first pick, as there aren't really hard counters to junglers in the same sense as there are to laners. Sure, there are champions that can bully other champions in the jungle, eg. Lee Sin can push around and abuse Hecarim pretty heavily in the early and mid game, but Hecarim can still perform in the jungle, just by paying attention to Lee Sin's movements, farming up, taking the opportunities that are given to him, and out-scaling.

Mid Lane is a different story. If you're particularly scared of playing certain champions into other specific champions, you can always request a swap with someone, or request bans. Part of first picking a solo lane is recognizing which champions you're vulnerable to, and if those champions are picked, how you can still exploit the match-up. Often, that might mean talking to your jungler and/or support and communicating what you might need to survive/win the lane. Know what your champion can do, and know what openings they can exploit.

Quinn as a first pick is kinda interesting, because there's a fair chance, from the opponent's point of view, that you'll be taking her top. Because of this, you'll probably usually end up facing off against comfort picks, rather than hard counters. If a matchup sucks, do what you can to keep up on exp, and when openings show themselves, focus on rotating for ganks.

Katarina has a similar story to Quinn in that you'll have to focus on rotating in bad matchups, without falling behind in exp. You're much more likely to get counter picked with Kat though, but she has her own advantages as well. Maybe avoid first picking Kat if certain champs such as Talon, or whatever else you're scared of are still up.

Lux is generally a pretty safe pick, unless the opponents pick dive champions like Hecarim and Fizz. Maybe grab Teleport in hard match-ups where you just want to keep as much counter-pressure as possible, and farm safely, and Barrier, Exhaust, or Heal if you're scared of dives.

Unless you're really skilled at around 10 champions you don't really have a lot of "strategic pick" options and should really just play your most comfortable champion because generally you'll overcome most counters if you know your champion well. At least, that's what I'd assume since that is how it works for me. I usually am able to either survive my lane or dominate it when vs a counter because I don't play a champion in ranked unless I have around 100 games of experience on it.


But to answer your question better, choose less played champions. Normally your opponent won't know the counter to champions they don't see often such as Nocturne, Urgot, Dr. Mundo, Karthus, Azir, or Yorick. I personally rarely have issues as first pick because my main champion choices are all very low pick rate.


However if you're higher elo just assume no matter what you pick can be countered since they understand the champions and how to beat them. They also tend to have a larger champion pool. However you can always coordinate your pick with your team. For example choosing a champion that works well with one on your team. In which case being countered isn't as bad because your team comp is good.

It´s not always working but you can Trick them. If you want let´s say Yasuo mid first pick what you going to do is to first choose a Toplaner like riven and some others like Malphite or Mundo after that like after 15sek you just pick Yasuo, IT IS REALLY WORKING IN LOW ELO even tho in Silver elo its more luck. Maybe they will pick a counter of your champ but it doesn´t mean they are good with that champ in other words if you Play lets say your main Champ midlane the enemy will pick some random champ or your counter maybe he is just a main but this will be just bad luck don´t worry.

Bare in mind, if you really first-picking, you could always ask your teammates if they're willing to trade.

No disrespect to anyone in Silver but you shouldn't be too worried about people counter-picking you. 9 times out of 10, that player wont have a great understanding of the champ or how to play the match-up. I recommend just sticking with your best champs (especially mid). And if you can, learn some of the tougher match-ups for your champ and discover the easiest ways of playing safe and surviving the laning phase.

Picking kata as a first pick lets the enemy team get a good pair of CC for you and ur team mates. :c

i first pick my role as i choose to play , what ever to play win or loose ..
WP is the word to well played player ..
i almost play a diff.role
as mid : Ziggs , Ryze
as top : kennen , Jayce
as adr carry : Lucian , Twistedfate , Draven
as Jungle : Rengar , Olaf , Udyr , Hecarim