Help with team composition

[quote=Tejlgaard]TL;DR post incomming ;) - but you're in a theory discussion forum, so I think you can deal with that =P We're a relatively new team of players who are generally 'ok' in their given roles, and we're doing the bruiser-top, bruiser-jungle, ap-mid, adcarry-bot, support-bot style play. Up to this point we've been doing a lot of classic games, since everybody needed to be level 30 to play arranged team ranked. We're at 1050 ELO at the moment, but we haven't got 10 wins down. Our team doesn't appear to be versatile enough; we can't seem to handle certain team compositions that we almost never encountered in classic. Here's our pretty much ideal setup: Irelia top Cassiopeia mid Skarner jungle Caitlyn bot Sona Bot You can go ahead and call us noobs and get it out of your system now, because here's some teams we've lost to: Talon top Arry mid Malphite jungle Sivir bot Sorraka bot Zilean, Sorraka, Sona, Kayle, Nidalee (roaming, all smite, all heal). We generally make sure to ban rammus and shaco, and we usually go for Kassadin, Tryndamere, Morgana or Nassus after that. We typically do a jungleinvade and get the enemy red buff, but first we hide in river near mid and pounce if our blue is getting invaded, typically with good results...if bottom or top is an immobile character (depending on where our base is), or if he doesn't have flash and he extends a bit, we also like to pick up first blood with a 3-man gank in top, or a 5-man gank in bot. We've played 13 games total, so obviously we've lost more games, but it seems these specific team combinations I listed were significant. We're used to being able to focus enemy team members individually, and we'll typically coordinate who to focus over voice, but that strategy boned us completely against the all-support troll-team who'd simply heal whoever we attacked, and use a bunch of nukes on our tank, who'd effectively be out of the fight after that. The troll team obviously controlled the dragon, because they did the coordinated 5-smite instantly dealing 3k damage to it, and after they reached level 6, they used their invulnerability ults cleverly enough that we just couldn't kill even a single one, nomatter how much we focused. Not quite the same issue with the more normal-looking team - but we couldn't kill sivir even with several characters up in her face due to lifesteal, heal, wish and spell vamp from will of the ancients...we just couldn't seem to disable our enemies as quickly as we needed. The kicker? When the game was over, after we'd lost 4 team fights (one under their towers when we had baron(which was stolen), two in the open, one under ours), we still had about 5k more gold among us than they had. It seems that our team, as a roaming 5-man stack will get beaten by considerably less fed enemy teams if they have the ability to nullify our attacks. How do we solve that? Is there some sort of strategy you can use against a team with a stronger 5-man stack? The only thing I can think of is to split push down the sidelanes, but these teams are relatively quick, and they'll have wards and oracles so whoever they go for first (if they don't split up) will be dead, and then the other side will need to defend untill the 2-3 characters who died come back up... So it seems like we need to solve the problem not with different play, but rather with a team compositon, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it. So what I'm asking for is this: With rammus, shaco, kassadin, maokai, leona, morgana banned (..yup...they banned leona and maokai...), how would you counterpick these two teams? What kind of adjustments to the teams would you make? And do you have a brilliant strategy we can use? (my best bet is to bait the teams with the 2 tankies characters, then have sona with an ult wait in the grass somewhere nearby...but I'm not exactly Sun Tzu)[/quote]

[quote=Lugignaf]If they're doing a roam team, which you can't really tell from the champ select, try building a split push team. Shen, Teemo, Panth, TF, Support champ. If you are pushing all 3 lanes really fast, there's no real way they can stop you. Most of them have escapes as well. Just be smart and buy wards.[/quote]

[quote=Slappiz][quote=Tejlgaard] Irelia top Cassiopeia mid Skarner jungle Caitlyn bot Sona Bot You can go ahead and call us noobs and get it out of your system now, because here's some teams we've lost to: Talon top Arry mid Malphite jungle Sivir bot Sorraka bot [/quote] First of all, lets check each lane. Top: [[Talon]] Vs [[Irelia]], Irelia should have the advantage here. But the it's a pretty even lane. Talon is a decent farmer and probably didn't have any problems farming even if Irelia has slight better dueling abilities. Mid: [[Ahri]] Vs [[Cassiopeia]], Ahri is one of the best counters vs Cassio hence to her spell range and her mobility. Bot: [[Sivir]] Vs [[Caitlyn]], Sivir has the advantage here, she can spell shield Caitlyn'ss traps for free mana and with Soraka as support she will never go oom.. Really hard lane for Cait and Sona because Caitlyn can't kill a minion wave like Sivir can. Sona's poke won't do much since Soraka will mostly heal it off like nothing happend. This lane need early ganks for item/level advantage. Junglers: [[Malphite]] Vs [[Skarner]], Strong junglers with decent ganks. But against this team you need a better ganker pre lvl 6, since your botlane and midlane are outpicked. [u]Solution[/u] Mid: Either ban Ahri or pick a diffrent mid laner, Ryze is a decent pick vs her. With root and high damage burst. Bot: Pick a different AD carry, I would recommend Graves but he is a bit tricky vs Sivir and needs some practise against her. Ezreal is a good pick to, can keep distance and wont have a hard time last hitting. Jungle: You need a pre-lvl 6 ganker against this team if u roll the same bot/mid lane. Xin Zhao, Lee Sin, Rammus and Shaco are strong picks. I hope it helps.[/quote]

[quote=Tejlgaard]It does help. As far as I can figure, what determines the firstpicker is who has the highest solo-elo, after the team leader...which is sadly our jungler, who is incredibly versatile and has 6 characters he's good at jungling with. I'm generally team leader since I have just a couple of solo top characters I'm good with, but I can generally handle what comes my way. I did crush talon in top lane. He was incredibly scared for god knows what reason, and he let me freefarm with irelia; I came out of the laning phase with 50 more cs than sivir in bot when I killed the tower. I'm not sure if it was the right choice; it seemed a natural counter to a teamfight at dragon that talon ran all the way across the map for, and I think I was needed for the teamfights, but it woulda been nice to get the trinity force quicker. Talon had a CS of 25 at that point, and he'd even allowed himself to be XP denied such that he was level 4 when I was level 7. Anyway, it was an incredibly frustrating game because of that; I couldn't leverage the advantage I'd gotten to get some good ganks in for whatever reason. It always feels like a more stinging loss when I'm ahead and I can't turn it into a victory for the team. In a sense, I was probably overeager for just this reason, and made some mistakes when it turned out my advantage wasn't quite as great as I'd hoped. But yeah, I think they counterpicked us with Ahri and malphite; as I recall, they picked Ahri last, and malphite would be all up in sona's face whenever they went in.[/quote]

[quote=BarbJ]If Nasus is one of your problems in top lane, try playing Cho'gath, he does well against him. Ryze is a good pick against Morgana, and see if you can get your mid to play Kassadin, so you don't have to ban him. Kassadin is good against champions who use burst to kill (Ahri, Annie), so if the enemy team picks someone like that, Kassadin can make your mid lane be far easier. As far as jungle picks go, you might want to make a pre-6 ganker a priority. If you have first pick, grab a Maokai or Rammus. Constant early ganks can secure a lane that might otherwise be losing. If your [[Cassiopeia]] is losing to [[Ahri]], just gank her a lot.[/quote]