This is a new series I'm trying input is welcome and encouraged ^^

Draft pick. The serious game type for league of legends in which ranked and pro games are played. Now the biggest part of draft is the picks and bans before the game. In this phase you are able to ban out champions you don't want to see and take champions from the enemy you don't want them on. However many Lol players see draft simply as a first come first served role type of gameplay. Today I will be talking about the things you should factor into your mind when picking a good team composition.



You know those games you are up on the enemy team and are much stronger in a fight but your team just can't seem to get on the enemy team. Well more often than not this is due to the fact your team lacks a good initiation. Initiation will serve as the primary way to start a fight and depending on how your team initiates could be the difference between an easy fight and a crushing defeat. Picking champions that will enable these kind of play like scenarios to happen would be ideal (such as Maokai or Hecarim). When in a soloQ game if possible ALWAYS try and have a strong engage to press a lead or catch enemies out of position.

Champion Examples:
Amumu
Lissandra(She can engage decently well if there is a followup while she is zhonya'sed)
Malphite
Hecarim
Nautilus
Rammus

This is both a champion type and a player attribute. The act of Focusing is to use damage on one enemy target and get rid of them first. This is the factor that can cause all of the enemy team to be low health but none of them be dead. There are team comps that can hurt your ability to focus a champion. Good types of champions to focus down targets are ones who can brush aside the enemy team or kill the target quickly enough the enemy team cannot respond.

Champion Examples:
Akali
Kha'Zix
Talon

Siege is the factor that will allow you to take turrets from the enemies despite their guarding them. Good methods of siege include having someone long range like Caitlyn hit the turret, having someone with wave clear repetitively push up to the turret, and having someone like Jayce poke enemies who are damaging the turret. This will all come together to determine how strong your team is at securing towers against the enemy team.

Champion Examples:
Caitlyn
Anivia
Jayce

Your champions scaling is also another factor to look into. Picking someone like Garen may be an easy win lane, BUT this would not be an ideal to help your team out in team fight situations. Some games winning lane is all you need to do, others you WILL need to scale. Picking champions based on this is a good way to build towards a strong teamcomp at various parts of the game.

Example Champs:
Jax
Renekton
Riven

Every team should have at least some wave clear is this allows you to protect your tower from being sieged. Evil Geniuses player Froggen is known to use his Anivia for waveclear to turtle out games into the late game. Waveclear is a stat that will allow your team to scale into late game easier as the enemies will not be as easily able to force down towers and engage on you.

Example Champs:
Anivia
Lux
Gragas

Kill pressure is excreted when someone on your team has the ability to own a champion instantly if he goes somewhere out of place. Kill pressure is commonly used in lanes where you have the ability to kill the enemy champion. Having kill pressure on the enemies means you can deny them creeps and other resources and increase your strength above theirs.

Example:
An enemy team ready to dive and kill you if you go to the turret.

Poke is the ability to damage an enemy from a range that will usually have little or no cost to yourself. This will allow you to whittle down at your enemies health before the fight even happens essentially winning the fight got you. Poking is a very strong tool and can also be used to force enemies off of objectives as well as seige. Poking is countered by a hard initiate before the enemy team is able to be poked down.

Nidalee
Jayce
Kog'Maw

The amount of CC on your team is a a factor in fights as it allows you to catch people out of position or keep a high priority target essentially out of the fight. Champions with AoE CC can be devastating in fights as their CC can cripple an entire team long enough for most of the team to die if they were clumped up. CC also allows you to easily get off ganks and snowball the early game out.

Volibear
Xin Zhao
Vi

Counter engage is how well your team can respond to the enemie teams engage. Either via instantly returning their engage harder due to a stronger front up fight team or via a disengage resetting the fight. Different types of champions have and want different types of counter engages. Poke comps would rather the fight be disengaged so that they may resume poking the enemies down. Whereas an AoE comp may simply want to turn around and fight.

Example Champs:
Janna
Gragas
Anivia

Peeling is the ability to keep enemies off your carry and allow them to do their DPS. Peeling involves the use of CC defensively. This CC is being used in order to provide more damage from your carry. Many games I see get lost when a team has a fed ADC is the lack of peel for that carry.

Alistar
Lulu
Trundle

Your teams ability to teamfight. This will mostly be determined by your teams AoE. AoE damage and CC makes for a strong teamfight team that can win most of the time even if the team is down due to the total damage dealt due to the AoE.

Example Champs:
Wukong
Rumble
Kennen

Now keeping these categories in mind how will you pick your team. All of these categories are not fully necessary and in some cases having a little bit of everything can be bad (some want to go all in, some want to poke, etc..). So then how exactly do you chose WHAT categories to get. Well you need to do 2 things

1.)What is YOUR TEAM going to have.

If you guys FP Malphite that most likely means there will be someone initiating who wants follow up so you should not go pick someone to disengage or poke the enemies down.

2.) What kind of comp does the ENEMY have.

If the enemy team has a Jayce, a Nidalee, and a Caitlyn the odds are they plan on poking you down before they fight. This means you should probably go with a comp that is against there wishes. In that scenario you should take a comp that allows you'd to hard engage on the enemy before they can even think of starting to poke you down.

When picking to SERIOUSLY try and win (this is not always necessary and honestly in most of your trolly non serious and even most ranked games you won't see people think and pick like this) you should if possible try and follow this kind of picking mentality. Does this Garentee you a win? No. But it does put your whole team on the same page and will avoid your team having conflicting types arguing over why was there no follow up or let me poke. This information is not something I feel most players understand or know about, though you will see it being used a lot when pro level teams will comp for there games. Next time you are watching the LCS watching your favorite team pick their champions see if you can find some synergy in how they are picking their champs. You may just see something you weren't looking for before.

So in draft when you are going down taking your turn picking you and your team should thing of the picks your making and how they will factor in later in the game. All of these aspects have strengths and weaknesses it is your job to learn and try and capitalize on them. As always summoners have a good day and good luck on the fields of justice.