The 5 best League of Legends champions to help you climb in low ELO (per role)

Stuck in low ELO and still learning? We’ve all been there, trust me. Here are five champions, one per role, that will help you climb out of low ELO while learning.

League of Legends is hard. Tons of players find that out firsthand when they jump into the rift for the first time. What champions are actually the easiest ones to learn all the basic mechanics with and will help you progress as a player? We’ve listed at least one of those for each role.

Toplane – Darius

A big man with muscles, just what you need for a toplaner. His extreme lane presence and carry potential is exactly what you need to climb in soloQ, and his objectives are pretty simple: Kill lane, win game. His kit allows you to relatively easily pick him up and learn the basics, but to truly understand how to properly pilot him, you’ll need a bit more than just good mechanics.

Knowing how to manipulate minion waves and understanding what to do with them is what separates a good Darius from a bad one, and in toplane, that will be one of the most important things you should be learning. The lane isn’t all about who is the mechanical god, or who has the biggest muscle. Play intelligently with Darius and your enemies will be crushed under your Noxian might.

Jungle – Nocturne

A healthy and quick clear, extremely powerful 1v1 potential and godlike ganks at level 6, truly a nightmare. Nocturne is that perfect balance between difficulty and simplicity. His abilities force you to be creative with how you use them while clearing, and his objective is pretty simple: Farm, get level 6, gank lanes, win games.

Nocturne leaves out the advanced parts of jungling and allows you to focus on the fundamentals, while still being a very strong pick to carry games with, especially in lower ELO. You can’t permanently farm until the game is over like Master Yi does, as reaching level 6 forces you to take action. When you do take action however, you can be sure the enemy won’t even see it coming.

Midlane – Annie

Memes aside, Annie truly is the queen of midlane when it comes to learning. Unlike most mages, she doesn’t have any difficulty landing skillshots, she has a tool to help you farm, and her objective is pretty simple: Nuke the enemy squishies. Her mechanics are limited to Flash combos, and her supposed “advanced mechanics” are actually pretty easy to understand.

Once you pick her up and start going, she can become extremely deadly in the right hands. A single teddybear can theoretically take down the entire enemy team, and doing so is extremely satisfying. Annie also forces you to understand how to position in lane, as junglers in the early game can make your life a living hell if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, if you manage to learn all of Annie’s core aspects, you’ll soon find your enemies disintegrated before your feet.

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ADC – Caitlyn

Long range, safety and high damage. These are only a few things Caitlyn is known for. For newer players to the ADC role, it might sometimes feel extremely difficult to survive against assassins and bruisers especially when the knowledge isn’t there yet. Caitlyn helps you mitigate their threat by staying away from a safe distance, farming minions and poking the enemy. Her kit is relatively advanced, so you might need a couple games to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll know it was worth the wait.

Because you’re so safe in the laning phase, it gives you a head start when it comes to carrying games. If you get rolling in gold and experience, your attacks will start hitting noticeably harder the longer the game goes, and the enemy team will feel powerless against her extreme range advantage. This time, clever use of traps and nets will be the difference between a good Caitlyn and a bad one, so use those abilities wisely and no longer will pesky assassins be able to take you down.

Support – Janna (& Leona)

Janna is your bread-and-butter support. Every single one of her abilities have a specific purpose without requiring too much mechanical prowess to use. Her Q ability, the tornado, is used to keep people away. Her W is there to damage people, especially in lane. Her E is to shield and protect people. Abilities with such basic support objectives can’t be found anywhere else. Even though her kit is that simple, she can still excel at buffing up her ADC, whether it’s Draven or Jinx, and still excel at keeping her team alive with her ultimate.

If you’re looking for a more beefy support to pick up, look no further than Leona. Her kit only really allows you to play one playstyle: Go in or go home. The abilities are very simple and intuitive, and playing her will teach you several concepts like CC chaining, which is when you wait for other crowd control effects to end before putting another stun to the list. Her ultimate ability has a fairly short cooldown, and her natural tankiness with her W creates quite a bit of room for error. When you start hitting everything at the right time you’ll start climbing like crazy, as Leona is by far one of the go to engage supports to play right now.

While these champions will certainly help you, remember that the best way to learn and climb is to have fun. Don’t force yourself to play champions you don’t like, but if you can help it, definitely check these champions out, as they will be bound to help you learn their respective role.

Which champion would you recommend to climb? Join the discussion on social media or our Discord!

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Image credit: Riot Games