Before you blindly go into champion select with your duo partner... Stop, in the name of elo! And think about what type of duo composition would best work for you and your partner. Can your friend jungle especially well? Perhaps you should play mid lane to give your team some map control. Or if you can rock a solid Vayne, your partner could grab an aggressive or non-traditional support. Whatever the scenario, be sure you figure out how to optimize your games together. Because solo queue is a strange place, and you never know what mongoloid might end up on your team.

A lot of duo queues like to run an AD carry / support bot lane. But, is that the most effective comp for you and your partner? Not always. You know who your best champions are, and your friends knows his. List them to one another and see which champions and roles synergize well with each other.

*NOTES* A few assumptions were made while writing this... First, you must assume that all other players in solo queue were dropped on their heads one too many times. Secondly, all roles that aren't played by you or your duo partner will ultimately fail unless you assist them. And finally, I am not a pro level player, so I might have made mistakes. Read below and correct me wherever you would like.

Welcome Redditors! If you find anything you disagree with or would like to expand upon, please comment in the Reddit post. I will be taking users advice all day. So feel free to tell me some of your favorite duo comps, and I will add it to the article when I have time. Thanks for reading!

Mid Lane & Jungle

This is one of the most effective compositions for map control. When you and your duo partner fill the two roles that have the most mobility, you can effectively win your teammates lanes for them. Mid lane is also one of the easiest lanes to gank (depending on the champion, you can have up to 7 points of entry to gank.)

The combination can be played a couple different ways. One play style focuses on roaming and ganking other lanes. Your goal is to give advantages to your other lanes and help your team succeed as a whole. The other play style is to have your jungler camp middle lane and snowball your mid lane. Your goal being to render the enemy mid lane useless and snowball your mid lane in to a position where he can carry. Both are viable strategies, but both also are risk / reward oriented.

A particularly funny composition to try is Pantheon and Twisted Fate. Getting the TF stun off right as Pantheon drops on your enemies head is pretty satisfying. (Attempt only if you are proficient in these champions - A bad Panth and or a bad TF lose games... The more you know ===★ )

Roaming/Ganking Composition Checklist:

Mid Lane Champion:

- Can your champion bare bottom spank creep waves in mid lane, allowing him/her to roam?

- Can your champion move quick like a bunny to another lane for a gank?

- Does your champion have a global ultimate?

One yes, and you have yourself a mid lane champ.

(Hard CC is also handy to have, but not essential.)

Jungle Champion:

- Can your champion stun the living bejesus out of people?

- Does your champion have a global ultimate?

Say yes to one of those dumb questions? Bam! Jungler.

(You can also use junglers with soft CC or no CC, but it is not ideal.)

Strong Compositions: Karthus (mid) + Nocturne (jungle) / Twisted Fate (mid) + Pantheon (jungle) / Ahri (mid) + Nautilus (jungle) / Le Blanc (mid) + Alistar (jungle)

Snowball/Camping Composition Checklist:

Mid Lane Champion:

- Are you a 'God Tier' burst champ?

- Would you find yourself saying 'Dat CC' in all chat?

Yes, no? No, yes? Yes, yes? Mid lane.

(Ideally you would want to have both traits covered, burst and cc. But you can still manage with one or none.)

Jungle Champion:

- Can you gank from behind the mid tower and constantly scare the $#!^ out of someone?

- Can you pin the enemy mid lane down and let your carry have his way with him?

- Does your champion have a global ultimate... Does he!?

One yes. One jungler.

(Grab Nocturne and have a field day after level 6.)

Strong Compositions: Annie (mid) + Amumu (jungle) / Swain (mid) + Maokai (jungle) / Ryze (mid) + Alistar (jungle)

Pros:



High mobility - allows you to give advantages to other lanes.

Strong dragon control.

Strongest gank synergy in the game.

Easy to snowball your mid lane player.

Cons:

Mid lane can be easily countered.

If mid lane fails, it can be hard to carry from the jungle.

If you choose to roam and your ganks fail, both mid and jungle will fall behind in CS.

If you choose to camp middle lane, your other lanes might snowball the enemy team.

Videos:

Well timed global ultimates result in lulz.

If at first you don't succeed... Try, try again.

Bruiser Bot Lane

Some consider it to be a cheese strategy for trolls, while others claim that it is a hard counter to the current support / AD carry meta. The truth? It's probably somewhere in the middle. If your team picks appropriately, it can be a perfectly viable strategy. However, if your team rages and you do it anyway, you could have just lost the game in champion select.

This is a very straight forward kind of composition. You grab two champions that can lock someone down and blow them up at level 2. In order for you to be effective, you need to shut down and completely deny the enemy AD carry. This means an early kill and continued lane dominance afterwards. The goal is to effectively nullify the enemy AD carry by denying him farm. All while you feed each other kills.

Bruiser Composition Checklist:

Both Bruiser Champions:

- Copious amounts of CC you have?

- Can you kill someone in under 2 seconds at level 2?

The combination of champions must be able to full fill both roles.

Strong Champions: Alistar, Blitzcrank, Jarvan IV, Leona, Pantheon, Nautilus, etc... you get the idea.

Pros:

Can absolutely wreck the standard AD carry / support bot lane.

Strong dragon control.

Easy to snowball.

Renders enemy AD carry less effective.

Cons:

Can cause rage.

AD carry is forced to go top lane (if you even have an AD carry.)

If you manage to lose your lane, chances are you will lose the game.

Videos:

Ever played Lemmings? Yeah, it's like that...

Examples of some bruiser comps.

AD Carry & Support

Having stated earlier, this is one of the most common duo queue compositions. Although, it can also be one of the most ineffective. In order to run this correctly, your AD carry needs to be REALLY good at his role. Assuming that all of your other lanes fail, it becomes very hard to avoid getting dove and instagibbed in a team fight.

Two common compositions for bottom lane are a kill lane and a sustain / buff lane. The kill lane consists of an AD carry with burst potential and a support that can lock down the enemy AD carry. The sustain lane focuses on a strong late game AD carry and a support that can sustain him and or buff him.

The only real requirement when you choose to run an AD carry / support lane is that you are REALLY good at the champion you choose. A bad support can cause an AD carry to fail, and a bad AD carry really hurts a supports to be effective mid to late game.

AD Carry / Support Composition Checklist:

AD Carry Champion:

- Are you good at playing this champion?

You better say yes.

(There are some combinations that work better than others. But as a rule for this comp, I would always try to choose the AD carry you are most comfortable carrying with.)

Support Champion:

- I said, are you good at playing this champion?

I said, you better say yes.

(I would always try to choose the support you are most comfortable with.)

Strong Compositions: Ezreal (AD) + Taric (support) / Kog'Maw (AD) + Nunu (support) / Tristana (AD) + Leona (support) / Graves (AD) + Soraka (support) / Vayne (AD) + Alistar (support) / Blitz (support) + Any AD

Non Traditional Supports: Yorick, Pantheon, Gangplank, Ryze, etc. (these can be used in kill lanes)

Pros:

The AD carry is the strongest role late game.

A well-coordinated bot lane with good communication can out play 2 pugs with little to no communication.

If you choose to deny the enemy AD Carry, you can have a huge impact mid to late game on the enemies damage output.

If you choose to take the tower early, you can have greater early to mid-game dragon control.

If you are dominating your lane, you can force the enemy jungler to divert attention away from other lanes.

Cons:

You only have control over bot lane’s outcome.

You will be focused every team fight, so you need to know positioning.

You need to rely on your teammates for initiations and counter initiations.

You first line of defense consists of random people, who we assume will fail.

Videos:

This is proof positive that Ezreal and Taric are more than just friends.

This is a fun one, can you say stealth bomber?

This is why I said "The only real requirement when you choose to run an AD carry / support lane is that you are REALLY good at the champion you choose."

1st Pick & Last Pick

Often times, if your elo difference is great enough, you and your duo partner will be assigned 1st pick and last pick. This can be very advantageous if one of you don't mind playing the support role. The trick is to have your first pick take a support and trade with your last pick partner. This will allow you to play a direct counter to one of your opponents lanes.

This general strategy can work no matter your draft order. When you can do so effectively, use your partners pick to counter enemy champions. Trading picks to counter one enemy champion can often times lead to flaming / raging on the opponents team. "Dafaq you take 'Champion X' for, you just got countered... zzzz" Oh, the angry and childish community of League of Legends... I love you.

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