Hi there toribash, 2worlds here, you may know me as "that 1800 player that always ignores your game invites"
well I'm here to teach you about the champions I (ab)used to get to 1800, and I'll probably reach plat ~ 2k. Then I'll teach you about some champions I personally didn't use, but are still strong as fuck. Most of this list will be no surprise, but I have some champions up my sleeve I used.
Ignore the most played champs, I'm just showing my elo. I hardly play graves/trist anymore (also the stupidly low win rate on trist is due to stupidly stupid teammates)
First off, some rules - do not go into ranked/do not expect a high ranking if you can only play 1/2 roles. I can play every role, and I have about 3-4 good champions for each one at that. This also means you have to be really good with the champion. Don't go into ranked with only one or two games under your belt, if you're picking a champion you better know them inside and out.
Second off, if you're a solo lane and you're not buying 1-2 wards every 3 minutes, doing it wrong. If you're a support and not buying 2-3 wards every 4~5 minutes, you're doing it wrong. If you're a jungler and not buying a ward every 3 minute and don't have an oracles, you're doing it wrong. The only person permitted to not but wards is the ad carry.
Third off, get some goddamn map awareness. If you have to rely on MIAs, you're not ready for this shit.
Fourth and final, understand champions and what counters them. This doesn't really apply to low rankings so much, but once you start getting to higher rankings people will understand how to counter your champion. All of a sudden first picking that karthus will be a terrible idea, because guess what? They'll just pick kassadin. First picking your solo top jax will be a bad idea, because they'll just pick malphite.Starting at 1700, most first picks are supports, junglers, and ad carrys.
Of course this is a double edged sword, because once you get to higher levels of play you begin seeing the same ~20 champions over and over. An example of one would be morgana. If you want to play morg mid, there's a high chance the other team does too, which means you might have to first pick her. However if you first pick her that leaves you open to get countered by talon. So for the more powerful champions it's a risk/reward type of thing.
Champion #1: Malphite
Well, I knew this day would come. Malphite is FOTM, but if you recall the last time I posted my guide to 1600 I said Malphite is stronk, and this was ~3 months ago. Malphite has two main roles he can fill, jangle and top.
His jungle is insanely fast, your skill order is R>E>Q>W. He's also a really good jungle pick if your middle lane is a non-mana user, allowing you to have more blues, allowing you to spam WE and clear the jungle like nobody's business. The only downside to jungle malphite is his ganks are terrible pre-6/without ult. He can still gank due to dat slow on Q along with red buff, but if it's someone like riven or ezreal or tristana, I don't even bother. However with his ultimate he's a ridiculously strong ganker, and his standard WREQ combo can burst a squishy to 40-50% allowing your teammates to finish them off.
If your mid does want blue, who gives a shit. By this point you have philo stone so you can still E whenever it's off CD on jungle creeps.
Once I'm level 6, I like to camp the same lane over and over.
Top lane he's really only good as a counterpick against AA/AD heavy champions, riven, jax, etc. you want to go R>Q>E>W, and don't bother using any spells until level 5 or else you'll go oom quickly. Once you're 5 or so just harass with Q every so often, and when they're ~40%ish, RWEQ + ignite them to death.
Every malphite game my build always looks the same, boots/3 pots, rush philo, HoG, frozen heart, abyssal scepter, randuins, ninja tabi, force of nature. 6th item is situational but I like me some shurelia's that way with Q you always chase never die.
During teamfights, you just want to R into either
A) as many people as possible
B) their ad carry
depending on the match, whichever has the greatest benefit. Once you do it, just lay down dat E, hit randuins, along with your FH aura laugh as they have .3 atk speed and your team decimates them.
My runes are flat AD/ArP quints and reds since I mostly jungle him, Armor seals, mresist/level glyphs, with 9/21/0 masteries on either jungle or top
I have 20 games played with Malphite, 55% win rate (so 11/9) and my per game average is 4.7/4.3/9.9
Champion #2: Kennen
Solo top kennen, that is. I don't go mid with him, but if I did I would do the exact same thing as I'm about to post probably. A popular pick for the last 3-4 months now. Now the way I play kennen will probably go against the way you guys believe is the proper way to play kennen, but this is in fact better.
My runes for kennen are actually any standard AD top bruiser, so armor seals, mrsest/level glyphs, then a mix of AD/ArP quints and reds. This is mostly due to the fact I'm poor as shit and spend all my IP on champions, but ideally you want AD runes on kennen. Masteries are 21/9/0 with standard AP caster in offense, but instead of +4 AP at the bottom I get +3 AD and + 2 to minions since it makes last hitting easier
The AD runes are because your W scales off AD, and it's even easier to last hit.
Kennen does good against pretty much every melee champion up top, and can hold his own against kayle, vlad, etc. other ranged champions. A good solo top kennen is hard to counter by any champions
First off, most kennens go R > Q > W > E . This is incorrect, you want to go R > W > Q > E, wiht one point in E at level 3.
You may ask, why? Well first off: Q is a skillshot. You're not garaunteed to hit it, unless you're some kind of god, but remember as you get better at landing those, your opponents get better at dodging them. Which is why I go W first, autoattack four times, then use the proc to autoattack your lane opponent and W instantly and you get garaunteed harass every 4 autoattacks.
The second reason is it actually does more damage early game than Q. Here's why, since I'm running AD runes and I have the +3 AD mastery, I have about ~70 AD at level. At level 1 a Q would deal 75 damage, but at level 1, you do 40% of your AD in magic damage as the autoattack proc, so 28, plus the additional 65 from activating W itself, for a total of 93 damage. So not only does it do more damage, but it's garaunteed since it's not a skillshot (assuming you can get that autoattack in on them).
My build for him is boots countering whoever im vs, so merc if AP, ninja tabi if AD, and I like to go 2x dblades since I'm maxing W first and that scales off AD, also it makes last hitting even easier, gives me hp, and some sustain.
If you're laning vs a melee champion, be sure to autoattack harass a bunch too. If you build D blades and max W first, you'll do a mix of physical and magical damage, so they won't be able to counter you. Merc treads don't reduce your AA harass, ninja tabi don't reduce your W harass.
Once you're level 2 and have Q, you're free to try to harass them with that all you want, but know most of your early game damage will be from having the boosted W autoattack followed immediately with a W.
Aside from that, just harass and when they're about 40-50% E/flash in, R, W, ignite, Q, etc and try to burst them.
My kennen stats are 66.7 wins, 10/5, per game average is 3.9/3.9/6.0
Champion 3: Varus
Willing some of you didn't bet to see Varus on this list, but I definitely used him, when I could. He's sort of a situational AD carry. He's good either way, but I only pick him when I'm laning with a support that has a hard CC. Leona, lux, and blitzcrank are the best combos with Varus.
Standard AD carry masteries/runepage.
For him I go R > Q > W > E, with one point in W at level 1 to make last hitting easier - I do about 85 damage to creeps at level 1 with W and my AA. I don't miss many creeps. I also get one point in E at level 4.
The thing about Varus is he
counters soraka, which is you play ADC you know how much of a bitch she can be.
Not much I can say, you want to try to autoattack your opponents and once they have two stacks of W on them Q them with as much power as you can.
The thing about Varus is with a hard CC support, he decimates at level 6. Once you know you can kill your opponent, wait for your support to cc the opponent, autoattack them, then R so you get some damage from your W without them moving. While they're snared autoattack them once or twice then E them so they're slowed out of your snare, and autoattack them as many times as you can followed by a Q. If your opponent is not dead or almost dead and you did all of that, then stop focusing the tank you idiot.
I bring flash/heal or cleanse, since you don't need ignite on him.
66.7% win rate, 8/4, pga is 4.7/3.8/5.3. It's actually a bit crappy because I keep getting too cocky when I pick him and die excessively knowing we rape them.
Another bonus for Varus is that is the only ad carry who the potential to CC the enemy team, so on a team with Leona, Amumu, Malphite, etc. if you can hit a good ult, you can lock the enemy down for a while. I just got out of a game as Varus where my ult hit 4-5 people per teamfight because we have an amumu and kennen.
He also has incredibly strong long range poke due to his Q, so he works especially well on a poke comp, such as with TF and nidalee.
Champion 4: Gangplank
Another one I bet some of you didn't expect, but I love me some gangplank. His play style is fairly straightforward, but DO NOT LAST HIT WITH Q UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. You do not actually get much gold from saving Q to last hit, from a 40 minute game I got about 1-1.1k using Q to last hit when it was up. Just save it to harass.
Rush a philo for lane, then go tri-force + standard tanky items. Use your ult to secure kills/assists from across the map, and in teamfights just E and charge into their AD carry while Qing them.
Same runepage as malph/ken/etc, 9/21/0 masteries with the typical AD masteries in offense.
Gangplank is incredibly underestimated at my level imo.
66.7% win rate, 16/8, per game average is 4.1/3.9/9.3
Champion 5: Swain
Swain has really good base damage, and I go Mid with him. I use mresist/level glyphs, mana regen seals, mpen reds, and ap quints. 21/0/9 masteries
I go R>E>W>Q as swain, getting one point in Q at level 2. If you're starting out with swain, try going R > E > Q > W instead, but once you're confident hitting those Ws you want to max that since it does a lot of damage.
Once you're 6 you shouldn't really be dying. Use E to harass your enemy, and once you're about level 5, E them, then Q them, and then W right in front of where they're running, and with the slow from Q they should walk right into your snare, doing about 50-60% of their hp in harass.
Swain is heavily mana dependant so rush a RoA and a chalice is not a half bad option if they have a lot of magic damage.
As I said, swain has incredibly good base damage, so when I play Swain I like to abuse how tanky he is due to R and his already good base damage, so rather than going standard AP caster I build tanky AP. This means merc treads/ninja tabi, RoA, Rylais, Abyssal, Frozen Heart, athene's or something similar. Just tanky.
I'm 5/2 with swain since I rarely play mid, but my per game average for those 7 games is 6.3/4.7/9.6.
Champion 6: Kassadin
Kassadin is my personal best Champion, but only works as a counterpick. You pick him vs someone that spams their skills in mid. Ahri, Karthus, TF, etc.
He snowballs insanely hard, at level 6 is impossible to gank, and once you have blue, you just riftwalk in, QE, and walk away and laugh as they cant retaliate besides autoattack a few times.
Standard AP runepage/masteries.
Sadly I only have a 50% win rate with kass since apparently half the time I get him I get idiots on my team, but my pga is 5.5/2.2/4.4
Also I'm not gonna bother writing my guide on shen, but if you can spend some time learning him since a good shen is a game changer, but I won't write a guide on him since he's banned all the time anyway and in about 300 ranked games I've played him 9 times and maybe seen him 3 - 4 more times. But for shen 9 of the games I've played him, 7 are won. My PGA is 5.7/3.0/10.1
Also wukong is a strong top but I'm too lazy to write more. Just E > Q then W out. E Q R ignite when they're at level 40%, I'm 8/3 with wukong and my pga is 5.6/3.1/6.0
List of Champions I don't play but I think are strong anyway
Jungle Amumu - Dem ganks/dat aoe ult
Morgana - Dat aoe ult and long range farming ability
Jungle Nautilus - 3 hard CCs and 1 soft CC make him #1 ganker
Jungle Alistar - 2 hard CCs make him an amazing ganker anyway
Twisted Fate - Global ganks, long range farm
Dr. Mundo - fast jungle, good ganks, hard to kill
Mordekaiser - es #1. Seriously though, a good mordekaiser is a fucking god late game.
Lee sin/Maokai - Good ganks, Maokai is really good in teamfights due to ult.
Pantheon, jungle or top - Jungle has good ganks due to stun from W, but he falls off late.
Irelia - still OP
Kog'maw - longest range AD carry, who needs positioning when you can just rape them a mile away
Yorick - never loses top
Anivia - lots of damage and utility
Leona - holy CC batman
Rumble - holy damage batman
Champions I'm convinced are goddamn terrible past 1700, aka I cringe when I see them on my team
Shaco - falls off past 25 minutes, with proper warding ganks can be avoided, so he can't get fed and is useless past 25 minutes. Most players at this level know not to be idiots when it comes to shaco.
Ezreal - Needs to get fed to do well, if he doesn't then he's literally outclassed by every AD carry late game.
