Coach Aydan on Ban Pick and Team Composition

J Team coach Aydan has written an article dedicated to the ban pick strategies and team compositions, and also to let you guys have a more basic understanding of how ban pick works.

I’ve received quite a few questions from fans asking about ban pick strategies and team compositions ever since the GCS Spring Season and AWC Bootcamp. So I decided to write an article dedicated to the matter, and also to let you guys have a more basic understanding of how ban pick works.

First of all, I categorize all heroes into early, mid and late game characters, then I try to analyze what kind of hero composition can be utilized 100%, maybe even 150% by my team. This time I won’t delve into hero characteristics, but I’ll try to give a broader concept of team composition and ban pick mindset.

I’ll take J Team as an example, we’re best known for an aggressive early game invasion playstyle, which allows us to snowball our economic advantage till the end of the game. That’s why I prefer to pick early game heroes, to better suit their invasive game style, like Tulen, Maloch, Arum, Lubu, Ryoma…etc. This doesn’t mean that I only pick early game heroes though, because I also need to take other factors into account, such as the possibility of failing to gain an upper hand in the early game, or if the opponent also chose an early game team composition, or if the opponent makes it into the late game. Then if the team is wholly made up of early game heroes, there could be a serious problem in maintaining an advantage in the late game.

The current game version is one that relies heavily on the early game: Whichever side gets an advantage first, and knows how to use it to get more objectives, is highly likely to win. In addition, how to take down the first highland (enemy base) turret is also a very important key to winning. Apart from individually destroying turrets, the most direct way is to choose a marksman. From the AWC Bootcamp this year, we saw that most teams chose to use a core marksman as their primary team composition strategy. We even saw some teams that used a 3 guard the king/4 guard the king compositions, all of these compositions have the same objective – to hasten the process of destroying all 3 highland turrets and taking the enemy base.

Ban pick strategy doesn’t just deal with the composition of your own team, it’s also a good chance to restrict your opponent’s. If you do enough research on your opponent’s habits, most used heroes, in game strategies, you can adjust your composition to restrict theirs, effectively increasing your win rate.

The most commonly used team compositions in GCS and AWC are Individual-Turret-Targeting, All In and Poke composition. These 3 compositions can be divided into a lot of other types and can be used to counter one another. I won’t go that deep into the topic, but I’ll describe the main characteristics of each of them:

Individual-Turret-Targeting: The heroes best suited for this maneuver are Lubu, Kil’Groth, Omen, Xeniel, Max, Taara, Superman and Nakroth… etc. These heroes move around the map quickly and destroy turrets faster than others. They push minion waves on one side of the map while all other members push another. This gives the enemy less reaction time and if implemented well, can allow your team to gradually take all objectives one by one. The tip is to know when to get into a team battle and when to retreat for the group with more people and also the individual roamer needs to pay attention to the map and not get caught.

All In Composition: Heroes suited are: Maloch, Wonderwoman, Lauriel, Zephys, Zuka, Airi, Ormarr…etc. The most important part when using this type of composition is to use all the crowd control skills in combo to force the enemy to fight with your team. This depends heavily on knowing when and how to start the group battle, if you perform the skill combo fluently, you have a good chance of winning the fight even if you’re lacking level and items. On the other hand, if you fail to all in and don’t retreat fast enough, you run a high risk of being eliminated.

Poke Composition: Heroes often used in a poke composition are Liliana, Preyta, Raz, Chaugnar, Violet, The Joker, Peyna, Alice…etc. These heroes have one thing in common, their long attack range. This allows them to poke from afar and force the enemy to either return to the base to heal or remain under the tower. Then the team can choose to attack during the time gap the enemy is still on the way back or call an attack on turrets or other objectives while the enemy isn’t in a good shape.

Although I spent so much time describing the different team compositions, the central dogma of a good ban pick strategy is to understand the core composition of your own team well. Protecting the overall completeness of your own composition is much more important than trying to restrict that of your opponent. Otherwise, you may end up with a composition that doesn’t suit your team, which will be catastrophic even if you succeed in wreaking the opponent’s.

Ban pick isn’t something that can be fully understood in a day, I only shared here some basic concepts to choosing the right composition. Hopefully, this could help some of you who want to play in the amateur Legend of City Series or even in the Proleague. I look forward to discussing with you about your thoughts in the comments!

Source: JT Aydan 小奈教練 Facebook page.