League of Legends: The Top 20 Champions that Make Pro Play Boring
By Josh Tyler
With the LEC and LCS starting back up, we look at the 20 League of Legends champions we hope get banned more often in 2020.
Professional League of Legends can be some of the most fun you can have as a spectator. With around 150 champions available, there are septillions of possible combinations of ten champions that can make up a particular match of League of Legends. Even with all of these (theoretical) combinations that teams can create, we only tend to see a few comps with small variations repeated over and over again.
When players see the same champions over and over again, a certain fatigue starts to set in for the fans. There’s just less excitement seeing a player on a pick for the fourth time this season in the same lane match-up we’ve seen ten times during the season. There’s even less excitement when you lost interest in the match-up after the third time.
With that in mind, here are 20 champions that we, as fans, are frankly sick of seeing in professional play. These are champions that are not only played a lot but ones that have playstyles that are fairly one-dimensional. Hopefully, regardless of how strong these champions are this season, pro teams will resist the urge to pick these champions and keep the ResidentSleeper emotes away.
20. Trundle
Trundle being meta means one thing: the game is full of tanks. Trundle counters tanks and tanks are boring, so a meta where Trundle is a strong player is just going to be boring.
On top of that, Trundle’s entire gameplay is just to run at people and smack them with his bat/giant icicle and steal their tank stats. There’s very little skill expression outside of making a flashy play by interrupting a player’s base with a well-placed pillar.
19. Zoe
League of Legends fans like seeing the best players outwit each other with their macro knowledge or outplay each other with mechanics. They don’t like seeing them get one shot by a missile from across the map because someone hit one skillshot. If Zoe gets picked, fans will be asleep faster than the enemy mid after they got hit by her Sleepy Trouble Bubble.
18. Braum
Braum is that guy who’s a great friend but he inadvertently screws up your chances with a hot girl. His kit exists to play defense, not offense, and no one wants to watch a defensive battle.
Can you name a single clutch Braum ult ever? I’ve been watching since Braum was released and I don’t remember a single one. This is the most clutch Braum play I’ve seen, which is astounding considering it was years ago and Braum is picked in every other game.
17. Sivir
You know why they say “it’s just a Sivir comp”? Because it is “just a Sivir comp.” She shouts, the team goes fast, she autos and crits for a billion damage. The only thing that’s impressive about her kit is hitting a fadeaway boomerang or properly timing her spell shield.
16. Karma
Whether she’s in a solo lane or the support role, Karma exists solely to buff up other, more important, champions. Nothing is more dispiriting than seeing that mechanical god relegated to endlessly shoving waves and shielding people on Karma.
15. Olaf
LS nods in approval as I trash this champion who basically only exists to run people down and farm fast. At least he has to hit one skillshot in order to gank, but I’d rather watch paint dry than watch Olaf swing endlessly at opponents.
14. Vladimir
For a flex pick, there’s nothing more boring than a Vladimir. I don’t even feel that teams really care which lane they match-up with him in since his entire kit is built to just do nothing in lane except scale and avoid death.
13. Elise
Just like Olaf, this champion falls completely off a cliff in the mid-to-late game and becomes entirely useless. She can make a lot of flashy plays in her early ganks, sure, but her entire gank pattern revolves around whether she can hit her Coccoon or not. Once she misses that she’s basically not a champion.
12. Mordekaiser
All the flex pick BS of a Vladimir mixed with the same “walk at you and swing a big stick” of a Trundle. Mordekaiser reminds me of a meatball in every League of Legends game I see him in, because he basically exists to just take up space and then removes all fun from the game.
11. Tristana
I do not like this Yordle. I do not like her in solo lanes, I do not like her as an AD. All she does is push waves, push towers, and push any enemy away who gets within crowd control distance over her.