Team Composition: Poke

There's more to team composition than checking off important roles and winning lanes. Every good team composition has a strategy for team fights, taking objectives, and pushing towers. Today I'd like to highlight one of the most annoying strategies for victory, "Poke Comp".

The concept behind Poke Comp is very simple, defeat the enemy by constantly bombarding them at a safe distance and only engaging once the enemy is severely weakened (if at all). This composition values long range, high damage abilities such as Nidalee's Javelin Toss or Kog'maw's Living Artillery, and strong disengages such as Trundle's Pillar of Filth and or Anivia's Crystallize. When executed properly this composition can win without ever engaging in a team fight.

The most important attribute a player can have for this composition is patience. You're going to spend a lot of time standing outside of your enemy's range carefully poking at them without putting yourself in danger. When this composition fails it's almost always because its players ran out of patience and engaged in a team fight prematurely.

This is actually one of the few compositions where Promote can be a strong summoner spell. Most summoner spells are chosen in order to win skirmishes and team fights, but as this composition ideally does neither it's fairly safe and effective to grab something else. Promote is effective because you can cast it on a minion in one lane and then siege another. Even if your siege is halted the promoted minion will merrily push and take turrets.

Poke Comp's primary enemy is Oracle's. Robbing this composition of vision severely inhibits its ability to push or control objectives. Without prior warning it's very difficult for a team focused on long, drawn out poke fests to contest Baron unless there's a significant power gap. Maintaining ward coverage and punishing opponents for grabbing Oracle's is an important part of Poke Comp's execution.

Overall Poke Comp is super annoying to play against, and fairly boring to watch. However, it's fun to play and at the end of the day competitors use what works more often than what sells. Just be prepared for when all chat fills with the cries and lamentations of your severely frustrated enemies.

Poke Comp Champion Picks: 

• Top Lane:
• Nidalee: Her Javelin Toss is one of the best poke abilities in the game. Combined with a decent heal and mobility, she's a top pick for Poke Comp.
• Teemo: While his poke isn't very strong, mushrooms and mobility make it difficult to engage on his team, ever.
• Olaf: His Axes are both strong poke and disengagement tools, and he can be used to facecheck dangerous initiation tools like Ashe's Crystal Arrow.
• AP Carry:
• Heimerdinger: Turrets for disengaging. Rockets and grenades for poke. An Afro for style. Heimerdinger has everything you could want.
• Karthus: Good luck engaging his team through his wall and Qs. His ult can either be the ultimate poke or the ultimate coup de grace.
• Lux: An excellent poke kit with slows, snares, and a spammable poke ult.
• Ziggs: Bombs for poke, bombs for zone control, bombs for escaping, and bombs for clearing a lane elsewhere that's pushing.
• AD Carry:
• Caitlyn: The space control she provides is unmatched by any other AD carries.
• Ezreal: Endless Q spam, a long range ultimate for stopping another lane from pushing or pressure the current lane, and an attack speed boost when the enemy finally relents.
• Kog'maw: Whether AP or AD, his(its?) ultimate hurts. Along with Void Ooze for disengaging Kog'maw is a strong pick.
• Varus: Long range poke, and area slow, and a great ultimate for disengaging.
• Support:
• Janna: The most disengages on any support, and the best support for warding period.
• Sona: While her poke range isn't the greatest, her speed boost and ultimate are extremely strong for disengaging.
• Soraka: While her poke isn't strong and she doesn't have any disengages, she's a mana/health battery that will keep your team going throughout a long siege.
• Jungle:
• Dr. Mundo: The perfect champion for eating the enemy's poke while poking back. Spam those Cleavers.
• Gangplank: While it's too dangerous to Parrrley many opponents, the mobility he gives his entire team and zone controlling ultimate are strong. That he can eat the odd CC as well is a great bonus.
• Trundle: He may only have Pillar of Filth, but with 40% CDR he can literally keep it up indefinitely.

While that list wasn't exhaustive, hopefully it gives you some idea what works for Poke Comp.