Thought: Replacing Urgot

I discussed Marn's Urgot-based composition yesterday, but it suffers from one notable flaw; enemy teams can always ban Urgot. A few opponents did, and while Marn still moved forward and snagged a spot amongst the salaried teams of Season 3, they had no alternative setup for this playstyle. Without Urgot Marn simply chose somewhat traditional team compositions.

Replacing Urgot isn't necessarily easy, as he does bring a lot to the team. His range his short, but he has excellent poke, an incredibly strong crowd control ability, innate tankiness, and super-strong laning. There is no perfectly analogous champion, but with a few small modifications to playstyle and composition there are possible candidates.

Jayce is one of the most obvious choices to replace Urgot. He has fairly decent poke, great team utility, potent tower pushing, and the ability to all-in bruiser style on opponents. Taric could still serve as a decent support for him, but he could easily be paired with other tanky supports and still be effective. Leona would be a good option to make up for the loss of initiation, and Thresh, the upcoming champion, could also serve as a potent support.

Nidalee is another possible option. Built as a bruiser she can serve to push towers with or without the team. However, her utility is strongest when her team isn't fighting, and many of her abilities rely on Ability Power to be potent. She's not a bad option, but she lacks the oomph that Jayce and Urgot bring.

Any other bruiser could potential serve, but they are all notable in that none of them have ranged attacks. While many of them have ways to farm at range, pushing towers is another matter. You'll have to modify the plan if you were counting on using range to help push towers from safety.

Of those bruisers, Zed stands out for his infinite harass/farming, slipperiness, AoE clearing, assassination potential, and incredible scaling. Once his ultimate is available any crowd control from a support spells death. While he lacks the ability to push towers from range, the danger he presents to the enemy carries is enormous.

These aren't the only options, but they are the first I would try as alternatives to Urgot. If the Urgot composition is truly too much for any traditional carry to handle, finding variations in the inevitable event of Urgot bans is the key to truly breaking the meta.