Not many people know this way to gain elo...
Picture this: your nexus has just blown up after a tough 30 minutes of your teammates getting caught, overextending, or chasing the Vayne so far that they don’t notice the Sett taking on the rest of the team by himself. Teammates can make climbing impossible, but there’s hope. There’s an entire class of champions with a playstyle centered around making up for exactly the sorts of things that cost you that precious, precious LP. Here’s who to pick to make your team feel like they’re playing like Faker when you’re the one doing all the work peeling.
10. Senna
It'll take more than that to keep her down.
Senna is hard to put in any one box. Some of you might even be surprised to find her on this list at all. But her ability to slow, heal, root, shield, and give invisibility on top of her damage output makes her more than qualified, despite her main role as a marksman.
Still, she’s so low on this list because her kit and scalings don’t maximize the effects of traditional support items. While she is most successfully played as a support, she uses items that increase her damage output and survivability. Usually, enchanters build things like Staff of Flowing Water or Ardent Censer to augment their allies’ attacks and abilities whenever they’re healed or shielded.
Senna’s abilities make her an enchanter, but not her actual playstyle. She’s discouraged from taking minion kills (like any support) so she can stack her passive. But the passive in question gives her more damage and range the more she stacks she has. This helps her settle into the low-income support role because she won’t need much gold to be effective. But this late-game scaling is the same reason she’s better as a damage dealer. Playing Senna puts the enemy team on a timer because of her scaling. Like most other marksmen, she’s played safely from the backline, because enemies know to shut her down as early as they can. Usually, she’s the one who needs help getting away from those pesky tanks and assassins. And the pros agree; most recently, she’s played like a classic ADC.
What makes Senna a great enchanter:
- An easy to hit Q with both damage and healing
- Crowd control with her Passive and W
- Mobility and invisibility with E
- Global ultimate ability with a shield and damage
- Passive gives her free stacks
- Guaranteed late-game damage
9. Sona
Dance to this!
This blue-haired songstress is a long-time resident of the bottom lane. Although she’s gotten a lot of changes to tone down her oppression in lane (mainly her Q and passive poke), Sona has stayed pretty much the same throughout the years. She can do anything an enchanter has to do: heal, shield, boost speed, CC. And she only scales harder with items and time.
But that’s exactly the problem. Sona is a jane of all trades but master of none. Her Q damage is now negligible, her heal is small compared to others in her class, and her CC is unreliable. Her passive auras now have only a fraction of their power and require her to position perfectly. Her versatility is also tempered by how fragile she is (along with Anivia and Yuumi, she has the lowest base health in the game when excluding Kled). To compensate, Anivia has her resurrection passive, and Yuumi is untargetable for most of the game. Sona is left to fend for herself with a passive that only gives her a pitiable amount of ability haste. Positioning can only do so much sometimes.
Not to mention her mana costs! For how often you’ll be casting them (especially to stack your passive), Sona’s mana costs are oppressive sometimes. Sure, enchanter items can help, (Moonstone Renewer was made for her) but it’s just another con to add to the list.
What makes Sona a great healer:
- Easy to play
- Good scaling
- Gives a lot of utility to the team
- Procs Summon: Aery and Moonstone Renewer almost constantly
- Procs the enchanter items with every basic ability
8. Yuumi
Meow. Kitty wants a treat!
Ah, Yuumi, the (in)famous cutesy cat of Runeterra. The bane of many ARAM games and the joy of many Volibears and Olafs. But she’s divisive for a reason; her playstyle is unique from what came before her, and she’s needed a lot of tuning for Riot to consider her balanced.
For the most part, her power comes from her ability to attach to an ally and become untargetable. When attached, all her abilities will come from her ally’s location. On top of a free adaptive stat bonus when she’s attached, you can get heal and movement speed boost from her E instantly. She moves between allies pretty much freely, which makes her ultimate ability an incredible teamfighting asset.
With such a powerful kit, this kitty’s a pain to play against. She’s gotten the nerf bat plenty of times to keep the playerbase happy. Her mana numbers are incredibly high to keep her from healing every time it’s off cooldown, and her Q damage has been decreased. Now, she needs meticulous mana management with her passive to be useful. As support, Yuumi has very little income, and won’t have the resources to build mana items.
And sometimes it’s the ADCs themselves who can’t stand her. Because she has next to no lane presence, Yuumi has to be played with a safe champion like Ezreal who can essentially 1v2 the lane. Many ADCs don’t enjoy this playstyle, especially in the late game, when the Yuumi often chooses to attach to the tankier jungler or top laner. Yuumi’s incredible peel for one member of the team has its perks, but just as often, it can leave the rest of the team out to dry.
What makes Yuumi a great healer:
- Easy healing
- Procs Summon: Aery and Moonstone Renewer regularly with little effort
- Game-changing ult
- Safe due to untargetability
- She usually doesn’t take Flash, which leaves room for an extra summoner spell
7. Soraka
WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE WOO! I can't hear you over the sound of the ambulance.
Soraka is the GOAT (pun intended). If you’re looking for a healer, you can’t do much better than her. The Starchild is the ambulance of Runeterra. Played and built right, she can keep entire teams alive and healthy while acing the opponents.
But her healing comes at the cost of her health, so she has to use it wisely. Good poke on either her or her allies can render her helpless. And while her Q and E help her stay alive, League players know to kill the Soraka first. And she has to hit her Q (or use her passive) to get any mobility.
Items can help with this, but it takes a long time to get there on a support budget. And there are tradeoffs to be made: do you build like an enchanter for the passive buffs, or do you build tankier so you can heal more and live longer? Enchanter items leave you as easy prey for enemies, and the survivability from items like Spirit Visage can have you out of mana after a few ability rotations.
What makes Soraka a great healer:
- Ultra-reliable healing
- Global heal on her ultimate ability
- Silence and root on her E make for excellent peel
- Low cooldowns (even for enchanter standards)
6. Janna
Anyone feeling a slight breeze up here?
Janna is a favorite for many support mains, including yours truly, and for good reason. Her kit revolves around one thing: peeling. While her abilities are simple and easy to understand, a Janna with more than 100,000 mastery points is a completely different champion from a Janna with 10,000.
Her Q is a tornado with a knockup, perfect for the goddess of the wind. Her W is a point and click slow and her shield gives the recipient extra attack damage. Finally, her ultimate is a knockback that heals the allies around her. This ability can shut down any of the stickiest engages, but you have to be careful. A mistimed ultimate can knock back low-health enemy champions, saving them and earning you a ? ping.
Though an excellent babysitter for a fragile ADC, Janna lacks healing that isn’t from her ultimate. While Moonstone Renewer (an enchanter staple, as you’ve probably noticed) can help her keep her teammates happy and healthy, there isn’t anything she can do that other enchanters can’t. The simplicity of her abilities usually lands her in the middle of the pack. Other enchanters often offer more powerful utility or have more tools to keep themselves alive. Janna has to time her spells well to kite back and escape because her 488 base health runs out quickly.
What makes Janna a great enchanter:
- Peel that can counter to hard engage
- Reliable shielding with extra damage
- Ultimate can save games
- Mobility for the team from her passive
- Lots of mobility in general
5. Nami
Sorry, boys, sushi's not on the menu today.
The Tidecaller is one of the best balanced and designed champions in the game. She is rarely ever found in patch notes, but she stays as a pick for a support main’s champion pool. Nami is reliable and versatile, casting abilities everywhere in a teamfight and keeping everyone alive.
The bouncing damage and healing from her W is a unique ability in the game. Used well, it can render a lane unwinnable for your opponents. Her Q and E give a respectable amount of CC, as well her ultimate, a tsunami. The gigantic wave has a long-range and a wide hitbox, useful for following up on engages or pushing back enemies.
To keep her power down to manageable levels, Nami has high mana costs, even for an enchanter. She has to use her healing carefully. Her Q has its drawbacks too, with a slow animation that makes it easy to dodge. This makes the CC on her basic abilities unreliable, and she will have to resort to her ultimate. Wasting an ultimate for something that a bubble could have dealt with is enough to make any Nami player cringe deep down in their soul.
What makes Nami a great healer:
- Passive gives allies movement speed
- 3 out of 4 abilities have crowd control
- Her W, combined with Moonstone Renewer, gives constant healing to multiple allies
- Easy to hit ultimate
4. Taric
The only thing prettier than his gems is his face.
Taric isn’t always the first champion that comes to mind when talking about enchanters, but those who forget him are missing out. Taric has healing, easy area of effect stuns, shielding, and two things that no other enchanter has: tankiness and invulnerability for the whole team.
His kit might seem overloaded, but that’s only a tradeoff for the fact that he’s a slow, melee tank with no mobility. But this means he’s less reliant on positioning than squishier enchanters, letting him get closer to hit his E stuns. His mana costs are a bit high, but good use of his passive makes them a moot point. And of course, a well-timed ultimate can easily let his team ace their enemies. Better not to waste it, though. It has a long, long cooldown.
He’s not an easy recommendation to make, though. He plays differently from ranged enchanters and other, more traditional tanks. The gem knight takes a bit more time to get used to, but once you do, you’ll have your opponents tilting off the face of the earth (or should we say Runeterra?).
What makes Taric a great enchanter:
- His kit has everything. Everything.
- Easy to hit stun, even against mobile champions
- Game changer ultimate
- Tankiness and survivability
3. Seraphine
See no. 9, Sona.
Kidding aside, Seraphine does look a lot like Sona with extra steps. Movement speed, healing, poke, and even very similar ults. But there’s a reason she’s 6 spots higher.
Should we start with her AoE shielding (and healing, with a passive proc) on a low cooldown? Or with her reliable, long-range CC with E? Or maybe her poke with Q? Or her ultimate, which can easily hit the entire enemy team if they’re a step out of place?
Well, no matter which part of her kit seems the most powerful to you (it’s the healing, by the way) Seraphine is one of the most powerful enchanters in the game. Though Riot pushes her as an enchanter midlaner, her lane control and teamfight prowess give her a comfortable spot in the bottom lane.
What keeps her from being higher, though, is her mana costs and the fact that she needs a little more help from items to be powerful. Supports have stats calibrated for a low budget, but with Seraphine technically being a midlane mage, she needs to spend money to scale off her items.
What makes Seraphine a great healer:
- Mini-Redemption on Passive + W
- All abilities have synergy with allies, making for great teamfighting
- Reliable healing
- Easy to hit crowd control on E and ult
- Lane dominance
2. Karma
She's basically Ionia's Avatar.
Karma is a triple threat, finding places in top, mid, and support. But she’s an enchanter at heart, with reliable poke, peel, and shielding. She’s incredible to have in lane, especially in the early game when she has access to her ult at level 1. A good Karma has tilted many, many, League players.
Let’s get it out of the way: her empowered E is one of the strongest abilities in the game. It gives your entire team a shield and movement speed boost on a relatively short cooldown. A few ability rotations and passive procs with Q, and Karma can do it again. And she will.
Her other abilities aren’t pushovers either. Her Q gives her lane dominance, and her W is excellent for peeling for yourself or the ADC next to you. And her Mantra makes them even more powerful.
Moonstone Renewer, as we’ve mentioned before, solves her healing problems. It has excellent synergy with her passive, making sure that she keeps hitting those Qs and getting those heals. In some situations, you could even build damage stats on her. Ability power still makes your shield bigger, and more Q damage is always welcome. The only thing she doesn’t have is hard CC--while her W can root, enemies can still cast abilities or cleanse.
Karma can engage or disengage at her discretion. All the enchanters on this list can save an ally from certain death, Karma can do it for the whole team at once with two button presses. And we all know that our solo queue teams need it.
What makes Karma a great enchanter:
- Easy to pick up
- R + E can be given to the whole team
- Self-healing on R + Wfor survivability
- The area-of-effect shield also procs items like Ardent Censer and Chemtech Purifier
- Low cooldowns with items and passive management
1. Lulu
*manic pixie purple girl noises*
Her Polymorph strikes fear into the hearts of Master Yi’s everywhere. Her ultimate ability makes ADCs shiver with excitement. With her pixie companion, Pix, she terrorizes bot lanes around the world. Our first pick, of course, is Lulu, the ultimate enchanter.
Lulu’s versatility puts her at the top of the list. Her abilities can be used offensively or defensively, depending on your needs. Need poke? E-Q for some damage and a slow. Funneling a level 18 Kog’Maw? W+E to give him attack speed, movement speed, and a shield. Dealing with an ulting Katarina? Just point your W at the dagger lady and ult the lowest health member of your team for good measure. There are very few things in League of Legends more powerful than a good Lulu.
With healing, shielding, and utility galore, Lulu can make full use of the enchanter items, which usually give mana, ability haste, heal/shield power, and passive buffs. Moonstone Renewer, for example, more than makes up for her lack of healing. With a couple of items, her cooldowns are low enough that she can proc the healing as much as she likes, and the abilities aren’t hard to hit either.
Sounds similar to Karma, right? We’ll admit, the gap is very slim. But Lulu’s more reliable CC with her ultimate and her point-and-click silence gives her the edge over Karma. A silenced Sylas is much better than a rooted one, after all. So when looking for a partner down in bot lane where the junglers lurk and the dragons spawn, you couldn’t pick anyone better than this quirky purple yordle.
What makes Lulu a great enchanter:
- Versatility
- Low cooldown shielding, healing, and buffs
- Enchanter items are perfect on her (Be it Moonstone Renewer, Imperial Mandate, or Shurelya’s Battlesong)
- Synergizes with many team compositions
- Can shut down problematic carries easily
