Top Team Comps #49: Tankslayer Comp

This week's team composition involves heavy tank shredding champions, each with built-in percentage based damage. The largest difficulty this team has is in staying alive long enough to dish the damage, but can definitely get some sweet pentakills on any given person.

Team Composition Score Card

AOE Damage: A
Crowd Control: A
Difficulty (1-5, 5 is hardest): 3
Diving Power: A
Dueling Power: A
Initiation: A
Poke Power: A
Pushing Power: B
Sustain: C
Synergy: B
Waveclear: A

Early Game: B
Mid Game: A
Late Game: A

S = Amazing!, A = Good, B = Average, C = Below Average, F = Bad

Theme

This team composition involves heavy tank shredding champions, each with built-in percentage based damage. The largest difficulty this team has is in staying alive long enough to dish the damage, but can definitely get some sweet pentakills on any given person.

Specializing in pure damage, this composition is surprisingly difficult to dive simply because of the sheer amount of power Brand and Kog'maw can provide, especially with Amumu locking down enemies.

Champions

Vayne [Marksman] - Needing no introduction, the traditional tank-shredder and outplay queen extraordinaire, Vayne fits in perfectly with this team composition as the clean-up crew.

Kog'Maw [AP Mid] - With the short range on Vayne and the absolute necessity to commit with Amumu and Poppy, Kog'Maw fits in perfectly in this team composition with his long range poke combined with his amazing AOE slow, especially since the support is more damage than utility based.

Brand [Support] - Picking a high damage support rather than a peeling support for Vayne seems strange at first, until you realize that Vayne's early game is pretty bad. On the other hand, Brand's early game is very good in terms of zoning and waveclear. Playing Brand gives your bot lane presence that they otherwise wouldn't have in a traditional Vayne lane. His percentage based passive is also absolutely insane in terms of shredding tanks.

Amumu [Jungler] - As Sejuani is consistently banned and somewhat less reliable as of late, I'm a big fan of Amumu as her replacement tank shredder.

Poppy [Top Laner] - Here's where we get a little creative. Despite having low amounts of peel on this team, I think that placing another diver actually relieves some of the pressure on the backline. With the amount of poke that Kog'Maw provides, most enemy teams will try and dive you. However, with Poppy on guard, the enemy backline will have difficulty following up on any tower dive initiations, leaving them as simple meatsacks to shred and enjoy on a warm brioche bun.

Key Concepts

• Prior to engaging, the team should create a loose protection circle around Kog'maw to avoid getting him pulled into a fight preemptively. 
• Surprisingly, it's okay if Vayne is engaged on (as long as the team is nearby). Although she's technically the clean-up crew, with Brand as a support the damage output will be extremely high if the enemy team specializes in single target lock-downs.
• It is fairly difficult to gank for these lanes, but snowballing bot or counterganking top/mid is your best bet. Otherwise, feel free to rush 6 on Amumu and start teamfighting for objectives.

Countering

To counter this team, I think that a heavy "catch" type composition combined with poke and CC will do well providing you can snowball and continuously catch Kog'Maw off guard.

Here's an example team that may succeed:

• Morgana [Mid] - Catching power combined with natural Zhonya build keeps her safe from Poppy
• Nautilus [Jungle] - Strong CC and good diving ability to take out the back line
• Jayce [Top] - Excellent poking ability and waveclear
• Sona [Support] - Strong sustain, good poke, and AOE CC
• Graves [ADC] - Good waveclear and strong early game. His passive will also help him stay alive vs Poppy.

What do you think about this team composition? Got ways to improve on it? Comment below!

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