League of Legends has over 160 Champions. While some are easier to be played by a general audience, other champions require a lot of knowledge and expertise. This can range from different combos to general matchup or lane knowledge. We have made a list of 10 champions that we consider really hard to play and master.
In League of Legends, some champions require a bit more thinking than others. We made a very subjective list of two champions per role that we consider very hard to play and hard to master. There's definitely more than 10 hard champions in the game at this point and with the recent release of Hwei we can expect a lot more in the future.
With the difficulty of a champion, you always have to differentiate between the skill floor and the skill ceiling. The Skill floor is how well a champion performs with minimal champion- and game knowledge. Just raw gameplay of the champion in his simplest form. Skill ceiling is when you master everything, absolutely everything, about a champion. Champions with a high skill ceiling have hard combos or mechanics that when played out correctly completely ascend the champion.
League of Legend's Hardest Champions
Top Lane
Gangplank
Gangplank can look like a very easy champion in some hands. After all, his Q Ability is point and click with a very low cooldown and his passive gives him a lot of true damage. But his skill expression lays completely in his E “Powder Keg”. This is one of the most game changing abilities in the game.
Gangplank's Barrels have a small radius around them. This is not only their damage zone, but you can also put more barrels around this radius to increase the area of effect damage. Barrel combos are insanely hard to master, but have a huge payoff when you land them. Barrels can not only crit, but they deal an extra 5% damage ON TOP of the critical damage. With 5 Barrel charges in the late game and a very good laning phase, GP becomes an absolute menace in jungle team fights or around objectives. Each barrel can do insane damage as this damage instance ignores 40% of the target's armor.
Gangplank can have a very easy laning phase versus tanks, but can be contested quite well by bruisers. He is very immobile but scales immensely into the late game. He relies a lot on sheen and gold, so rush essence reaver and use the first strike rune. Good Counters to GP would be Irelia, Aatrox and Kled.
K'Sante
K'Sante is a relatively new tank top laner. His kit isn't too complicated to understand, especially after his recent nerfs. He is a very mobile tank with loads of cc abilities. He isn't necessarily hard to pick up but gets a lot stronger once you figure out his combos. The hardest part about K'Sante is his ultimate ability, “All Out”. It allows you to knock back an enemy champion through walls and upgrades/changes your basic abilities. This ability also halves your health points and trades armor and magic resist for better combat stats.
K'Sante gets a lot better once you understand your limits in his “All Out” form. You severely lack tankyness but make up for it with damage and lower cooldowns. In general, he turns into a kind of bruiser in his ultimate form. He is not that strong in solo queue but is very big priority in competitive games. This shows that he can be picked a lot with little to no bad matchups and if he is played well he can definitely work out great.
Grasp of the Undying makes his laning phase very sustainable and with Iceborn Gauntlet first enemies can basically not escape from you. He requires lots of limit testing, but is absolutely worth it.
Jungle
Nidalee:
Nidalee is infamous to be very hard to pilot. To play her well, you will need to master her pathing and of course the two different forms she has. As a shapeshifting champion, she has seven different spells instead of four, which already makes her infinitely harder. Nidalee works great in higher elo's where the players have a good general understanding where and how to path and how to clear efficiently.
Nidalee is a very squishy champion with insane damage potential. The problem is that you need to get ahead early because in late game team fights nidalee struggles hard. So you need to clear efficiently, gank the right lanes, play your combos perfectly AND in best case counterjungle afterwards.
What makes Nidalee the snowball champion that she is, is the ability to land her Q “Javelin Toss”. It is literally just a small hitbox spear. It does more damage the further it flies, but that also gives the enemies more time to dodge. She works well with Night Harvester rush and can utilize the Dark Harvest rune really well.
Lee Sin:
Lee Sin is a jungle bruiser champion. His Q ability is a gap closer that you can throw at enemies and reactive to dash to them. Lee sin's W gives him a little shield and can be cast on himself, or you can dash to allies to shield them as well. His E is his primary jungle clearing tool, as it is a small area of effect around him that slows the targets. His ultimate is basically just a kick that, well, it kicks the enemy away. Using all of this efficiently can be hard enough already, as it is detrimental that you hit your Q's, but that's not even the hardest part of Lee sin.
The InSec. If you ever had a Lee sin in your game, you already know what I'm talking about. It is THE combo in League of Legends, the true test of all lee sin players. Its original is one of the most influential and iconic moments in esports history. On the 24 May 2013 everything was changed. The Pro Player InSec hit his Q ability on an unsuspecting YellowPete. He then took this Q, placed a ward behind the enemy player, w'd to that specific ward and kicked the ADC into the waiting arms of his team.
On this fateful day, everything about league changed as it suddenly became a lot more mechanical and these short split second combos just grew in importance.
Mid Lane
Azir:
Azir is known to be a very hard to play mage in the mid lane. After his countless reworks since release, he always finds a way into the competitive meta. He scales really well and has a decent laning phase, which makes him a very solid magic damage source in the late game. To add to this, you have his ultimate ability “Emperor's Divide” which allows him to knock enemies away. Combine this with his personal passive tower and the ability to redirect dashes, and he can basically insec entire teams.
But it is not that easy. He is a ranged character with not a lot of mobility, so he can be easily punished in the early game. He struggles versus burst damage, but his ability to carry team fights on his own later makes it all worth the pain. His W “Arise” summons sand soldiers, which he can control with his autoattacks. This is a very weird system that no other champion has, so you will need to play a few games to get used to it. This also makes it very hard to kite if you don't have any sand soldiers available.
Azir is a champion that needs a lot of practice and even then might just not be worth it if you are not playing at the highest level. Champions like Orianna and Syndra are way easier and can perform just as well if not better at lower elo's.
Irelia:
Irelia is a very disliked character as she can easily conquer lanes in lower elo's. She works insanely well with the item Blade of the Ruined King, as its passive and stats are basically made for her. But everybody that has picked Irelia even once knows that it just doesn't work like that. Her Q ability is a dash that resets if you consume a mark or kill the opponent with it. This means you have a great wave clear ability and can almost always get high creep score numbers with her. Not to forget that it also gives her loads of mobility.
For every spell Irelia hits, she also gets a passive stack, granting her attack speed when at 4 stacks. A typical Irelia combo would be to dash at a minion and throw your e ability while you are dashing to stun your opponent. This marks them and allows you to Q them twice. Now this sounds very easy but her e is actually very hard to hit as you need to throw two blades and the space between those blades is the actual stun.
Irelia is a very snowbally champion when ahead as she doesn't need to hit her stuns anymore to chase you down, but getting to that point versus knowledgeable good players is almost impossible. Her timings are very obvious, and she is very easy to punish if her Q cooldown did not reset. She needs complete mastery in wave control and mechanics to be played well and even pro players admit that nobody can play irelia to perfection.
Bot Lane
Ezreal:
Ezreal has a great kit with lots of poke but most importantly a blink on his E. This is basically a second flash on a 15-second cooldown. Now you can always tell apart a good or bad Ezreal on whether they can hit their Q's, but you can definitely tell apart a good and a mastered Ezreal on how they use their E “Arcane Shift”. If they are always shifting themselves into bad positions, chances are they are quite new to the champion. It is a very versatile spell as it can be used both offensively and defensively.
Mastering this and combining it with the skill shot heavy kit takes quite a while and makes him very difficult.
Aphelios:
Aphelios difficulty doesn't come from his general gameplay or spells. Aphelios is hard because you need to remember a lot of details. He has 5 different weapons that all do different things. He has a sniper, a life steal weapon, a stun gun, a flamethrower, and even some chakrams at his disposal.
Instead of putting levels into your skills, you are able to choose between lethality, attack damage and attack speed at every level up. Every weapon of his has 50 shots and his Q ability consumes 10 ammunition as well. If you auto attack, you use ammo too. After one weapon runs out, he gets the next one in an always repeating cycle. He always has two weapons in hand to rotate in between, as the different primary and secondary guns have different effects on his skills.
Remembering all this already takes an insane ammount of games but this isnt where his skill ceiling comes in. The hardest part of any aphelios player is rotating your guns in a way that gives you the best weapons for whatever situation to come. The Sniper might be really good during the laning phase but wont help you out alot if you are brawling close quarters in the jungle so you need to account for that to happen in the future and setup your guns to be ready.
This is what makes Aphelios insanely hard as you always need to actively think about what could happen in the next 2-5 minutes in your game and prepare accordingly.
Support
Thresh:
Thresh is one of the most difficult champions to master. His Q is a great hook ability where you can follow up. His W allows you to get teammates into action or into safety and his E can even cancel enemy dashes if used right. Overall his Kit just does a lot but needs to be used right to provide value. If you misstime or miss one of your critical spells you are left useless for 10+ seconds. In any given situation there are multiple ways to play the champion and choosing the right one might be a little difficult for inexperienced players.
Bard:
Everybody has their own bard story. The Champion can be the best or the worst depending on who plays it. His Q is a stun that requires a second enemy behind the target or a bit of terrain to connect on. Its already hard to hit as it is but bard players need to be a bit careful with aiming it. Placing the E ability smart can make or break a laning phase as you can gank your own lane with the jungler and surprise your enemies from behind.
The ability that is the most important for a good bard is the Ultimate. Basically it is an area of effect zhonyas effect that even works on towers. It can affect enemies and your allies. It has infinite ammounts of applications. You can use it to stop a herald from charging your turret, stopping a team from getting baron or drake and you can even catch enemies that overstep IF you hit it. Sometimes you can also use it to safe your teammates but thats very unreliable and can lead to some not so nice interactions.
The payoff of an insane 5 man bard ult can change the game but most bards just throw it at the first opportunity and dont use it to its fullest potential. This ability alone makes Bard very hit or miss.
Thats our list for the hardest champions in League of Legends. Do you agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments!