With over 160 champions in League, each with their unique abilities and play styles, picking just one or two can be an extremely daunting task. This vast array of options can make it challenging to find the champion that suits you best or to really understand what to look for in a champ. This article aims to guide you on how to find your main champion in League of Legends, whether you’re new to the game or have been playing for a while.

Why Should You Find a Main?

Before we delve into how to choose your main, it’s crucial to understand why you need one. Having a main champion allows you to master their mechanics, understand how they interact with other champions, and get a good grasp of their power curve. This mastery will enable you to perform more reliably in games.

Many players don’t think having a main is necessary. They switch between different champions every game, making it difficult to find any sort of consistency. The issue with this approach is that every game of League of Legends is different, with an endless number of team compositions and individual player skills and play styles. Constantly adjusting to different champions and play styles can be challenging, and swapping between different champions every game only compounds this difficulty.

How to Find Your Main

Finding your main champion involves recognizing that most players are drawn to a broad category of champions. For instance, if you’re a support main that mains Janna, your other top-played champions tend to be other enchanters like Nami, Sona, Lulu, and Soraka. It’s rare to find someone who likes champions with contrasting play styles like Zed and Seraphine in their most-played list. It may be best to first look at the variety of available classes and go from there.

Classes

Here are some broad champion classes to consider:

Assassins

These champions rely on high burst damage and mobility to eliminate squishy targets.

Bruisers

Bruisers are champions who are generally durable and deal good damage.

Enchanters

The enchanters are support-style picks, with most of their worth coming from healing and shielding to keep allies alive in fights.

Mages

Mages are casters that rely on spells to either poke from afar or burst down enemies.

Marksmen

These are ranged champions that generally rely on their auto attacks to dish out damage.

Tanks

Tanks are the beefy champions with a good amount of crowd control to engage fights and disrupt the enemy team.

Juggernauts

The juggernauts are a mix of bruiser and tank, super durable but also dealing a ridiculous amount of damage.

Roles

Once you’ve decided on the class that suits your abilities and play style best, it’s time to figure out what role you want to go with. Each role in League has its unique characteristics and challenges. For instance, playing top lane means you’re in the most isolated of any of the roles, while jungling is probably the most stressful and thankless but also the most influential on how the game plays out early.

Mid lane has the most variance. There are some outstanding mid laners that do nothing but shove, and perma roam, then there are equally talented mid laners who more or less AFK farm and play to scale. It’s probably the easiest role to just play safe and scale with since you’re alone and have a short lane to travel.

Bot carry is generally considered the role with the least amount of agency, especially if you’re playing with traditional ADCs which require support to set up plays. They’ll often be able to unleash insane amounts of damage when the situation is set up correctly. Alternatively, you can just play a mage in this role and win the lane alone anyway.

Lastly, we have the support role. Contrary to what many may say, support is a really complex role when looking at skill ceiling instead of the skill floor. Supports have the burden of setting the pace on the bot lane, trying to roam on good timers early, playing for vision in the mid to late game, and facilitating team fights.

These are, overall pretty broad guidelines to help you figure out what you would like to do. Once you’ve decided on the role you think you’ll perform best with, it’s time to actually pick a champion.

What Comes Next?

To help answer these three questions of which class, which role, and which champion you should main, reflect on some basic personal preferences by asking yourself some questions. Would you want to be a lone wolf or group up for team fights? Do you want to lead the charge? Would you want to be a damage dealer or go for more utility? Do you want high risk, high reward, or something more consistent but with less agency to carry?

Remember, finding a main isn’t about being a one-trick for your whole League career. It’s important to be a well-rounded player. After figuring out your main, make sure you practice a few alternative picks in your main role and one to two other picks in other roles for when you don’t get your main role.

It’s also important to understand finding a main is all about finding the pick that you love to play. You won’t be able to put a thousand games on something you find boring. But keep in mind the whole reason that you’re trying to find a main is to win more games. You probably don’t want to main some champ that’s chronically in the detail for solo queues like Aphelios.

The process requires self-reflection and an understanding of the game’s mechanics. So take your time, experiment with different champions and roles, learn more about the game and the champions, and find the one that clicks perfectly for you.