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Cloud9's Best League of Legends Champions for Beginners
The new player experience for League of Legends can be extremely daunting, so we’ve got some recommendations on champions to help you get started (with a little help from Cloud9).
As popular as Riot Games’ hit MOBA is, the game is incredibly dense and features over 165 champions for players to choose from (or ban, in most game modes). Below is a list of the best League of Legends champions for beginners, hand-selected by the professional players on Cloud’s League Championship Series team.
Orianna (League of Legends)
© Riot Games
Orianna
When we asked Cloud9’s LCS squad what picks were the best League of Legends Champions for beginners, Orianna was the most common answer. The Lady of Clockwork was released on June 1st, 2011 and has since established herself as the quintessential mid lane champion on Summoner’s Rift.
Through over a decade of new champion releases with increasingly nuanced abilities, Orianna has stood the test of time because of her well-roundedness as a control mage, but also because of her extremely smooth skill curve. “The way the champion works, she is very simple, but she's also got quite a high skill ceiling,” Cloud9 support Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme told Akshon Media during the 2024 LCS Spring Split. “She’s easy to pick up, so you’ve got a lot of room to improve as you play the champ.”
Orianna’s kit is easy to understand – everything centers around her ball. She can damage enemies when she moves it with her Q, Command: Attack, and her E, Command: Protect, can attach her ball to herself or a teammate and provide a shield. Her W, Command: Dissonance, does damage in the area around the ball and then leaves a field that slows enemy units and speeds up friendly units. Her ultimate, Shockwave, is one of the most iconic abilities in League of Legends and can completely define a teamfight if used properly.
Simply put, Orianna is easy to learn, but difficult to master. Her entire kit being based around the position and function of her ball makes her easy to comprehend, but how well a player can execute on both the offensive and defensive aspects of her ability set is what makes the difference between an acceptable Orianna player and superb one.
Ashe (League of Legends)
© Riot Games
Ashe
It’s no secret that Ashe is a quintessential champion for new League of Legends players — she’s in the tutorial for a reason. Ashe is many a player’s first League of Legends champion, but her versatility and clear style of play make the Frost Archer ever present at all levels of play.
“I feel like whenever you play Ashe, you kind of know what you're doing,” said Cloud9 top laner Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami. “Like, you just press W on them, you just auto attack them, you just ult them. And then you just like, just keep W’ing them. It's very simple.”
AD carry is a role that prioritizes damage above all else, but Ashe’s abilities offer multiple forms of utility. As Fudge said above, her W, Volley, is the staple of her kit. Volley has long range, a wide spread, and slows anyone it hits. Her Passive, Frost Shot, gives her auto attacks slow and her Q, Ranger’s Focus, can be utilized for a damage boost after being built up by multiple consecutive hits on an enemy. Her ultimate, Enchanted Crystal Arrow, has global range and can be used for engages in team fights or cross-map snipe plays.
Ashe’s E, Hawkshot, is great for scouting vision, but is also thematically removed enough from the rest of her kit that it serves as great “training wheels” for new players to get used to constantly scouring their minimap for vision.
Ashe hasn’t gone out of style because she’s easy to understand and the way she impacts the game is the same regardless of map state or team compositions.
Miss Fortune (League of Legends)
© Riot Games
Miss Fortune
Miss Fortune cannot match the utility offered by Ashe’s kit, but there are plenty of aspects of her playstyle that make her a great League of Legends champions for beginners. New League of Legends players will be hard-pressed to find a less skill-intensive champion that can pump out as much damage as MF.
“Each game is pretty much the same,” said Vulcan. “There's no skillshots so you don't have to focus on that as an AD carry compared to Ezreal, who wants to farm and hit his Q’s at the same time. That’s a bit more complicated, but MF is very, very straightforward.”
Miss Fortune’s E, Make It Rain, can be used for poke and slows enemies that enter its area of effects. When combined with the speed boost from her W, Strut, she can be pretty slippery when compared to other dash-less champions. Her Passive, Love Tap, and Q, Double-Up give her a lot of lane priority, making her a fierce early game threat.
After the laning phase, Miss Fortune only had one objective - Bullet Time. Her area-of-effect ultimate allows MF to win a teamfight with one click of R — as long as your aim and timing is right.
Like Ashe, Miss Fortune’s gameplan on Summoner’s Rift is relatively binary, and with a strong early game, mobility that allows for margin for error; and massive aoe damage on her ultimate, she can be used to great effect with simple mechanics and an even simpler approach.
Teemo (League of Legends)
© Riot Games
Teemo
Despite technically being the “newest” player to League of Legenda on the Cloud9 LCS roster, Jojopyun struggled more than any of his teammates when trying to think of good League of Legends champions for beginners.
“Actually,” the C9 mid laner said after a long pause, “Teemo’s not bad because you have mushrooms for vision and you can really play for your lane. You have to look at your map, and play for split push — I feel like that kind of teaches you more about the game.”
Teemo is, depending on who one asks, a beloved or deeply hated champion in League of Legends. His Q, Blinding Dart, is one of the few blind effects still in LoL, and his E, Toxic Shot, adds poison to his auto-attacks. The Swift Scout can chase people down or run away with his self-explanatory W, Move Quick.
These three abilities, combined with good auto-attack range, make Teemo a tall task to stand up against in lane, especially for melee range champions like tanks and bruisers that comprise most of the top lane champions in League of Legends. Teemo is relatively useless in teamfights, so his best bet is to leverage a lane in advantage to become a threat in the side lanes. This style of play, like Jojopyun referenced, forces players to be aware of the rest of the map.
The mushrooms of his ultimate, Noxious Trap, give vision similar to Wards, but also poison and slow enemies who walk over them, giving Teemo options to escape or try and contest enemies who have come to match his pressure.
Karthus (League of Legends)
© Riot Games
Karthus
There is no harder role in League of Legends than jungle, especially for beginners. Not only are you without a linear path to experience by means of laning, but the early game is often dependent entirely on a jungler’s decision making and how well they can execute on those decisions. However, there is one champion that has a far more straightforward game plan than any other in the jungle.
“I think if you want to learn how to jungle, something like Karthus is pretty nice, for example, because you’re pretty much just learning what camps you should be clearing,” explained Cloud9 jungler Robert “Blaber” Huang, “I don't really think you're jungling if you're doing three camps and ganking, and that's the only thing you do. Because you're just hoping the enemy ints, if that makes sense.”
This isn’t to say Karthus can’t provide presence on the map, of course — he just doesn’t usually gank like other junglers. His Requiem globally targets all enemies, meaning he can secure kills in any lane from anywhere on the mark with a well-timed ultimate. And while he may not have the best kit for ganking, his other abilities can hit multiple targets, making him a serious threat in neutral objective fights.
In terms of durability, Karthus might as well be made of glass, but the fact that his Passive, Death Defied, allows him to cast spells for a short period of time after allows margin for error — and occasionally rewards it.
