10 Best LoL Champions for Beginners (Season 14)

Champion Mechanics 101

Before I get into the best beginner Champions LoL guide, let’s quickly go over some League of Legends basics.

Every Champion has a basic attack (or “auto attack”), four active abilities, a passive ability, and two summoner spells. It sounds complicated, but I promise it isn’t. The Champions recommended in this guide are great for beginners because they aren’t particularly difficult to play. That’s not to say they’re worse — there’s no correlation between difficulty and quality in League of Legends — they’re just easy to pick up and stay consistent all the way to high-level play.

Before choosing your Champion (or Champions, as you’re not limited to just one), you should know which role you plan to play. A Champion’s role is classified mostly by the section of the map they play in the game’s early phases, and not every Champion can play every role. I’ve broken down my recommendations by role so you can have a clearer idea of how each Champion fits into overall gameplay.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the LoL best champions for beginners!

Top Lane Champions for Beginners

Top lane (the curved lane on the top side of the map) is usually played by tanks or Champions that can easily initiate a teamfight. Most players consider top lane and its roster of characters to be the best beginner Champions in LoL since it’s separated from the chaos of the bottom side of the map (and because the most reliable Tanks are pretty simple to play).

#1 Garen 

Incredibly powerful and simple

Garen is probably the easiest Champion in the game, and he’s more powerful than you might think. He’s the tankiest of tanks, and his damage output is no joke. Garen is all about regenerating health through his passive, dealing lots of damage while taking very little. He’s fast and resilient, and can spin around like a Beyblade with a knife attached. 

Garen is a nightmare for the enemy team since he can tear through their health while tanking through most incoming damage. He’s precisely the kind of Champion a newer player should play, and my pick for the #1 best starter Champions LoL.

#2 Malphite

A “rock solid” pick

Malphite can be played as both a top laner or a support, but for learning the game I like him more as a top pick. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest is that he is great for teamfighting. Since this is such an important element of League, learning how it works on a champ like this is a great idea. Typically Malphite top builds tanky and uses his ultimate to stun large groups of people, allowing his team to lay in damage. This AOE stun (actually a knock-up) is easy to use and is great at teaching you how to optimize your positioning and look for great fight opportunities.

Jungle Champions for Beginners

Jungle (the areas between lanes) is by far the most difficult to play. You don’t even unlock Smite (the summoner spell required to play the role) until Level 9, so even the game doesn’t want you to start with it. Junglers have many responsibilities, namely maintaining the area and helping teammates as needed. Champions played in the Jungle role are typically versatile with either high damage output and/or good abilities for disabling enemies.

#3 Master Yi

High damage and versatility

Master Yi is all about high damage output. Only a few Champions have the potential to do as much damage as him in the late game, especially if he gets a few kills early on. His most frightening ability is his Q, which allows him to teleport onto enemies — once he’s on top of them, they usually die. 

He’s also a pretty safe pick since his ultimate makes him fast enough to get away from most situations and grants him immunity to slowing effects. Master Yi shreds through teams in unparalleled fashion, all while being a great Champion to use while learning the game. 

#4 Amumu

A helpful tank

Amumu is a good beginner Champion (and a good Champion in general) for two reasons — he’s got stun abilities that stop enemies in their tracks, and he’s tanky. While Master Yi focuses on doing damage and securing kills himself, Amumu assists teammates with their kills. He can deal damage, but he’s most useful when stunning enemies for his allies to pick off. If you prefer playing in a support-like style, Amumu would be an excellent starter jungler.

Mid Lane Champions for Beginners

Mid lane (the middle lane) can be played by several kinds of Champions, but is dominated by ones that specialize in burst damage. Mid is considered by many to be the most fun due to the explosive potential of most burst damage Champions, but it’s also a risky role. Junglers can surprise you from either side, and any other laners can show up in mid to cause you trouble. Still, sometimes the risk is half the fun.

#5 Lux

Burst damage for days

There’s a reason Lux has been one of the best League of Legends champions for beginners for over a decade. Lux is focused on doing high burst damage and even has a bind ability (essentially a stun) that guarantees the enemy won’t be able to avoid her damage. She also has a very long-range ultimate, which shoots a beam of light and does significant damage, allowing her to snipe kills from far away or finish off enemies that survive her initial blast of damage and think they’ve gotten away. Play Lux if you want to watch your enemies’ health bars go from 100 to 0 in two seconds.

#6 Annie

Has a bear (and sustainable damage)

Annie is a little girl with a teddy bear — sounds a little underwhelming, right? Well, the teddy bear can spawn a much larger bear that’s ready to kill anyone near it, and Annie herself has fire-based abilities. 

Annie’s damage is less burst-oriented than Lux’s, but she’s generally more consistent and safe than Lux. Since she can stun enemies with ease thanks to her passive, Annie can consistently shut down incoming threats and kill them before they kill her.

ADC / Bot Lane Champions for Beginners

The bot lane (the curved lane on the bottom of the map) is the second most complex after jungle because each team has two members in the lane. The first of the two roles in bot lane is ADC (Attack-Damage Carry), populated by ranged Champions that scale into the late game and do the highest DPS on the team. 

Unlike most Champions, ADCs find most of their damage through their auto-attacks, and the items they buy are centered almost entirely around boosting their DPS via these attacks. The role is a blast to play, but it’s also a very vulnerable role since ADCs typically have a small health pool and no way to escape from an enemy they can’t take on by themselves.

#7 Miss Fortune

A pirate with great abilities

Miss Fortune is a great starter ADC because she exemplifies everything about the role. Her damage output is insane, her abilities are focused mostly on boosting her damage potential, and she has no way to escape from a bad situation. This lack of escape potential is something ADC players must get used to, but it can help them learn how to play safer in other roles. 

Miss Fortune’s ultimate ability (a cone-shaped barrage of bullets) can also help new players learn about positioning, as it can wipe out several enemies at once but can also leave her vulnerable while she’s locked in place. She was my first ADC Champion, and I believe her gameplay helped me learn the game far more than the others would have.

#8 Caitlyn

A sniper with versatile abilities

Caitlyn is useful for several reasons, but her ability to quickly escape from bad situations makes her especially good for new players. Her E pushes her backward when activated, which helps her get away if she’s ambushed. Her Q is also pretty satisfying to use since she can push her lane forward, and her ultimate is a sniper shot that locks onto an enemy and can’t be dodged (though another Champion can block it). 

Caitlyn isn’t as easy to learn as Miss Fortune, but since her abilities have a slightly higher skill cap (in an easy-to-understand way), she functions as an excellent way to bridge the gap between the easiest ADCs and the most difficult ones.

Support Champions for Beginners

Playing support (the second role in the ADC/Bot lane) is a drastically different experience than all the other roles. You don’t want to kill minions or focus on doing damage (in most cases); instead, your goal is to keep the ADC alive. 

Supports usually offer either healing or other support abilities that keep enemies away from the ADC — in some cases, they even deal high damage on their own. To play Support, you have to be selfless. Supports are team players above all else.

#9 Sona

The ultimate healer

Sona is absolutely the best Support for someone that is new to the game and just wants to learn what they’re supposed to do. Sona only has one ability that has to be aimed (her ultimate), and the others either apply a boost/heal to her teammates or poke enemies with damage. 

Sona has no problem keeping her ADC alive, and in teamfights, she’s able to use her abilities on the rest of the team to give a significant advantage that the enemy team will have a difficult time fighting through. The only downside to Sona is that after playing her for a while, there’s a good chance you’ll begin to find her too easy. But that’s a good problem when considering her place on this list of best Champions in LoL for beginners!

#10 Blitzcrank

The best meme pick

Last on my list of best beginner Champions in LoL is Blitzcrank.

Blitzcrank isn’t all that complicated, but he has one particular ability that makes him a blast to play: his grab. Blitzcrank shoots his robot arm forward, and if it makes contact with an enemy, it pulls them to him. This ability never gets boring, and the panic of whomever it hits is always evident.

Blitzcrank’s other abilities focus mostly on disabling enemies, so when he does pull them to him, he can make sure they’re not going anywhere for a while. If you want to annoy the enemy team, Blitz is a great pick, and one of the best beginner League of Legends Champions around.

How to Play Each Role (An Overview)

So, before I wrap this article up, I want to touch once more on the roles in League of Legends. As I said before, you’ll want to at least be aware of the different roles and what they do before you get too far in the game. It isn’t important that you immediately have an in-depth knowledge of each, but knowing a little bit would be massively helpful.

Top Lane

Top is all about being a tank and engaging teamfights. Every good team comp needs at least one tank, and often times this ends up being the top laners role. However, top can also do a few other things. For one, there are a lot of “fringe” picks like Vayne and Akali that venture out of the tank category, but as a beginner you’d be best off sticking with the standard picks. Be tanky and cause problems for your enemies, it’s that simple.

Jungle

This is the most complex role to play. I recommend not starting out with Jungle, but you should be aware of what junglers do. In general, they handle the jungle. They go from side to side of the map, clearing jungle camps and warding/capturing objectives. They also “gank” lanes, meaning they come into help secure kills in-lane.

Mid Lane

Mid is the most popular role in League, which is largely due to some of the most popular characters being found there. You can play a wide variety of champions in Mid, but the most common types are mages and assassins. Mid champions can typically secure kills very quickly, or they’re good against champions that try and do that. You’ll want to be aggressive in Mid, and you can also try out roaming to other lanes to help them as well.

ADC / Bot Lane

Bot lane is the most chaotic lane in League due to how many people are down there, in addition to being close to the dragon pit. As an ADC, your role is to build a lot of attack damage and do high DPS with your auto attacks. ADCs tend to get stronger as the game goes on, so early game you’ll be quite weak. Late, though, most ADCs are able to kill enemies in the blink of an eye.

Support

Support is pretty simple, you just support your team. There are a few kinds of supports, ranging from “enchanters” (healers) to assassin-types. No matter which kind you play, though, your goal is always to help your team do better. This can be a frustrating role to play if your team refuses to work with you, but it can also be highly rewarding when you get teammates that understand your importance.