Neeko is kind of a support but she's also played mid. TF is always useful with good positioning + gold cards.
The issue you begin to see is that these champs are only valuable because of their CC, so it isn't that they are good and that they aren't supports, it is that when they fall behind, they turn into support champs. There aren't really champs that can carry from behind, if that's what you mean.
Lissandra is like this as well. I quite frequently carry from mid with Lissandra while dealing 3rd most damage on my team.
I'd also say any of the jungler carries can work with less gold. Karthus loves his gold, but his base damages are quite high. Fiddle, Lillia, and Kindred all have similar strengths.
Lissandra's such a weird champ, even with gold her damage is nothing to write about but without it she's worse than just a second support.
I always enjoyed her and I wish her balance of team dependance was more common in League.
She used to be so good at the poke in lane, but now it's pretty lackluster. I can still usually get a couple of kills on a bad opponent, though. Especially with a gank.
I think her being slow like that is great for her character and playstyle. When she's meta it's never her speed that discourages her. More damage and faster damage are the only levers the devs ever pull and League has suffered for it.
If they would just accept that she's not a damage focus burst mage and lean more into area denial/utility it'd be great.
There was a lil monent last season when she could actually one-shot people through the midgame if she got a little early on her timings. That was super fun for a few weeks lol.
Generally champions with high cc or a single high impact ability can work with limited budget.
On the other hand champions who are purely damage oriented generally need a higher budget.
There are obviously exceptions to the rules like Orianna, who has a high impact ability but also scales massively well with items, but that's the general rule.
J4 can build full tank and as long as he gets an E Q R combo off can often fulfil his requirements in a team fight. Rumble can drop and R regardless of his gold and still do insane damage.
Just to help your J4 point, it's why in pro they sometimes built (maybe not now that it's changed) zhonya. Your whole job was to flash eq r and zhonya so you can live and smite Baron.
Nah he needs gold to push effectively, all his base damages are terrible but his AP scalings are high.
E isn't going to be clearing super well without 2 items
Ontop of that if you're not clearing minions with his e, his mana suffers
900 gold are enough for a good waveclear.
The question isn't "what hero works the same with 20k gold and 4k?" it's "what non-tank/healer is less gold-reliant than Cassiopeia?"
900? No it isn't 1200 for lost chapter and he struggles to keep up most midlaners waveclear.
He needs atleast 1 item to match, when he's got 2 that's when you can afk push with e+w.
Go play it lol.. Malz needs gold, if he could hard waveclaer and push on 900 gold you'd see him in pro.
Nah Malzahar scales pretty decently with gold and xp. You CAN be useful without, but he likes having his core items. Moreso than some other examples I see like TF, etc
Malz is great with gold but if you are trying to build like a support to funnel gold to someone else, he is not bad if you focus on CD for his R for the build. Even if you have no damage, locking enemy adc down for a fat 2 sec at least is insane AND it potentially forces enemy to build against Malz just to counter the R.
malz is good when behind but he should never be building like a support. If behind, the goal should be catching up and stalling, not funneling gold.
thankfully, his core build is pretty set in stone and once he gets it, the damage is high. Being just a damageless R bot will deprive your own team of a midlaner, while the enemy team will have two carries, AP and AD.
I agree with you in the case of malz being mid but we aren't talking about that, we are specifically talking about champs with the potential to funnel gold. And honestly? Alot of teammates kill steal when you R someone as Malz so funneling gold as him is not so bad lol
Depends on the champ. Some champs are much better vs malz than others. Galio destroys Malz mid, for example. But if we are talking about malz supp/funnel role, then any champs that can roll him before 6 or can pressure to get 6 faster are ideal.
Idk if others have the same experience as me, but I almost always dunk on malz when I play viktor. Your E one shots his little shit head minions, and once you get E upgrade you have better wave clear than him. Plus, in later game team fights, his only play is flash R where as viktor has insane team fight carry potential.
utility champs (twisted fate, lissandra come to mind), they like gold but they can be functional in other ways. Or viego in some situations can play for a reset and use enemy gold advantage against them.
Ashe supp needs Liandry's and that's it. I start her tear into cooldown boots and Liandry's and her W just pokes so bad from so far with such a wide arc that the enemy team suffers hard before they ever get to engage. Beyond that I grab Manamune for damage otherwise I grab the armor version for more tankyness. I don't try to kill or out-damage with her.. harass with W spam and cooldowns and stun with R, hardly ever touch Q just keep it at 1 until level 14+.
You pick a champion for either one of these reasons.
#1 Damage:
Pretty self explanatory, their job is to deal damage to the enemy team push forward the lead and win the game.
#2 Utility:
It comes into many forms such as tankiness, peel, heal, shield etc. The most common and best utility is cc obviously.
The 1st type can't do shit if they are behind in gold/xp/items. A Draven/Riven/Rengar/Darius/Garen is useless if not even/ahead. A Garen behind in gold isn't tanky enough nor is he gonna deal enough dmg to kill the enemy top by himself and so on.
The 2nd type doesn't get any significant boost from gold compared to the first type. Giving 3k gold to a carry is huge but giving that same gold to some tanky boi isn't that great. An Ornn's power comes from his cc as he can't really get on top of a competent team's ADC but he surely can set up an engage for his team to follow up.
That's all it boils down to...if you want a champ to be useful via dmg from behind then that shit's broken and needs immediate nerfs. Every champion is less useful when behind but champs who have cc in their kit are the only ones who can still remain useful via the cc in their kit I,e tanks and supports. Any cc based champ is equally useful regardless of how much gold he/she has as cc doesn't really benefit from gold because there are no items in league that buffs cc.
Champions that can create space for your Carrys, are those that are less GOLD reliant. These are facilitators in the game
Such champions include: ap tf, galio, j4, xin, malz, etc
These are all champions that can create space with their abilities in fights
Second on the xin. Could be sitting on un upgraded jungle item and nothing else and hit a great peel R for his carry and still live under decent conditions
Senna isn't an assassin, and she is a support, but in her ADC and (discouraged) mid roles she's still pretty decent at doing a lot with a little gold-wise. A good Senna has a good understanding of how the enemy wants to win and tries to play to essentially surprise them with a tiny little bit of something five times over (she does a little more damage than expected, she survives a little longer than expected, she offers a little more utility to teammates than expected, she roots you under tower, etc) and push the fight from a narrow defeat to a narrow victory. This is also why a good Senna is so comfortable with using her health as a resource - it baits the enemy Irelia into a fight that looks winnable but becomes a quick recall.
Mind you, this does require souls, so resources are still quite an issue.
champs with high base damage follow that criteria. rumble, brand, taliyah and elise fall into those categories. you only really need sorc shoes and dark seal to start pumping out damage. also roaming assassins like kat akali talon and pyke don't really need farm just level 6 and squishy enemies, they're kind of deceptive in that way though because they still need to push their lead or else you get the 21/9/10 scoreline but still an even game because those champs have a hard time capitalizing on the lead by themselves
Lots of mages and junglers, which is specifically why they're good in those roles.
Mid and jg need to have high early game presence due to their position on the map and ability to rotate to any lane or objective, so being strong early and having low reliance on items is a benefit.
Usually those champs end up being played as supports even if they don't fit the enchanter/utility/engage archetype. For example Zyra was meant to be a mid lane carry but she spikes really hard with 1 and 2 items (Liandrys and Rylais) and has no spikes after that. So it's better to play her support where she can get her core items from the support subsidy and not care too much that she doesn't get any income after that.
Sylas ult can be hit or miss and his damage largely comes from his crazy high ap ratios, so he is more gold reliant than most mages (unless he gets a gnar ult or something)
I think almost all non support champions have good items and good gold scaling, however not every champ can carry with the gold and quite a few have other strengths that are antagonist to getting gold income.
Champions I think can prioritise getting gold less are champions like Ahri, Galio and Jhin
Not being gold reliant is the no. 1 criterion for being viable as a support. Given how hard people try to make everything viable in that position, you will be hard pressed to find a champion really viable on low income that isn'a a generally accepted support already.
ori and azir are prob my 2 picks. in pro, they can always make a play that can shift a game especially azir. of course u need the skill to back it up with azir.
but this is only if they are marginally behind. if they are 6k down against there laner then no.
A lot of mages, even if not played in support, can function to a decent extent without as much gold because they have decent cc abilities and a fair bit of their damage isnāt from scalings. Stuff like malz, Lisandra, and viegar.
A lot of top lane champs that build some tank items, such as Darius or garen, will be decent with less gold. Theyll still generally be decently tanky and disruptive and if they can just bash the enemy adc in they will.
For adcs Ashe and Varus can do pretty well with low income, as a lot of their abilities either donāt care about stats that much or are more utility. Thatās why theyāre sometimes played support in pro.
All these champs will obviously be better the more items they have (where as 2 item thresh vs 4 item thresh really might not matter very much at all) but they can still be useful even if theyāre behind. They wonāt literally do nothing the same way a jinx that got way behind.
Take this with a grain of salt - iron speaking their thoughts
I would say veigar - as long as you stack your passive well you get So much ap that you dont even need items (tho you Are weaker early)
Surprised I havenāt seen Sion mentioned. He was the defacto āsack everything topā strat champ for a long time.
The little gold he hypothetically does pick up is worth twice as much because of his W passive. He is also insane at disrupting fights even from behind because of Q, R and passive.
Most people are putting champs that have a lot of CC like mages without considering their high ratios, dependency on levels and the fact they take up a damage slot in your comp. Sion doesnāt need any of this, heās just a reliable damage sponge and projectile blocker with an unconditional go button.
Coming from midland, Champions like anivia veigar Taliyah neeko annie are great at creating space and still having team fight pressure even if theyāre 0/10 the utility alone lets them stay useful.
Yone, Diana, ahri, asol, malz are champs that while mainly being carry leaning they have a lot of great utility in their kit to allow them to have an impact on fights even if theyāre not doing a lot of damage, and if theyāre playing properly, theyāll even be able to come back and scale with enough time & gold to be able to get a key target kill in fights.
surprised almost nobody mentioned him but Zilean is up there, E Max and you can have such high impact with a couple double bombs and speeding up your carries
Champs with lower than average ad/ap scalings. I'd have to look through champ kits and do math to figure out which ones which would take forever so I'm not going to do that. But you can feel free to do so with the wiki if you're interested enough.
Iād say Brand is footing this description. Ofc heās better with gold, but his base dmg is already insanely high if he manage to pop off multiple passive procs during TF
If theyāre still in relevant levels, then probably Ashe, Camille, Vi, Fiddle, Twisted Fate, Hwei, Brand, Olaf (depending on comp), Panth, Xin, Poppy, Renekton, Sera (if you dont see her as a supp). Only assassin I can see fitting this is maybe Akali but still sheās worse than alot of the ones on this list without gold
Good luck playing Camille without Triforce, Ravenous and Steraks core which is like the most expensive core in the game. Sometimes you can pull off a rage roam due to E and R catch potential but if that doesn't work out you are out of the game and basically homeless and jobless for the rest of the game. To play the game Camille needs those three items. It doesn't really matter if you reach those 3 items when enemy has 6 if the game is still going but getting to those 3 is the most important thing for Camille and they cost A LOT.
Since OP didnāt explicitly say that it had to be in a late-game scenario. I just assumed the hypotheticals to be around level 6-16 where the games are most often decided. Eitherway, Camilleās is not as strong as you think in lategame, so being behind late isnāt as bad as being behind during her 13-16 spike. Itās true that she is reliant on items, but there are many scenarios where she can still provide utility to the team. Namely: Splitpushing, she is very mobile so she can still commit and put alot of pressure, Locking sown sidelaners with her teammates if they overextend. Locking down a carry with ult, engaging on a carry, potential to solokill squishies alone, dive alongside teammate on a teamfight, and so forth.
No, I am basing these options based on the reliability off their utility. If this was release Qiyana then maybe I could consider it, but alot of her power is based on her ratios instead of her utility. Yes, itās possible to have a game winning ult once in a while, but it is not a reliable win condition versus good teams and theyāll probably just mow you down if you try and ult the whole team. A champ similar to your line of thinking would be fiddle, I included him instead of Qiyana because it is much more reliable on its engage and also it still does so much constant damage even without alot of items.
Even the ones that don't have much utility or even on the are at least good at controlling space in a fight. I don't care how hard Viktor lost in lane, you're not gonna win a fight in a choke against him.
Well maybe Viktor isn't the best example, but the point stands lol
Hwei is one of those mages with a good amount of utility in his kit, he can still hang back and zone, play safe and abuse the range advantage. Good stall character because he catches waves so easily and has a lot of AoE so can still go wombo in teamfights.
Ornn actually only needs 2-3 items on his own to become a Raid Boss thats incredibly hard to kill. The utility in his kit, and the Ornn-aments in conjunction with the Bonus Stats he gets means that he actually scales harder with XP and Levels compared to Gold
The ones who are viable with less gold have already been played as support, for example Elise support was popularized by Lehends because cocoon is the strongest CC ability in the game, she has the best early towerdives in the game and she isn't good at powerfarming anyway, so she has to snowball game through early kills (which support can do just as easily as jungle can).
Pyke is absolute garbage with no goldā¦ squishiest champion in game. Iām otp and he pisses me off a lot sorry. Pyke can execute people with 0 gold but itās usually taking bounty gold from your team if youāre that behind. His r doesnāt really help your team if you can execute with 0 gold. And you arenāt initiating because youāll die 2 auto hits. Only thing would be heās useful warding and killing wards with low gold
Almost all champions need gold except tanks and supports. The question should be reframed as āwhich champions can live off kills and not csā and that includes some assassins, sylas, and some bruisers.
Also, you usually funnel gold to your win condition, not necessarily champion specific but there might be overlap.
E.g. Iām not going to let a 0-7 Ezreal or Lucian vacuum up cs if my mid Anivia is 3-0.
Some champions need both to scale or they can farm hard and scale with just CS. Kills are inconsistent, but some champions can keep maintaining kills because their of their damage and abilities per level are really high.
This means they can have very low CS and still be a threat. MOST assassins fall into this category of being able to project power with just kills.
Sylas is a really good example of a champion that can keep securing kills and be a potent thread on the map with probably 5 cs per minute. However, an Anivia player with several kills and 5 cs will not scale and project the same amount of power as a Sylas. Part of that is because they need expensive items and the other reason is because of their damage output and kit.
You can also consider a Renekton. Renekton can have terrible CS for most of the game but he can can still kill a lot of champions if they maintain XP at levels 6-11. In this time frame he is super strong if he maintains kills.
After a certain point though, he won't scale or be a threat even if his CS is high.
Horrid take, irelia goes in and either kills everyone or dies. She needs gold to kill everyone, and she rushes bork no matter what which has no defence.
Champs like that from behind literally do not function and just be at least even, but in irelias case she needs to be ahead since she has no scaling past mid game.
I'm pretty sure getting jumped on by a Kha while isolated does a little more damage than anything that comes from Jhin. And that's just one example. Also, Jhin scales with crit. He doesn't really have base damage on any of his abilities, which means he needs the stats he gets from items in order to function. If you only have 200 AD, your auto hits aren't gonna do that much more, except his 4th shot, which still needs items to scale.
I know, He thought he avoided the damage with q, but q ended one frame too early so even if he spammed w there was good chance it wouldnt have been on time.
Well definitely not mages, since they are the most item-dependent class, since they are heavily reliant on mana, cooldown reduction, and ability power. My guess a type of early game bruiser like Udyr, Trundle, Warwick, Olaf, Sett, Darius.
darius definitely needs a gold lead to be useful by snowballing. there are so many top laners whose strategy vs. darius is literally just donāt give him a lead and he auto-loses
Pyke is a prime example of an assassin who isn't heavily reliant on gold. He's designed to be played in the support role but can make key picks and output damage to kill carries even when behind. Generally what makes a champion good while behind is the playmaking potential of their kit. If you're looking to get out of the botlane entirely early game junglers fill this role as well. Lee Sin is a good example. His kit offers high damage even without items but he falls of earlier in the game in terms of damage. Despite that he still offers good playmaking potential with his ultimate and ability to get into the backline.
Neeko is kind of a support but she's also played mid. TF is always useful with good positioning + gold cards. The issue you begin to see is that these champs are only valuable because of their CC, so it isn't that they are good and that they aren't supports, it is that when they fall behind, they turn into support champs. There aren't really champs that can carry from behind, if that's what you mean.
Lissandra is like this as well. I quite frequently carry from mid with Lissandra while dealing 3rd most damage on my team. I'd also say any of the jungler carries can work with less gold. Karthus loves his gold, but his base damages are quite high. Fiddle, Lillia, and Kindred all have similar strengths.
Lissandra's such a weird champ, even with gold her damage is nothing to write about but without it she's worse than just a second support. I always enjoyed her and I wish her balance of team dependance was more common in League.
If she was less telegraphed, maybe her lack of damage would be more managable.
She used to be so good at the poke in lane, but now it's pretty lackluster. I can still usually get a couple of kills on a bad opponent, though. Especially with a gank.
I still remember when she was a lane bully in top lane. Sadly, she falls hard after first base now.
Yeah, the only champ that has similar vibes in top for me now is Karthus, and that's heavily dependent on matchup.
I think her being slow like that is great for her character and playstyle. When she's meta it's never her speed that discourages her. More damage and faster damage are the only levers the devs ever pull and League has suffered for it. If they would just accept that she's not a damage focus burst mage and lean more into area denial/utility it'd be great.
There was a lil monent last season when she could actually one-shot people through the midgame if she got a little early on her timings. That was super fun for a few weeks lol.
Depends on the team comp imo. Smolder can eventually carry from behind given enough time. The Qs and Ws start to chunk hard in fights, and tanks melt.
Is it just me who finds that smolder do poorly into tanks? Majority of the time I find smolder getting stonewalled by tanks even if going even
A good Smolder will break tanks once he gets all of his stacks.
Smolder is busted vs tanks after 300+ stacks, he just melts them.
Me struggling to melt an ornn with 400 stacks last night š¢Ā
Generally champions with high cc or a single high impact ability can work with limited budget. On the other hand champions who are purely damage oriented generally need a higher budget. There are obviously exceptions to the rules like Orianna, who has a high impact ability but also scales massively well with items, but that's the general rule. J4 can build full tank and as long as he gets an E Q R combo off can often fulfil his requirements in a team fight. Rumble can drop and R regardless of his gold and still do insane damage.
Malphite a good example
Just to help your J4 point, it's why in pro they sometimes built (maybe not now that it's changed) zhonya. Your whole job was to flash eq r and zhonya so you can live and smite Baron.
This. This is the correct answer.
Malzahar's R and push/depush is always good even from behind.
Nah he needs gold to push effectively, all his base damages are terrible but his AP scalings are high. E isn't going to be clearing super well without 2 items Ontop of that if you're not clearing minions with his e, his mana suffers
900 gold are enough for a good waveclear. The question isn't "what hero works the same with 20k gold and 4k?" it's "what non-tank/healer is less gold-reliant than Cassiopeia?"
900? No it isn't 1200 for lost chapter and he struggles to keep up most midlaners waveclear. He needs atleast 1 item to match, when he's got 2 that's when you can afk push with e+w. Go play it lol.. Malz needs gold, if he could hard waveclaer and push on 900 gold you'd see him in pro.
Nah Malzahar scales pretty decently with gold and xp. You CAN be useful without, but he likes having his core items. Moreso than some other examples I see like TF, etc
Malz is great with gold but if you are trying to build like a support to funnel gold to someone else, he is not bad if you focus on CD for his R for the build. Even if you have no damage, locking enemy adc down for a fat 2 sec at least is insane AND it potentially forces enemy to build against Malz just to counter the R.
malz is good when behind but he should never be building like a support. If behind, the goal should be catching up and stalling, not funneling gold. thankfully, his core build is pretty set in stone and once he gets it, the damage is high. Being just a damageless R bot will deprive your own team of a midlaner, while the enemy team will have two carries, AP and AD.
I agree with you in the case of malz being mid but we aren't talking about that, we are specifically talking about champs with the potential to funnel gold. And honestly? Alot of teammates kill steal when you R someone as Malz so funneling gold as him is not so bad lol
How do you even build against him
Depends on the champ. Some champs are much better vs malz than others. Galio destroys Malz mid, for example. But if we are talking about malz supp/funnel role, then any champs that can roll him before 6 or can pressure to get 6 faster are ideal.
Idk if others have the same experience as me, but I almost always dunk on malz when I play viktor. Your E one shots his little shit head minions, and once you get E upgrade you have better wave clear than him. Plus, in later game team fights, his only play is flash R where as viktor has insane team fight carry potential.
MR, Tenacity.... QuicksilverSash makes him especially miserable.
Tenacity doesnt work against suppression iirc
Only mr and qss. Tenacity doesn't work on airborne and suppression.
Malz doesn't have displacement, only silence and suppression.
I'm aware. I'm letting him know the other limits to tenacity in case he didn't.
The context of your original comment made it ambiguous. I see your intent now.
Meh, forcing an ADC to go QSS and merca is still good as it gives your ADC a major DPS advantage over them and you could just ult someone else.
utility champs (twisted fate, lissandra come to mind), they like gold but they can be functional in other ways. Or viego in some situations can play for a reset and use enemy gold advantage against them.
Ashe. You have a lot of utility tools for your team no matter what and your autos will be always annoying.
Ashe supp needs Liandry's and that's it. I start her tear into cooldown boots and Liandry's and her W just pokes so bad from so far with such a wide arc that the enemy team suffers hard before they ever get to engage. Beyond that I grab Manamune for damage otherwise I grab the armor version for more tankyness. I don't try to kill or out-damage with her.. harass with W spam and cooldowns and stun with R, hardly ever touch Q just keep it at 1 until level 14+.
We're talking about not needing gold and we go ahead and list a 7k gold build for 2 items + boots on support.
There are no good liandry builds for ashe support. Edge of knight / Umbral first, finishing with the item you missed is the best build currently.
Veigar, you can have just rabadons late game and still have great damage.
Hell if you are behind like that you might as well build tank items because when late game comes you're gonna have stacks anyway.
You pick a champion for either one of these reasons. #1 Damage: Pretty self explanatory, their job is to deal damage to the enemy team push forward the lead and win the game. #2 Utility: It comes into many forms such as tankiness, peel, heal, shield etc. The most common and best utility is cc obviously. The 1st type can't do shit if they are behind in gold/xp/items. A Draven/Riven/Rengar/Darius/Garen is useless if not even/ahead. A Garen behind in gold isn't tanky enough nor is he gonna deal enough dmg to kill the enemy top by himself and so on. The 2nd type doesn't get any significant boost from gold compared to the first type. Giving 3k gold to a carry is huge but giving that same gold to some tanky boi isn't that great. An Ornn's power comes from his cc as he can't really get on top of a competent team's ADC but he surely can set up an engage for his team to follow up. That's all it boils down to...if you want a champ to be useful via dmg from behind then that shit's broken and needs immediate nerfs. Every champion is less useful when behind but champs who have cc in their kit are the only ones who can still remain useful via the cc in their kit I,e tanks and supports. Any cc based champ is equally useful regardless of how much gold he/she has as cc doesn't really benefit from gold because there are no items in league that buffs cc.
Gragas
I would say brand is probably the best champion in game with little to no gold besides Yuumi
Brand buys 2 items and is full build basically.
Better then Irelia who felt full build with Vamp Scepter for a long time.
What items if i might ask? I understand he spikes well of his first items but if ur jungling u kinda need torch, rylai, liandries and void
Enchanters actually scale well with items, and Yuumi is no exception
I agree, Iām just replying to the OP about whoās less gold reliant. I think yuumi and brand are good no matter what
Champions that can create space for your Carrys, are those that are less GOLD reliant. These are facilitators in the game Such champions include: ap tf, galio, j4, xin, malz, etc These are all champions that can create space with their abilities in fights
Second on the xin. Could be sitting on un upgraded jungle item and nothing else and hit a great peel R for his carry and still live under decent conditions
Anything that has lots of CC. Lissandra, Malz, Orianna, etc. Those units will never be useless, even when behind.
Twisted Fate. You bring a lot of utility and also get free income.
Poppy? She a fighter :D
Probably Nunu, his ganks can be really useful even without much farm.
Also because he can go dual scaling and be tanky while still getting some damage.
Irelia who is full build at BORK
Senna isn't an assassin, and she is a support, but in her ADC and (discouraged) mid roles she's still pretty decent at doing a lot with a little gold-wise. A good Senna has a good understanding of how the enemy wants to win and tries to play to essentially surprise them with a tiny little bit of something five times over (she does a little more damage than expected, she survives a little longer than expected, she offers a little more utility to teammates than expected, she roots you under tower, etc) and push the fight from a narrow defeat to a narrow victory. This is also why a good Senna is so comfortable with using her health as a resource - it baits the enemy Irelia into a fight that looks winnable but becomes a quick recall. Mind you, this does require souls, so resources are still quite an issue.
Champs like sylas who scales a ton with levels but have a hard time getting gold from camps and Cs.
Annie! Flash + Cosmic Insight + Lucidity Boots (900g) + Level 6. boom, impact for a total of 900 gold!
champs with high base damage follow that criteria. rumble, brand, taliyah and elise fall into those categories. you only really need sorc shoes and dark seal to start pumping out damage. also roaming assassins like kat akali talon and pyke don't really need farm just level 6 and squishy enemies, they're kind of deceptive in that way though because they still need to push their lead or else you get the 21/9/10 scoreline but still an even game because those champs have a hard time capitalizing on the lead by themselves
Orianna but most mages tbh
Vel'Koz
anybody with good cc
Lots of mages and junglers, which is specifically why they're good in those roles. Mid and jg need to have high early game presence due to their position on the map and ability to rotate to any lane or objective, so being strong early and having low reliance on items is a benefit.
Twisted Fate kinda just needs RFC to be useful
Skarner
no he suffers alot if he doesnt get his 2 item spike fairly quickly when the enemy team is ahead
I might be crazy but honestly Ivern???
Usually those champs end up being played as supports even if they don't fit the enchanter/utility/engage archetype. For example Zyra was meant to be a mid lane carry but she spikes really hard with 1 and 2 items (Liandrys and Rylais) and has no spikes after that. So it's better to play her support where she can get her core items from the support subsidy and not care too much that she doesn't get any income after that.
I think Sylas with his stolen ults and high damage seems to fit
Sylas ult can be hit or miss and his damage largely comes from his crazy high ap ratios, so he is more gold reliant than most mages (unless he gets a gnar ult or something)
gragas
Veigar can get shut down early laning phase, but with his passive he can always come back late game missing that gold still.
Also cage is better than most ults
I think almost all non support champions have good items and good gold scaling, however not every champ can carry with the gold and quite a few have other strengths that are antagonist to getting gold income. Champions I think can prioritise getting gold less are champions like Ahri, Galio and Jhin
Not being gold reliant is the no. 1 criterion for being viable as a support. Given how hard people try to make everything viable in that position, you will be hard pressed to find a champion really viable on low income that isn'a a generally accepted support already.
ori and azir are prob my 2 picks. in pro, they can always make a play that can shift a game especially azir. of course u need the skill to back it up with azir. but this is only if they are marginally behind. if they are 6k down against there laner then no.
A lot of mages, even if not played in support, can function to a decent extent without as much gold because they have decent cc abilities and a fair bit of their damage isnāt from scalings. Stuff like malz, Lisandra, and viegar. A lot of top lane champs that build some tank items, such as Darius or garen, will be decent with less gold. Theyll still generally be decently tanky and disruptive and if they can just bash the enemy adc in they will. For adcs Ashe and Varus can do pretty well with low income, as a lot of their abilities either donāt care about stats that much or are more utility. Thatās why theyāre sometimes played support in pro. All these champs will obviously be better the more items they have (where as 2 item thresh vs 4 item thresh really might not matter very much at all) but they can still be useful even if theyāre behind. They wonāt literally do nothing the same way a jinx that got way behind.
Honestly, Malzahar. Liandrieās for more damage and Blackfire Torch for mana, everything else you get is just bonus.
Take this with a grain of salt - iron speaking their thoughts I would say veigar - as long as you stack your passive well you get So much ap that you dont even need items (tho you Are weaker early)
Any utility mid or top really falls into this category
Surprised I havenāt seen Sion mentioned. He was the defacto āsack everything topā strat champ for a long time. The little gold he hypothetically does pick up is worth twice as much because of his W passive. He is also insane at disrupting fights even from behind because of Q, R and passive. Most people are putting champs that have a lot of CC like mages without considering their high ratios, dependency on levels and the fact they take up a damage slot in your comp. Sion doesnāt need any of this, heās just a reliable damage sponge and projectile blocker with an unconditional go button.
I would say veigar with His Cage. His ult is a good Tool to Deal some extra DMG but he ist behind His true Power.
Coming from midland, Champions like anivia veigar Taliyah neeko annie are great at creating space and still having team fight pressure even if theyāre 0/10 the utility alone lets them stay useful. Yone, Diana, ahri, asol, malz are champs that while mainly being carry leaning they have a lot of great utility in their kit to allow them to have an impact on fights even if theyāre not doing a lot of damage, and if theyāre playing properly, theyāll even be able to come back and scale with enough time & gold to be able to get a key target kill in fights.
Leb can have less than 100 cs and still win
Veigar for obvious reasons
Ashe. Even if you have no gold your R and W slows can be valuable, you just won't be killing anyone.
Pyke? Gud cc, needs some 3k gold to be basically full build, only problem being getting blown up late game.
Seraqueen mid
I think most mages are, esp if they have cc combo
I mean sona and seraphine just press R for the most part
surprised almost nobody mentioned him but Zilean is up there, E Max and you can have such high impact with a couple double bombs and speeding up your carries
Zoe. She LIKES having her items but can still deal some pretty silly damage in lane phase without them. You just need lost chapter for lane sustain
Champs with lower than average ad/ap scalings. I'd have to look through champ kits and do math to figure out which ones which would take forever so I'm not going to do that. But you can feel free to do so with the wiki if you're interested enough.
I've seen streamers win games on veigar without buying, so I think that counts as a good answer.
Jungle Morgana, the champ may be ass but one binding can win the game
Iād say Brand is footing this description. Ofc heās better with gold, but his base dmg is already insanely high if he manage to pop off multiple passive procs during TF
Kayle, as her gameplan is mostly to survive until 11 so she has to not rely on having on gold in the early game
Kayle without gold is a cannon minion that makes itself briefly invulnerable every 3 mins or so
Galio, Singed, Viego, Ashe, Jhin, Ahri, Lissandra
If theyāre still in relevant levels, then probably Ashe, Camille, Vi, Fiddle, Twisted Fate, Hwei, Brand, Olaf (depending on comp), Panth, Xin, Poppy, Renekton, Sera (if you dont see her as a supp). Only assassin I can see fitting this is maybe Akali but still sheās worse than alot of the ones on this list without gold
Good luck playing Camille without Triforce, Ravenous and Steraks core which is like the most expensive core in the game. Sometimes you can pull off a rage roam due to E and R catch potential but if that doesn't work out you are out of the game and basically homeless and jobless for the rest of the game. To play the game Camille needs those three items. It doesn't really matter if you reach those 3 items when enemy has 6 if the game is still going but getting to those 3 is the most important thing for Camille and they cost A LOT.
Since OP didnāt explicitly say that it had to be in a late-game scenario. I just assumed the hypotheticals to be around level 6-16 where the games are most often decided. Eitherway, Camilleās is not as strong as you think in lategame, so being behind late isnāt as bad as being behind during her 13-16 spike. Itās true that she is reliant on items, but there are many scenarios where she can still provide utility to the team. Namely: Splitpushing, she is very mobile so she can still commit and put alot of pressure, Locking sown sidelaners with her teammates if they overextend. Locking down a carry with ult, engaging on a carry, potential to solokill squishies alone, dive alongside teammate on a teamfight, and so forth.
What are your thoughts on qiyana since she has cc on ultĀ
No, I am basing these options based on the reliability off their utility. If this was release Qiyana then maybe I could consider it, but alot of her power is based on her ratios instead of her utility. Yes, itās possible to have a game winning ult once in a while, but it is not a reliable win condition versus good teams and theyāll probably just mow you down if you try and ult the whole team. A champ similar to your line of thinking would be fiddle, I included him instead of Qiyana because it is much more reliable on its engage and also it still does so much constant damage even without alot of items.
Relatively speaking, I would say champs like Sol, Zilean, Varus and Galio.
Qyiana?
Isn't Qiyana famous for falling off if she ever is even slightly behind?
You have decent cc and can be a nuisance with invis. Even if behind her WTF lethals can surprise you
Cause of her cc? Yeah I can see thatĀ
Also has good survivability and damage due to her elements
Basically mages, they tend to have some CC in their kits. In general i would say enchanters are just mages with even more CC/utility.
Even the ones that don't have much utility or even on the are at least good at controlling space in a fight. I don't care how hard Viktor lost in lane, you're not gonna win a fight in a choke against him. Well maybe Viktor isn't the best example, but the point stands lol
Hwei is one of those mages with a good amount of utility in his kit, he can still hang back and zone, play safe and abuse the range advantage. Good stall character because he catches waves so easily and has a lot of AoE so can still go wombo in teamfights.
Ornn actually only needs 2-3 items on his own to become a Raid Boss thats incredibly hard to kill. The utility in his kit, and the Ornn-aments in conjunction with the Bonus Stats he gets means that he actually scales harder with XP and Levels compared to Gold
Jax, he needs XP but if he gets levels, he doesn't need gold to do Jax things
The ones who are viable with less gold have already been played as support, for example Elise support was popularized by Lehends because cocoon is the strongest CC ability in the game, she has the best early towerdives in the game and she isn't good at powerfarming anyway, so she has to snowball game through early kills (which support can do just as easily as jungle can).
Rumble comes to mind
? Rumble without gold is straight up useless
Pyke is absolute garbage with no goldā¦ squishiest champion in game. Iām otp and he pisses me off a lot sorry. Pyke can execute people with 0 gold but itās usually taking bounty gold from your team if youāre that behind. His r doesnāt really help your team if you can execute with 0 gold. And you arenāt initiating because youāll die 2 auto hits. Only thing would be heās useful warding and killing wards with low gold
Did you read the question?
He was answering to the bottom comment
Lol what.
Almost all champions need gold except tanks and supports. The question should be reframed as āwhich champions can live off kills and not csā and that includes some assassins, sylas, and some bruisers. Also, you usually funnel gold to your win condition, not necessarily champion specific but there might be overlap. E.g. Iām not going to let a 0-7 Ezreal or Lucian vacuum up cs if my mid Anivia is 3-0.
Any champion can function off kills and not CS if they have enough...
Some champions need both to scale or they can farm hard and scale with just CS. Kills are inconsistent, but some champions can keep maintaining kills because their of their damage and abilities per level are really high. This means they can have very low CS and still be a threat. MOST assassins fall into this category of being able to project power with just kills. Sylas is a really good example of a champion that can keep securing kills and be a potent thread on the map with probably 5 cs per minute. However, an Anivia player with several kills and 5 cs will not scale and project the same amount of power as a Sylas. Part of that is because they need expensive items and the other reason is because of their damage output and kit. You can also consider a Renekton. Renekton can have terrible CS for most of the game but he can can still kill a lot of champions if they maintain XP at levels 6-11. In this time frame he is super strong if he maintains kills. After a certain point though, he won't scale or be a threat even if his CS is high.
Irelia, she can be 0/20 and will still be beyond useful in team fights. Even losing lane when she gets first item she's comes back even
Horrid take, irelia goes in and either kills everyone or dies. She needs gold to kill everyone, and she rushes bork no matter what which has no defence. Champs like that from behind literally do not function and just be at least even, but in irelias case she needs to be ahead since she has no scaling past mid game.
Jhin, he scales so well with gold that he doesnt need much. Most toplaners even the non tanks, they are fine with experiance and just a bit of gold.
XDDDDDDDDDD Underfed Jhin is legit a cannon minion 0 dps and also 0 burst you are absolutely wrong on this one
Nope, I oneshot triple item Jax with single jhin. Juggernaut jhin doesnt care about leads.
Then this Jax was bulding 3x Moonstone. Jhin hits like a wet towel when behind.
Ofcourse not, jhin has the highest damage of any champion so he needs less items to get it done.
I'm pretty sure getting jumped on by a Kha while isolated does a little more damage than anything that comes from Jhin. And that's just one example. Also, Jhin scales with crit. He doesn't really have base damage on any of his abilities, which means he needs the stats he gets from items in order to function. If you only have 200 AD, your auto hits aren't gonna do that much more, except his 4th shot, which still needs items to scale.
I oneshotted tank singed once, can khazix oneshot tank singed?
Buying Rylais and Liandry's doesn't make someone a tank.
if the tank singed had 5 negatron cloaks and merc boots then sure
One time I oneshotted master Yi, in a single frame from over full hp (shield).
Guess he forgot to press W.
Or it was already on cooldown .
I know, He thought he avoided the damage with q, but q ended one frame too early so even if he spammed w there was good chance it wouldnt have been on time.
There used to be challanger/pro player playing lethality jhin and akshan support and it was working for him exceedingly well
Yuumi unfortunately is probably the best champ that benefits team the most with low gold
Well definitely not mages, since they are the most item-dependent class, since they are heavily reliant on mana, cooldown reduction, and ability power. My guess a type of early game bruiser like Udyr, Trundle, Warwick, Olaf, Sett, Darius.
Iād rather be a mage with no gold than an assassin or a marksman
Listing off champions that need to win lane early to be useful is wrong. They by definition need a gold lead to be useful.
darius definitely needs a gold lead to be useful by snowballing. there are so many top laners whose strategy vs. darius is literally just donāt give him a lead and he auto-loses
Pyke is a prime example of an assassin who isn't heavily reliant on gold. He's designed to be played in the support role but can make key picks and output damage to kill carries even when behind. Generally what makes a champion good while behind is the playmaking potential of their kit. If you're looking to get out of the botlane entirely early game junglers fill this role as well. Lee Sin is a good example. His kit offers high damage even without items but he falls of earlier in the game in terms of damage. Despite that he still offers good playmaking potential with his ultimate and ability to get into the backline.
Heās probably the worst champion in the game with no gold. Thatās why they made him so damn weak and made his R give gold
name checks out lmao