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8 annoying League of Legends champions that players hate to play against
Why do these champions even exist?
With well over 150 playable champions available, not every single matchup in League of Legends is going to be a walk in the park. Throughout the game’s nearly 14 years of existence, new mechanics and features have been introduced that have completely changed the landscape of how League is played, and some of these changes can be harder to adjust to than others.
Nearly every champion has gone through at least one period of unchecked dominance, which can feel oppressive to play against at best and straight up impossible to overcome at worst. No matter how strong or weak they are, some champions are utterly obnoxious to play against regardless of the abilities of the player piloting them or their rate of successful execution. Here are the 8 most annoying champions to play against in League of Legends.
1. Akali
Akali from League of Legends
© Riot Games
In the modern version of League of Legends, it’s difficult for assassins to make their way to the top levels of competitive play as often as other champion classes because of their often limited viability against a well-coordinated team.
Akali is the exception to these rules. Unlike most assassins, she has more than one ability that can give her viable harass and wave push to mitigate her disadvantages in lane as a melee champion, and her Shroud ability gives her move speed plus invisibility for quick escapes or daring outplays. Her ultimate gives her multiple dashes for dogged pursuit of would-be victims and, when you stack those on top of the fact that she can also dash to a target hit by her Shuriken, you have a kit with nearly unmatched mobility on Summoner’s Rift.
Akali isn’t the easiest champion to play, but her slipperiness makes the Rogue Assassin a chore to play against when ahead, and a terror to try and survive when behind.
2. Aphelios
Aphelios from League of Legends
© Riot Games
No kit in League of Legends was scrutinized the way Aphelios’ was upon release. Many new champions come out of the gate slightly overtuned or straight up OP, but Aphelios’ power wasn’t the main complaint of the playerbase – it was the fact that they had no idea what they were playing against.
This isn’t your classic tale of lower-level players getting their ankles broken by something they aren’t used to seeing, either – Aphelios befuddled members of the League of Legends playerbase at every level. His combinations of various guns that he can cycle through mean he can navigate different situations in different ways, but it is a lot to keep track of as an opponent if you haven’t played the Weapon of the Faithful much yourself.
“I’m not even going to lie, I have forgotten about Aphelios’ gun,” Nick “LS” De Cesare said on a stream during his time as a League of Legends Champions Korea caster in 2020. “I want to take this moment to say I am the LCK color caster and I will be casting LCK tomorrow. And I have no idea what that champion does. I’ve probably played against him about 100 times. Maybe more. I have no clue what I’m looking at, I don’t know what’s coming next. You just approach him and you’re guessing.”
Aphelios has since received countless nerfs over the years, and his relatively short range does require players to execute on his strengths with skill and patience, but keeping track of his variety of firepower options and the unique threats that come with them is a chore through and through.
3. Illaoi
Illaoi from League of Legends
© Riot Games
Since her release in 2015, Illaoi has had very well-defined strengths and weaknesses. She’s an oppressive lane bully who can dictate the pace of the lane through the zone control of her tentacles and the essentially free harass from her Test of Spirit ability. Illaoi doesn’t have any gap closers or engage in her kit, so she’s not the greatest teamfighter and can be played around, but she’s extremely hard to shut down once she gets rolling and can turn ganks around in her favor with a timely use of her ultimate, Leap of Faith, even if her lead is only a slight one.
There’s no other way to say it: playing against Illaoi sucks. More often than not, she’s going to win her lane and it’s not going to be fun for her opponent. There are few champions who can outduel her, even through superior execution, and if you give up even a single kill, be prepared to shut her down with the help of at least two of your teammates.
Fortunately, if Illaoi doesn’t get going in lane, it’s pretty tough for her to accomplish much of anything outside of it. If you can get through the laning phase against the Kraken Priestess without losing too much, chances are that you can provide more impact to your team than she can in the long run.
4. Master Yi
Master Yi from League of Legends
© Riot Games
Some champions are annoying to play against because of their complexity and amount of threats that have to be kept track of against them. Master Yi is not one of these champions. The Wuju Bladesman is as binary as they come; an untouched relic in the modern landscape of champion design. Master Yi wants to do one thing: farm until he is strong enough to take over the game by himself.
On one hand, a champion with well-defined strengths and weaknesses makes them easy to balance, but Master Yi’s problem isn’t whether he’s strong or not, it’s that he simply makes the game less fun for everyone else. If Master Yi takes over the game and wins, he most likely did so by completely ignoring his teammates and focusing entirely on farming. This not only makes his early game extremely telegraphed to opponents, it also leaves his team feeling like they are without a jungler. This can create a frustrating situation in the uncoordinated environment of solo queue unless the team happens to land on a composition built entirely around just Master Yi because his lack of ganking tools give him one viable option to win the game.
If Master Yi is behind, he offers no utility in the form of crowd control like Sejuani or enchanter-style support like Ivern. Yi creates a two-outcome situation where he’s either the star of the show or the anchor tied to his team tossed overboard. If things do go his way, he’s able to essentially 1v5 the opposing team with little to no counterplay. Master Yi’s kit is, simply put, antithetical to everything that League of Legends is about in 2023.
5. Teemo
Teemo from League of Legends
© Riot Games
Teemo has been one of the infamous mascots of League of Legends due to the duality of his cute appearance and utterly obnoxious gameplay. Like Master Yi, Teemo’s outdated kit lacks a bit of dimension in context of the current scope of League, and by extension, the ways in which he can affect a game are limited as well.
Teemo’s range and Blinding Dart ability make him a perfect lane bully, and his Move Quick ability allows him to extend long trades against the melee champions he can especially beat up on in the laning phase. After developing a lead, Teemo can continue to set up shop in the top lane once he gets his ultimate, Noxious Trap, which allows the Swift Scout to place invisible mushrooms that poison and slow when they are stepped on by opposing champions.
It can be tough to get to Teemo between his Move Quick and the levels of protection he can give himself with Noxious Traps, but if you keep the fight away from him, he has trouble bringing the same level of threat. Teemo is extremely squishy, he has no hard CC, and doesn’t offer much in the way of multi-target damage without time to set up. Unless he’s extremely fed from his laning phase, he’s not going to offer much to his team.
Teemo is not quite as egregious as Master Yi in terms of the binary nature of his kit, but ultimately, a team with Teemo will live and die by how well he does in the laning phase, stripping the nuance from the games in which he is picked. Make no mistake, though – he’ll be as annoying as possible while doing it.
6. Tryndamere
Tryndamere from League of Legends
© Riot Games
Tryndamere creates a problem for his team in that he only does one thing. Tryndamere creates a problem for the opponents because he does that one thing really, really well.
Whether his target is a minion, a tower, or a champion, Tryndamere wants to get in close and auto-attack that target until it’s dead. The rest of his kit is about making sure he can do this as long as possible. His entire kit builds up his Fury bar, which he can consume with his Bloodlust active to gain life back, creating nearly-unmatched sustain in the early game. His base stats are incredibly high so, while he’s not necessarily a laning menace, a single mistake can cost an opponent their entire laning phase.
All this makes Tryndamere annoying to play against, especially because even when he’s behind he can still be a menace to enemy structures if left unchecked in a side lane. But nothing is more annoying that the Barbarian King’s ultimate, Undying Rage. Undying Rage immediately gives Tryndamere Fury and also makes him unkillable for five seconds.
Undying Rage can buy Tryndamere the time to take down someone with him, finish off a structure, or make a quick escape with the help of Spinning Slash – sometimes, all three simultaneously. Getting a kill is one of the most satisfying experiences in League of Legends, and Tryndamere revels in the opportunity to rob opponents of that pleasure multiple times per game.
7. Yone
Yone from League of Legends
© Riot Games
Yasuo has been one of the most hated League of Legends champions since his release, but in terms of annoyance, he has nothing on his brother.
Yone is unique to this list in that his annoyance comes down to a single ability. Outside of this one ability, Yone is relatively similar to Yasuo – he can be tough to pin down, but requires a high level of execution to get the most out of his kit. His ultimate, Fate Sealed, can decide a teamfight by itself, but only if well-timed and well-aimed.
What makes the Unforgotten such a pain to play against is his E, Soul Unbound. Yone can enter his “Spirit Form” using Soul Unbound, gaining movespeed and leaving his body behind in the spot he casted the ability. He can then “snap” back to his body at any point during the ability’s duration, dealing a percentage of all the damage he just dealt in his Spirit Form when Soul Unbound was active.
This can be used as a trade tool and allows Yone to go aggressive while still having a get out of jail free card when he is ganked. The cooldown is among the longest in the game for basic abilities, but since that basic ability is essentially Zed’s ultimate, one could argue the cooldown isn’t long enough. Soul Unbound also allows Yone to mitigate tougher laning phases before his monstrous scaling allows him to reach his point of power later on in the game.
Yone wouldn’t come close to this list without Soul Unbound, which speaks to the heresy the ability allows him to commit on Summoner’s Rift.
8. Yuumi
Yuumi from League of Legends
© Riot Games
There has never been a League of Legends champion hated the way Yuumi has been hated. From players asking for full deletion from the game to casters leading crowds in chants to “ban the cat”, Yuumi has been polarizing since the first day of her release due to her extremely low skill ceiling in juxtaposition with her relative power.
Yuumi, in theory, is a great introduction champion for players who haven’t played a MOBA before because her kit essentially allows her to latch onto one of her carries and focus solely on abilities instead of movement. But for the majority of her time as a champion, she’s been extremely strong at all levels of play, including professional competition.
Yuumi’s innate uniqueness creates a two-fold frustration for the players playing against her – she can become untargetable by latching onto people, which makes her hard to pin down and creates many “almost kill” situations that can be some of the more frustrating moments present in a game of solo queue. On the flipside, Yuumi’s low floor of execution can make it frustrating for players to be beaten by her because of how easy her strengths are to utilize.
The fact that Yuumi’s changes in 2023 were made with the intention to remove her from professional play should tell you everything you need to know about Yuumi’s current problems. She’s non-interactive to opponents in most situations, making her extremely unfun to play against, and that experience is made all the more frustrating to a large portion of the player base due to how easy she is compared to other champions.
There are League of Legends Champions with arguably less healthy kits than Yuumi, but no champion has drawn the ire of the playerbase quite like the Magical Kit.
