[Comp] 14v5, a.k.a. Pet comp a.k.a. "Legion"

This article is about teams made of champions able to summon creatures that will fight and tank damage for them. Such creatures are called "pets" in League.
Here's what you need to know for this comp. You may check out the wiki links to fully understand the whole thing.

If you only have little time, just read the bolded and underlined parts!

Main advantages:
-Pets give great sustained damage. An enemy champion fighting within range of your pets is at a disadvantage;
-They're often not focused especially in teamfights, allowing lots of "invisible" damage;
-Pets can tank damage especially from turrets and in the jungle, making pet comps great at pushing even without minions (turrets prioritize pets);
-The more pets you have the more enemy skillshots will fail to reach you properly.


Pet Champions

Very few champions able to create [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. The chosen few are (with links to ability details) :

List for copy-paste: Annie, Elise, Heimerdinger, Malzahar, Mordekaiser, Shaco, Yorick, Zyra. (Leblanc, Wukong and Zac don't fit).
Full list:
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (2);
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (3);
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (4);
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (4);
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (2);
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (3) with his clone;
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (4), with his 3 different "minion" pets and his "champion"-type pet from ultimate;
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (4) is special because her plants are halfway between traps and "real pets", but they're still pretty good for this. Their main weakness is their inability to attack structures. **Since patch 3.7, Zyra's plants benefit from Banner of Command's aura, like every other pet.


The color code points out an important thing who fits a pet comp:

-Some pets are very limited in everything (Wukong, Zac) : inefficient for a pet comp.

-Some others are only available under specific circumstances like being very low HP (Leblanc), getting a kill (Mordekaiser) or have a rather long cooldown compared to their power ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]). Out of these, Mordekaiser and Annie can complement a pet comp even though they can't be the basis for one, but Leblanc's condition is way too risky for not enough benefit.

-Shaco is on a middle ground: his real pet is his ultimate's clone, which has a better cooldown than Tibbers, and scales much better with Shaco's items. He also has "pet" traps (his boxes) who can tank very little damage and most importantly, apply AoE hard CC.

-Elise's pets are real pets and thus will benefit from pet-boosting items, however they always stick to her and thus relatively suck at tanking turrets. She also cannot use them in ranged form.

-The best champions for a pet comp are those in green, because they can reliably bring pets to the battle with their low cooldowns and high durability/damage output (Heimerdinger, Malzahar) or their very low cooldowns (Yorick).

Basically the more points (colored, in the parenthesis) a champion scored in the list above, the better suited he is for a pet comp.

Recommended core champions: Heimerdinger + Malzahar + Yorick.


Summoner Spells

-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] works on all pets. Not very useful for tanking turrets because the heal will be wasted on full HP pets, and the one focused by the turret will only get around 1 turret-hit worth of healing. However it can make it safe to keep pushing after getting hit by AoE damage.

-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] can be used on minion-type pets, and targetable traps like Teemo's mushrooms, Shaco's boxes or even Zyra's seeds (not plants)!

-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is a massive amount of raw materials to make pets, aka mana (50% of max mana for everyone, if the user has the mastery). The 3 most reliable pet champions are mana-hungry, and should be built with max CDR to spam enough pets to get the full benefits from them, like tanking skillshots. Having even just 1 Clarity in the team can turn an exhausted push into a fierce steamroll.
(removed in S4)

Items

Three items directly affect pets:

-The [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] increases the movement speed of mobile real pets, helping them deal damage to fleeing enemies for example.

-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] will give pets a 50% greater bonus than it gives to champions, and that is often the only defensive steroid you can give to certain pets like voidlings, Heimer's turrets or Elise's spiders.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] will flat out increase 15% the total damage (not "AD", actual damage) of all pets around (except Shaco's boxes), on top of whatever scaling they already enjoy.
It also promotes cannon minions into awesome tanks for a pet assault, or good splitpushers.
Note that the +10 HP regen aura it provides stacks with Aegis/Bulwark's, and with Heimer's +25 HP regen aura at lvl18.
All of these traits combined in the same item make it the core any pet comp should be getting, pretty much like a DFG/Deathcap on a AP burst mage or a BT/IE on an ADC.
EDIT: i suspect that banner's damage aura only works on minion-type pets; will need to test that out but nonetheless, a great item.

While the following items are not directly meant for helping pets, they do a good job at it:

-[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s active can be used on pets for chasing or peeling. This can force the enemy to focus an expendable target, or slow them for surprisingly long. Particularly good on fast, mobile, durable pets like voidlings and "champion"-type pets. The mana regen aura also helps with spamming pets.
(changing in s4)

-Abyssal Scepter, Black Cleaver & Malady: their MR/armor shredding effects benefit everyone including pets. Note that pets who deal physical damage (Yorick's ghouls, Malzahar's voidlings) apply Black Cleaver stacks.

-Rylai's Crystal Scepter often allows mobile pets to land extra hits on enemy champions.

Recommended core items:
-Early Banner of Command on an AP petmaster (Annie/Elise/Heimer/Zyra).
-Early Aegis of the Legion/Bulwark on a frontline petmaster (Elise/Shaco/Yorick) or pet-less tank.
-Rushed Shard of True Ice on an AP petmaster or a support.
-Early Captain boot enchant on a petmaster with chaser pets (Annie/Malzahar/Mordekaiser/Yorick).
-Each of the core items should be gotten by a separate champion, so that all the core items are ready when midgame starts!
-Chalice of Harmony on each of the pet spammers, if your team doesn't have 2 Clarities.


The two types of pets

LoL has a behind-the-scenes somewhat obscure system that decides what can be targeted by what.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Champion-type pets (aka "clones") can be targeted/hit by the same things as Champions, save for a few exceptions. That means they will block a Cait ulti, be valid targets for Warwick's ult, take full damage from Hecarim's Q, and give Veigar the champion-grade bonus AP from his Q's passive if he kills them. They probably also refresh Katarina's cooldowns if she kills them. They probably benefit from Zeke's Herald aura.
Those include Mordekaiser's R ghost, Shaco's R, Yorick's R (and Wuk/LB's clones).

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Minion-type pets are targeted like minions. They are immune to things like Tryndamere's slow and Katarina's ultimate, and they take reduced damage from Hecarim's Q. Smite works on them, and so on. An important point difference is that towers will focus them before attacking normal minions.
Those include Annie's R and the vast majority of pets.


Pet scaling

In general, pets scale nicely with your champion's level or when you rank up the ability that makes them. They also benefit fully from their creator's penetration stats.
Champion-type pets will usually copy a % of the stats of the champion(s) they were made from (can be their own creator's stats), and thus naturally scale with said champion's levels and items.

In order to maximize the power of specific pets though, you can feed them with the stats they scale from:

-Annie's Tibbers: his Sunfire effect has a 0.2 AP ratio, none of his other stats scale with anything. His basic attacks deal magical damage (he cannot deal any physical damage).

-Elise's spiderlings: their attacks have a 0.1 AP ratio (with 5 spiderlings, that's 0.5 total) however note that they still deal physical damage only (the explosive spider is considered a spell).

-Heimerdinger's turrets: have a 0.2 AP ratio and deal magical damage.

-Leblanc's clone: deals no physical damage but can apply on-hit effects and deal damage with them.

-Malzahar's voidlings: have a 1.0 bonus AD ratio on their attacks (not displayed in their stats, but noticeable on the damage text when they hit something) and deal physical damage. Note that the ratio is amplified when the voidling is 14 seconds old (+100% attack speed).

-Mordekaiser's ghost: this one deals magical damage and is very strong but also fairly complicated, you better just check out [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. It even scales with his boots.

-Shaco's clone: deals 75% of the damage Shaco would deal with his autoattacks and the damage is still physical, not counting on-hits (it can apply them). Deals 50% damage to turrets/inibitors. Its death's explosion has a 1.0 AP ratio, it's magical damage.

-Shaco's boxes have a 0.2 AP ratio on each attack and that's magical damage. Note that they attack very fast.

-Wukong's decoy: has a 0.6 AP ratio on the damage it deals when it dies/disappears.

-Yorick's ghouls: their AD and HP are respectively 35% of Yorick's total AD and HP. Note that they lose 20% of their max HP per second anyways. Each type of ghoul also has a special bonus but those only scale with the corresponding ability's level.

-Yorick's Revenant (ulti): deals 45% / 60% / 75% of the cloned champion's damage, and has 50% / 75% / 100% of their HP.

-Zac's bloblets: have 12% of his max HP and 50% of his armor & MR.

-Zyra's plants: have a 0.2 AP ratio on their attacks, dealing magical damage.

Also, because Banner of Command increases the total damage from the pet, it effectively increases all AP & AD ratios by 15% aswell.


Combos
" + " means at the same time,
" -> " means then.


Without items:

Annie AoE stun -> Malz Q = Longer AoE hard CC.

Heimer turret(s) + Shaco box(es) in a bush = Strong trap and distraction on facecheckers.

Heimer turret + mass Shaco boxes in a bush = AFK buffsteal earlygame, or killtrap if you ever luckily manage to bait someone into it.

Bot or Mid wards enemy jungle at the start of the game ->
Heimer turret at ally redbuff (placed so that it doesn't hit lizard elder but clears small lizards) + 4 Shaco boxes at ally redbuff ->
Shaco immediately walks up to ally bluebuff with Smite + leash from botlane =
Shaco counterjungles enemy jungler with doublebuff.

Malz R -> Heimer E + Shaco E -> Zyra R + Annie stun = Extremely long hard-CC chain to shutdown any fed enemy.

Morde R + Malz W+R = Easy ghost.

Morde R -> Yorick R on Morde = Morde's ghost doesn't die if Morde dies, until zombie mode ends.

Morde W on voidling or ghoul (aka fast pets) = Morde's W is guaranteed to deal some damage (better on voidling because of duration and movespeed).

Taric W aura & R aura + Sivir R enchant = All nearby allies including pets get bonus AD, AS and MS for 10 seconds. Champs get AP and armor too. The armor remains.

With items:

Annie R -> Shard of True Ice active on Tibbers = Keep the enemies inside his flame aura (and your team's range).

Heimer passive at max lvl + Aegis aura + Banner aura = +45 HP regen/5s for all nearby champions and pets.

Malz with BC + Yorick with BC = BC stacks applied very fast on enemies by ghouls and voidlings.

Morde W on Morde + Mikael's Crucible active on Morde = Recover from baiting, especially against melees.

Morde GA + R -> Morde GA procs -> Yorick R on Morde = Morde's ghost doesn't die unless Morde dies twice and then zombie mode ends.

Promote siege minions in 2 lanes at the same time + push the other lane = Free splitpushes.

Shaco with AP makes clone + W slow on enemy -> Shard of True Ice active on clone = Harder to avoid clone explosion.

Yorick W -> Yorick E + Shard of True Ice active on E-ghoul = Long-duration ranged champion-seeking AoE slows.

Zyra with Banner & 40%CDR & huge AP places 4 seeds next to baro ->
when the next seed is stored she makes 4 plants and damages baro with Q + places the seed and makes it a plant and damages baro with E + Enrages them all and damages baro with R + Heimer places 2 turrets =
Quick baro with 2 champs.

Zyra with Rylai's + Malz with Rylai's + Heimer = Alot of ranged AoE permaslowing.

Taric W aura & R aura + Sivir R enchant + Bulwark aura + Zeke's aura + WotA aura = Similar to without items, except harder.

Last notes

While the 3 champions able to keep at least 1 pet up nearly at all times (Heimer, Malz, Yorick) are crucial for a pet comp, some non-pet-using champions benefit very well with the presence, harass and tanking provided by pets, or have some other kind of synergy with them. It may be wise to add one or two of these to your pet composition for maximum success.

Generally those champions would be assassins, long-range mages or ADCs, or some particular cases. I can think of a few right now, i'll complete the list as they're pointed out:

Spoiler:

Similarly, some champions have particular bonuses against pets:

Spoiler:

Also, some champions get screwed up by pets:

Spoiler:

Pets do not heal their creator via lifesteal or spellvamp, except Zyra's plants who proc reduced spellvamp.
Some pets do have effects similar to that though: Elise's Spiderlings heal, Mordekaiser's shield, Yorick's passive and his E heal.

Baron ignores pets completely: they can't tank him for you, and he can't kill them.

Screenshots
Because We are Legion !

Spoiler:

Congratulations, now you can easily make a pet champions team.
This is one of my favourite, hit me up in the channel if you want to play and don't have enough players to fill the slots :-) .

nice one there.
now with the basics in mind we should be able to pull it off.
sivir and taric may have great synergy with pet champs

loojam2nd wrote:nice one there.
now with the basics in mind we should be able to pull it off.
sivir and taric may have great synergy with pet champs

Thanks for the feedback!
I'll have to check out if Sivir's ultimate and Taric's armor aura apply to pets.

I have just improved the formatting of the article, and added a couple details and a pic here and there. Please tell if you can think of other improvements.

Nice guide!

I'd add Karma to the list of 'pet supports', since she has an AOE heal and very strong shield that she can put on minions & pets. Her shield can also be detonated with her R to deal some nasty AOE damage around it

Would work well especially with Tibbers I think

You put this one out just perfect Djoz, nice description about everything on this type of combo. I would like to add, that, this can be also done with 1 lane 5 ppl from start, but to play games like this, you need to have reasonable teammates. Which are plenty in metabreak group, so it wont be aproblem ,everyone should give this a try to see how it works. Enjoy

rawrxtina wrote:
I'd add Karma to the list of 'pet supports', [...]

Done!

Update to the guide:
-Added Taric's and Sivir's amazing interactions.

HI, im one of the plays that played that composition xD
well i wanted to clarify something about yorick, their pets last 5 seconds MAX, so healing them wont make them endure more ( sadly, but thats good or they would be even more op)

and yes it is a really nice teamcomp

xerido wrote:HI, im one of the plays that played that composition xD
well i wanted to clarify something about yorick, their pets last 5 seconds MAX, so healing them wont make them endure more ( sadly, but thats good or they would be even more op)

and yes it is a really nice teamcomp

Funnily enough, if they are healed during their existence, and dont take any damage, they can actually last abit longer. It can be achieved with auras like Heimer's passive, Aegis/Bulwark, and Banner of Command. That might let them hit 4 times (instead of 3 max), but maybe only with a little attack speed bonus, like Sivir's ulti.

However by the time those items are up, Yorick probably has enough CDR to refresh the ghouls by casting new ones so i don't know if it's worth it (when you recast a spell that makes a ghoul, if the previous one was still alive, it dies instantly).

After some tests,
I think we got the best picks with the best synergy for this team comp.




Picks

Top Lane
Elise

She has to dive. She needs Farm. She needs to be tanky. She needs dmg.
So the best lane for her is top since in jungle she wont have enuff gold and
she is better in top lane cause in mid lane she cant trade efficient.

Mid Lane and Jungle
Yorick/Malzahar

You want to play either Malz or Yorick in mid lane. Yorick is strong vs a few Mid champs
and can shut them down easily but if its a bad lane for him you maybe gonna place Malz
in Mid lane and let Yorick Jungle. Yorick does not need so much farm to be good in this team
comp. You play Malz with AD instead of AP, his voidling is just too good in this team comp.

Bot Lane
Sivir/Taric

Now this is the interesting part. Some of you think now: "Wait woot? wtf? Sivir and Taric in a Pet Comp?
Why would you?" And i say you re right they dont have Pets but. they have team Steroids which buff pets
AND champs.
Lets see
Elise's Spiderlings Scale with AP
Yorick's Ghouls Scale with his AD
Malzahar's Voidling Scales with AD
and Tarics ult Buffs all Champs (ad + ap) = Stronger Pets
and Tarics ult Buffs even Pets (in this case only +8/10/12 (dont know exact numbers anymore)) = even Stronger Pets

Example with Elise Spiderling
Elise has 100 ap. A spiderling has 10 base Dmg +100*100ap Bonus Dmg equals 110 Total Dmg
now add Taric ultimates buff
Elise has 130 ap. A spiderling has 10 base Dmg +100*130ap Bonus Dmg + 8 Dmg (from Taric Ult) equals 138 Total Dmg

(these numbers are randomly generated in my head)

Now think about Sivir
Sivir's ultimate gives bonus MS and AS for both Pets and Champs nuff said.

Combine Sivirs bonus MS and AS + Taric bonus AP + AD + Banner of Command + Ghouls,Spiderlings and Voidling and u get
not only a Pet comp u get a STRONK Pet comp.

Think about Elise, Yorick and Malz as basic ingredients for a Milkshake
Think about Taric and Sivir as the special ingredients for a better Milkshake

Taric-Sivir combo ftw!

I've tried that setup with Loojam and others, it indeeds works nicely
The detailed stats for Taric's pet aura are in the article btw.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Search for "Aegis of the Legion" (Ctrl+F). Another buff for pets incoming!

I especially like that part of the Red explanations:

The only aura item that doesn't currently effect minion is Zeke's Herald- because +12 damage on 7 minions is insane

.
Remember what Manric's ultimate does to minions :p ?

More interesting data for the Pet comp, from a Rift Myths-like channel:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It shows that Yorick's ult can be used on Shaco's clone (that makes a total of 3 Shacos running around), and it will stay alive (or revive, it's hard to see in the video) if the clone dies!
The more you know.

Good news for the Legion!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] makes Banner of Command empower Zyra's plants!

Also features a solid cost reduction on Mana Manipulator, and the new highest mana regen item in the game: enter reworked Mikael's Crucible (18 mana regen + Chalice passive) for the very mana-hungry puppetteers like Heimy.

Even more good news for the Legion in the next PBE patch!

I still think about 'Chaos Legion' when thinking about 'Legion' If I remember correctly, You summoned demons to do your bidding.. Perhaps the word 'Chaos' should go before the word 'Legion' mhmm, mhmm..

Massive updates to the OP & improvements to readability, details, and highlighting of the most important parts.

Bad news for the Pet comp i hope this PBE patch doesn't make it through:
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