Funneling is a team strategy in LoL where a team puts efforts to give the majority of gold and experience, into a single player. This player is typically a carry assassin champion, with the potential to become exceptionally powerful with enough resources.
How Funneling Works
The funnel composition often has a carry champion, usually playing the jungle role, and a supportive champion in the mid-lane. The most popular funneling champions in the past were Master Yi and Taric.
Funneling Champions
While Master Yi and Taric are well-known classic examples, they are not the only ones who can benefit from this funneling strategy as you can see below:
Braum/Kai’Sa Funnel
Mid Lane: Kai’Sa (with Smite)
Jungle: Braum
How it worked?
Kai’Sa takes Smite and goes to mid lane. The jungler plays Braum and runs in the jungle, his role is to take the jungle camps to a low HP setting them up for Kai'Sa to take them.
Mid lane allows Kai'Sa to farm freely and be protected by her jungler. And because of the Smite, she can finish the jungle camps quickly. Additionally, champions like Kai’Sa can easily proc Braum's passive.
Master Yi and Taric Funnel
Jungle: Master Yi (with Smite)
Mid Lane: Taric
How it worked?
After Master Yi completes clearing the jungle, he moves to the lane to farm large waves of minions prepared by Taric. During teamfights, Taric applies his W to Master Yi, providing him with extra armor. And, when Master Yi initiates with his Q, Taric is using his E, enabling them to stun the targets as Master Yi is untargetable in his Alpha Strike. This strategy was nerfed by deleting the possibility for Taric to stun the enemies while the ally champion is untargetable, so he can no longer use his E on Master Yi while he is in his Q.
Janna Top With Smite Funnel
Top Lane: Janna (with Smite)
How it worked?
This strategy was popular in S12 and started around patch 12.2 in SoloQ. The toplaner picks Janna with smite. They farm for the first few minutes to unlock their abilities and get 300 gold for boots. Smite allows them to quickly push the waves and easily take the cannons.
Once Janna has 300 gold, the player roams and walks with his jungler to gank lanes. The goal is to get free kills by ganking the lane 3v1. In addition to that, the fact that the enemy toplaner is playing solo and gaining the gold from turret plates the ally team gains objective bounties which are cashed in with a successful roam top.
Developer Response
Riot Games has made some adjustments to the core game's mechanics to ensure that funneling doesn't become the only viable strategy. Some of them are jungle item changes, support item changes and champion's mechanics, so the downfall of funneling was not caused by a single change but rather a combination of smaller changes.
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