Short answer: start with Garen (top), Warwick (jungle), Annie (mid), Miss Fortune (bot) or Leona (support), and play them in Swiftplay, where games last about 20 minutes. All five are rated Low difficulty by Riot, and each has one clear job. For runes, use the recommended page for your champion and role instead of building one yourself: Hexgate puts it into your lobby slot in one click.
What Makes a Champion Good for Beginners
Every champion in League has a difficulty rating from Riot: Low, Moderate or High, shown on the champion's page in the client. The champions in this guide are all rated Low. In practice, an easy champion has three things in common:
- A simple job. Start fights, survive the lane, or stand back and deal damage. Not all three at once.
- Forgiving mistakes. Healing, shields or a lot of health, so a bad trade does not end your lane.
- Abilities that are hard to miss. Point-and-click spells or big areas, so you can watch the map instead of your aim.
Easy does not mean weak. Several of these champions show up in high-level games too, because the same simple job wins fights at every rank.
Start in Swiftplay
Swiftplay is a normal (unranked) Summoner's Rift mode built for shorter games, and it is the best place to learn a role. You start at level 3 with 1,400 gold, the team that falls behind gets extra gold and experience to catch up, and Sudden Death at 25 minutes makes structures easier to destroy. Across 1,513 Swiftplay games tracked by Hexgate in the last 60 days, the average game lasted 19.9 minutes, against 28.5 for Normal Draft. More games per evening means more practice per evening.
The one catch: before you queue, Swiftplay asks you for two champions for two different roles, with runes and summoner spells for each. Pick two easy champions from the lists below, one per role. The Swiftplay guide covers the rest of the rules.
Top Lane: Garen, Malphite, Nasus
Top is a long one-on-one lane far from your team. Your job is to win or survive your duel, take your share of minion gold, and show up for big fights later.
Garen
The classic first champion. Garen has no mana, so you never run out of resources, and his passive regenerates his health when he has not taken damage for a few seconds. Step back for a moment after a bad trade and you are healthy again. His abilities are a silence, a spin and an execute: run at someone, spin, finish them.
Malphite
A rock tank with one big moment. His passive shield blocks poke while you learn the lane, and his ultimate, Unstoppable Force, charges into the enemy team and knocks up every enemy it hits. Learn to land that one ability well and you are useful in every fight.
Nasus
Every time Nasus kills a minion or champion with his Q, the ability gets permanently stronger. That turns last-hitting, the most important habit in the game, into something you can see grow. Nasus is weaker early and very strong late, which teaches patience.
Jungle: Warwick, Amumu, Vi
The jungler kills the monster camps between the lanes and helps lanes win with surprise attacks, called ganks. You must take Smite as a summoner spell to jungle.
Warwick
Warwick heals with his attacks, so clearing camps is forgiving, and his passive hunting sense shows him enemies on low health and speeds him toward them. The game points you at the ganks you should take.
Amumu
Amumu's ultimate, Curse of the Sad Mummy, locks down every enemy around him. Bandage Toss pulls him to a target, then the ultimate starts the fight. One combo, every teamfight.
Vi
Vi's ultimate, Cease and Desist, locks onto one enemy and cannot be stopped on the way. Pick a target, press the button, and your gank lands.
Mid Lane: Annie, Lux, Malzahar
Mid is the shortest lane, close to both sides of the map. Mages there deal a lot of damage from range and help the jungler and side lanes.
Annie
Every fourth spell Annie casts stuns. The game shows the count of her passive, so you always know when the stun is ready: count to four, then drop her bear, Tibbers, on the enemy team.
Lux
Lux fights from far away: a long-range root, a zone that slows, and a laser ultimate that reaches across the screen. Playing at range keeps you safe while you learn spacing.
Malzahar
Malzahar's voidlings push the minion wave for him, and his ultimate holds one enemy in place, point and click. His passive also makes him hard to burst when he has not been hit recently.
Bot Lane: Miss Fortune, Ashe, Caitlyn
Bot is the marksman's lane, shared with your support. Your job is to last-hit, stay alive and deal steady damage from range in fights.
Miss Fortune
A straightforward lane and one of the strongest teamfight ultimates for a beginner: Bullet Time sprays a cone of bullets that can hit the whole enemy team from a safe distance.
Ashe
Every attack Ashe lands slows, so enemies struggle to run from you. Her ultimate is a giant arrow that flies across the whole map and stuns the first champion it hits.
Caitlyn
Caitlyn has one of the longest attack ranges in the game, so she can farm and poke from distance, and her traps protect her when enemies get close.
Support: Leona, Soraka, Sona
The support helps the bot lane: protecting the marksman, starting fights and placing wards to show the map. You do not need minion gold; your support item rewards you for helping.
Leona
A tank who dashes in and stuns. Leona's job is to start the fight; your marksman finishes it. The clearest support role there is.
Soraka
Soraka heals allies by spending her own health, and her ultimate, Wish, heals your whole team wherever they are on the map.
Sona
Sona's songs heal and speed up nearby allies, and her ultimate, Crescendo, stuns every enemy in a line. Stay behind your marksman and keep your songs going.
Runes, Explained in One Minute
Before every game you choose a rune page. It looks complicated, but every page has the same shape:
- A keystone. The big rune at the top, with the strongest effect. It shapes how your champion fights.
- Three runes from the same tree as the keystone.
- Two runes from a second tree.
- Three stat shards: small bonuses like adaptive force, attack speed or health.
You do not need to understand every rune to start. The page most players use for your champion in your role is a safe default, and copying it by hand is where beginners usually go wrong: a wrong tree, a missing shard, or the previous champion's page left on by accident.
Summoner spells are simpler: almost everyone takes Flash, and the second spell depends on the role. Junglers must take Smite. Top laners often take Teleport or Ignite, mid laners Ignite or Teleport, marksmen Heal or Barrier, and supports Ignite or Exhaust.
Let Hexgate Set Up Your Picks
Hexgate is a free desktop app for League of Legends. When you sit in a Swiftplay lobby, it opens a window with one tab for each of your two picks:
- The best Swiftplay picks for that role. Click one and it goes into your slot.
- The recommended runes, summoner spells and core items for your champion in that role.
- Import to slot, which writes the runes (and the spells, if you tick Spells) into that pick in the League client.
- A warning when a slot still has a rune page that does not match, for example after you swapped champions.
In game, press Tab and the Hexgate overlay shows the next item to buy, ranked against the five enemies you are actually facing. That takes care of the other question every new player has: what to build. In normal Draft and ranked games, the same runes and spells import in champion select.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the easiest champion in League of Legends?
Riot rates many champions Low difficulty. For a first champion, Garen (top), Annie (mid) and Miss Fortune (bot) are the most common recommendations: each has a short list of simple abilities and a clear job.
Which role is easiest for beginners?
Support with a tank like Leona, or bot lane with Miss Fortune, because you learn next to a teammate. Jungle is the hardest to start with: it asks you to track the whole map.
Should beginners play Swiftplay or Normal Draft?
Swiftplay. Games are about 8 minutes shorter, you start at level 3, and the catch-up rules keep a bad start from deciding the game. Normal Draft is the step after, once you know two or three champions.
Do I need to understand runes to start?
No. Use the recommended page for your champion and role. Learn what your keystone does first, then the rest over time.
Is Hexgate allowed by Riot?
Yes. Hexgate uses the League client's own interface to fill your pick slots and reads public game data. It does not modify game files, read game memory or automate gameplay.
Your First Swiftplay Games, Set Up for You
Hexgate shows the best picks for your roles, puts the runes and spells into your slots in one click, and tells you what to buy in game. Free for Windows, no ads.
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