League-of-legends – Is the teambuilder a separate queue

Zileas, design director for LoL, explains:

The system guesses how good you are based on who you beat and who you lose to. It tries to make matches where it thinks you have a 50/50 chance of winning.

It knows pre-made teams are an advantage, so it gives you tougher opponents when you are in a pre-made team. We did fancy math to make the pre-made teams vs solo players matching fair. I even ran it by two math Ph.Ds and they said it made sense!

You can read the full shebang here. Basically, a custom ELO derivative is used to rank players and power the matchmaking system, so that you are paired with similarly ranked teams.

The short answer is no. You are always in a better position if you are using a champion whom you are good at playing.

If you pick a counter you are not good with, you will have to try and adapt your playstyle to a kit you don't know, create an item build path you haven't used and played with before, and try to figure out exactly "how" your kit counters their kit.

For instance, someone picking Talon mid vs a squishy AP mid would be at a serious disadvantage if they didn't understand how Talon's burst combo should be used. If you go in on Brand with no understanding of how to quickly get Talon's damage in before Brand can start his combo, you will die.

tl;dr: If you are trying to counter a lane, rely more on your ability to play a champion well than which kit counters your opponent.