Guide to League of Legends, part 2; On the Fields of Justice.

If you havn't read the first the first part, you can find it HERE.

Game modes

In League of Legends we have 5 permanent game modes. A few of these are variations of each other. In addition to this we have sometimes what is called a Featured Game Mode. These are special modes that are available only for a few weeks which brings a new way to play.

Summoner's Rift

The classic is 5v5 Summoner's Rift, in which teams of 5 players battle through towers to destroy each others Nexus. The map is divided into 3 lanes, Top lane, Mid lane and Bot lane. Each lane contains 3 towers and 1 Inhibitor. Between each lane, you have the Jungle, where you can find neutral monsters, which can be killed for extra experience and gold.

Dividing the map from the top left corner to the bottom right corner is the river. The river is often used as a dividing line. At the start of a game, if you stay on your side of the river, you will be more safe. As soon as you cross over to the enemies side of the river, you can get collapsed on fairly easily. As such, it should not be done unless you have enough information.
The normal division of people on the map is to have 1 person in the top lane, 1 in the mid lane, 2 in the bot lane and 1 in the jungle. This is however not how it will look for the most part in the lower levels as it is difficult to jungle without a proper rune page. In these cases, which you will encounter as you level your account, you will have 2 player in the top lane.
In the jungle, there are 6 major objectives to contest. These are 2 Blue Sentinels also known as the blue buffs, 2 Red Brambleback also known as red buffs, the Dragon and Baron Nashor. The blue buff is a temporary buff granted to the champion which kills a particular monster. The buff grants the champion cooldown reduction and mana regeneration. The buff is transferred if you are killed by another champion. The blue buffs are on opposite sides of the map. One of them is in the left jungle and the other is in the right jungle. The red buffs is like the blue buff but it is in the top and bot jungle. The effect of the red buff is that you get a slow and a true damage DoT on physical attack and that you get increased health regeneration for the duration.

Here is the locations, the Blue Sentinel on the left and the Red Brambleback on the right.

The last 2 objectives in the jungle is in the river. The first one is in the lower river and is the Dragon. Taking down the Dragon can be dangerous early in the game. While it gets easier to take as you get more items and level, you can never take it for granted. The Dragon gives the team which kills it a stacking buff. This caps of at 5 stacks where you get a temporary buff. Every time you kill the Dragon after that, the team gets the buff again.
Baron Nashor is the big objective on the map. To kill Baron Nashor you will generally need the help of the rest of the team. Many games have been lost due to attempts to take the Baron. If your team were to kill the baron, every member of the team that is alive at the time of the killing blow would get the buff, Hand of Baron which gives increased Attack Damage and Ability Power, faster Recall and empowers nearby minions for the duration of the buff.

Here is the locations, the Dragon to the left and Baron Nashor to the right.

What champion goes where changes based on the current meta. Generally though, you have a marksman in the bot lane along with some form of support. It is not always a champion with the support tag. In the mid lane, you will generally see a mage or an assassin. In the top lane and in the jungle you will see different types of champions running from tanks to assassins. But as the meta shifts all the time saying where a particular champion goes is useless as that info can be out of date a week later.

Twisted Treeline

We also have the 3v3 map Twisted Treeline. This is very much like Summoner's Rift, but with some small changes which makes a large change on how it is played. To accommodate just 3 players on each team, there are only 2 lanes, top lane and bot lane with the jungle being between them. The exception to this is that above the top lane at the center you have a small jungle part housing Vilemaw.

The core is the same as Summoner's Rift, but some changes are made. First thing is that there is no river dividing the map. This mean that there is no line straight through the map. This mean that the pathing around the map is different. But that comes with any map. What really changes things are the 2 altars.

There is one on each side of the map. Both teams can take control over them and the give bonuses for each controlled. As the buffs given by the altars being changed at time of writing, I will not comment on what each buff is, however for each altar controlled you will get a buff. So if you are controlling 1 altar you will get one buff, and if you control 2 altars you will get both the buff for controlling 1 altar and the buff for controlling 2 altars. This creates conflict points on the map. After capturing an altar, it will be locked for 90 seconds and can not be captured during that time.
Vilemaw stand in for Baron Nashor on Twisted Treeline. As Vilemaw is undergoing some changes at time of writing I can not comment in specifics on the buff it gives.
In the center of the map, a health relic spawns which gives the champion who walks over it a small amount of health and mana and simulates the effect of a Speed shrine which gives a temporary speed boost.

Crystal Scar

Crystal Scar hosts the often forgotten game mode Dominion, which is very different to the previous two. Crystal Scar is a round arena with 5 capture points. These capture points are how you win the match. Each teams Nexus starts with 500 health. As long as your team control more points than the opponent, their Nexus health will tick down. You can also damage their Nexus by killing champions up to a point, you can't win the game on a kill. The last tick on the Nexus has to be because you control more points.

Next thing to take up in Dominion is the Storm shield. This is something that spawns in the center of the map, one for each team. Any player can got there, channel for a short while and get the buff. The buff has 2 components, the first being a health shield which means that you have a shield the gives you some extra health. The second component grants a damage burst on auto attack and damage spells, though the effect can only proc once every 4 seconds.
There are two other things to note about the mode and that is the health relics and speed shrines around the map.

Howling Abyss

The final map, Howling Abyss stared just as the map where you play the tutorial. It has been expanded to host a less serious game mode, ARAM or All Random All Mid. Howling Abyss doesn't need much of an explanation as it is a very simple map. It is a single lane with no jungle. In ARAM, everyone get a random champion selected from their own pool of available champion. You can get reroll tokens by playing the mode which lets you spin the wheel so to speak if you really don't want to play the champion you got. One major thing to note is that you can not go back to the fountain to heal or to buy items. You can only buy items if you die or at the start of the match.

Featured Game Mode

Now every once in a while, for a limited time there is a featured game mode which puts a twist on a mode. For instance Hexakill where there is a 6v6 on Twisted Treeline. The only difference is that you have 6 extra player on the map. We have also seen a mode where you face super charged bots (Ai controlled champions) on Summoner's Rift and a deathmatch mode on Crystal Scar.

Special events

You might encounter special events or Quests ingame such as The hunt is on, which triggers if one team has Rengar on it with a certain amounts of stacks on his special trinket and the other team has a Kha'Zix which has reached level 16. And the winner in the Quest gets a bonus. There are several of these, but I will leave you to find them. There is a Quest in Dominion which is a team based which I will talk about however. When this Quest triggers, each team is tasked to capture a particular capture point. The team which completes it first gets a temporary buff and deal some damage to the enemies Nexus.

In the following and final part I will talk about some tactics, strategies and tricks. Until then, have a good day and remember that comments are welcome.