Guide to League of Legends, part 3; Tips and Tricks

If you have missed the first two part, you can find part one HERE and part two HERE.

This will be the last part, and in this part I will give you some tips and tricks to help you get started. I can admit that I'm not the best player in the world, far from it in fact. But I do know my way around the Rift so to speak.

My first tip is, find a few champions you like to play. This may sound obvious, but it is the few part that is important. Don't just find one champion you like because you cannot be guaranteed the get it every single game. And only having one champion you can play also means that you can get bored with it, I know I do. And lastly, you aren't as restricted in where you can go on the map.

Secondly I would say that you should make sure to have a positive attitude. You will encounter people who flame and harass people in the chat. Sadly, that comes with interacting with people on the internet I have noticed. The best thing to do is to ignore it, and if to becomes too much, you can mute them by taking up the score screen by holding down Tab and pressing the mute button on the right side. While I tend not to do it because I really don't care about people who say such thing, it is okay to do it. However,never say that you are muting someone because that might make it worse. Just quietly mute them and continue playing.

Now this here is a more personal philosophy, but I would say, never give up. Some people will give up very easily, while I personally never give up until my Nexus has fallen. I have seen game turn when one of the sides had sub 100 health on their Nexus to a win. Because remember, giving up mentally will make sure you lose as you will play worse.

Now for more tactical advice. Don't forget to ward. If you can see where the enemy is you will have an advantage. Wards will help you see where the enemies are when they leave lane. If you compare low level play with high level play you will notice that the better teams places a lot more wards. Why is this so important? Because if you know where you opponent is, you know if you can go super aggressive without being punished for it with a flank.

Even if you don't play a particular champion, you should learn what it can do. Doing this will make sure you know what strengths and weaknesses your opponent has and how you can exploit them. You don't need to know everything about all of the champions, but learn in general terms what they can do.

Playing with friends is the best way to good. The game is much more fun when you play with friends. This also helps you avoid the bad part of the community. If you don't have any friends who play league, you can join communities in league to help you. I for one hang out in The Gentleman's Club on EU West. If you where to play on EU West, I highly suggest joining the chatroom. Everyone in the chatroom are pleasant.

If you want to get better, a good place to start is to master last hitting. Last hitting is the skill of delivering the killing blow to minions to get gold. A good way to train is to create a custom game and just go into lane and last hit. Strive to last hit every minion in every wave.

With these tips you will have a good foundation to get into the game. And as always, have a good day and comments are welcome.

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.

Guide to League of Legends, part 1; Outside the game.

Intro

One on the games I have played a lot lately is League of Legends, a free to play game developed by Riot Games. It is a MOBA game played from an isometric view. In the game you control a character called a Champion. At the time of writing, the game contains 121 released Champions with one new currently on the Public Beta Environment or the PBE. It is a free to play game with a fairly fair monetary model. You have a few things to acquire for you. In addition to Champions, you have runes. Runes are minor stat boosts that all players have access to. At the start of each game during Champion Select when all players selects which Champion they are going to play, they also selects a Mastery page and a Rune page. The game has several game mode, ranging from the standard 5v5 game mode with a slower pace to a slightly faster but similar 3v3 mode all the way to a 5v5 mode where you play a random Champion that you have access to. I will going down the different parts of the game, one by one. And a note on the capitalization, I will capitalize several words throughout the article. These terms refer to specific components of the game which everyone might not have familiarity with, and are terms which I will explain in the article.

Account and Summoners

When you create your account, you get to pick you in game name, also know as you Summoner name. Your account represent your Summoner which levels up as you play games. These levels are seperate for Champion level which are earned ingame each game. Each time your account levels up, you gain 1 Mastery point and 1 Rune slot. The max level is 30 at which point you can start to play Ranked games.

Champions, Runes and Masteries

Lets continue with Champions, Runes and Masteries. This is what you set up before the game. The current roster consists of 121 Champions divided up in 6 roles, with several of the Champions having secondary role tags. The role tags are Assassin, Fighter, Mage, Marksman, Support and Tank. Each tag gives a rough idea on how the Champion work and I will explain how they generally work.

Champions

As a new player, you won't own any Champions, you have to buy them as you proceed. Don't worry though, each week 10 Champions are free to play for everyone. You can buy Champions for either Influence points, the currency you earn by playing the game, or for Riot points, which are purchased for real money. The Champions have different prices depending on a few factors, but mainly based on when the Champion was released.
Each Champion has at least 5 Abilities. One passive Ability, three basic Abilities and 1 Ultimate. The passives are varied, although some are quite alike. But even those who share common traits behave differently. There are a few "extra life" passives, each with its own mechanic. We have Anivia who turns into an egg if she gets killed and her passive isn't on cooldown. And we have our gooey hero Zac which splits into 4 blobs when he died is his passive isn't on cooldown, which then move together and reform him unless the enemy destroies the blobs before that. In addition to those, you have passives the gives the Champion a shield, extra move speed, a bleed and a whole lot more.

From left to right, passive, followed by 3 basic abilities, an Ultimate and finished with 2 summoner spells and the recall spell.

All Champions have 3 basic Abilities, and some have 4 but no Ultimate. These Abilities come in all shapes and sizes. Some are simple click on target and do damage, some are player aimed Skillshots, some are activate and get a buff and some are far more complicated. However, many of the simpler Abilities have interesting side effects.
Most Champions have an Ultimate, that being an Ability that is stronger than the basic Abilities. The Ultimates in the game are very varied. In some ways, some Ultimates might seem broken. For instance, we have the Champion Karthus whose Ultimate deals a large amount of magical damage to all enemy Champions after a short channel. This is however balanced by the fact that the channel can be interrupted, unless he is in his passive form which activates when he dies, and that the it has a long cooldown.
In addition to your Champions Abilities, you get to select 2 Summoner spells. These are chosen from a group which everyone has access to. Currently there are 13 Summoner spells in the game. There are 3 mobility related, 4 self enhancement related, 3 that targets enemies and 3 that do other things.

Lastly, you have the Recall spell. This spell is something everyone has access to, and it teleports you back to your base. It takes a couple of seconds to channel, and it gets interrupted if you take damage during the channel. This puts you on the fountain which will health you up to full health and mana.

The Recall spell

Assassins generally are good at doing just that, assassinate. This means that they tend to someway to get on to their target and kill them quickly. However, as a drawback to doing terrible terrible damage(I tip my hat at those who know the reference), they can't really take a hit. If they are caught out, they will go down very quickly.

Fighter are the group most difficult to define, and this is something Riot is having trouble with as well. Fighters are somewhere between Assassins and Tanks. They have more damage than Tanks but less than Assassins. While being able to take more damage than Assassins but less than Tanks. Fighters doesn't follow any distinct pattern. Some have a large amount of damage, some not so much. Some are range(or partly range at least), some are not. Some are very mobile, some not as much. Some do magic damage, some do physical damage. As you can see, there is a great variety to Fighters. But this also makes them difficult to nail down.

Mages are Champions that mainly deal damage through their Abilities. While some can be built to do physical damage, they mainly do magic damage. Other than that, Mages are a quite diverse group, which is shown by the diversity of secondary tags. There is at least one mage with every possible secondary tag, a trait only shared so far by, surprise surprise, the Fighters.

Marksmen are brought together by one thing, most of their damage comes from their Auto attack, generally. While a few can build to primarily do damage through their Abilities, Marksmen can all do large amounts of damage through Auto attacks. Tagging along with that damage, is an inability to take large amounts of damage. Marksmen are known for being one of the least tanky roles.

Supports aid their allies through buffs, heals and Crowd control. During season 4, Riot introduced Utility scalings, something commonly found on Supports. That being scalings that increase the utility of something. For instance, several Movespeed slows got Utility scalings which affected the rate the slow decayed or decreased in effectiveness.

Tanks are a group that is easy enough to understand, they can take a lot of damage. Tanks tend to do relatively small amounts of damage, when looked at in aggregate. This does not mean that they can do damage though as some of the Tanks are know for doing massive amounts of damage if built a certain way. But something that is universal among the Tanks is that they have some sort of Crowd control.

Runes

Runes are something that each player can acquire for Influence points, the in game currency earned through playing games. Each Rune gives a small stat bonus, which can be put into a Rune page. The Runes comes in four versions and 3 tiers. Each tier is a bit stronger than the last with tier 3 Runes being the strongest. The 4 versions are, Glyhps, Sigils, Marks and Quintesenses. Runes either gives a flat bonus or give a bonus that scales with your champions level ingame. The general consensus is that you should not spend any Influence point on Runes until your Summoner level is at least 20, as it is a that point you gain access to tier 3 runes. This also means that at that point you will have a grasp of what each stat does, and which is useful on which Champion.

Masteries

On each Summoner level, you gain one Mastery point, to spend on masteries. Mastery points are never permanently spent to be clear. You can have up to 20 different Mastery pages, in which you can have different configuration of masteries for different Champions. This is so you don't have to fix a full page each time you are starting a new game.
The Masteries are split into 3 catagories, Offence, Defence and Utility. The Offence tree contains things that boost you offensive capabilities or are triggered by offensive actions. The last one you can get in the Offence tree is Havoc, which gives you 3% increased damage. This counts for abilities and auto-attacks. The Defence tree helps you to survive, either through giving you more health, more resistances, more health regeneration or through strait up damage reduction. The final Mastery in the Defence tree is Tenacious, which reduces Crowd control on you by 15%. The final tree is Utility. This one gives you a bit of everything not included in the other trees. It have masteries that increases your Mana regeneration, gold generation or as the final mastery in the tree, Wanderer does, movement speed. Wanderer gives you 5% increased movement speed outside of combat.

I will continue with the guide soon, at that point going more into the ingame aspects. And as always, comments at welcome and have a good day.