LoL Golden Rules

These are some basic rules which help lots to general gameplay.
  1. Learn to farm, farming is really important, is the most secure and sustainable way of gettin gold, 80 cs by 10 minutes is ok.
  2. One for one is not worth it, unless it's first blood. Normally you see many people diving to kill an enemy just to die after, this is bad.
  3. Learn to harass. Poke the enemy when they are about to last hit, if you are ranged, works nicely.
  4. Don't overextend if you don't have wards.
  5. Try to control Dragon, get the timer, and ward it. If you are a jungler, getting a pink ward for Dragon is usually a good idea.
  6. Tower kills are more important than champion kills.
  7. Communicate, be a leader, say what you think your team should do, warn them if they overextend
  8. If you want to win don't insult your team, you can rage all you want, just dont type until you are 100% sure you are gonna lose
  9. Ward, get wards!
  10. If you want to win, pick what your team needs, not what you feel like playing. Also be able to play all roles.
  11. Know your champion, it can take several games to feel comfortable and use it nicely. If you can play two or three champions per role, and play them nicely, you'll be a great element for your team.
  12. Don't get cocky, take every advantage you have, even when it's an easy game, take baron, dragons, steal their buffs, do everything, don't let anything to chance.
  13. Normally when the enemy team get aced and your team pushes until they are all up, and all your team has to b, they will baron, don't let them baron.
  14. When you find someone overextending in lategame, and you go to kill him, b afterwards immediatly, you will have all their team on you if you keep pushing.
Let me know on the comments if you think something should be added n_n

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Wards!

This is a common topic, normally in solo queue normal games, nobody really cares about warding, they might get some wards after they first b to prevent ganks, but that's pretty much it.
Ranked solo queue is a lot better, but the best is archieved when all team cooperates on warding, and this is mostly on arranged teams.
Surprisingly most people don't know where to ward, and most guides just throw an image with 100 possible ward locations, this is awesome but you have to consider the game state too, normally you will have different wards on early, mid and late game, and position change a little sometimes depending if you are blue or purple team.

Warding to prevent ganks
Early game wards are for preventing ganks, and basically you need full river sight. Spots for wards change a bit depending if you are blue or purple.
These are some nice wards positions for blue and purple team.

Blue Team Early Game Wards
Purple Team Early Game Wards

By warding on those locations you will have full sight of the river, and any jungler ganks. There are some variations too, for example, when playing on purple team, you can ward the bush at the bottom right of the dragon, instead of the river, but it's not much difference. Try not to put the ward in the river bush because reaction time is significantly lower if you put it there. Notice the dragon is not warded, that's because you don't really need to see it, you know it's there, and you can see if they try to take it. After early it's nice to ward it though.

Some Late Game Wards
Mid-Late game wards are a bit different, you must ward baron and dragon, and depending on how aggresive your team plays or how much your team push, you will want to ward their jungle too.
Purple Team Possible Wards
In the image above you can see the possible wards for a purple team late game. Warding the enemy jungle allows you to fight them on the jungle, which is a nice advantage sometimes as you normally can pick up people one by one. You should also consider warding your own jungle if they are invading.

Who should get wards
As a carry, never buy more than one ward at the same time, it will slow down your build. Of course there are some exceptions but normally one per shop is ok.
As a jungler you should get some wards for river, and if needed, oracles.
As a support you need to get a lot of wards, if you don't have oracles and the enemy team also doesn't, consider getting a pink for dragon/baron, those places are always warded. Try to get between 2 and 3 wards everytime you shop.
All in all, the role who must get the most wards is support, followed by jungler and tanks, finally carries.

Ward when you overextend
To overextend safely, once the first lane tower is down, you should ward if you plan on pushing that lane alone, up to the second tower, that way you will be safe.
For example, If you are purple, and you push top, you'll ward at their blue.

Tips
  • If you put a ward inside baron the enemy team wont be able to kill it, even with oracles, it's a well known bug right now, which Riot surprisignly still hasn't fixed.
  • If you know the enemy team is warding a lot and you are a support, consider getting oracles.
  • You can check out TheOddOne's jungle video, part 2, where he talks a bit about warding to prevent jungle ganks.

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Roles on LoL

It's really surprising how many people is not aware of their role as they play, you'll see supports kill stealing, and last hitting, tanks who forget to protect the carry and just charge and try to get kills, and more, in this entry I'll just name the most common roles in LoL and what they are expected to do.

AP Carry
Abiliy power carry, your role is to deal lots of burst magic damage, then back, then burst again, you normally just sit behind your tanks so you can unload safely, sometimes you can initiate too, for example, dropping a good tibbers is always nice.
Common summoner spells: Flash & Ignite
Some good AP Carries: Annie, Brand, Vladimir, Orianna

AD Carry
Attack damage carry, normally this refers to ranged AD carries, your role is stay back and poke, deal damage constantly during the whole teamfight, normally bruisers will try to get you, but it's up to the tanks and supports to protect you, you can deal the most consistent damage if fed. It's important to not back too much, you need to do damage, many carries fail because they are too scared to go in, and their team end up getting killed.
Common summoner spells: Flash & Ghost
Some good AD Carries: Ashe, Caitlyn, Vayne, Tristana, Teemo

Junglers
Junglers are very important, they allow top lane to solo, while they clear the jungle and control buffs and dragon, jungling is a very deep matter itself, but for now I'll say the basics, junglers are supposed to gank each overextending lane, or help a teammate who is losing, you can gank for the kill, or for the summoner (most commonly flash), so you can gank again later, or any other gank, they should play safer when they burn they summoner, giving your partner an advantage.
Junglers are normally bruisers or tanks, which once they finished jungling they should play their respective role.
Common summoner spells: Flash/Ghost & Smite
Some good Junglers: Udyr, Amumu, Warwick, Xin Zhao, Nunu

Support
Support is a rather easy role, but surprisingly there's a lot of misunderstanding and fail on this role, support have to... support your carries, this is, heal them, CC if they try to gank them, die for them sometimes, help them last hit under the tower, CV everywhere on the map, find the enemy jungler, find the enemy team, etc.
Supports normally just sit bottom lane with a ranged AD carry.
Common summoner spells: Flash/Ghost & Clarivoyance
Some good supports: Sona, Soraka, Janna, Taric

Tanks
Tanks main role is to protect the carries, initiate and get focused. Some tanks go around in a teamfight trying to get kills, and completely forget about their carry, this is really bad, you want to protect them, and let them get the kills most of the time.
Common summoner spells: Flash & Ghost
Some good tanks: Singed, Alistar, Udyr, Amumu, Galio

Bruisers
Bruisers, also known as tanky DPS, are mostly meelee champions with a lot of sustain and life, bruisers normally focus the enemy carry, and take them out of the fight, or kill them, fed bruisers can carry pretty hard.
Common summoner spells: Flash, Ghost, Ignite
Some good bruisers: Jax, Warwick, Xin Zhao, Lee Sin, Irelia

Assasins
Assasins are champions with very good chasing skills, and a lot of burst, they can blow up the enemy carries, and normally can engage and disengage easily. Assasins do mostly magic damage.
Common summoner spells: Flash & Ignite
Some good assasins: Akali, Kassadin, Katarina, Poppy

Team Composition
Normally in NA Server we get: AP Carry, AD Carry, Support, Tank/Bruiser and Jungler/Tank Jungler, AP and Tank/Bruiser solo mid and top respectively, and the AD Carry goes with a support bot lane, this is mostly because AP Carries need mostly levels, and AD needs mostly items.
EU introduced an alternative composition which is sometimes used both in NA and EU, which is: AP Carry mid, AP Carry top, AD Carry + Support bot, Jungler (Sometimes tank + jungler), sometimes you get no tank though, this works rather nicely sometimes, against some comps.
You can of course tweak some things, but those are the most common compositions.

When playing ranked, most of the time you also want to counter pick, if they have Fiddles, you might want Janna, if they have Karthus, Soraka is a nice counter, but that itself is a quite wide topic which should be discussed by itself.

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Orianna Drawing

Orianna
Just something I did while bored. There is a video on how I made it!

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Last Hitting, Lane Control, Harassment and Zoning

In this entry I'll be talking about the basics of laning, this might seem very basic, and it is, since it's one of the most common things you do in LoL, but there is more than just right click a minion and auto-attack. If you are new to LoL and this game genre you might find this useful.

Last Hitting
Last hitting in LoL is very important, last hitting is just doing the last hit and kill a minion. When a minion dies near you, you get experience, but you get gold only if you do the killing blow, as you can imagine, this is really important, because gold means more items, and the more items you have the more advantage you have over your enemy.

When you are on your lane and game starts, you can't just afk attack a minion and let the champion auto-attack forever, if you do so you will be pushing the lane, which is something we'll talk about later, what you want to do most of the time, is wait until the minion is low health and then last hit, this might be hard first, and some champions have it easier than others, but here are some tips for last hitting better

  • See the minion that is beeing focused by most of your minions: See the speed his health drains, and calculate based on that
  • Sometimes a minion with low HP that is not beeing focused can wait, try to steal your minions kills!
  • Sometimes it's worth to use a spell to kill a minion when your attack speed isn't enough to hit two targets quick enough or you are too far
Sometimes, your enemy will push more than you, and your turret will attack your minions, this is bad most of the time, because it's somewhat harder to last hit under a turret, not because it's hard to do but because there are many situations when you WILL lose some minions, and that is bad for you. 

When the minions are under your tower you have to know this
  • Melee minions die with 3 tower hits
  • Caster minions die with 2 tower hits
So ideally, you will wait for tower to hit a melee minion twice before last hitting it, or else, tower will get the kill, the same with casters, you wait one shot, then you last hit.
That's considering the minion is full health and you have enough damage from your auto attack, but sometimes, and most commonly early game, you do not have enough damage to kill them after the tower hits, in that case, you must hit after the tower's first shot, or even before, but predicting where the tower is going to attack is not always easy, and sometimes it looks like its random. 
What you want to do is just let the tower do one hit, you hit, then the tower, then you again, that works with melee, but with casters is different, because you have to hit before the tower hits them the first time, this is possible but that's why it's a bit harder to last hit under the tower, it might take you some time to get used to, but you will be able to practice this a lot, remember, practice! And don't just hit random minions, if you try hard, you will improve! 

Now, that was considering minions have full health, once you do this for a while, you will be able to calculate how many tower hits a minion without full health can take, and this is where it gets hard, most of the time, you just wont be able to last hit just with autoattacks from under your tower, sometimes the minion has low hp, enough for a tower shot to kill him, but not with your autoattack, you can use some skills to clear faster if you can, but normally there is always more margin of error last hitting from under your turret than in mid lane.
You will have a lot of time to practice this, at least the first 10-15 minutes of every game, focus on last hitting, if you get 20 more minions than your enemy, it's almost as if you killed him! Because it's like 250+ gold, which is a huge advantage.
Just to have an idea, high Elo players get normally 80~ cs by 10 minutes, so you have something to aim to :P.

Lane Control
You might think that pushing a lot is better for you, because minions go to your enemy's tower, and it's harder for him to last hit, also, you can hit the tower and get it, this is true, but you can't just always push, if your game has a jungler, you are never really safe, if you have a support with Clarivoyance you can see where he is, and be safe early game, and after that, you might get some wards, but it's never a good idea to push if you don't know where everyone is, that means basically, never push when there are any mias.
Here are some of the most common things you can do
  • Push the lane, then b and dont overextend: This works pretty well, mostly if you are a champion that clear waves really fast, like Mordekaiser, Miss Fortune, Corki, Cho' Gath, etc, what you wan't to avoid though, is when your minions are stuck close to his tower, but not really under it, the lane then will be pushed and you will be forced to go close to his tower to last hit, this happens when you don't clear the wave fast enough mostly, so minions slowly get closer, what you can do in this situation is go back to buy, or try to clear the wave as fast as possible until it's back at somewhat the middle of the lane.
  • Push the lane, and hit the tower: If you are feeling safe, say, if they don't have a jungler or you know where the jungler is, because of CV or wards, then you can do this, but only if you are sure you are safe! This will help you get the tower quicker, maybe then get a gank and get tower also, or just get tower by slowly poking it over and over again, this works nice with ranged champions, but also with champions that can push really fast. Don't be scared to take a few hits when you hit the tower, but make sure you know how much damage your opponent can do and how much you can receive! This is very important to LoL overall, a lot of dumb mistakes are done this way.
  • Don't push, just last hit: This is the safest option, just last hit, if your enemy does the same then it will be easy, if he pushes, you might need to last hit at tower, if you see he overextends too much, ask for a gank, it should be an easy kill. If you are on a 2v1 lane, this is a must, you don't want to push and let the enemy get experience, you must zone him, I'll talk about that later though.
Remember to always ward before you push! Solo top is a nice lane to push as it's very safe, you can ward river and just push, if you have your summoners, you will be ok. 
Solo mid is also good but you can get ganked from both sides, depending mostly on the jungler, the jungler normally ganks at lvl 4 after red, if you are blue, then he might come from top, if you are purple, he might come from bottom, but there is really no way of telling other than wards or cv.

Harassment
Harassment is basically repeatedly hit the enemy without him/her hitting you back, harassment is done while you last hit, so you have to be paying attention to both things, chances to harass and last hit minions.
The most common harassment is to wait for one of your minions to get low on hp, then as your enemy last hits, you hit him, that way he can't hit you back, this is good if you don't have any minion close to last hit, last hitting should be a priority in this case.
If you are ranged, or see good oportunities to hit your enemy without him hitting back, or receiving less damage, you should also do it, check his cooldowns and attack him when he can't hit you back. 
Also, if he doesn't have any regeneration, and you have, like potions, you can trade some hits, for example, if he/she starts with a doran, and you have potions, you can trade some hits and heal back, you will have an advantage soon.

Zoning
Zoning is basically using your advantage to deny your enemy experience and gold, once you have an advantage you have to know how to use it, whatever advantage, either if you have way more hp, or are ranged, or he's underleveled, or simply scared of you, anything, in this case you try to freeze the lane middle so you can get close to the minions and push him back to his tower, this way he can't last hit and losses gold, and if he goes too far, even experience, you have to be careful of ganks though, but it's normally very safe, if he gets close, you can hit him and keep him away or kill him, if he Bs, then you can push and get his tower if there aren't many mias.

In a 2v1 situation, you can zone from the very start, just keep him/her away from the minions, this is very important, he should be at your level or lower, and starved in gold, if he gets the exp and levels like the solo mid then you will be at a disadvantage.

In 2v2's it's pretty much the same as 1v1.

Tip: Check Shurelia's Ol' video of Zoning.

Conclution
Mixing all those together is basically what laning is, it's blurry idea but it will help getting started. I'll write about some more specific subjects soon! I'm open to feedback and suggestions! Feel free to comment.

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