[GUIDE] The Library of LoL Knowledge

[Ket]

Enjoy


If you just installed LoL (League of Legends), then you probably want to know what you are playing and how to play effectively. This game has a high learning and skill curve which is one of my favorite qualities in a game. That being said, don't expect to pick it up just like that... it takes time and patience to get good.


Pre-Game Knowledge:

Summoner and Champions:

You are a summoner that level caps at 30. You have the choice to choose over 65 champions. As a summoner, you are given two ways to customize your champion to benefit yourself. Those ways are the masteries and the rune pages. To access these contributors you need to view your profile by clicking the human icon as seen below.



Masteries:

From level 1-30 you will gain a point for your masteries tree. If you've played WoW, which I'm sure most of you have, then you can see the masteries closely resemble talent trees. There are 3 trees. Offense, Defense, and Utility. Offense is used to increase damage output, Defense is used to increase you're survivability, and Utility is used to reduce downtime on beneficials.



Rune Page:

You are given 3 rune pages. You can buy 7 for time sake but everyone can do fine with 3. At level one you have the choice to buy Tier 1 runes. These are very weak and you should never EVER buy these. Once you reach level 10, you can buy Tier 2 runes. I don't recommend you buy these. At level 20 you are able to buy the Tier 3 runes. These are the top notch runes and should start buying as soon as possible. Start with Quintessences first and work your way down to your liking. You should buy the runes that will benefit a variety of champions you like to play.

Spells:

Summoner spells are universal for all summoners regardless of what champion they pick. Most have large cooldowns and can save your life or destroy your opponents. You can buff these spells by placing points in your masteries that boost their effects.

The Two Maps:

There are two map/game types in LoL;Summoners Rift 5 v 5 and Twisted Treeline 3 v 3
Summoners Rift is much more popular than Twisted Treeline. The two vary greatly in play style. In SR you have a total of 22 towers which have large amounts of health and do massive damage at lower levels. SR has the dragon and Baron Nashor which give universal buffs to the entire team and change the game in your favorite effectively. In Twisted Treeline there are only 10 towers and a dragon. The dragon gives universal gold and a buff.




The Game:

Lanes and Jungles:

Your champion has the option of going into the jungle, or laning.

A jungle champ will usually if not always get the Smite summoner spell paired with a slow or escape spell (Ghost, Exhaust, Flash). Jungling benefits your team greatly. If your whole team groups up and kills minions, the xp is distributed among all of the players. In an ideal set up for SR, there will be 1 champion in the top lane (Known as the SOLO), 1 champion in the middle lane (MID), 1 champion jungling, and 2 champions bottom lane. The reason for this setup is to distributed the minion xp so your team levels quickly. Why 2 champions bottom lane and not top lane? The Dragon is always bottom on the SR map. 2 champions bottom will give your team a better control over killing it than 1 champion. I will cover jungling in depth later.



If you are laning, your main goal is to farm as much as possible. Farm? You see, when you are the last person to hit a minion and get the killing blow, you get a nice reward of gold. This is known as "last hitting". Doing this repeatedly during early game (about 0:00 - 10:00) is crucial to your success. The caster minions give you 16 gold, melee minions gives 22 gold and cannon minions give you 27 gold. So...Cannon>melee>caster for last hitting. It is so important you do this in order to get a good start.


Pushing:


While you are in early game, you do not want to constantly auto attack the minions and push (Exceptions are if you have no jungle or they are pushing extremely hard) The only time you should be pushing is if the opposing champions in your lane are back at their base or you won a skirmish or team fight.


Harrassing:


Tip: If you attack a champion, their minions focus you. This hurts.
If you wish to harass, be sure you are a decent distance away from their minions and move back after your auto attack so the minions do not target you. Harass when you have more minions in lane.


Team fights:


These are what can win you games or lose you games very easily. Once laning phase is over, you will see 3v3 skirmishes arise, ganks from jungles/mid/solo. Winning these fights can cost the team their tower, or allow you to kill dragon, baron, or their jungle buffs. All of the following give some main factors in winning. XP/Gold and pushing power. If it is late game and a team has baron buff, they can constantly push without being initiated. If they are initiated on, they should win the fight with ease. I will go over what your role is in team fights depending on your champ class.

Continued

[Ket]

What Champions Are There?



Character Roles are essential to your knowledge of the game. You need to know how to play who your playing and how you interact with other people. You need to know how to behave when someone is going to gank your lane. You need to kill that Carry in teamfights, and overextended caster should be eaten swiftly. You dont let the tank mess up the line and Support needs to be doing their job whatever that is.


Carries: A carry is someone who function by throwing a ton of damage out of his auto-attacks. Some people use this as a term for people who carry their team to victory. Which is fine based on the name however a Carry is someone who maximizes auto-attack damage. This person will be putting out a lot of constant damage in a team fight, and will be the person who takes towers down in a heartbeat. A person playing a carry needs to know the time when they engage the other team under the tower and when its better to break for a few moments to down the tower entirely. A carry will be SQUISHY, but will carve the other team to shreds if you give them the chance. The job changes depending on the character. A carry forces the other team to invest in armor or die in seconds. Blinds, and Exhaust are your enemies. Watch out for them. Stay in the back, if you are up there where your tank cant control the flow of the fight or the burst damage of the mage youre in the wrong position.

Examples: Ashe, Tristana, AD Ezreal, Master Yi, Shaco, Tryndamere, TF, Twitch

Mage: A mage is the magic version of the carry. They do a lot of damage through their SKILLS. They normally excel by excellent Magic Penetration, and Lots of Ability Power. Every Mage is very different so its hard to classify. Mages bring a lot to the table, damage wise and normally utility wise as well. Karthus and Anivia need to be able to wall well. Annie needs to manage pyromania stacks. People need to stop playing Ryze entirely. Whoever is in this role needs to force the team to get Magic Resist. Mages stay in the back and pop in and out to get their skills off, since when their on cooldown their pretty useless.

Examples: Anivia, Karthus, Ryze, Annie, Kogmaw, Katarina, Fiddlesticks, Malzahar, Veigar, Corki, Vlad, Kassadin, Akali, Evelyn, Kennen

Off-Tank: An off-tank is someone who can lay down a lot of Damage still, but can go into the fight either right before the tank or right after depending on the teams initiation ability. They normally bring a ton of utility threat, and are right in the middle of the fray. They need to have survivability or else being where they are they will eat dirt really quick. You need to be scaring people, you are the person actively going after squishys and making them say "Oh shit, this fight aint for my ass." Im out of here

Examples: Mordekaiser, Nasus, Olaf, Xin Zhao, Warwick, Sion, Blitz, Malphite, Udyr, Mundo, Garen, Jax, Poppy, Pantheon, Nunu, Gangplank

Tank: A tank is someone who has massive utility, who can spec themselves specifically to soak up Tons of damage. Their job is to keep people off the squishies, and to disrupt and disturb the other teams lineup. Have a carry that is hiding in the back? Taunt them back in range of your mage and carry to eliminate the enemies damage. This is the guy who good teams ignore until its necessary. Remember Disrupt and Save Squishies. If you arnt keeping your squishies safe then you need to readjust your play as a tank unless you have your Off-tank filling that role.
If you want to tank; Heartigans Tanking Guide is a must read.

Examples: Shen, Rammus, Amumu, Alistar, Cho, Gragas, Singed

Support: Support is someone who, just like it sounds, functions in some capacity as a support role. Some bring damage of their own, some bring heals, some bring CC, some bring auras. They will enhance their teams, they will mess up the other team, they make their team smile and go yay Im so happy we have them on our team. They stick to the back and do their job. Aura people stay in there, Heimer, Soraka, Nidalee Jump in and out. Same with Morgana until she uses her ult.

Examples: Soraka, Janna, Morgana, Sivir, Heimerdinger, Nidalee, Kayle, Taric

Now note that these listings are kinda generalities. Some champs can be built other ways, this is just a good starting point. Remember your only taking 101 currently. WW is a lot of support by increasing the carries AS. You cant ignore Kayle or Heimerdingers functionality as a Carry/Mage when their late game built either. However I wanted to paint a picture


– Delepitore League Craft



Practice your champs in every role so when you get up to the big ranked games you can balance your team.


Balanced team is:
Tank
Off-Tank
Carry
Mage
Support
One must jungle

Jungling in Depth:

TIMERS!:

Pro junglers know the exact second when every neutral mob will spawn. You have to have a decent memory. If you have Alzheimers you should lane.

Golem/Wolf/Wraith packs – Spawns 1:40 Respawn 1:40
Lizard/Golem Buff – Spawns 1:55 Respawn 5:00
Dragon – Spawns 2:30 Respawn 6:00
Baron – Spawns 15:00 Respawns 7:00
MEMORIZE MEMORIZE MEMORIZE!

Read this guide
The Jungler's Guide to the Galaxy (reposted and edited by yours truely) - Guides & Strategy - Forums

Test out different masteries and different routes/builds in custom game solo.


Eventually guides will be repetitive and you have enough information and skill to not need to see anymore guides…

Advanced Players:

The only possible way to get better is practice right? No.
Go to top ranked players streams and watch them play. You will see what mistakes they make and TAKE IT IN. LEARN IT. Analyze any patterns they do that you don’t and ask questions.


Links to Everything you need:


Champion Guides:

Champion Guides :: Leaguecraft
League of Legends Strategy Build Guides :: Browse popular LoL strategy builds created by other fans!
SoloMid.NET Forums -> LoL - Champions Strategy
Champion Guides - League of Legends wiki - Champions, Items, Guides, and much more!


Game Knowledge:

General Game Guides :: Leaguecraft
Main Page - Forums


Streams:

Solomid.net - League of Legends Video Game Guides, Strategies, and Secrets from the Pros. Free to Play Mass Multiplayer Online Video Game
Livestream - cLGaming - The only site dealing damage in a cone!
own3D - Chauster - Livestream


Collection of pro play videos:

own3D - clgame
own3D - aonempatic

[Harambeqt]

Harrassing:


Tip: If you attack a champion, their minions focus you. This hurts.
If you wish to harass, be sure you are a decent distance away from their minions and move back after your auto attack so the minions do not target you. Harass when you have more minions in lane.

Correct me if Im wrong.

Only "caster" minions will focus their damage on you if you attack a nearby enemy champion.
The "melee" minions will keep attacking your nearby minions / friendly champions.

[shadowsx]

Correct me if Im wrong.

Only "caster" minions will focus their damage on you if you attack a nearby enemy champion.
The "melee" minions will keep attacking your nearby minions / friendly champions.

I'm not 100% sure, but i'm almost certain the melee minions attack you also (if your nearby). Atleast that's what I think from personal experience lol.