Nothing will improve if you do not practice. If you don’t practice, there will be no magical word or tactic that will help you improve. The saying “practice makes perfect” is correct it to certain extend. But it’s not completely true. “Good practice makes perfect”. There is no point in practicing something the wrong way. A good example is when league of legends players keeps practicing his or her own techniques and keeps dying. So practice the tips and implement them into all of your games, and soon enough you will be climbing the ladder of ranks. I hope that I have a clear vision to share and take in the game and maybe we will meet one day in league of legends.
The Basics for Each Role
Support Role
The Support Role Isn’t an easy role to learn but after you learn how to play It properly, it will become easier to learn all of the other roles in a shorter time! Support has the responsibility to protect and assist your Attack Damage Carry (ADC for short) at all causes by fighting alongside the ADC and harassing the enemy laners and preventing them from getting any CS. There are many types of supports you can pick from, all with different abilities. There are support champions with stuns, heals, snares, shields, hooks, slows, and knock ups. When it comes to supporting, you must always ward the area around your ADC to prevent incoming enemy ganks by the enemy jungler. This provides vision all around you and the ADC. So when the enemy jungler wants to gank into your lane, you and your teammate will be safe because you saw him coming from a mile away. Another important aspect is not getting any CS. Sounds boring but believe me, it isn’t! Your ADC is the team’s damage dealer. Later in the match, he will do the most damage out of the whole team. In order for him or her to get strong, you must not take his CSI He needs it. The way you get your gold as a support is by purchasing support items and being near the dying minions.
Laning as a support to the ADC is all about how well you work with your ADC in the lane. You should always show lane pressure (showing yourself in the lane). It’s frustrating when I ADC and I see my support Just hiding inside the bush watching the enemy team just poke me Into submission and lowering my health. Do not do this. Supports need to show lane pressure to show that he’s there to protect the ADC, otherwise, your ADC will have a really hard time getting CS and lose the laning phase and ultimately, lose the game.
When Harassing the enemy champion you must always look and see who has the most minions, If they have more minions at that moment (they have 5 minions and you only have 3), you can’t really harass them because all the minions will turn on you and start attacking you which does a lot of damage early game. But if you have more minions, you can easily poke the enemy ADC Champion while he/she goes for the CS. Simply use your skills or auto-attacks to damage the enemies.
Initiating in lane depends on how well you work together and how strong you guys are. If you think you can set-up an easy kill for your ADC, tell him/her or ping them when you’re about to go in. Do not Just go in without telling them! This will cause them to have slow reaction time. That’s why there are pings in the game! When setting up a kill, you should look at which champion has less armor and magic resist. For example, if the ADC has 40 Armor and 35 Magic Resist and the support has 50 Armor 43 Magic resist, you should target their ADC to inflict more damage. You will use whatever your skills your champion has to either stun, snare, knock up, slow, or hook while the your ADC is using his/her skills and auto-attack to try to kill the enemy ADC quickly. Initiating in team fights is catching someone off guard and your whole team aims for one person at a time, while protecting the ADC.
When playing support you should always start with a stealth ward, a health pot, and one of 3 starter support Items in the shop that will work well with the ADC and your own champion pick. The 3 starter Items are called Ancient Coln, Spellthief Edge, and Relic Shield and can build into helpful items to win team fights late game.
Another common mistake I see is when the support role doesn’t buy a Sightstone. It saves you tons of money on wards and it’s a critical item on every support champion. Support champion is meant to provide vision and remove the enemy’s vision as well. Without a Sighstone, you are greatly reducing your team’s potential to catch someone off guard or take down objectives.
The Top / Tank Role
The top lane does not really do much till later in the game. When you’re playing top lane, you must farm up and counter-build the enemy top laner and other enemy champions for late game. Usually, if you start blue side and the enemy Jungler starts blue buff he will most likely (not always) gank top after he gets his red buff and if you start red side and their Jungler starts his red buff he will most likely gank top as well. This usually tends to happen around the 3:15 on the timer. To counter this, you should place a ward on your side bush so you can see him coming. This way, you let the enemy Jungler stay there to waste time or get your allied Jungler to help you kill him (if he’s nearby).
Top lane should be played as a Tank Role but some people like to build AP/AD early on for the damage to get fed and build tanky later on for late game. For example, Lee Sin, when played in top lane, people like to build a Hydra first for the strong early damage and then build armor or magic resist depending on who you’re matched up against in team fights, the top lane is usually in the frontlInes, zoning the enemy ADC in team fights while your team is in the back fighting as well.
If your team is losing, your role is to split push. Split pushing is a risky way to carry your team to victory but it all depends on your team. You will have to tell your team to group in the middle lane and avoid fighting while you split push and take down enemy turrets. When split pushing, you must always ward in the river and jungle so you can see if the enemy team is coming after you. if so, Just run back while your team in middle lane pushes. Split pushing is all about getting objectives such as towers and inhibitors.
The Jungler Role
The jungler role is one of the trickiest roles to play; It can go in many ways such as Tanky Jungle, Support Jungle, or Bruiser Jungle. The Jungler has no lanes and gets gold through killing jungle monsters, hence the name of the role. It is the Jungler’s job to assist your team getting kills in lane, or at the very least helping allied laners to not lose the laning phase. The jungler also has to get the summoner skill called Smite which is a must-have when jungling. In Season 5, instead of dragon giving global gold It gives 5 global buffs which can stack nicely and win games as well as baron buff which gives 40 attack damage and ability power (scaling with game time). Baron buff also gives you a faster recall time and gives a buff to nearby allied minions to get stronger.
Since they added timers for jungle buffs (when you press tab and look top you see when they will respawn, if seen). It is important to consistently kill the jungle camps in order for you to stay at a matching level as the other laners, otherwise, the enemy laners will be much stronger than you and you will have low kill potential. During mid-game, you can give the Red Buff to your ADC and Blue buff to your mid laner, these buffs will help them tremendously in lane or team fights. Once you gank a lane, focus on the enemy champion and try to get the kill, or at least lower his or her health. If all else fails, you can either help push the minions to the tower so the tower will kill all the minions before the enemy champion to miss out on experience and gold or Just let your teammate stay In the lane to get more gold.
When ganking, try to go in from a position In which you have the best chance of getting the kill. Ganking is often more effective if you go behind the enemy champion, that way they will have almost no chance of escaping. If going behind them is not possible, go from the side and try to kill them that way. Sometimes the enemy will have wards the sides of the lane so he or she will see you coming and back out in time. If that’s the case, don’t wait around, either gank another lane or kill jungle camps to get more experience and gold. The more you assist your team, the stronger they will get.
Counter-ganking is very crucial when jungling. You always have to try to think or see where the enemy jungler will gank next. Usually the enemy Junglers will gank when allied laners are pushed up to towers. This allows the enemy jungler to come from behind and kill them easily. In order to counter that, you have to think first and predict if you can kill him or not. But if you can, you have to ping to kill the jungler or the lane champion while both of you try to kill him at the same time and as fast as you can. Always remember to ping in order to alert your teammates and tell them who to aim for. It Is also good to buy wards and place them on the jungler’s camps so you can see where the enemy jungler is headed next.
The AD Carry Role
AD Carry, AKA “The Marksman”, Is a late-game role which are champions that rely on long range auto-attacks/skill shots. The ADC role is always about farming and CSing while trying to work with the support to kill the enemy ADC and support. When you think you can kill the enemy ADC, you can tell your support to use his/her skills to initiate a fight and try to make them low while you sit at the back, attacking and using your skills from a safe distance. Your Job as an ADC is to consistently and safely harass or poke the enemy to keep their health lower than yours. This role will be useless If you do not CS properly, or support role takes your CS. So make sure you get as much CS as possible and rack up your gold and buy strong Items, because you are the damage dealer.
When poking during lanIng phase, make sure you always stay behind your minions. I see this mistake all the time. When you don’t stay behind your minion wave, you are wide open to take tons of damage from the enemy. No matter In what position the enemy is in, make sure there are minions In between you and them. Use your min-ions as meat shield, literally. This is will allow you be safe, or at least safer, from any income damage.
When getting a gank by your allied jungler, ping your support to go in and use their abilities on the enemy, while the Jungler comes from the back, or side, to help you make the ADC weak enough for you to get the kill. During team fights you must always stay in the backlines, dealing as much damage as possible, trying to kill the closest enemy while kiting away. Otherwise, their entire team will come and kill you In a matter of seconds.
Kiting is the most important skills that any ADC should master! In order to properly kite, perform an auto-attack and quickly click away to move. Perform another attack, and then move. This way, you will be able to move away from incoming enemies while lowering their health at the same time. It’s very tricky skill to master, but it definitely worth It and will keep you alive if done properly. I suggest you watch some videos online on kiting techniques.
The Mage /Assassin Mid Role
The Mage or Assassin, also known as the mid taller, is an enjoyable role in my opinion. You can go as an AP or AD champion in mid lane depending if you’re an AP mage/assassin or an AD assassin. This lane is all about trading. You must be able to deal more damage with your combination of skills, than the enemy mid laner. If not, you will quickly lose the upper hand and will potentially get killed multiple times. When you get a kill you can either push the lane and go back or push the lane and gank other lanes. If the enemy mid laner roams, you must ping where he’s going to go and follow him in case things get messy. If you don’t ping or alert your team, they will most likely get killed. A good rule of thumb is, if the enemy mid laner is going somewhere, you have to be there too, or else your teammates will be overwhelmed and lose their lane.
Middle lane is actually the most important lane because that’s where most people group up to end the game and most team fights happen in mid lane. It is always important to get the mid lane tower as fast as you can so you can roam around and help other lanes, or help the jungler get dragon, or baron buff. Sometimes your allied jungler will let you take blue buff; do not Just give it away by dying. Blue buff is really important during laning phase and if used properly, it can get you multiple kills. If you lose blue bluff, you basically just handed over the upper hand and you will most likely be pushed away in lane or be forced to stay back or you will get zoned out.
Make sure you buy a couple of wards for vision, this way you can avoid surprises from the enemies. Most junglers focus on mid lane first because it is the easiest to get kills early game. So be very careful on your position-ing in lane, it can get you killed if you are not careful.
In teamfights, the mid laner’s Job is to focus on the enemy ADC. Since most of your kills will be very strong with long cooldowns, it is crucial that you hit all your skills and unleash all your damage on the ADC. Do not waste your skills on the enemy tanks; you will not kill them most of the time due to all the armor they build. As you probably already noticed, team fights can occur in just a few seconds. So if one of your skills is on cooldown when a fight is initiated, you are missing out on tons of possible damage you could be dealing. So save your skills for more vulnerable targets.
Overall, mid laners have to be more aware of how the entire game develops. You have to know who to target and when to deal damage. It’s more complicated than other lanes. I suggest you focus on learning other lanes before you learn mid.
Warding
Why are Wards Important
Wards are one the most underrated items in the game. The most skilled players always say “wards win games!” When placing wards you can only place 3 vision wards and 1 pink ward. It Isn’t enough but if your whole team is warding, It is enough to get vision on hot spots in summoners rift. Wards can spot roaming enemies or ganks, this way you can easily escape or you can catch someone off guard and killing them with a team or just killing them by yourself. Being in lane with no ward coverage is like boxing while blindfolded. Don’t make things harder for you by not investing in wards. You could not believe how many people I have seen constantly lose games only because of lack of wards. If you can see where the enemy jungler is, you can either kill him and put yourself ahead of the game, or at the very least u can prevent yourself from dying. Vision is crucial to the game and yet, many people do not use it. It’s the difference that will take a mediocre player, who gets constantly killed, to a player who is aware of his surroundings.
CSing and Freezing
CSing
CS stands for creep score, which means how many minions you have farmed/killed. The more minions you kill the more money you get. I’m sure you see people simply attacking and attacking minions mindlessly. Do not to that. Csing is actually a skill which you have to master and use with every lane. its one of the core skills of the game so practice it.
Every minion has precious gold attached to it. But you do not get gold for minions attacks; you get gold from minions you kill. Meaning you literally have to be the last one hitting the minion, so your attacks have to finish the minion off, this is called last-hitting. The more minions you last hit, the more gold you will get. This will then lead to more items you can buy and make yourself stronger. There are two ways you can CS, freezing your lane and pushing your lane. You have to master both and know when to use them.
Freezing Your Lane
When freezing, you must always have fewer minions than the enemy minions while you let your minions do all the damages to the enemy minions and you simply last-hit it, getting the gold. This way you the minion wave tends to stay near the same area over and over again, if done correctly. Try it, next time you see a minion wave, let your minions attack while you wait until the minion is low enough to last hit it. This will help you with getting more gold faster. Sometimes auto-attacking messes you up with last hitting, but have no fear you can disable auto-attacking in the options menu of the game. Look around the options and you will find it.
Pushing Your Lane
Pushing your lane is the complete opposite of freezing. it means you use all your skills and attacks to kill the enemy minions as fast as possible. This will either allow you to take down an objective, or leave your lane to help your team. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very important to last hit the enemy minions to get the gold, other-wise you are Just wasting your time.
Runes and Masteries
About Runes
Runes are constantly changing depending on the updates of the game and the champion that you play; therefore it’s impossible to write about which runes you should use. A good rule of thumb is, if you are using a champion that scales up from the amount of AP, then get Ability Power runes and masteries. its fairly simple and self-explanatory. Same goes for AD-based champions, you buy AD runes. I suggest you save some in-game money to spend on runes once you get to level 30. In my opinion, runes are not worth the money prior to that. Once you have enough money for runes (about 6 to 7k), go online and look for which runes work best with your champion and your champion pool.
About Masteries
On the contrary, masteries are fairly consistent. For the champions that you use, search online for a good mastery builds and try them out. If you believe you can make a better mastery build, try to come up with your own and try it out. Most of them are similar to each other anyways. Using the wrong masteries will be a handicap against you. For every game you play, every role you play, every champion you use, make sure you set up your runes and masteries accordingly. Do not make the common mistake to only have 2 or 3 mastery pages; you can make up to 20 mastery pages so take advantage of this.
