League of Legends: Before the Game Starts

Hello everyone! My name is Kathy Chen and I am a sophomore majoring in Accountancy and Finance. I’m being forced to blog (not that I really mind >.>) so I’m just going to write down my thoughts (THESE ARE OPINIONS PEOPLE, NOT FACTS). This blog is mainly going to be about League of Legends (since that’s the only game I regularly play). My blog assumes that you have played LoL before or at least know the fundamentals of the game. I figure I’ll start with strategy and move onto champions and other games when I’m done. If anyone wants to talk to me about what I’ve written, be it congratulating me on how correct my analysis is or raging at me because I was terribly wrong, leave a comment at the end of this post or add me in game. I am mostly on the NA server, but sometimes I play on the EU servers. The summoner name for all three accounts is UTXKai.

So let’s get started. Strategy in LoL begins before the game begins. Many games have been lost before the game even starts, whether it be the synergy of the team (if it’s solo queue), team composition, or the setup of each individual summoner. Much of what I’m going to say is common sense, but these are ideas that many forget to apply.

Attitude

Your attitude coming into this game is important for yourself and for your team. No matter how idiotic your team is or how rage-inducing the enemy team is, you must keep a level head. Yelling at your teammates, contrary to popular belief,does not improve their gameplay. A team that was originally crushing the enemy can throw the game if there is disruptive conflict amongst teammates. Keep in mind that the more you type, the less of the actual game you play. If you don’t play the game, then you can’t win the game.

In terms of addressing individual summoners when they are not doing well, instead of saying “fuck noob feeder l2p”, try telling them how they can improve. It’s been proven that people learn better when told what they are doing right rather than what they are doing wrong. So for example, try telling that Ashe how she should position yourself. Ping on the map where your team should go and what objectives to take. Tell your tank to actually build tank items instead of more damage (surprisingly, your dps is 0 when you’re dead). Mark which threats on the enemy team to focus first. You can always help your team improve.

On the other hand, while your team may be doing poorly, you must also remember that there is always something that you could be doing to carry harder. No matter if your team is feeding or doing stupid builds (AP Garen anyone?), you cannot ignore the mistakes that you yourself make or place the blame for your mistakes on your teammates. So what if there is a 10/0 Akali running around at15 minutes? You know that there is this danger, so you must be careful and account for that. You did not die to the Akali because top fed hard, you died to Akali because you got caught.

You should come into the game with a positive attitude. Be prepared for anything at champ select and make sure to tell your team what you prefer to play and where. Also be open to playing what the team needs, not just what you want to play. And most of all, have fun, but not at the expense of others. This is a game, don’t play it if you don’t like it.

Team Composition

Many times a game is won at champ select simply because one team has a better composition. That said, what needs to be in a team? A team must have the ability to live and farm through the laning phase while being able to win teamfights late game. Laning phase is up to each individual champion and the jungler. However, in teamfights, a team must have three things in order to perform effectively: Initiation, Damage, and Protection.

Initiation

How do you win the game? By killing the nexus. Who is there to stop you from killing the nexus? Enemy champions. How do you stop them from stopping you? By killing them. Unless you are running a full split push team, teamfights will occur at some point in the game. You need to be able to initiate teamfights so you can kill champions so you can take objectives. Furthermore, winning one teamfight tends to snowball into winning more fights due to the gold and experience gain. Initiation can come from multiple sources, ranging from the tank to the support. Initiation is only successful if a high value target on the enemy team is gimped. Some examples of initiation include: Malphite’s UnstoppableForce, Gragas’s Explosive Cask, and Sona’s Crescendo.

Damage

How do you win teamfights? Kill the enemy champions before they can kill you. This means that you need to be able to output more damage to them than they do on you. That means that you need a good balance between damage and survivability.This is also the reason why you run two types of damage on your team, as one is easy to itemize for. Pretty self explanatory, AP damage comes from casters such as Brand, Cassiopeia, and Anivia and AD damage comes from ranged carries such as Graves, Vayne, and Sivir and melee carries such as Gangplank, Riven, and Nasus.

Protection

How do you keep your carry from dying? You prevent damage from going through to them. This can occur first from a correct initiation to gib a carry, second from keeping threats locked down, and third by keeping threats away from your carry. It is generally the support and the tank’s job to complete the second and third tasks. Champions such as Amumu, Janna, and Taric are able to continually cc threats, whether through stuns, snares, or slows. Champions suchas Alistar, Nunu, or Singed are able to zone threats from getting close to your carry.

Technically,a team does not need a tank or a support as long as they are able to effectively accomplish the above stated objectives. The reason that the team composition used is generally support and one or two tanky dps, AD ranged, and AP is that this comp has the best mix of the three objectives. So when building a team, don’t think strictly along the lines of “we need X type of champion in Y lane” and more along the lines of “we want this champion to carry us and we need these champions to enable our carry”.

Individual Champion Setup

So now that you’ve picked your team, you’ve got to make sure that your champion can get through the laning phase. I’m not going to go through specific masteries and runes at this moment, but you should know how your champion is generally built. I usually recommend early game runes because I feel that the bonuses that you get from runes are more impactful early game. An extra bit of damage can mean the difference in securing a kill which can snowball into larger items and more kills. Speccing some flat attack damage can also help with farming for those that aren’t completely comfortable with the skill.

Summoner spells are another important component of your individual champion and are largely situational. These are my general thoughts on each spell:

Exhaust—Useful both offensively and defensively for the slow and the armor/mr reduction.

Garrison—Great for diving points, not that great for defending points.

Ghost­—Decent for chasing and helps with kiting, but is doesn’t cleanse slows. Beaten by flash in terms of engaging and escaping.

Heal—So much better after the buff it got and actually has some impact after early game. I feel that some people aren’t used to it yet so healbaiting is pretty effective.

Revive—Meh. I feel that this is just pretty cheese since it requires you to DIE before it’s actually useful and it has a terribly long cooldown.

Smite—Hi there jungle.Alternatively, use it on a skillshot champion (like Morgana or Lux) and shoot your snare towards the champ standing behind a minion. Smite the minion, watch your skillshot land and reap the benefits. Although this isn’t as good as ignite on said champions.

Surge—Uh. I don’t know, Teemo?

Teleport—Very useful toplane as it allows you to have a presence other than farming for the first thirty minutes of the game. Just make sure your team brings wards to fights.

Cleanse—The Rammus counter. Situational depending on the cc you’ll be facing.

Clarity—Wish it got the heal treatment. Useful for baiting on mana dependent champions.

Ignite—Secures kills early game, falls off late game, nice healing debuff.

Promote—Not as useful as other summoners since it doesn’t actively protect you or assist in getting kills. I guess you could run it on a pushing team.

Clairvoyance—It doesn’t give as much vision as before so it isn’t as necessary to have it. However,it is still a decent spell because brush advantage is great when fighting.

Flash—Not much to say here. Want to engage? Flash>R>W>Q. Want to escape? Flash>W. I’ll let you guess what those champions are.

I hope this post has helped with how you approach the game and start you on your way to victory. Some points to consider from this post:

· Don’t rage. Help your team learn.

· Team composition: Initiation, Damage, and Protection.

· Carefully consider which runes, masteries,and summoners you take.

Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve written! I tried to be a bit conversational in my writing, so let me know if you prefer this tone or if you would like for me to be more formal. In later posts, I plan to discuss in depth the strategies at each state of gameplay.

~~Kathy Chen