So we’re into week 3 of our League of Legends ‘How To Play’ guide and it’s finally time to start talking about some of the fun stuff. Fightin’! This is a competitive game and so eventually you’re going to have to throw some punches, against your lane opponent and later on, against the team. This week I wanna talk about how to best go about that so you don’t end up giving away as much as you gained.
Dueling
I’m gonna open this with some advice that you will need to get completely behind if you’re going to make solid progress as a League of Legends player. Winning a fight does not mean you kill your opponent.
When you end up exchanging blows with an opposing champion, what you really want to do is to force them out of the lane. It is not vital to secure a kill. If you get one, great, but if you walk away with near zero health and have to go back to base, you’re only getting the smallest gold advantage, compared to the gold you would get from the free minion farming in a free lane.
When you’re looking to engage in a fight, always keep a few things in mind; What items does he have? Does his champion have any escape moves? What abilities and spells are on cooldown? Do I have vision of any incoming reinforcements? Can I get away if this goes poorly? Over committing to a fight is one of the biggest errors that early LoL players will make and you can use this to your advantage. Practicing with champions and working out the best combo of abilities for them is also vital to picking up kills in fights. Don’t just mash the next available ability if it would work better after another one. Use your surroundings as well. Minions and brush areas can help turn an otherwise lost fight in your favour. Here’s a handy little checklist before you go knocking heads.
- Know your champion and their combos
- Keep an eye on your opponents movements and habit
- Draw your opponent into your minions for some extra damage
- Be ready to bail if you need to
- Forcing the opponent out of lane is just as good as a kill
Teamfighting
Contrary to popular belief, League of Legends is a team game, and eventually with much kicking and screaming there will have to be some teamwork involved. So when the eventual and sometimes epic teamfights break out depending on your position, you’re going to need to do different things. Here’s a little breakdown of each roles, main jobs:
- Top Lane – You’re tanky and intimidating, so you wanna try get to the opponents AD Carry and disrupt them putting out their damage to the squishier targets
- Jungle – If you’re tanky, you’re doing the same thing as the top lane. Get in their, disrupt people and use your CC abilities to lock down targets. If you’re more of a damage based assassin, find the prime targets like mid and AD Carry and shut them down
- Mid Lane – You’re going to be doing some big damage. Stay clear of opponents trying to stun you or lock you down and focus on the squishier opponents.
- AD Carry – With the least amount of escapes, your goal is to stay at the back of the team, and just hit the closest person to you. Your damage output will be big, but get caught and you’re dead in seconds
- Support – You’re job is not going to look like much, but keeping someone in a fight for another few seconds is vital. Spam your healing abilities on the squishy team-mates and try to catch as many enemies as possible in your CC abilities. Even if you’re not doing much damage, you’re incredibly necessary for getting in and out of the fight alive.
Combining your abilities with that of another teammate to keep enemies under control is important too. That skill will come with time as you play the game more and more. You can predict when a teammate will use one ability and you can then follow this up for massive damage and control.
Assuming that a fight has gone well for you and the enemy turns tail and legs it, you must quickly assess the situation. Objectives like Baron, Dragon, Turrets and Inhibitors are worth far more than champion kills so try to secure them before heading on a wild goose chase to pick up one maybe two kills. Teams win games, not players. Stick together later in the game and you’ll pick up wins.
Next week we’ll take a better look at the specifics of the roles of Support and Jungler, and how you can maximise their effectiveness.
Glossary
Each week we’ll end up with more and more jargon, so I’ll put a little explanation of each term into a little section at the end of every article.
CC – ‘CC'[ simply stands for Crowd Control and references any champions abilities that will, stun, slow, silence, snare or knock up an enemy champion.
Baron – Baron Nashor is an epic difficulty neutral jungle minion that will grant the team that kills it a temporary but powerful buff. Located in the top side river. Must be taken on by a team.
Dragon – Dragon is another challenging neutral monster located in the bottom side river. Killing it grants a global gold bonus to the team that lands the killing blow.
Inhibitors – Inhibitors are buildings in the enemy base that do not return fire. Destroying an inhibitor promotes one minion in the appropriate lane a Super Minion, a strong and tough melee minion. Inhibitors respawn after 4 minutes.
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