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The Summoner's Guidebook: Supports are ruling League of Legends
I think Season 4 of League of Legends has been dominated by support play. Some of this is because there have been a number of really inspiring star support players at the pro level, and their brilliance is shining down a bit on us plebians. Although I think that the Season 4 jungle is still really messed up, the support role has really solidified in a good way. What do I mean by "good"? Supports still get less gold than other roles and don't generally rock huge K/D ratios. They're still the team's ward machines, as we talked a bit about last week. However, the support's overall game impact has increased dramatically. Supports get more gold than before; they are making plays, initiating fights, and making way more of an impact in those fights than they ever were before. There's no more need for a support who is an ult and ward bot; you can now tank, deal damage, or whatever mix of support you want.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Good team composition for League of Legends Dominion
I would have loved to cover the IGN Pro League 5 this week, but at the time of this writing it is still ongoing. I'll do a brief overview of it next week, but its timing didn't mesh well with the timing of the Guidebook. I've been playing a lot of Dominion lately, and as many readers of the Summoner's Guidebook know, it's the gametype I focus my skills on. I try to build knowledge of League of Legends' other maps, including Summoner's Rift and the Proving Grounds/ARAM, but Dominion is definitely my focus right now (I haven't played much of the beta Twisted Treeline, so coverage of that will have to wait). One thing that really bothers me about Dominion, particularly as I creep into high level play, is that people still randomly pick champions without regard for a strategy. While I do think my overall skill has improved a lot, a major reason that I win 60-70% of my matches is because I look for where my team is deficient and pick a champion to cover that area. As you escalate into the intermediate levels of Dominion skill, a good arsenal of champions to fill roles can be a huge asset. This week, we'll look at some of the possible roles and compositions and some good champions to pick up to fill those roles.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Don't get grabbed by Blitzcrank!
This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, I'll be talking about the matchup against Blitzcrank, League of Legends' own rock-em sock-em robot. We'll be looking mostly at his matchups in bottom lane on Summoner's Rift, but we'll also examine his gameplay in Dominion, where he is also very strong. Learning the matchup against Blitzcrank is extremely important in my opinion. He is a very popular champion, and this is due to his incredibly brutal gameplay. If you do not know how to deal with Blitzcrank, you will get owned by him. He's not a champion you can just "do your best" against. Failing to properly account for his strengths will result in deaths, and this makes him a very popular choice. If you're struggling at all against Blitz, you owe it to yourself to keep reading.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Our favorite League of Legends bottom lane teams
Although building a team composition in League of Legends is all about synergy, the bottom lane in Summoner's Rift is the most critical. In Dominion, players may split up as the needs demand, and the other characters in Summoner's Rift spend around 15 minutes of each game on their own against a lone enemy. The bottom lane has two characters that are essentially joined at the hip for most of the game. While the support will eventually roam free and the carry may engage in some solo pushing or farming, those two characters spend much of the game together. It makes sense then that these two characters should mesh well. Here's a list of my favorite teams. If you're stumped on whom to pick for carry or support, you should try some of these out.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Dealing with Heimerdinger
When I was a League of Legends nooblet, I latched onto Heimerdinger during a free week and found him really fun. He was my first taste of bottom lane Dominion play, and he contributed a lot to my early wins. I felt pretty invincible as bottom lane Heimerdinger, and while he was highly gankable, I used it as a way to practice flashing to escape. A lot of my mid-levels were gained by playing Heimerdinger. In Dominion, he's a strong bottom pick, though he has a lot of weaknesses that can be exploited. On Summoner's Rift, he's a strange pick that nobody knows where to place. We'll talk about either case this week and some things you can do to handle them.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Carrying Dominion games
One of the best things about League of Legends' Dominion mode is that individual bad players can't ruin games quite as much as they can on Summoner's Rift. It's true that a bad player is still not going to be as valuable as a good player, but in Classic, a single bad player is often worse than an AFK. It's never fun to lose a game when there's absolutely nothing you can do about Tryndamere feeding the top lane. In Dominion, single players don't contribute quite as much, in general. However, there is an exception: the bottom lane. You'll be hearing me talk about the bottom lane in Dominion a lot. In most games, it's the most important element of the entire map. One player generally holds and controls the lane solo, and his ability to do this job well has more of an outcome on the game than any other individual's skill. A team that wins the bottom lane usually wins the game.
