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The Summoner's Guidebook: Stop worrying about the LoL metagame
If there's one thing that seems to be fairly static among low and mid-level League of Legends players, it's that they dislike the metagame. If I weren't such an exception (being a kind of bad player overall), I'd say that probably 100% of low-level players challenge the meta. This kind of complaint hits the comments, my email inbox, or IMs all the time: "LoL is so dumb! There are only four viable champs in each role, and the meta is static." The first thing I'd like to point out is that those statements, regardless of variation, are all wrong. LoL as a game changes wildly from patch to patch and season to season, and while the existing Summoner's Rift solo queue metagame is more or less fixed in terms of roles (duo bot, one jungler, a "support" who does not CS in favor of giving it to an ally), none of that applies to premades of three or more players or other game modes. Even between the roles, there's a wide variation in expectations of what those roles should do. Stop blaming the game; think outside the box and start seeing the game for what it really is.
The Summoner's Guidebook: The allure of new LoL champions
Picking new champions in League of Legends is akin to picking a role. There are a few major schools of thought: Either you pick a small number of characters and stand by them or you grab every new character that strikes your fancy. Of course, there's a middle road where you get a lot of characters but you still focus on getting new characters that add something to your roster. There's less of an opportunity cost with picking up a new character than there is with picking a new role. Learning a new champion takes some practice, but many of the things you learn while playing your new character are applicable to every character in the same role.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Selecting a League of Legends jungler
As sometimes happens in The Summoner's Guidebook, one of you asks for a more in-depth article on a particular subject. This time I was asked to look more at character selection for junglers. As we've already discussed, the jungler is frequently the leader of a League of Legends team, but as the reader mentioned, the character you choose makes a big difference in what you can or can't do. If you're thinking of getting into jungling, the first character you buy for the job is important. Who you pick determines a lot about how you go into the job, what types of skills you develop, and how you think about the entire jungle concept. If your first jungler is a speed-clearer like Shyvana or Master Yi, you're going to look at things differently than if you choose a powerful ganker like Nautilus. Regardless of the character you select, the jungler is a playmaker. If he's not making plays that get his team ahead, he is going to hurt his team if the enemy jungler is.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Teaching ourselves LoL matchups
I'm always looking for things to teach players in the Summoner's Guidebook. We have, however, covered a lot of the low hanging fruit in one way or another. In League of Legends, and virtually every other asymmetric competitive game, matchup knowledge comprises the huge bulk of information that is truly useful to read about. This week was originally going to be a counter-Ryze guide, but then I decided to cover a broader topic to help reach more people. I don't really like discussing specific character matchups largely because the character you're using matters almost as much as your opponent's. What does Ryze do against Kassadin in lane, for instance? The answer is not a whole lot if the Kassadin is decent. I could write a counter-Kassadin guide, but a lot of it wouldn't be usable by Ryze. Instead, this week we'll discuss how to think about the opponent's kit and develop a strategy to win on your own (or at least survive).
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of Legends' hardest choices
Sometimes League of Legends gives us hard choices. As a jungler, I'm frequently tasked with the difficult decision of whether to gank or counter-jungle and where I should do so. After a lost teamfight, you also have to make a lot of decisions about how to turn the game around. Should you buy elixirs? Should you try to farm and stall the game out or force another teamfight in a better position? These are all difficult choices. However, most players have to deal with the toughest question of all: Which champion should I unlock next?
The Summoner's Guidebook: Why big metagame changes to League of Legends could be bad
It's fairly common knowledge now that League of Legends is undertaking a massive rework of its two permastealth champions, Evelynn and Twitch, in the next big patch. These changes were desperately needed. Evelynn was in horrible shape; she's the least-selected champion in the game by far, and her gameplay needed a tremendous amount of work. Twitch was in better shape, but he was a poor selection on Summoner's Rift for either of his two roles (jungle and carry). Twitch was considered a strong pick on Dominion, however. Riot Games chose to completely rework these two champions, weakening Twitch's stealth aspects in order to make him a more normal carry. Evelynn was completely reworked, and she is so much different from her old self that she's basically a new character. Both of these champions are still "weird," however; despite the changes, neither character exemplifies any element of the current metagame. I think that this is sort of dangerous. Riot has already introduced one very weird champion recently that has turned out to be viable (if not strong), Jayce. The stealth rework patch will also be succeeded by Zyra, who has very weird caster/pet mechanics. With all of these dramatic meta changes, League will become very unpredictable, especially at the middle levels of skill where I reside. I think that this is somewhat of a bad thing.
